Illinois doesn’t require you to initiate notification with your school district when you decide to homeschool, and it’s easy to follow Illinois homeschooling laws. There’s no specific home school statute in Illinois, but you can legally homeschool via an alternative home school statute. Check out the Home School Legal Defense Associations’s (HSLDA) website for credible information on homeschooling. There you’ll find lots of state homeschool resources; Illinois law states the following:

“If a child is ‘attending a private or a parochial school where children are taught the branches of education taught to children of corresponding age and grade in public schools, and where the instruction of the child in the branches of education is in the English language’ the child shall not be required to attend public school and the child is in compliance with Illinois compulsory attendance law.” Home schools that met these two requirements are considered legal private schools (Illinois law: 105 ILCS § 5/26-1).

Although both the HSLDA and Homeschool Legal Advantage (HLA) have summaries of homeschooling laws on their site, you should ask your librarian to help you find a copy of the Illinois homeschooling law. Yes, the HSLDA and HLA have summarized the law for you, but it’s their interpretation of the law–not the actual law. Do your research and after you read your state’s homeschooling statute/provision, then read the HSLDA’s or HLA’s interpretation of the laws. If you find the homeschooling laws on the internet, make sure it’s the actual law and that the site is a credible one.

If your child is in school, and you decide to homeschool, you should write a letter to the school principal, so no one will think he’s a truant. But if your child has never attended school, you don’t have to inform any one that you’re homeschooling him.

What you need to know has been outlined here. There are no heavy duty rules or regulations, and no standardized tests or teacher certifications are required. Now that you know the law, decide what curriculum you’re going to use, and go for it!

Do you remember when you learned to type?  I think I started in 9th grade; I’m dating myself by telling you this, but when I began typing it was on a manual typewriter. For some reason, I could never get the knack of the long reaches, i.e., the “a” key to the “1″ key with the right pinky finger or the “;” key to the “-” key with the left pinky finger. I wasn’t a good typist on that dinosaur manual typewriter.

However, a few years after high school, I went to secretarial school. They had electric typewriters, and I practiced each day. By the time I graduated (in one year), I could type 60 words per minute–not bad for a student who couldn’t type 30 minutes in high school. From years of experience, I eventually reached close to 80 words per minute.

School students nowadays start learning to keyboard long before 9th grade; some start learning before they reach their teens. My 10-year-old son, David, started using the BBC’s Dance Mat typing; I thought it might help him with his homeschool work, because he likes writing stories and journaling. I thought learning to keyboard, as they call it nowadays, would help him to get some of his work done faster. He likes fun keyboard games a lot, because it makes learning to type exciting.

I’ve been searching for other sites that will help my son to become a better keyboardist. (I think typist sounds better). There are a lot of keyboarding games that will help your child learn to type. Typing games are a great way to get your child used to the feel of the keyboard and on her way to becoming an adequate typist–and maybe even a speed typist.

I’d love to know if your kids have any favorite, typing games. Leave a comment and let me know.

My strong recommendation for those homeschooling and using the web is to check out the following.

 Time4Learning’s web-based online curriculum.  They have great interactive lessons for middle school, elementary school, and even preschool.  It’s highly interactive and full of animation and multimedia. Whereas some curriculum are just lots of text with an occassional video or animation, Time4Learning is an interactive experience.  All those tough math concepts seem simple when they’re explained in such alight-hearted manner.  Who says fractions has to be hard? Their great multimedia lays it out so simply.  Give it a try.  Time4Learning is a great homeschool partner. They let you sign up month to month and start and quit at any time. Start by looking at their lesson demos.
 

 Number 2 choice - Time4Writing.  If you are like me, you find some subjects hard to teach.  One of the hardest is writing skills, especially when the kids get into middle and high school.  Expectations are so high. And my kids just don’t react well to my correcting their writing. Want help?  This isn’t a “how to”, it’s an online tutoring course where they work directly with your student teaching writing skills every week and giving one-on-one feedback.  You get the same tutor for the whole eight week course which the kids really like. It’s definitely worth taking Time4Writing’s writing classes. They have sentence writing, paragraph writing, essay writing (these are for writing tests and college essays), and research paper writing.
 
 
Number 3 choice - Fun Building Vocabulary. This is not really a curriculum choice but a fun collection of vocabulary games. Vocabulary is Fun is a leading vocabulary website worldwide with the best flash online word games.  The vocabulary games include an online word search, an online crossword puzzle, and hangman online (their version is called HangMouse).  Users choose the vocabulary list that the online word game will use in the word game. So have some Fun Building Vocabulary.  
 
 
Number 4 Choice - Spelling City. This spelling program should be used by everyone. I would have put it first but I’m not a huge believer in the importance of spelling skills.  Despite that, now that I’m using this site, I’ve returned to having spelling as part of our weekly routine.  You know what’s really cool, check out how the vocabulary site’s science songs have put their vocabulary/spellinglist on SpellingCity.
 
 
Number 5 choice - This learning games website is really what it sounds like.  But they have the best collections.  For instance, they have keyboarding games, memory games,  science songs (also integrated with vocabulary lists), and math learning games.

I’m supposed to be setting up my curriculum for next school year, within the next few weeks. Since Tim will be official, I’m going to use my church as an umbrella, at least for the first year. They require me to turn in a lesson plan, I believe for a year, just a basic idea of what I’m going to teach.

I sat down to start this yesterday, not too concerned about it. I did this all on my own last year and had no clue what I was doing, but it worked, and it worked well! So, no worries, right?! I couldn’t figure out where to start! I clammed up, just like I did last year! He’s already doing 1st grade for language arts and math, so I’m having a hard time figuring out where to start, based on the skills they want him to be learning. He HATES repetition, so I don’t really want to start at the beginning of 1st grade. I’m really confused, and I hate that! I like knowing exactly what I’m going to be doing, it just makes everything run together more smoothly.

So, I’m going to pick a couple of online curriculums, T4L being one, and look at what is there in terms of grade level, then use that as a jumping point to write the rest. I don’t know any other way to do this and have it somewhat organized! I know I’m not the only one here that writes my own curriculum, so how do the rest of you figure out where to start for a new year?

I haven’t posted anything for awhile! We’ve been doing a lot of hands-on activities and little field trips here and there, so I haven’t been on the computer too much. It was really nice, because Tim hadn’t been on T4L for about two weeks, and we hadn’t really done a lot of ’school’ work, which includes reading. He went on today, and one of the sections he did on language arts was where he had to read a story. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to, usually is memory doesn’t hold anything unless we hammer it EVERY day. But he was able to read along and only needed a little help! It feels so good to see his accomplishments, the little ways in which he’s progressed, and see him really enjoy learning!

I honestly could not ever see sending him to school, and missing out on all of this! I’m very selfish in that area, I want to watch every step of his development and have a part in his reaching his milestones. It would really be depressing for me for him to bring something home that he did, and know that someone else taught him to do it and not me! The day will come soon enough where he will go out into the world and I won’t be as big a part of his life, but I’m not going to allow that to come any sooner by sending him to school now. Somedays, it is VERY tempting, but when I wake up the next morning I’m ready to do it all over again.

I just realized today that it’s been quite awhile since any of the activities have frozen up on us, warranting going back through them. Has anyone else noticed this? I’m wondering if whatever was causing it, has been fixed.  Oh! I came up with an idea for using the social studies that is too advanced for Tim! I couldn’t stand the idea of just using T4L for the language arts and math, it seemed like such a waste of what is offered. So, I go on the social studies, read it myself, and make a lesson on it breaking it down where he can understand it. Then, it gives me a point of reference to look up other sites that gears it down a little more to his level.