My son is only 10 but recently told me he wants to be homeschooled through high school. I often think, “Will I be able to rise to the challenge?” Do you have similar thoughts?

We attend a homeschool co-op, and there are several parents who are homeschooling their kids through high school. It seems to be a time of great concern for most of them. They’re concerned with keeping accurate records, making sure their children take the right classes (especially if the kids plan to go to college), applying to universities, and tons of other things on their to-do lists. Some have enlisted the aid of their local public schools, and their children have a part-time home school and part-time public school status. Other kids are homeschooled and take classes via community colleges and universities to ensure that they’ll learn those difficult subjects that their parents may not be able to teach them, i.e., Advanced English/Writing, Physics, Calculus, Chemistry, Foreign Language, and others.

There are parents who have decided to use online high school programs (both public and private) and others who are using high school writing programs. Writing is a subject I’ve heard parents say they don’t teach their high school children but serve more as a guide. High school online writing programs serve to give teens guidance and direct feedback on their writing. Some are geared toward essay writing, others toward standardized test writing, and still others toward research writing.

Lots of success stories are being shared via our homeschool co-op, i.e., school acceptances at Stanford, Oberlin, Wellesley, and Northwestern University, among others.

When the time comes, I’ll be praying that my son will be among those who are accepted at the university of his choice.

Please leave a comment sharing your experience with homeschooling through high school.

It didn’t take me long to get used to the idea of online homeschooling, because I began teaching my son at home via a home-based virtual public school that used online resources. They recommended that younger children do about fifteen to twenty percent of their work on the computer. I only used this home-based school for about six weeks, because I saw their curriculum wasn’t working for my son.

After this, I tried a labor intensive free curriculum that required me to print lots of books, keep lots of records, and spend lots of time preparing lessons. I did this for awhile, and for all my effort, I received an emphatic “boring” from my then 6-year-old son. So, I continued to search for an affordable curriculum. Homeschooling was becoming pure drudgery, and each day, I pieced together school work for my son, as I continued to search for excellent, affordable homeschool materials. I finally happened upon an online homeschooling curriculum that sounded too good to be true. I tried it out before I ever allowed my precocious 6-year-old to try it, and after reviewing a few Language Arts and Math lessons, I knew he would love it. I was right, and three and a half years later, he’s still loving it.

Online homeschooling resources can be helpful to your child and to you too. If your child is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, the online interactive lessons will keep her engaged. The online homeschool resources will help you too, because as your child matures, she will do her lessons independently, while you tend to your younger children or get things done around the house.

Once you begin using the online homeschooling materials, you won’t abandon your books, your unit studies, your hands-on projects, or your field trips; online resources will only be part of your home school, and your child will look forward to the lessons. You can even use those lessons to reward him for doing well with his other homeschool work.

You may have toyed with the idea of homeschool online but thought better of it, because you felt like the computer would be teaching your child instead of you. However, most homeschoolers use online homeschooling in combination with more traditional methods.

Homeschooling is all about freedom of educational choice and options. If online homeschooling materials work for your child, then don’t be afraid to use them. You may be a homeschooling mom who works from home and need some free time to check emails, answer phones, or search the internet. Online homeschooling materials will free you to do those things during the day and will also free your child to learn independent study and work skills.

Do you remember the commercials for “Hooked on Phonics?” “I am hooked on phonics. I am learning to read . . . ” Those lines are etched in my memory.

“Hooked on Phonics” was the way thousands of parents helped their children learn to read in the 80s and 90s. Some still use it, but now your child can be hooked on phonics online, because homeschoolers are avid users of the internet for educational purposes.

I used an online phonics curriculum to help my son learn phonics, along with workbooks, and of course, reading, reading, and more reading to him. He’s in 4th grade and is reading at 8th grade level. He loved the interactive piece where an onscreen character would pronounce a phonetic sound or word, and he repeated it.

Another part of intensive phonics online, my son loved was clicking on the right answer. The program would present him with a choice among three or more answers, then he would make his choice. If he got the answer right, the online character would clap or say, “Great job, you’re a phonics superstar!” or if the answer was incorrect, the character might say, “Almost got it, try again.” He would glow when he got the correct answer, and he would be challenged to keep trying if his answer was incorrect.

Children love this approach, because there are no “Xs” for incorrect answers–just encouragement to continue moving along the positive phonics path. For correct answers, there are lots of bells and whistles, and this serves as motivation for your child to keep up the excellent work.

There’s no doubt that intensive phonics is needed to teach a child to learn to read. Yes, there are sight words that don’t fit into the phonics rules, and there are always exceptions to those rules. But once your child learns phonics, she will become a better reader. She will always “sound out” new words, because that is what she’s learned.

Your child will apply all the phonics rules and word sounds to words he’s never seen before. Although he may not necessarily pronounce the new word correctly, when he applies what he’s learned, he’ll be closer to a correct pronunciation than those who learned to read by the whole language method.

Don’t you wish there had been online phonics when you were learning to read? My son found it to be a fun and exciting way to learn!

Share your experience with phonics by leaving a comment.

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!

When I tell other moms that I homeschool my son, they sometimes give me a strange look. I’m an African American single (divorced) mother, and I just don’t fit their idea of who a homeschooler should be. I only have one child, and they think that’s another odd thing about me homeschooling. The first question I  often get is, “Why don’t you want him to be at school with other children?” Then I’ll patiently explain that he goes to a group meeting with other children on Mondays, classes on Wednesdays, and a homeschool co-op on Fridays. When I assure the mom that I don’t have my boy on lock down in the house, she looks relieved.

Then, she’ll ask me about the co-op, and I’ll tell her that the kids who go to homeschool co-op, including my son, take classes there once a week. Sometimes the mom (or dad) will ask what kind of classes, and I tell them, “Oh, different kinds of classes, like Spanish, Science, Art, Photography, English, History, and other stuff.” I add that this semester, my son is taking “Exploratory Art” and “Digital Photography.” This leads to more discussion about his academic classes and where I get my teaching materials. I tell her about the Great Literature and books we read, about the “What Your __ Grader Needs to Know” books, workbooks, field trips, and about the online curriculum we use, Time4Learning.

Usually, the mom asks a question about standardized tests and how I’ll know if my child is at grade level if he has to take the ISAT (Illinois Standards Achievement Test). I’ll then mention that although I don’t have to get my child tested, I may start doing this. But I also mention that the online program we use let’s me know if he’s at “grade level,” although for me, it’s more important that he master the material than be at a particular grade level  by a certain date.

These impromptu talks usually go well, and when I’m done I’ll often feel like I’ve given someone, who may have never met a homeschooler, especially one who doesn’t fit the prototype, a positive impression about homeschooling.

Other homeschooling moms probably get a lot of questions too. Do you?