Are you ready to teach your kids at home? If you want to remove your kids from public school and teach them at home, planning is key. Here are the steps you need to take to prepare:
Know the law
Every state has its own laws about homeschooling. Check with your local school or your state Department of Education.
For example, Arkansas parents who plan to remove their kids from public school and teach them at home must file a Notice of Intent with the superintendent of the school district where the family lives by August 15th. You don’t need to file multiple notifications if you have multiple kids — just one for the family.
Arkansas schools are not required to provide books, curricula, or anything else to home school parents. They may allow your children to participate in extracurricular activities like sports or band. They can require a one-year waiting period for participation. It’s up to the school.
Arkansas does not have any specific guidelines for homeschool families when it comes to what you must teach or what kind of schedule you should follow. You are also not required to test your children. However, if you decide to place your children back in public school, you may be required to show that they have met the school district’s requirements in order to be placed in the grade you expect.
It makes sense to keep records of what you cover in your lessons and to keep up with the state standards. Check the Arkansas standards if you homeschool in our home state. You’ll find a PDF for each content area which gives you all the things kids are required to learn in our state, from understanding that words are written from left to right to solving real-world problems using quadratic expressions and equations in one variable.
However, Arkansas homeschool families are not required to meet the state standards.
Optimize your environment for success
You can create a wonderful learning moment anywhere, anytime. If you want to homeschool with a view to preparing your child for high school or college, though, you’ll need to keep records and meet standards.That means that an organized space, a method of keeping track of what you’ve studied and what you plan to study, and some basic supplies can be the difference between stressful failure and happy success.
Choose your curriculum
Do you want to choose a complete ready-made curriculum? Or do you want to be more flexible, picking and choosing books, workbooks, and hands-on activities as you go along? This is really the first decision to make.
If you want a prepared curriculum, you have a wide range of choices. An economical option is the complete workbook. Carson-Dellosa, a respected classroom publisher, makes complete basic skills workbooks. Give kids time to work through all the curriculum areas to make sure they’ve got the essential skills under their belts, and spend the rest of your learning time with hands-on learning adventures.
Alternatively, use something like Alpha Omega’s LifePac system, with daily lessons and testing included. This system is intended to cover everything from a Bible-based perspective.
Other options include unit study approaches. The lesson plans here at FreshPlans are generally designed in this way. We choose great books and connect multiple content areas with reading, discussion, online resources, and hands-on activities. For our Titanic study, for example, we recommend an assortment of books, a virtual field trip, and thoughtful discussions on history, technology, and economics. Some of our plans are detailed step-by-step activities, but many are fun-schooling — exploration and thoughtful consideration of information and ideas. If you choose this kind of approach, you will need organized reading and math lessons to complement the unit studies.
Our unit studies are often literature based, but some homeschool plans center on literature completely. We have many fairy tale lesson plans and literature studies to support this kind of plan. Again, you’ll need reading and math skills work to round out your child’s education.
Plan your schedule
There are lots of different ways to schedule learning. You may choose to have school from 8:00 to 3:00 with recesses and a lunch break, or you might fit 15 minute study snacks into a day spent doing projects and having adventures. Make sure your state laws don’t require a certain number of days or hours of instruction, and then choose the best plan for you and your family.
Unless you’re devoted to unschooling, though, we strongly encourage a set time for reading every day. Start with 10 minutes for the youngest kids and work your way up to 30 minutes a day. That’s good amount of time for adults, and you can hope this will become a lifelong habit for your child.
