About four months ago, I was strongly considering homeschooling my oldest.
She was currently attending a public school in our district. After much thought and discussion with my husband,
as well as most members of our family, a few of which are teachers.
We decided we would go ahead a try it out for at least one year.
So once we decided it was a go, I spent almost all of my free time devouring any and all information I could on homeschooling.
 I never would have guessed how many options, approaches, and curricula there were.
Choosing between Charlotte Mason, Unit Studies, Classical, Unschooling, or School-at-home.
Choosing between Boxed Curriculum or piecing my own together.
It was all a little over whelming to say the least!
Things you will need to consider when choosing a curriculum:
State Requirements
First, you will need to see what your state requires for homeschoolers. I live in Missouri and the homeschool rules
aren't that strict. You are required to teach the main subjects for a specified amount of hours. Have a plan book and keep a portfolio/evaluations of the student's work.
Subjects you need/want to teach
Our state requires that you teach at minimum reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.
We also discussed as a family what other subjects we wanted to cover.
We are also going to choose a foreign language, we need PE, and will be doing art and music.
Learning Styles
I strongly recommend find out how your child learns, are they a hands on learner or do they like worksheets?
I used these tests from Scholastic and from SheKnows.
Also, observing your child or if they have gone to a school/preschool talk to their current teacher.
Once you have this info, you can compare the available options to see what is best for your family.
Approaches
There are several approaches to homeschooling, Charlotte Mason,
Unit Studies, Classical, Unschooling, or School-at-home to name a few.
I recommend researching each and seeing which would work best for your family.
I will be doing a post in the next week over the differences in each.
Boxed Curriculum or Pieced Curriculum
Most companies that provide homeschool materials have a boxed set covering every or almost every subject.
These can be expensive, but are great because everything comes together and most include a lesson planner.
Piecing together your curriculum is another option. I am choosing this option.
I will include in a future post why and which I have gone with.
I have included this printable that I have been using to compare the different curriculum options.
You can download the Word Doc or the PDF.
In the next few weeks, I will be sharing what options I looked at, what curriculum I found for each subject,
a guide to the different styles, and ultimately what I have chosen to try for our first year.
This is going to be one of our biggest, scariest adventures and I look forward to sharing it with you guys!
I would love to hear what your favorites things are for homeschooling.
What was the one thing you had to buy? Let me know in the comments.
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