More questions answered on homeschooling!

Monicar http://grizzlymama.blogspot.com/ a homeschooling tutor in the USA has kindly answer questions, that may help those here in the UK and elsewhere, decide if they want to take charge of their own children’s education!


Hi Monicar, a very big thank you for giving an insight into homeschooling! I will stay on this post for a while to give it a good airing! I think an alternative to left wing biased state education is long overdue for those who want a more balanced and truthful education for their offspring. I’m going to look at the situation here in the UK and see how it works.A couple of questions, do you run your teaching timetable along the lines of your public schools, re: holidays?Also do you set aside a room and make it, well like a classroom to create a learning environment just like the school classroom? Like a couple of desks and globes, charts and pictures to encourage a conducive learning area?Or is teaching in any room or area, just curious. What in your opinion and experience is the best format?

Monicar’s reply

Sparky - it's different for everyone. We have the kids computers set up in the dining room with shelves for the books and we also have a lot of their toys in there. Their artwork adorns the walls the drawback being that we don't have a dining room now...we eat gathered round the coffee table in the living room. Most of the work is done away from the computers. Writing, reading, math manipulatives etc.. We 'do school' in many settings. Sometimes out on the lawn, sometimes at the picnic table, sometimes in the livingroom at the coffee table, sometimes in the dining room, sometimes in the kitchen while I'm cooking, sometimes riding in the car I have them do some stuff. I know of one family who set up their finished basement as a schoolroom and that's where they do everything.


Some people like to get it all done in the a.m. but as for us - we sleep in and get going a little later. We're usually done or nearly so by the time the publics get home and start calling and knocking up. Sometimes we save music or art until after dinner. As I've been doing this for several years now I've moved away from regimented to a more relaxed 'go with the flow' type of mentality. We love it and as I said - at the beginning I was very worried and keeping tabs and regulating things and fretting over the little stuff. I have now learned that it will all get done (it is a lot!) without all of that worrying.

There are days where I have to push the kids a little harder and remind them that if they want to advance then they need to get the damn math worksheet done sometime within the next 68 1/2 hours! Most days are not like that though. They're excited and want to see what's up next. Most days are good and very enjoyable with lots of laughter and learning.There are many ways to approach it from a very un-structured 'un-schooling' philosophy to a very structured, teacher/class type of environment. I am somewhere in the middle and gravitating toward the more un-structured. The exception being a summer break. We take days off that the publics are in school and many times are doing school when the publics are off. We tailor it to what WE need - not to what the publics are doing. When the kids whine to me about doing school when the other kids are off I remind them of the time we went sledding in the snow while the other kids were sitting at school. They get over it.

Question from Sparky

Hi Monicar, I like your philosophy on home education. I suppose some though might like the classroom setting and strict times! Question how much record keeping do you have to do, do you need to show prove to inspectors that you have covered a particular area against knowledge that a child of a certain age would have deemed to have cover in your public schools?

Monicar’s reply

Sparky you are lucky in the UK in that you do not have to document ANY of this to your bureaucrats.Here it depends on the state. In PA they must have 900 hours/180 days per year of instruction time for elementary level. They must be evaluated by an evaluator. You must provide notification to the school district with goals by a certain time each year. You must keep a portfolio of their work and document days/hours. It's a matter of putting their work into a file and keeping track of days teaching. There are different tools that can be used to keep track of it all.Some states don't require all of that. It seems that the UK does not require that from the parents. Count your blessings!
Here is a link to an example of a tool that can be used by homeschoolers to keep track of everything:
http://www.didtoday.com/welcome/index.php/didtoday/index