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!

We all have some sort of bump, don’t we?

We have to deal with a lot of medical-type interruptions in our house.

Our youngest is a CHD Warrior!  Eli was born with complex congenital heart disease.  He has a very rare defect, along with three very common heart defects.  We found out during the pregnancy and were encouraged to terminate the pregnancy-that week!    

We immediately chose life and had to re-plan our delivery hospital, OB, and even the pediatrician we planned to use.  We expected Eli to have surgery a couple of days after birth, then another at about 6 months, another possibly at a year or so.

Eli is 2 years, 4 months old and has not had any surgeries yet!   However, we are looking at a possible surgery later this spring/summer.  He is truly a miracle…..

He has many, many doctor appointments….in two other cities.  So, we attempt to work around them.  

I was sincerely concerned about my first grader’s schooling.  I felt he was getting lost in the shuffle.  Not anymore, thanks to T4L.

By the way, Eli is our second heart kid.  We lost our oldest son after heart surgery in 1993.