Part 3: Onto the Guts of Homeschooling!

This is the third post in a series about beginning homeschooling. In my first post, I talked about how to let your school district know that you intend to homeschool your child(ren) and assessments. In my second post, I talked about getting reimbursement for curriculum from your school district and applying for a tax exempt status. If you missed either of those posts, and are just beginning your homeschooling journey, you might want to go back and read those posts.

In this post, I thought I would discuss choosing curriculum. The hard part with this is that it will look different for each family. But, I will try to give you some tools I've come across that have helped me in making choices for our family.

For our family, I wanted to go with a classical curriculum, and I found Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise's book, A Well Trained Mind, to be very helpful in guiding me with my choices. There are other styles of homeschooling though. The seven main styles are classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Unschooling, School-at-Home, Unit Studies, and Eclectic. Because others have already explained in length, much better than I could, all these different methods, I'll leave you with a link to The Best Schools that describes all these methods. You can read through it and decide which style best suits your teaching style and your children's learning styles. I would suggest to pick one style and go with it, and not try to fit a style to each child.

Cathy Duffy Reviews 

Once you've figured out what style of homeschooling is right for your family, start researching curriculum that fits into that style. My favorite site to helping to select what I want is Cathy Duffy Reviews. She has detailed reviews of pretty much any curriculum out there. I would suggest looking at her website on a computer instead of your phone. One of my favorite parts of her website is the "Instant Key" (on phones you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find this, which is why I suggest using a computer instead). This can tell you at a quick glace some of the key things you'll want to know. Another thing you'll notice is by many of the links to reviews have a little red apple next to them. These are her top picks. Many times they'll also be "endorsed" by other sources as well, such as "A Well-Trained Mind," that I mentioned above. If you're not sure where to start, these are some good ones!

If hand-picking curricula for each subject seems overwhelming to you, there are many "boxed sets" of curricula to choose. Cathy Duffy Reviews has a list with links to all of their reviews for boxed sets.

Once you have selected the curriculum you want to use with your children, you can being the search to buy it. When it's not a workbook, I like to buy second hand books. It's cheaper, and if you're friends with me, you know that that's how I roll! There are plenty of places to buy curriculum. Cathy Duffy does provide links for you, making it super convenient, but sometimes with a little looking around, you can find it elsewhere cheaper. Some curriculum is only sold through the publisher's website though, unless you can find it on Ebay or a Facebook curriculum re-sale site. A few places that I've bought curriculum from that aren't specific to just one publisher are The Curriculum Store and Amazon. With Amazon, when I'm looking at non-consumables (things that aren't workbooks), I always look at the used copies and select either a "Very Good," "Like New," or occasionally a "New" copy from a seller that has decent reviews. It can save you some money! Remember to use your sales tax exempt status and to save your receipts using an organization system that will work best for you as I discussed in my second post about homeschooling.

I think it's important to make many of these decisions yourself and choose what you think will work best for your family, so I don't want to list the curricula we use in this post. For now, start your own research. I know some of you have specifically asked me about math, since I was a math teacher before having kids. In my next post, I'll share my math recommendations and what we use for other subjects, along with why I chose them. If my reasons for choosing them seem like reasons that would work well in your family, then I'm happy to recommend it!

Here are quick links to the other posts in this series.
Part 1: Reporting to Your School District and Assessments
Part 2: Reimbursement and Tax Exempt Status

Part 4: Our Curriculum Choices

Part 2: Homeschooling... What's Next?

This is the second post in a series on beginning homeschooling. Here's the first part about informing your school district.

In my last post, I mentioned at the end that you should ask your school district liaison about reimbursement forms (Aids to Non-Public Schools). Each district has their own, so unless you live in my school district, I don't have an easy link to share with you. I simply email my district person each summer for the forms for that upcoming school year, and she emails them on over. Reimbursement will vary from district to district (and even if you get reimbursement can vary from state to state, but it's completely worth looking into). For us, in Minnesota, in our district, we get about $80 per year per kid in full day kindergarten through 12th grade. (Half day kindergarten gets half the amount.)

What does reimbursement cover? Curriculum and standardized testing (in Minnesota, other states may do it differently, so for more specific information on your state, I would recommend checking with your school district). At this point, you may not know what curriculum you will be using, but it will not cover "religious" curriculum. I'm not talking about Sunday School-type stuff, I'm talking about anything that may have a religious slant to it. (I will try to do another post about curriculum choices that may explain this more if you're just beginning to look into homeschooling.) From other homeschoolers I've talked to, most of us use this money to help cover the standardized testing (that I mentioned in my first post about filling out the reporting form). Many also use it on "consumables," such as workbooks. Since the school district is "purchasing" the curriculum for you, they are technically the "owners" of these books. Things that are "consumables" aren't things that they are ever going to want back. (Though, I've never heard of a school district asking a homeschooling family for "their" books back, so really don't fret over this too much.) Reimbursement does NOT cover supplies such as printer paper, pencils, art supplies, or the like. Something to keep in the back of your mind, is that for reimbursement, you will need receipts for what you have purchased to submit to your district. You will want to find some organizational system that works best for you. For me, I purchase pretty much everything on-line and I submit my receipts via email, so I have a file folder on my computer where I save a copy of my receipts for easy quick access. I have a folder for each school year with the amount we will be getting that year in the title, so I don't have to look that up again. Then when I save my receipts to that folder, I name it with what it is along with the amount, so I can easily add up my receipts to the total (on the name of the folder), and pick which receipts I'm sending in.

