Thinking of home schooling

[Unregistered]

Hello all

My husband and our 2 kids just moved to ma from California. My daughter just turned 5 this month and will be starting kindergarten in the fall. Due to my husbands job we travel a lot and we are planing to move back to California in a year or so....

I'm looking for help on deciding if she should go to public school or if I should home school..... What am I in for if I do decide to home school? Any help or info or pointers would be great.....

Also if I'm planing to move back to California in the coming years. Should I go off ma standards or ca or both

Thank you

[katshu2]

Hi there and welcome! I am a huge advocate of homeschooling, so I would tell you it's at least worth a shot, lol. However, I do know that it's not for every family. Saying all that, Kindergarten is such a fun age! I think if you wanted to, you'd do fine and really enjoy the time with your daughter.

As far as which state's standards to go by, that's difficult... If you know for a fact that you are moving back to CA, then I would say follow the CA standards, but abide by the MA homeschool laws. That way you have everything covered. Here are the laws for the both states: http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/California.pdf and http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Massachusetts.pdf. And here are the DoE standards for both states: Content Standards - Standards & Frameworks (CA Dept of Education) and Current Curriculum Frameworks - Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Hope that helped a little. :/ Looking forward to hearing back about you guys!

[Brandon]

Hi, I'm not a parent but I am a college student who was homeschooled for most of his life (up until 11th grade). I can't help you with the legal side of homeschooling, however, I would like to give you some personal feedback what it was like homeschooling for me.

When I was around 10, my mother made the choice to move to Belgium because my stepdad had work over there. This is why I don't know how to help you with the legal side of things. The requirements were much more lenient. My stepdad assigned my work for me and made me get it done. The books were designed specifically for home-learning. Much like books with constant homework assignments. I hated every moment of it.

My corcumstances were different and maybe not the best situation to put me in because I later found out I have Attention Deficit Disorder. If you chose to homeschool your children and they seem to have dificulties or lack of self-discipline, please have your children tested for learning disabilities! Homeschooling would have been a better experience had my mother been aware of mine from the start.

Now let me go into the advantages of homechooling; I suppose it left me far more self-disciplined by the end of it so now I actually find I sit down and teach myself about 90% of every class before I even take it. I was able to travel around while homeschooling without the headache of transfering schools (while in the U.S. I was homeschooled through the University of Nebraska Independant Study Program, so was Justin Timberlake and Brittney Spears). That about sums up the advantages for me.

The disadvantages are they I missed out on having a childhood. But that could have been fixed with a well thought out plan to get me around peers. Sports or music groups could have cured that issue. I actually never missed out on prom because I begged my mom to let me go to a normal high school in 11th grade because I hated homeschooling so much. I can tell you transferring credits was a huge headache and I actually lost many credits. Being thrown into a new environment at that age was tough because all my peers had bonds wirh each other that root for years. So making real friends was difficult but I always just pulled the homeschool card on people to make them invite me to social gatherings or birthdays or whatever.

Don't let me discourage you from homeschooling though. Once I went to college it was easier to make the right kinds of friends. Just make sure your children are happy. If they complain about missing out, listen to them and take it seriously otherwise they may hate you in a long run. Make sure your children are well rounded, that's really the important thing to keep in mind. Homeschooling is both rewarding and tedious. Only follow it if you can both afford and have time to compensate for the lack of having a normal life.

Also, nothing is set in stone. Homeschooling and public schooling are interchangeable if need be. If you can't cope as a parent to homeschool, then don't do it. Otherwise homeschooling a great opportunity to bond with your children and have control over how they turn out. A lot of public schools in the U.S. are very worrying. A lot of bad behaviors are leaking around at younger ages these days. But find a way to make sure your children have a social life otherwise when they go to college they may try to make up for it lacking (I did and wasted 3 years and $40,000 in student loans). But I did grow up eventually.

How did I turn out? Well, I'm a straight A student pursuing a career in Nursing. I have almost 60 college credits and a GPA of 3.84. The turn around happened after I got help for my learning disabilities.


Good luck with your choices, I hope they work out!

Brandon

[katshu2]

Thank you, Brandon, for sharing your experiences with everyone!

[Unregistered]

Hi! I wanted to respond to your post even though it may be "after the fact". I raised my kids homeshooling them in CA (Pasadena area) until we moved to Mass. 4 years ago. I never intend to do anything but homeschooling as that was a decision I made before they were born. Before I left CA I checked out homeschooling and found homeschool groups here in MA. I contact support group leaders and joined some yahoo groups to get a feel for the area in regard to homeschooling. I'm on the North Shore and there are quite a number of homeschoolers here. I was a little apprehensive about the change, I never reported when I was in CA although we joined a Charter Homeschool for a year before we moved. I know that the rules are decided on by individual school districts here, but most I have heard of require very little so it wasn't as bad as I thought. I hope you decided to take the plunge and try it out. It would be nice to hear how things went and where you settled. Hope you're doing well.

Jane C.

Hello all

My husband and our 2 kids just moved to ma from California. My daughter just turned 5 this month and will be starting kindergarten in the fall. Due to my husbands job we travel a lot and we are planing to move back to California in a year or so....

I'm looking for help on deciding if she should go to public school or if I should home school..... What am I in for if I do decide to home school? Any help or info or pointers would be great.....

Also if I'm planing to move back to California in the coming years. Should I go off ma standards or ca or both

Thank you