Unschooling Families

LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

We strongly urge you to get a copy of Homeschooling in Wisconsin: At Home with
Learning by the Wisconsin Parents Association , P.O.Box 2502, Madison,
WI 54701-2502 for $24.95 (members receive a discount.) This
handbook answers almost all questions you may have regarding homeschooling in the
state. WPA also holds a statewide homeschooling conference each spring in Stevens
Point. Write to the same address to
receive a brochure. WPA voice mail 1-800-283-3131.

Targets:

Home Education Magazine

Resources for Self-Directed Learning

Books

Anything by John Holt, especially:

Learning All The Time -- how small children begin to read, write, count, and investigate the world without being taught.
Teach Your Own -- his handbook on homeschooling
Never Too Late -- "...whatever we want to learn or learn to do, we probably can

Grace Llewellyn: The Teenage Liberation Handbook: how to quit school and
get a real life and education -- written for teens, but useful for others as well. New
revised edition 1998.
Real Lives: eleven teenagers who don't go to school-- their stories in their own
words . My 12 year old daughter tells me she's read this 4 times.

Mary Griffith: The Homeschooling Handbook -- an inclusive guide to styles of
homeschooling, empowering readers to make decisions on what is best for their
particular families.
The Unschooling Handbook : how to use the whole world as your child's
classroom -- another winner, featuring our own Cindy, Dan and Ben as well as other
unschoolers from across the country.

Linda Dobson: The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community, and
Self -- powerfully written analysis of what is wrong with government schooling and how
to find fulfillment through family centered education.

Thomas Armstrong: In Their Own Way -- A classic on understanding and responding to
differences in learning styles.

David and Micki Colfax: Hard Times In Paradise --By a homesteading homeschooling
family. 3 out of 4 of their sons chose to go to Harvard on full scholarships.

David Guterson: Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense -- the perspective of
a public school teacher who homeschools his children.

Cafi Cohen: And What About College?: How Homeschooling leads to admission s to
the best colleges and universities -- just what it says.

Herbert Kohl: The Question Is College -- just reissued.

Susannah Sheffer: A Sense of Self: Listening to homeschooled adolescent girls --why
homeschooled girls do not experience the loss of voice and self-esteem common to
schooled teen girls.

Rebecca Rupp: Good Stuff: Learning Tools for All Ages -- Thousands of books, games,
videos, contacts, etc.

Anna Kealoha: T rust The Children : A Manual and Activity Guide for
Homeschooling and Alternative Learning -- Many friendly ideas for preschool and
elementary ages with a holistic/New Age flavor

Periodicals :

Home Education Magazine P.O.Box 1083, Tonasket, WA 98855 1-509-486-1351,
A meeting ground for all approaches to home learning since 1983. regularly $32.00 or
two years for $64.00, bimonthly. Single Copy $6.50

Web pages :
see also periodical list for associated addresses

Unschooling.com includes many links to currciulum vendors, correspondence schools

Some catalogs : see also periodical list for associated catalogs

The Learning Home 5573 Ashbourne Road, Baltimore, MD 21227-2813
learnghome@aol.com Voice mail 410-536-5990 -- Discount prices on educational
materials.

NASCO Arts and Crafts or Science and Math Catalogs, 901 Janesville Ave., Fort
Atkinson, WI 53538-0901 (414)563-2446 School
suppliers who have been selling to homeschoolers for over 30 years.

Follett Home Education (800)554-5754. New and used textbooks.

Support for Special Needs :
At Their Own Pace, 102 Willow Dr. Waukegan, IL 60087

Targets:

ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING

People homeschool for a variety of reasons. There are families who travel or live
overseas. Some think there is too much or too little religion in the public schools. Some
live too far out for even school buses to reach them. Still others think that learning and
education are two separate activities. Large families, families with an only child, single
parents, gay parents or straight, the rich, the poor, the professors and the high school
drop-outs, atheists and fundamentalists, capitalists and socialists --- the only things that
homeschoolers have in common is a particularly strong (but varying) view of the
importance of their families and a commitment to that oldest form of education - learning
at home.

Where did you learn your most important lessons? Chances are that it did not happen in
school, but in life. Early on, these lessons came from our parents. Do not the most
important lessons your children learn come from you, not any institution. Everyone of us
homeschools, it is just that some of us choose to do so full-time. Homeschooling is but
another choice with public and private education. By our exercising that right, we
preserve it should you ever want or need to use it.

The responsibility to have children is a considered one. Homeschooling parents find that
first smile, that first step, that first word read and that first solved equation are all our own
joys, not joys given to someone else. Family time is not merely the time left over after
soccer, dance class, school and work, committee meetings, etc. It is of prime importance.

