Get the Best Resources for Faster Homeschool Start-Up
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this review or post, but all opinions are our own.
You’ve decided to homeschool. You have goals set for the year of what you want to accomplish and know what kind of tools would work best for your family. Now, it is time to begin the filing process and prepare for choosing a homeschool curriculum. It still might feel like your toes are on the edge of the great unknown. Whether you are in Iowa, another state, or another country I have good news, there are plenty of tools and resources that will answer your questions, ease your fears and lead you to the homeschool that will fit your unique family and learning needs. I will walk you through the steps and answer any questions you have along the way.
The trouble can be in knowing where to start. I’ve linked to a ton of resources in this post, so be sure to bookmark it as a reference for further searches. Consider our blog, 200 Fingers & Toes as your guide to help you find the way to your best homeschool year ever.
Who Can You Trust to Help
Home School Legal Defense HSLDA and National Home Education Research Institute NHERI are both good resources to locate your state’s information and begin creating a plan for how to communicate with the appropriate agencies. Every state has laws you must follow and doing so from the very beginning will save you time and worry in the long run.
We homeschool in IOWA which has had some major success in alleviating the burden of excessive or invasive oversight. A clear resource for a breakdown of your homeschool start-up options is provided by Homeschool Iowa. Their site is one the should be bookmarked for every Iowa based homeschooler and is a good resource for anyone trying to navigate their first year of homeschooling. They have printable forms and sample documents to help you know exactly what you need to provide to your school district.
We choose from several options according to our students needs, when you are just starting-up it might be a little confusing for me to explain to you how we do it. There are lots of terms and form references that can sound confusing. It should be clear after you read this article, but if I missed something vital to your family a few simple questions to your state’s support group will have you feeling confident. The simple version of our homeschool start-up is this; we are open enrolled to a neighboring school district. We had to apply to our own district and the district we wished to attend in April of the previous school year, so a heads up if you are thinking of going out of local district, this step takes advance planning and granting of permission. You may dual enroll in your district without any extra steps.
CHECK WITH YOUR STATE FOR SCHOOL ATHLETICS LAWS
Two of my sons are dual enrolled at the public school for athletics. We had baseball players and now two wrestlers. Each state has different rules regarding sports access, so contact your local district if you have a student athlete to be clear about your state’s laws. There are several states that do not allow homeschooling students to compete in athletics at the public school. Iowa allows you to dual enroll at public schools for academic courses and/or athletics. Since our sons are involved with athletics we choose to complete the CPI (Competent Plan of Instruction) form and choose option 2* with opt-in reporting to report to our district .
You may choose to satisfy this “reporting,” by choosing to submit the spring standardized test results from the school year, OR a year-end portfolio evaluation by a licensed Iowa teacher, OR you may submit an end of the year report from an accredited correspondence school in which your child is enrolled. You are responsible to send it to the district at the end of the school year. Homeschool Iowa has this handy chart to help you see all your options* more clearly.
The rest of my homeschooled students are open enrolled, but are not using services from the school at this time. For these students, I send an IPI form (Independent Private Instruction) only if and when the district in which those children are enrolled requests one. I do not have to report to the district about those students daily work or test results.
WHAT DOES A SCHEDULE LOOK LIKE
Depending on your state laws for attendance, the next thing you can do is schedule your school year. In Iowa, we must meet the minimum requirement of meeting for 148 days per calendar year, at least 37 days each school quarter. I divided 148 school days by five days a week, for a result of roughly 30 weeks of “class” time. That leaves 20+ weeks for summer break, Holidays, Travel, and well deserved breaks.
Homeschooling allows you to schedule your school days as you need them to be. There is no need to replicate the Monday through Friday, 8 to 4 schedule. You are not getting paid for a forty hour work week, teachers are. You can school for the amount of time it takes you to complete the studies for the day and you can schedule school for the day that you are available to teach.
After 19 years of being a stay at home partner in our business, I started a part-time job. In October of 2018, I became a working homeschool mom, working 20-25 hours a week away from home. The younger kids were already using a four-day school schedule and using day five for elective studies and personal projects. To help us cut down on our workload through the week we switched everyone to a four-day week, with three days of hands on instruction with a parent and one day for online work, elective and personal work. This means we could do school a little longer, at 38 weeks out of the year. We still have 14 weeks’ worth of time to distribute throughout the year for breaks and vacation.
Flexibility for Every Family
I say all of this to let you know that you can still homeschool as a working parent. Homeschooling is a great fit for entrepreneurial families like mine. Our hours as restaurant owners were always unconventional. There were years when the only way the kids saw Daddy, was when I packed all of us in the car and headed over to the restaurant to hang out until closing time. Looking back, I am so glad I made the effort to stay connected as a family.
Homeschooling gave us the flexibility we needed, I don’t know if we would have beaten the odds and made it twenty-five years as business owners and lovers if we hadn’t made “US” a priority. I would have chosen late nights with Dad if the kids had to be up for the bus at 6:30 in the morning. Homeschool helped us create a closer family.
Now that you’ve assessed your personal goals and educational goals for your family, and you’ve looked at your learning styles you are ready to start narrowing down the selection of what kind of curriculum you are going to start using as a family.
What Kind of Program is For You
When I started thinking about choosing a homeschool curriculum, I knew I wanted to keep doing exactly what was working for us AND get school credit for it. I searched for a Literature Based Curriculum, one with full length books that I could read aloud covering the majority of our core subjects for the day. We settled on Sonlight Curriculum and have used it from the start. It fits our learning goals and is perfect for multi-student families like mine. We wanted to build a library that we could keep coming back to year after year. Being rural, I like having everything we need delivered to our door at the outset of the school year.
SOME LITERATURE BASED HOMESCHOOL PROGRAMS
- Sonlight My top Literature Based Bundle pick for great content and price
- Memoria Press Classical Subjects Latin, Greek, Logic & Rhetoric, Streaming
- Veritas Press Classical Subjects, Language Arts, Live & Online too
- Beautiful Feet Lighter reading workload with a study guide
- Notgrass Stories all in one or two big book with guide and readers optional
- Ambleside Online Free classical literature book links and individual lesson plans or purchase the year lesson plan
TEXT BOOK AND PACKET BASED PROGRAMS
- Abeka Trusted leader in Textbook style, offers Video and Full Online Instruction
- Alpha Omega AOP Offering teacher Led Textbooks, self-directed workbook, digital and full online
- Saxon Math Clear, time-tested and not too much repetition, solid test prep
- ACE Core Paces A series of workbooks sets covering four core subjects systematically
OTHER RESOURCES I USE…
- Timberdoodle
- Christianbook.com
- My Amazon Recommendations Page
- Schooling Inspired on pinterest
There are tons of Homeschool teaching styles. The important thing is to find your family’s best fit. I have a friend who only uses textbooks and workbooks. She is confident in knowing that all of the information she needs to cover is in one book for the year. If a textbook is overwhelming to you or your child, there are some providers that break up the whole year into packets with ten workbooks for the year for each subject. That said…textbooks make me want to cry. Don’t be sorry for knowing what you like and what you need as a family. The best part of choosing homeschool curriculum is there are plenty to choose from. Without apologies find your family fit. To each their own my friends.
When I started blogging at 200fingersandtoes.com I wanted to encourage parents who were looking for an alternative in education. Over that year I realized we only used one curriculum and a few supplements, because we love them. You might not love them like I do. That is why I have used a lot of materials over the last few years that I would not have chosen for myself. Our reviews and links are the best of the bunch.
I WRITE REVIEWS FOR YOU
If you crave structure and assurance check out the textbook providers. I don’t review materials to find what fits me best. For over two years, we were reviewing curriculum with The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, so I could serve homeschooling families better. We want you to find your best school year and that means we cover all the tools to find ones that you will love.
Are you looking for something specific in a program; the next thing you can do after reading this article is to search 200fingersandtoes.com and over 200 reviews and articles we created to help you plan and succeed in your homeschooling endeavors. One easy article that will help you find more reviews in one place is 23 Great Teaching Tools for Language Arts in Your Homeschool.
Start Smaller Than You Think
When you begin your first homeschool year, start smaller than you think you need to.
What you are going to need the first year is a whopping dose of grace, humor, openness, humility, coffee and Jesus.
Doing anything from start-up is hard. This is your first time homeschooling. Acknowledging that it will be a season of fine tuning and finding your way gives you permission to start smaller and make changes sooner.
When we begin the school year we typically start in August. I give us a month to come up to full steam. We begin with just our core subjects, Math, Reading, (our reading book subjects cover History, Social Studies, Geography and can even Science) Language Arts. By September, we incorporate Bible, Writing assignments, current events and the full science curriculum. By reading great books we sneak in a lot of learning time.
NO DESKS FROM EIGHT TO THREE
People often wonder how we get done with our work so quickly? Are we cheating, slacking off? The real question should be why is the school week five, eight-hour days? School is forty hours a week…because teaching is a job. Teachers are employees and our work-week, and pay structure is built on forty-hour work weeks. If every class in a seven period rotation, has thirty minutes of solid instructing time, that’s 210 minutes. That is just three and a half hours, about what our school day takes to teach. We don’t have an hour bus ride, we’re not changing classes, and waiting for announcements, but you could throw on some tunes and have a pep rally if you need it!
SCHOOLING YOUR WAY; SETTING YOUR OWN HOURS
We all work from 10 to 2pm most school days. There is plenty of time to play and pursue other interests if they get right to work and stay on task. If they give me their best during school hours, I generally promise not to take my kids free time.
I can keep my word because there is no homework for us to do at night. Why so late of a start? Because I am a working mom of ten and a writer. I have always kept mornings as my personal quiet time and productive hours. You can create a life that fits ALL of your goals. Homeschooling truly is a whole family deal.
THE BIGGEST FACTOR IN SUCCEEDING IS DECIDING TO START
Through research, planning, plain trial and error, and a ton of grace, we have made it through fifteen years of teaching at home. Our three oldest graduated in 2017 and are grateful for the opportunity homeschooling gave them to pursue their interests, graduate early and prepare for college. They are thriving and doing great in school. This could be your future too.
Back in the beginning of our homeschool it was just a theory.
Fifteen years later I can see the results. My three grads love books, they are succeeding in college and I enjoy them a lot. Each of them have a unique story. Homeschooling lets you sculpt each child’s learning experience to fit them. I believe that it has been a huge factor in helping them to overcome learning difficulties and leap over hurdles like they would have never been able to do in public school.
You might see a child like your own in my examples. I hope you are inspired and encouraged to find your own path in your homeschool as well.
- If you want reading to be a focus in your family…
- Maybe you want to raise readers…
- Do you have a large family with multi grades…
- I’d like to share why Sonlight works for us.
We are 200 Fingers & Toes because we are homeschooling that many here at our house. Now you are asking…
How do we homeschool multiple kids without outsourcing everything?
We know what it is like to have many grades at one time. I had a literal K-12 schoolhouse one year, with ten kids in all the grades except for 6th and 9th. With the curriculum we use I have never taught more than three grade levels at a time. I always knew I wanted a big family. When I needed to chose a homeschool curriculum I needed one that would fit our future family. One that could expand from the first homeschool convention over twenty years ago, as just newlyweds to today. We needed a curriculum we could reuse with every kid. One that would feel enough to fit multiple kids in our grades to save time and make schooling a large family streamlined but still hands on. I did not want to throw my kids in front of a computer or leave the schooling to someone else. I wanted to be the leader in their education journey.
Why I chose Sonlight as my homeschool curriculum for my huge, multi-grade family
1. THE SONLIGHT BINDER IS A SECOND MOM IN THE ROOM
Regardless of how you got there, if you have more than two kids you will be tempted to hope for cloning in the future. With two of you, you can answer that math question AND sit on the couch and get through that chapter with your second grader. That chapter is SOOOOO long when the brother is standing there with his workbook two inches from your face the whole time “patiently” waiting his turn.
The binder is the next best thing to a clone. It keeps us moving forward every day by keeping us on task with simple, clear and extremely satisfying to check off boxes for every subject. The whole day is laid out on one page for us to reference throughout the day. On the go, we just pull out the schedule page and the notes for the week and throw our books in my amazing Sonlight book bag and off we go. Whenever the older kids need to know what to read next they simply look in the binder, and boom, I am out of the loop. How awesome is that.
2. WITH SONLIGHT MY HUSBAND CAN HELP ANYTIME
The other problem I was running into was that my husband’s schedule fluctuates a great deal. He would be unavailable to be home for long stretches and then home for a week, willing to help, but I didn’t know what to throw his way. With Sonlight he can jump into the schedule on any given day. We check off tasks in our schedule binder when we complete them, so he can see at a glance where we need catching up or he can read through the whole week in a book and save me some time. Either way, I love that he can always jump in to help me.
Right now as I have been working on writing and podcasting I have been taking two days a week off. With Sonlight I am able to hand over the binder and my husband and I can work together on our entrepreneurial goals while we are homeschooling. It makes for a team approach where we can work on our projects and stay accountable in our homeschool.
3. I KNOW MYSELF, I NEED STRUCTURE
I‘m not a planner. For school I love my giant binder. Don’t let her looks fool you. She is not intimidating at all. In fact I affectionately call her “Mom” because this binder tells me what to do every day.
With 10 kids asking what is next, I could lose my mind before lunch on any given day. Knowing where to look quickly helps me keep kids moving forward during the day. Every day is neatly laid out with Reading, History, Bible, Language Arts and Read-Aloud titles. Just check down the list as you read and you are done.
This translates into kids working independently earlier
By the seventh grade, my older kids were in charge of their own binder and I would check in with them. Through all of high school they have worked through their studies as a group with little direction from me on what to do. I still have to hound them about completing their Math every day and turning in science sheets on time, but they know what to do from their binder. Getting them to complete it in a timely manner still falls on us as the parents, but half a job is still better than everything. Right?
Reading out loud is a great way to incorporate the whole family in History and Social Studies, geography and Literature
ALL OF THESE HELPED US HOMESCHOOL MULTIPLE GRADE LEVEL SUCCESSFULLY
My older kids began their independent work just as the next group really needed more guidance. Sonlight was again a great fit because many of the readers covered the subject matter both groups were learning. We could still all meet in the morning for bible time and then break into our smaller groups.
Flexibility has always been a key factor in schooling a large family.
Homeschooling Works for Our House of Flux
We scrap a lot of plans. We are a house in constant flux. With a bunch of kids, you are too. The baby becomes a toddler, the kids read at different rates, some kids are auditory while others are hands on. We shift perpetually to fit the needs of this year, but Sonlight shifts right with us to give us the structure we need to be successful.
If you like structure, in fact you are craving it, Sonlight will be a great fit for you. If you love reading, or if like me, you hated reading and want your kids to love it, choose Sonlight. My kids are practically putting in the new book order at the library these days. If your husband desperately wants to help you, or grandma, a teen helper or the paperboy, the Sonlight binder lets anyone jump into the fray.
MAYBE YOU DON’T HAVE MULTIPLE CHILDREN BUT YOU NEED TO STREAMLINE YOUR SCHOOL WITHOUT COMPROMISING LEARNING FOR ANOTHER REASON
Are you expecting a baby, experiencing a prolonged sickness or have a child with a health condition? Sonlight has been a great fit for many families in your same position. They could pull the week’s schedule page and throw the reading books in a bag and be all set for the day is a great relief.
No matter what kind of curriculum you are looking for I guarantee a quick online search will yield you plenty of results. I’ve created a wealth of resources and reviews here on 200fingersadntoes.com with the intention of giving you all of the options to meet your family’s needs in the way that they will learn their very best. I don’t want to sell a curriculum. I don’t want to push MY ideas on you. What I want is to help you refine what you want as your homeschool vision. I am a homeschool courage lender. I want to encourage you to be brave and step out and make scary choices until you are confident with your feel fully on the ground.
No matter what your questions are you can always email me at [email protected]. I’d love to share in your wins and heart aches. I’ll do my best to help answer your question and I will happily pray for you as well.
I want to thank you for joining me on these episodes and I hope they have encouraged and inspired you and empowered you to make the choices you want for your family. You’re the number one person here leading your family and I want you to help you find the tools you need to do that.
Subscribe and Share with a Friend
I can’t wait to meet you over in the next few episodes. I especially want to encourage you if you have teen; struggling in public school, and you are thinking about removing them, but maybe you are afraid of how high school is going to go for you the second time around. By the end of the next episode you will agree with me that high school is nothing to fear. I will give you the tips and tools to help you go through high school together successfully.
You will give your student the tools they need for their future.
I can’t wait to meet you here again next week.
Have a great day,
Amber from 200 Fingers & Toes
