This webpage has a list of articles detailing many of the issues and ideas surrounding starting a homeschool support group. You'll find discussions of everything from why you should form a support group, to choosing a leader, to delegating and handling tough situations.
This is a survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, with a stated goal of being used by educators and by federal and state policy makers to address important issues facing the nation's schools: educational standards, high school course-taking patterns, dropping out of school, the education of the disadvantaged, the needs of language minority students, and the features of effective schools. We are including this link as an item of interest, to demonstrate what directions institutional survey writers are taking in their approach to homeschooling. In our opinion, it is a completely inadequate attempt to measure homeschooling demographics or success, focusing heavily on cultural notions of "socialization" and structured educational models. It is also invasive in terms of the amount of personal information required.
Tips for using calendars, binders, notebooks, and a weekly assignment record to organize your homeschool. Although this article is specific to one curriculum, there are some useful general tips.
The mission of ArtChallenge is to motivate individuals to take action, have a positive art experience, and to develop the "can do" spirit, which soon becomes a way of life, benefiting mental health and human achievement. Entrants come up with a stained glass design on paper.
We’ve been brainwashed by the system to think that education can only happen when an “expert” or someone really good at a subject, transfers that expertise to another person. Actually, this is a very inferior way to learn. We need to trust the human capacity for learning things and figuring things out on our own, when we need to.
"Not possible," homeschool mom proclaimed glumly, shaking her head. I had just explained how the Sudbury Valley School - a democratically managed, child-directed learning environment that has been around for almost 40 years - has demonstrated repeatedly that a child could learn math - all of it grades K through 12 - in eight weeks. Average (if there is such a thing), normal (never met one), healthy children, hundreds of them, learned it all, leading to admissions to some of the leading colleges and universities in the nation. "Must be some kind of trick," she insisted dolefully, remembering her own dark days in the classroom slaving over the seemingly inscrutable, all joy wrung out as from a wet sponge, then as an elementary school teacher herself, and now finally daily fighting what she was convinced was a losing homeschooling war with her nine-year-old over the required workbook pages. "Nope, no tricks, no special techniques, magic curriculum, or innovative teaching method," I informed her. The secret, if there was one, was to wait until the child asked for it, indeed insisted upon it, and had a use for it, even if the use was just college admission.