Getting Ready to Home Educate

QUICK GUIDE to teaching your children at home!

Interested in homeschooling, but still not sure? Read All You Need Is...'

The information in this guide can also be found in Beverley's comprehensive The Educating Parent Resource Directory, a free download.

• About Home Education
• Is it Legal? Registering
• Getting Ready: learning plans, environment and resources
• Assessment
• Keeping Records

Before you worry about how to legally register as a homeschooling family there are a few things you need to consider...

Do you really want to homeschool? Are you cut out to be a homeschooling parent? Although the benefits are many, commitment is important. Getting approval isn't the hurdle it used to be but it does require some thinking and work. Consider your reasons for home educating your children. Are your children happy with the idea? Spend some time sitting around the table talking about what it will mean for your family, what learning at home will and can look like, think of possible disadvantages and how you can overcome them. There is a lot to consider and your discussions will form the foundation of your home educating philosophy and lifestyle.

Homeschool is not school. School is classroom oriented, homeschool is family/community oriented. The world is your classroom! Your children know the difference between parenting and teaching. You'll save yourself time, money and energy to spend a few moments thinking about what kind of education you want for your children. It isn't about how many hours of instruction per day - quantity - it is about being able to offer quality individualised learning programs tailored to your children's unique learning needs!

Preparing the learning environment doesn't have to mean turning one room into a classroom. Usually families provide each child with a desk although most learning will occur in the main living areas of the home - where you are! There are plenty of ways you can enhance learning though by tweaking the learning environment.

You will need to design your own curriculum. Home educators are 'on their own' - it is not distance or correspondence school, though there are a few some distance schools that will enrol homeschooling families and offer some support and resources. Writing your own learning programs isn't difficult once you've determined what the children need to learn. I recommend you being by developing your own personal philosophy or mission statement about education. You can also incorporate any of the different homeschooling approaches and methods. Finding appropriate resources to help your children learn is the next exciting step!

Home educators use a wide variety of approaches and methods. It will take time to find the 'right' way for you and your family. The first couple of years will include experimenting with different methods and materials - all homeschoolers go through this 'settling in' stage. All methods work to balance children's natural ability to learn with organised learning activities that challenge and promote growth and development. The homeschool curriculum aims to be holistic. It should also be responsive to the learning needs and styles of the individual learner. The information on this website has been accumulated over four decades of homeschooling experience as well as from Beverley's ongoing interest in how children learn and how parents and teachers can continue to aid that process.

Homeschooling is legal. Find out what you have to do to legally home educate in your state or territory.

There are dozens of articles on this site about getting started.

My original book Getting Started with Homeschooling is a home educator's manual on how to write your own learning programs tailored to your child's learning needs and preferences, as well as reflecting your family values and lifestyle. It has in-depth chapters on how to plan and evaluate learning programs as well as checklists for different subject areas. It is now also available as a complete 'how to homeschool' course, consisting of 3 parent workbooks each dealing with a separate area of creating, evaluating and recording a learning plan for your children.

Begin this quick guide to getting ready to homeschool your children by reading the next page of this guide: the nature of home education.