The Top 10
Okay, here are the top 10 things that I wish I had known about homeschooling–it’s just that some of it is difficult to believe until you have lived it.
1) Homeschooling is addictive. Once you start, it’s difficult to stop.
2) Most learning goals will be reached even if you teach nothing. If the resources are available kids will learn whether you meant them to or not.
3) Buy resources “you” need. The kids are going to ask you things that aren’t in the “children’s” books.
4) Find a support group–On-line, In person, Anything. One other person who will remind you, on rough days, that people with children “in school” have rough days too. It’s not homeschooling… it’s parenting.
5) Don’t expect a typical homeschooling day to be anything like the next typical homeschooling day.
6) If you say “funding”, duck. Quick. (Well, you would have to be an old-timer around here to remember what #6 is about.)
7) Some homeschoolers use lots of packaged curriculum (otherwise vendors wouldn’t sell so much of it) but we are paranoid about admitting it to unschoolers. (This thing has nothing to do with me, of course, we “only” use a packaged math curriculum, a packaged spelling program, thinking skills, and once dabbled in a packaged unit study. But when we are not doing all that we are really unschoolers.)
8) Most teachers and principals will “not” be pleased when you tell them you homeschool. Naive? Well, the principal at the school in Rankin Inlet threw open the doors to the supply room for me and encouraged me to take whatever I wanted. The reception here has been, uh, somewhat cooler (weird, since we are further south).
9) Homeschooling is easier than it sounds.
10) Homeschooling is harder than it sounds.
Those last two statements don’t contradict each other. They only seem to.
Gina Rozon is a homeschooling mom to two daughters aged 7 and 5. They live in La Ronge, Saskatchewan. In addition to homeschooling, running a home daycare, and writing, Gina operates a home-based business doing income tax returns.