Approximately one to two percent of the school-aged population is currently educated
through homeschools. The oldest homeschool periodical is the secular Growing without
Schooling, first published in 1977. Often mistakenly characterized as an activity taken up
by granola crunchers or Bible thumpers (an odd coalition), home-based education
programs have become an ever more mainstream alternative education choice. Most
families belong to one of the over 5000 support groups of all flavors across the country.
Children join together to put on plays, take swimming lessons, play sports or learn about a
special topic. And unlike the age and sex segregation found in conventional schools, they
have close friends of both sexes and many ages.

The laws regarding homeschooling vary from state to state and are always changing.
Basically, it is legal. Some localities require curriculum plans filed with school boards and
overseen by certified teachers. Others may only require an attendance sheet. Alaska
provides home schools with materials and California has an option of assistance from the
local school district; but in most states you are on your own. Some states require testing
or external evaluations. Children who re-enter traditional schools have been doing quite
well.

Curricula: Many of us develop our own materials using trade books from the library.
There are all the texts any conventional school may choose from, and there are
correspondence or umbrella schools with a secular viewpoint. Those curricula that have
been written for homeschools have been for where standard school materials did not fit
some people's religious beliefs.

Suppliers and catalogs of all philosophies are available. Some families choose to go with
services which assist, oversee, help plan and keep records. Others might purchase a
complete curriculum from a single source or pieces that suit their needs from a variety of
places. Still others design their own course of study and use the resources of their local
libraries and the larger community

Targets:

BEGINNING TO HOMESCHOOL

Where Do We Start?

"The world is our classroom and life is our curriculum."

We care about our children's creativity and individuality and spirits. We spell education
"homeschooling." Many families go into homeschooling because of concerns about
learning differences, academic rigor, curriculum choices and values, peer dependence,
personal safety, travel, medical problems, and creativity. We often continue because it is
not only very effective, but also contributes to a family whose members grow closer.

Many of us have chosen homeschooling because of a pedagogical approach. For some of
us, a text-based approach is irrelevant. We use trade books (the stuff you would find in
ordinary bookstores or libraries) and people involved in the activity we are studying. For
a kindergartner studying community helpers, talking to the letter carrier and the grocer or
watching the gas company workers dig for a new line accomplishes the same task as a
flannel storyboard in a classroom. If we chose to study Costa Rica, there are any number
of webpages, travel and history books, videos, etc. - but support groups also find inviting
an exchange student to a potluck with each family bringing a dish from that country a
great process. (And yes, we sometimes do homeschool activities as a group.)

Others of us, preferring a more conventional curriculum, use conventional texts. Still
others use materials or the services of
Clonlara School , 1289 Jewett St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 734-769-4511,
Clonlara@wash.k12.mi.us ,
Oak Meadow , PO Box 740, Putney, VT 05346 802-387-2021,
oms@oakmeadow.com
as well as correspondence schools such as
Calvert (105 Tuscany Rd., Baltimore, MD 21210, (410)243-6030,
inquiry@calvertschool.org for K through 8th grade
and the American School (2200 East 170th St, Lansing, IL 60438 708-418-2800) for high
school. american@www.iit.edu
There are others. The kinds of books sold through a homeschool magazine's catalog
serve the particular needs of homeschoolers well. The real problem is not finding
materials, but choosing among them.

For those looking at the whethers and whys:

John Holt, Teach Your Own , Delacorte Press, 1981, $11.95. Holt is the leading
proponent of the unschooling approach to learning.

Mark and Helen Hegener, editors, Alternatives in Education , Home Education Press,
1992, $16.95

Borg Hendrickson, Home School: Taking the First Step , Mountain Meadow Press, 1989
(new edition.) Solid help on deciding why, whether and how. $14.95

For those looking for resources:

Anna Kealoha, Trust The Children : A Manual and Activity Guide for Homeschooling
and Alternative Learning Celestial Arts, 1995 $17.95 Many friendly ideas for preschool
and elementary ages with a holistic/New Age flavor.

Grace Llewellyn, The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real
Life and Education , Lowry House, 1991, $14.95. Useful for those beginning or
continuing homeschooling in the high school years.

Rebecca Rupp, Good Stuff: Learning Tools for All Ages , Home Education Press, 1993,
$14.75 Thousands of books, games, videos, contacts, etc.

Also useful for reference: Mary Pride, The Big Book of Home Learning (4 volumes),
Crossway Books, 1991. The most extensive list of curricula, suppliers, etc. with
addresses, phone numbers and reviews. The author is a fervent Fundamentalist Christian
with a clear viewpoint - but this can still help find what you prefer. And, Theodore Wade,
The Home School Manual , Gazelle Publications, 1986. Another extensive source of
resources, again with a clearly visible viewpoint.

Web pages :

Some catalogs as examples of the 100s out there:

Targets: