Homeschooling FAQ
Are you interested in homeschooling your children but don’t know where to start? This video will provide insight into the homeschooling process as well as answer some of the frequently asked questions about it. You’ll learn about the different types of homeschooling, the positives and negatives of homeschooling, and resources available to parents who are considering this option. With this video, you’ll have the information you need to make an informed decision about homeschooling. Don’t wait any longer – take advantage of this video and empower yourself to make the right decision for your family. Get started now and join the growing movement of homeschoolers!
Transcript at bottom of page
Timeline:
00:00. Intro
00:24. About Homeschooling
16:27. FAQ – How did you get started?
22:05. What about socialization
27:56. What method of Homeschooling do you use?
30:51. Where do you get curriculum?
32:02. What are the legalities of Homeschooling?
33:46. Does it take up too much of your time?
36:55. Outro
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Transcript – Homeschooling
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Farm Life and Freedom. I’m your host, Amy Bell. Today’s subject is going to be about homeschooling. Now, this is something that I get asked about quite a bit. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve, I get. I get asked a lot of questions and I try to give as much help as I possibly can.
I’ve helped many families over the years get going and, you know, getting started or maybe I’m helping ’em cross a point where they’re kind of struggling and I give a lot of credence to the, um, to homeschooling, to the ability to do so, to the outcomes of homeschooling. I just, I find that homeschooling is one of those things that, um, in, in my life, I just couldn’t possibly replace it.
I’ve seen. Firsthand the benefits of homeschooling. And so I’m always willing to help when any family is, I mean, from looking for information on whether or not they should, uh, or maybe they’re already into it and they just really need some help, you know, moving forward or turning a corner. So today’s subject, because of, of all of the questions that I get, I’m, I’m gonna give you a bit of a primer on.
Okay, let’s call it just overall about homeschooling, but then I’m just gonna try and answer some of the questions that I most frequently get. So we’ll start out by just telling you, homeschooling refers to the process of educating a child. At home instead of sending them off to school. Well, obviously, I mean, that’s kind of self-explanatory, right?
You’d be surprised though. You’d be surprised at some of the, the different ideas that people have on what homeschooling truly is. And honestly, I can tell you firsthand because. I had kind of a skewed idea of what homeschooling was when I first began, and I’ll tell you about that. Um, we’ll talk first about maybe some of the reasons that people homeschool.
Some of the families who I’ve talked to. They, I would say it kind of runs the gamut. Sometimes people, um, choose homeschooling for religious or. Cultural reasons. You know, maybe they, they want to be able to instill in their child, um, their own personal, religious or cult cultural values. Not an easy word to say for me for some reason, but that, that’s something, you know, these days they’ve taken God completely out of schools.
You know, it’s completely, you know, out of the question to even bring that up. But people who are deeply religious and or, or spiritual, they, they want to be able to make. That a part of their child’s regular schedule, their regular life. And the best way to be able to, to do that is through, as a parent anyway, is to be able to do it through your homeschooling efforts.
So that is one, like, it’s probably one of the. Biggest reasons that people choose homeschooling. Um, one of the other reasons especially happening a whole lot more here recently is to get away from the institutional indoctrination that it’s happening in public schools. Now, I’m not gonna say across the board that every single school is doing this, okay?
I know a lot of. I know a lot of teachers, I went to school with a lot of people, really, really good people with great intentions that chose to go into, um, teaching, you know, and they teach at a, you know, at public schools. And I know these people and I know that they’re, they’re. Goodhearted people and they have a love for their children.
It’s not the same love as you have for your child, right? But they care about those children and they want the best for them. I see the problem as the fact that not, not that teachers are bad or not that, you know, some of them are, and everyone has to admit that there are bad eggs out there, just like there are in every profession, but.
I see the biggest problem as one of, we’re good teachers, even though they want to be good teachers and they want to do the right thing, they are having to work within a framework that is pushing them the wrong direction. And I think we’ve seen that a lot of that has come out. You know, COVID was an, it’s an awful thing to have to put the nation through.
I mean, in every sense of that word. It, it, it was an, a horrible thing, but there were good things that came out of it. And opening up kind of, you know, pulling back the curtains on the educational system in America, I believe was probably the biggest good thing that came out of it. Parents were able to see firsthand for themselves.
The kind of things that were going on in our public schools and they didn’t like it. Now, I’m, I consider myself very lucky. I have not had my children in public schools, um, for a long time. They, uh, there was a couple years when, um, we were in transition or when I was deployed overseas that they had been put in public school, not my choice.
And, um, there’s a difference. There is an absolute difference, and my kids will even tell you. So there, I, I saw the difference, I saw the impact that came and long-term impact even, um, that came from putting them into public school. And, um, it, it’s a, it’s a rough thing, especially when you, you see the difference, you know, when you see the two side by side.
Another reason that parents decide on homeschooling is to be able to provide their children with opportunities that they would not normally have in public school. And, uh, I’ll, I’ll be more specific. We can, as homeschooling parents, we get to choose what we do with our, our children’s education, at least to a certain extent in in our state.
I’m in Oklahoma in our state, which I consider to be the best state of the union, especially for the purposes of being a homeschooling family. The state sets out. Rules across the board as far as how many credits new children have to have to graduate and that kind of thing, and we follow those. We meet and exceed them as a homeschooling family.
But it’s something that we’re able to do because of the way we set things up. And, um, but we also get to do, you know, throughout, throughout the years, you know, regardless of what’s going on, we do field trips and hands-on science experiments and, you know, just real world educational moments. Things that my children would never get in.
A public school setting. My kids are getting real world experience in those things. So that’s something that, uh, I just, I, I feel like it’s probably one of the biggest benefits that my kids get. They learn from doing instead of just reading about it in a book. So I like that. I like, I like the, the whole idea behind that.
And my kids seem to really, um, they advance well that way. So I like that personally. Okay, we, in, in homeschooling, we can also personalize our children’s education. So what I mean by that is, you know, in public school everything is very cookie cutter. Um, everyone has to do, you know, have to meet these benchmarks.
At these grades and, and that’s all. And you get to take this math and this science and this English and what have you. And then when you get out of high school, you have taken those courses. Good for you. You’ve taken the courses. That does not mean that you could do anything with them. It means that you’ve taken the courses and in, in our, I’m giving you personal example, in our homeschool, our children get to, at least to a certain extent, they get to lead their learning.
So when my children are. Interested in a particular subject matter. Um, maybe an, an overall general topic. I have one that is, he’s a math wist. He doesn’t particularly like it, but man, is he ever a whiz? So his educational needs for the past several years have really shifted a lot, um, having to do with math and numbers.
It’s something that he gravitates to. So it’s something that we allow, we push more of because it’s something he’s good at. Now when we have a child who is really into science, then we push, push the science a lot harder. You know, um, my kids, my two, my two younger ones, as they were coming up, we, they chose what I give them opportunity to choose their sciences for the year and what have you.
And they chose zoology. And it, we had a ball doing it. We did, you know, hands on science experiments with it, and it was just, honestly, it was a great time and they truly learned. To this day, they still talk about those things that they learned back then because it stuck When a child is truly interested in a subject, they actually learn about it.
They, they, they invest themselves in it because they’re interested in it. It’s not like being forced to go grab their book and walk down the hall and go to a class that they hate and sit there and listen and then do a homework paper and drop it back off. That I’m telling you, I mean, having gone to public school and having, um, dealt with that, Um, here and there throughout the years.
Uh, I can give you the side by side example. When a child is interested in their subject matter, when they’re interested in what’s going on, they push themselves into it. They don’t have to be pushed, they don’t have to be forced to learn. They want to learn. Children are curious and their minds are constantly growing.
You know, it’s something that, you know, when they’re young, that’s when you learn. The majority of everything you’re ever gonna know when you’re little. So it, when we, um, when we suppress that by saying, no, you can only learn this. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, you can just learn this. It suppresses that desire in them to want to learn, to want to seek out that information.
And I think that’s a shame. That’s a real shame. It’s holding back your child. So I don’t, I don’t care much for that because I’ve seen the flip side. I’ve seen how much children can do when they really want to learn. Um, we allow our children to be able to learn more. Um, in, in their field of interest. We still stick with, you know, their basics that they have to do.
You know, obviously they learn their, their, um, English grammar and they learn their math skills and, you know, the sciences and what have you, the basics. They always learn those, but outside of that, they get to really push forward and. Determine what they like. They get to determine what they’re good at.
And I, I see it, I see them flourish because of it. Um, you okay. One of the things, how you personalize a child’s education is being able to, um, use their learning style. As a part of, you know, their educational platforms, I guess when a child is able to learn in their learning style, They are able to learn a lot more, and it’s not so, it’s not so horrible.
You know, I’m a, um, I, when I was growing up, I didn’t want to hear anybody at all tell me how to do something. I didn’t want to hear that. I’m not, I wasn’t going to be good at that if they were going to tell me. But if I could see it or if I could physically do it, then. I would learn it and I would learn it in a heartbeat, and I could move on because I knew it already.
But, so I’m not an auditory learning, an auditory learner. That’s not me. But other people are, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned through the years that, you know, all of my children, every single one of them have a different learning style. And I’ve tried to cater to that learning style, not that I don’t add something else in.
Also because I believe that you expanding yourself is a good thing, but I really try to cater to the style that my children can more fully learn in. And you know, in public school, that’s not something that you can really get. I mean, in, I’m not blaming them, they’ve got a bunch of kids. In each class, and they’re all different and they’re all going at, you know, they’re all different levels and so it’s very difficult to cater to an individual child, especially if you’ve got 30 of ’em to cater to.
So it’s in public school, they really can’t do it that way. But in homeschool we can, um, Learning real skills firsthand. That’s one of my favorite things about homeschooling. You know, I, I add in. My, I add in learning to everything that we do. You know, if we, if we go in the kitchen and decide to cook something together, when they were young, they were learning fractions left and right.
They knew the fractions like crazy. We didn’t even, once we got to math where we were doing fractions, they already knew ’em. They had already conquered it. So it’s being able to add those little things in to everything that we do and inject learning. Into everything. And I try, I still do that. My kids, some of my kids are grown already and I’ll still try to do that.
It’s just part of what I do. But that, that gives you a good primer on, um, the basics of homeschooling, kind of the. The why behind it. And you know, there are a lot of different homeschooling methods I’ve done. You can check out, um, a life on the farm.com and I’ve done multiple different articles. Um, you check under the homeschooling tab, I’ve done multiple different articles on different subject matter.
Um, concerning homeschooling, and they go a lot more in depth than what I can do right here, right now. But I would suggest that you go, if you’re thinking about this, go and have a look at those because it’s gonna be something that would potentially really give you some, some great information to help you make a decision.
So we’re now, we’re gonna get started. On the questions now, one of the questions I always get is how I got started with homeschooling, and I can tell you that my, let’s see. I can tell you that my two oldest were really young, like I wanna say kindergarten and. Maybe going into the third grade, pre-K and maybe about to go into the third grade, something like that.
And we were come from a fairly small rural area and, but we were being transferred to the city, to Oklahoma City and I was, there was no chance I was gonna put my kids from the kind of setting that we were in going into those big Oklahoma City schools. I knew as a mother, I knew it would be bad for them.
That’s a culture shock going straight into such a, a large school. So I decided, well, if we’re gonna have to move away, I’m gonna stay home and I’m gonna homeschool ’em. And you know, that first year we, we were lucky to make it out alive. I will say that because I had a wrong view. I had kind of a, I, my, in my mind, homeschooling was.
Public school at home and I was trying to force us all into that situation where you, you’re starting at eight and you don’t end till three and you know, it’s, you open the book and you do whatever I did in public school, and I mean, I was. I was dagum Hitler. I was dictating and, and it was a bad theme cuz I made my kids hate it.
Oh my goodness. And I hated it too. I was ready to pull my hair out and theirs, but I, I learned and didn’t even take the first year, it took maybe part of the first year and I learned, Hey mom, it’s time to chill out. These kids are going to do what they’re going to do. And they’re. They were smart. They would learn whatever I put in front of ’em.
I was putting too much in front of ’em when I was expecting too much. And that’s actually one of the things that I can point out about homeschooling that, um, we can get our school done in less than half a day. Okay. Because we don’t have the other additional distractions. You know, we’re, we’re not going for fire drills and recess and whatever.
We don’t have the additional distractions. Plus it’s one-on-one, you know, or one on two at a time or whatever. And we can get our done, our work done. Very quickly. I do not assign homework. We’re already at home. We get our work done fairly quickly and once it’s done, it’s done. We’re moving on, we’re gonna go do something else, we’re gonna play or we’re gonna do whatever.
And that’s something that has been a huge thing for us. Once I finally got that, that whole idea of, Hey, this isn’t public school at home. This is us learning. Together in our home or anywhere else because we have done many, many, many school sessions, you know, at the lake, throw down a blanket and throw down our books or whatever We were happen to doing at be doing at the time, and we.
Do our school stuff, get out and go take a break in the lake and then come back up there, finish up the school stuff and you know, we’ve done school at the park, we’ve done school in the backyard. It just, we’ve done school in the car a lot because of going to field trips now. That’s something that a lot of homeschoolers tend to do.
We sometimes we gather together and do field trips, or sometimes we just jump in the car and say, you know what? Let’s go find out about X, Y, and z. We’re gonna head out, and that makes it a terrific break from the norm, and it gives us another way to experience learning. I, I am fully of the idea that we wanna teach our children to learn.
We don’t necessarily wanna fill their brain with all these various facts and figures and what have you. We wanna teach them to learn to, to seek out the information, to want to seek out the information, and then also, How to seek out the information, how to filter through the trash and pull out the good and true information that they’re actually looking for.
And that’s probably where I gear more of my teaching instead of just, you know, hey, this paper says that a noun is, you know, person, place, or thing. Sure we go over that stuff, but we go so much further with our homeschooling and my, my kids definitely benefit from it. Okay, now I’m, now comes the, the dreaded question that every homeschooling family probably gets 50 times a year.
And, and it’s the one that we hate the most because people have such a, just a, a skewed view. Of homeschooling on, on a life on the farm. In the homeschooling section, you will find an article, um, about socialization, the S word. And you know, I get, I get questions, you know, all the time. It’s the same question every time.
What about socialization? Um, how do you socialize your child? Well, I don’t have to socialize them. They’re born social creatures. What I do. Is I teach them the proper way to socialize. I teach them who they should and should not socialize with. And you know, my kids, my kids have over the years, they have just.
They’ve been very impressive. I will say that they’ve been very impressive. They could all speak at a very young age and at a very young age, they could hold an intelligent conversation with anybody. Adults included, actually adults mostly. I’m gonna go ahead and say, because we always socialize, but we aren’t segregating them.
To a class of people who are only their own age. We are in homeschool groups where pe you know, there are children of all different ages, plus parents and what have you. We are obviously in church and people of all ages that they are able to speak with and, and have conversations with and interact with on a regular basis.
They do extracurriculars all the time. You know, I think that a lot of people assume that. Kids who are homeschooled just never leave the house, and it’s just not true. We probably leave the house a whole lot more than publicly schooled kids. We’re just not going to a classroom. We are going to all different kinds of places, you know, between jujitsu and tournaments and just so many different things over the years that my kids have been involved in.
Their socialization has never been in question. Ever do I know? Some homeschooled kids who, who are what? Everyone likes the, it’s the stereotype, the awkward child that doesn’t know how to speak. Sure. I know a few. And that has more to do with their parents. You. Maybe that’s how their parents are. Maybe they’re super shy, maybe they don’t get a lot of interaction with other people because their parents are really shy and then they learn to be shy at the same time.
So it’s not about homeschooling, it’s about the people that you’re around. So that’s one of the things that it’s, it’s always a question that I get and it’s always a question. I just, I am happy to answer it, but, There’s so much more out there and studies. I’m, I went ahead and type up, you can look in my, um, article and see a bunch of the information, but I wanted to go ahead and.
Give you this information on this, okay. There was a 1992 study called Comparison of Social Adjustment between Home and Traditionally Schooled students. It discovered that homeschooled children had consistently fewer behavioral problems than public school children, which we’re seeing so much more of that here recently.
Um, the results seem to show, it goes on to say that a child’s social development depends more on adult contact and less on contact with other children, as previous, previously thought. Um, another one. The 1993 Associated Press article entitled University Study says Home, home Taught Children won’t become social misfits.
Um, it found that children, um, being taught at home will not make them social misfits. It studied that study, um, looked at 53 adults who had been homeschooled, and nearly two thirds of them were self-employed. And the findings in the report was that quote that so many of these surveyed were self-employed.
Supports the contention that homeschooling tends to enhance a person’s self-reliance and independence. Now we see that all the time in my family, that that’s an absolute, um, my kids don’t have to have a group of people their age to be able to go forward and do the things that they want. My kids feel empowered to be the one just jump out there and do the things that they want.
And I think that has more to do with the way that we create the atmosphere, not just at the table or desk or wherever we happen to do school, but the entire family atmosphere. As it pertains to homeschooling, you know, I believe homeschooling is a lifestyle. It’s not a thing you do, you know, starting at eight o’clock in the morning.
It’s, it’s how we live. We inject learning into everything that we do, and it doesn’t just have to be book learning. It’s things like, you know, learning how to interact with other people. It’s, it’s those kind of things. It’s everything actually. But socialization is, Is not, and I believe never has been a true issue in homeschooling.
I just believe it’s been used as an issue by people who are anti homeschooling. It’s my opinion. Okay, so I get asked what method of homeschooling that I use now. There are a lot of different methods and I’ve got an article, a really good article, um, up on a life on the farm.com. About the different homeschooling methods, but I can tell you that we’ve done.
All of them. We have done all of the different methods in over the years. I mean, I’ve been doing this for over two decades now. So we’ve done all the different methods and until we kind of honed in on what works best for us. So what works best for us is kind of an eclectic style. We don’t stick with a like a big box.
You know, curriculum where everything is one way. We don’t do that. A lot of people do and they do it very successfully, but you know, we’ve tried that a long time ago. We did try that. But I have found maybe, maybe between my teaching style and their learning styles, it works best for us. If I choose, um, curriculums that are geared, I mean individually.
So, you know, depending on the subject matter, Choose curriculums that are geared toward the way each individual child works. And, um, I’ve found some over the years that I do not like, and I’ve found some that I really love. Um, Saxon math I personally think is terrific. And I, um, algebra, the Algebra Saxon Math, algebra one, I’ve always felt like it was the best way to teach math because it was one little.
Tiny step at a time, each time building on itself. And, um, as someone who I, I’m pretty good at math, but I really hate numbers. They kind of make me sick at my stomach, so I don’t really want to have to go too deeply into all of the numbers and math and stuff. I love the fact that it’s, it’s really one of those great.
Curriculums that are almost self-taught and, and which I really like, but there, and there are, honestly, there’s a lot of curriculums out there that are very much self-taught for the homeschooling family. And of course that would be for someone who’s a, a good independent learner. You know, there’s, there’s, um, unschooling, there’s some of the traditional, like the Charlotte Mason technique and, um, there’s just so many.
If you look at that article on a life on the farm under the homeschooling section, it’ll tell you a whole lot more, um, about the different styles of homeschooling. But as far as what method I use, we’re calling it eclectic because I pick and choose what’s best for each child. Okay. Um, okay, so one of the questions I get is where do you get curriculum these days?
I mean, you can get it just about anywhere. eBay was a good source of mine for a long time because, um, homeschooling families, you know, once you’re done with it, you don’t need it anymore, so you sell it to another homeschooling family who could then pick it up and use it. I’ve done that a lot. I’ve done some swaps with other homeschooling families, which is.
Terrific and way less money if everyone starts swapping out, Hey, my second grader is growing out of this, but you know, maybe your first grader can grow into it, what have you. Um, but um, Mardell. It’s a Christian bookstore. I don’t know if it’s everywhere, but I know that it’s in Oklahoma, Texas for sure.
And we, I go there and get, um, uh, they’ve got so much you can go in there and spend the entire day and really start picking and choosing, Hey, I like this, I don’t like this. And it’s something that’s, I think really good, especially when the kids get a little bit older. It makes it a little bit easier to, um, Let them look into the subjects that they’re gonna be choosing.
Okay. Um, okay. The legalities of homeschooling. Every state is different, you know, on how it is. Um, Governed, I guess, on how homeschooling is governed. Some states are ridiculous, you know, it’s basically like being in public school, just at home and you, none of your tax dollars go and help or anything. So some of the states are really stupid if you ask me, but Oklahoma’s fantastic.
And so for my state, it’s super easy. We are the controlling people in our homeschool. We take care of it. Now, we keep track, not because the state is requiring us to send in forms or anything, but we personally, we keep track of how the kids are doing, you know, what’s subjects that they are doing and completing, and at the end of everything, they have a transcript that tells all of the subjects, you know, the, the, um, Credits that they, uh, got.
And you, I know when my kids, because they were in home in public school for a short time when we, um, pulled them back out to go, um, into homeschooling again. Um, all we had to do here was write a letter to the school that said, I intend to homeschool. And that was that. And, um, That was all that Oklahoma required, but you’d have to get, um, online and go to your, I guess, to your State Department of Education and see what the requirements are in the state wherever you live.
Okay? Okay. Here’s the question. Um, Doesn’t it take too much of your time and tie you down? Well, I mean, it does take a lot of my time, but not nearly as much as what you would think. And I choose it. I like it. I, I love to be with my kids. I, I adore being with my kids and when they were little bitty, it probably took a whole lot more time.
But as they get older, they’re really, honestly, I’ve created some pretty independent learners and they’re ones that can take over. Handle their, um, business and move on without having to, um, have me as involved. Um, the math thing, typically I have to be called in to help, you know, understand certain concepts or what have you.
But once we go through ’em and they understand ’em, then they move on again and I’m working on something else. But I, I, it does take time, but I enjoy that time. And as far as tying me down, Not really, because we’ve always just been able to, you know, throw the kids in the car, grab the books, and head out and just go wherever we’d go, do school, wherever.
Honestly, I’m probably more free doing it this way, but you know, I know a lot of people who don’t get out and do much in the way of the. Field trips and what have you. And then I know some who are just all over the place, just nonstop going on field trips. And of course it was me at that point who was thinking, how on earth are they fitting in all of those field trips?
But because I couldn’t, I couldn’t fit all of those in and still get the schoolwork done. But I think it’s fantastic that they’re able to, you know, I think each family finds their own way, you know? Don’t give up. If you’re, if you’re thinking about getting started in homeschooling, don’t give up after the first few months or the first year even.
Let yourself find a flow, find your way through it, and um, I think that you’ll come out on the other side better for it. I hope that I’ve been able to answer some of the questions for you guys. Maybe that you might have some of the questions that I know I get a whole lot. If you have any further questions or if you’d like further information about any of this, you can certainly holler at me, contact me, comment, send me an email or whatever.
You can find this on Farm life and freedom.com. You can also go to a life on the farm. Dot com and go into the homeschooling section and see a lot of, a lot more information on homeschooling, but I’m always willing to help. I love it when families, especially the way things are going here lately, I would love to see a whole lot more people putting their kids in homeschool and taking ’em out of public school.
That’s, that’s just me though. Until next time. Um, I’m gonna sign off and I can tell you right now that with all that’s going on currently, literally this week happening, um, I’m probably about to put together another episode and it’s gonna be more current events than anything else. You guys have a great week.
