Newbie for Homeschooling

[Jastect]

I am just starting to look into home schooling for my 15 year old. We are in northern Delaware, Newcastle Co.

Does anyone have advice for dealing with Delaware's laws, withdrawing from public school, etc? Is there any help available through the school district? How about driver's ed?

We could use a support group that's not religious.

Do I have to register as a teacher somehow? I ordered some books online for general advice. Is there a list of required courses to graduate?

Thank you for any help!

[lovehmschlg]

Hello.

I don't live in Delaware, but I can answer some of your questions. Hopefully someone in Delaware will chime in and help you out with more local information, like a homeschool support group near you. I did a Google search for Secular Homeschool Support group in Delaware and came up with some links. Here is one link that shares a few of those. If they're not near you, maybe they can direct you to one that is. And here's a great resource and forum for secular homeschoolers.

If you're interested in homeschooling high school, this is a great source of information: Let's Homeschool High School Just follow that link and you'll find just about everything you need to know, including a free Guide to Homeschooling High School. You may be able to ask some of the parents at that forum or the Time4Learning high school forum here what they do for driver's ed. Personally, my husband and I taught our kids to drive and logged their hours. They also took a course through our Allstate insurance company online. Usually, the best source of information on homeschooling is other homeschooling parents, your state homeschool association or your local homeschool support groups. From experience I've learned the school board employees are not very well-informed about homeschooling.
Some states require you submit a Letter of Intent to Home Educate, which are usually found from a homeschooling support group website. In our state, we also need testing done by a certified teacher. We know many homeschooling parents who are also certified teachers and offer their services for end-of-the-year testing.

This is a summary of the Delaware homeschool laws taken directly from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. And this is a link to more Information on Homeschooling in Delaware.

If you haven't seen this yet, these are the high school courses offered by Time4Learning curriculum.

Well, I hope all that was helpful.

[Sewcrazymommy]

Welcome! We just recently started homeschooling also! It was very easy! I created our on "school" via the Dept of ed site then printed the letter from them for his school to formally remove enrollment. We're still working out all the bumps etc and attempting to get a schedule together. My 16 yr old also wants to switch over to this so then I'll have both of my older boys homeschooling, we have 5 (17, 16, 10, 8 and 13 months). We are also non religion based.

I am more than happy embark on this journey with you