Receipt Organization (Click for a larger view)

Once you've got the reimbursement figured out, you can look into getting a tax exempt status. In some other states from what I understand, you don't have to worry about paying sales tax on your curriculum purchases anyway, such as Florida and California. In other states, I guess you're just out of luck. Heppner's Legacy Homeschool Resources has an excellent walk-through for Minnesotans to apply with links to all the forms you will need, and where to send them. With the tax exempt status, you not only don't have to pay sales tax on the curriculum you purchase, but also on school supplies that are used exclusively for homeschooling. (So you can't buy a computer for the family that will be used for things not related to homeschooling.) Keep in mind that if you live in a different state, the laws may vary on this if you have a tax exempt status for homeschoolers, so make sure you check your own state's laws. If you do get a tax exempt status, and you're purchasing some of your curriculum from Amazon or other online stores that you frequently use for other purchases, you will want to be careful when ordering other things. Sometimes your tax exemption will apply itself to things you're not purchasing for homeschooling. With Amazon, you can easily remove the exemption with the click of a button. I'm assuming other online stores are also as simple, but it's the only one I've used.

I think the next logical step is figuring out your curriculum, so unless I see other questions arise, that will likely be what my next post is about.

UPDATE:
Here are the links to the other posts in this series.
Part 1: Reporting to Your School District and Assessments
Part 3: Homeschooling Styles and Curriculum

Part 4: Our Curriculum Choices

Part 1: So You're Thinking of Homeschooling...

... Now what? Can you make it work? Here's a few things you might like to know when you're considering homeschooling.

Photo Credit: Woodbury Magazine

Homeschooling is as flexible as you want to make it. Whether you have a 9-5 job Monday through Friday or not, you can work around your work schedule. Maybe you only do school 3-4 days a week, instead of 5. That's fine. Maybe you homeschool on weekends. That works too. Some people homeschool year-round, and then take random days or weeks off when brick and mortar schools are in session. (Think of vacations with fewer people crowding the place!) In Minnesota, there aren't any requirements regarding the number of days in your school year. A brick and mortar school year is about 180 days, and most curriculum is designed around that, but that doesn't stop you from doing some of tomorrow's work, today. It's homeschooling. It's flexible.

So now you're thinking that it's more feasible than attempting distance-learning again this fall. What's next? Well you'll need to fill out a form, the "Initial Report to Superintendent," for your school district telling them that you're homeschooling instead of attending their schools this fall. Districts often have their own forms that are much longer than they legally need to be. MACHE provides the shortest form for Minnesota that fulfills all legal requirements. It is due to your district by October 1st. If your child(ren) have already been in attendance at a public school, then the district already has your child's immunization records and you can just note that on the form. If you child was enrolled in preschool and isn't 7 years old, then you don't need to include them in this report. If your child was enrolled in kindergarten or higher then you will likely need to include them on the form (this can vary by district, so you will have to check with your district). If your child is 7 years or older, then you have to include them, whether they were previously enrolled in school or not. You can read the specifics of the law here.

You'll also notice on the form that you have to tell the school district which "Assessment of Performance" you'll give your child. That's a standardized test. If your child is between 7-17 years old, they have to be tested yearly. You have many choices (CAT tests, PASS, Stanford Achievement, Peabody, or Woodcock Johnson to name a few). If you have your Bachelor's degree, then I've found that the cheapest, easiest way to fulfill this requirement is to use the Iowa Tests through BJU Press Homeschool. You can upload your information and be approved to be a test administrator. Keep in mind that these tests can be given at any point during your school year. You also don't need to report these scores to your school district. (If your child's total score is below the 30th percentile though, you are required to do additional evaluations to see if your child has a learning disability.) If you'd like to look at other testing options, you can check out MACHE's website for more resources.

(If you don't live in Minnesota, HSLDA provides great resources for getting started in every state.)

Now that you have your form all filled out, what do you do with it? Most school districts have someone in charge of handling all the homeschooling stuff (a homeschool liaison). Find out who that person is in your school district and send them the form. While you're emailing that person (or have them on the phone), ask them to send you the forms for reimbursement (Aids to Non-Public Schools) for any curriculum you'll be purchasing (more on that in another post, but for now, just get your district's form).

UPDATE:
In my following posts:
Part 2: Reimbursement and Tax Exempt Status
Part 3: Homeschooling Styles and Curriculum

Part 4: Our Curriculum Choices