The best homeschooling information
from the friendliest folks in the Rocky Mountain region!


Articles by Homeschoolers


What makes us tick? What is home learning really like? What worries us? What in the world is "deschooling'? And what compels us to take the road less traveled and shy away from the 'easier' public school route?



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All Right, You've Made the Decision To Homeschool.
Now What?

Cyberspace Changes Everything
Homeschooling 'back in the day', before laptops, cell phones, and yes, even Google. An RMEC article. By Cindy Englan.

The First Year of Homeschooling: It's All Greek to Me!
What am I getting myself into? Hindsight and humor from a homeschool veteran. An RMEC article. By Cindy Englan.

Homeschool Comics - Schools Are for Fish
A new one is posted every Monday. Now this is my idea of curriculum. From the artistry to the discussion of satire, societal misconceptions, down to the handful of succinct words and phrases he used to get his idea across, the kids and I'd be yakkin' about this for a couple of hours. Not to mention that impressive vocabulary list I just came up with.

Homeschooling Styles
What will you teach? How will you teach it? What kind of homeschooler are you?

Learning Styles
Successful homeschooling isn't just a matter of finding 'the right curriculum'. Rather, it's finding the best fit.

Media Madness
How a monster and a dead guy named Howard led a boy to a world of learning connections. By Deb Lewis.

Milestones
He'll be turning 21 this year. Twenty one. My baby. A legal adult. Looking at him now, the memories came rushing back as to why we'd taken him out of public school at the age of 6. By Cindy Englan.

Questions About Homeschooling From a Teacher
As a former teacher sympathetic to homeschooling, I often wonder, who guarantees that the parents actually have the appropriate knowledge to teach? By Tammy Takahashi.

The Ultimate Unschooling Adventure
Take one homeschool mom, a son who has Asperger's, a 30-year-old old school bus turned into a traveling home, and what do you get? One pretty incredible adventure. Interview by Mary Nix.

What Else Counts as Curriculum?
Learning doesn't begin precisely at 8:00 a.m. or suddenly stop at 3:00 just because some bell rings.

A Few Good Books for New Homeschoolers
Beyond Survival by Diana Warning
The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child by Linda Dobson
Homeschoolers' College Admissions Handbook by Cafi Cohen
The Homeschooling Handbook: From Preschool
to High School by Mary Griffith
Homeschooling The Teen Years by Cafi Cohen
Seven Kinds of Smart by Thomas Armstrong
Teach Your Own by John Holt.

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Deschooling

DEschooling
The first time I felt how great my own deschooling needs were was during those first few shaky months of homeschooling. I asked Christopher one night, "What have you learned today?" Then I stopped to wonder: why did I need proof? By Pattie Donahue-Krueger

Deschooling for Parents
Take a breath and picture your favorite, clearest school year. Is it vivid? By Sandra Dodd.

Deschooling: The Mental Vacation You Didn't Expect
Are your kids resisting all your attempts to start homeschooling? They're not trying to drive you nuts. Really. They're just unconsciously letting you know that they need time to decompress, to take a deep breath and flush all that unhappiness out of their system. An RMEC article. By Cindy Englan.

The Best Books on Deschooling
Deschooling Our Lives by Matt Hern
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling Ourselves by Alison McKee
Moving A Puddle by Sandra Dodd
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School
and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn.



Homeschool Insurance and Legal Cases
Dave Mankins on the HSLDA
The question was recently circulated about why people would complain about HSLDA. I'm composing this because my morning mail included another cry of "wolf" from them, and I'm more than a little angry that they try to spew their noxious propaganda on a list that costs me time and money to maintain.

Homeschooling Has Always Been Legal
What, exactly, is homeschool 'legal insurance'? Do we need it? Does it really protect us?

Threatening Our Freedom to Homeschool:
Colorado Case Inspires National Support
It was this single mom's legal right to educate her daughter at home. But, going to court on a completely unrelated matter brought about a whole new question: what if judges and magistrates are personally biased against homeschooling?

Your Homeschooling Decisions Affect My Homeschooling Freedoms
Since public school officials are considered the "experts" on education, regulation of homeschoolers is assumed to be their responsibility. (Of course, we homeschoolers know that we would have a better chance of being understood by, say, the Fire Department, since fire fighters have learned important life skills through hands-on activities, books, and real life experience.)



Stuff We Worry About

Arguments Against Homeschooling
I find these opinions interesting because they reflect what non-homeschoolers may think about homeschooling. I’ve had conversations along similar lines with friends and neighbors. Polite consideration is often the rule in face-to-face discussions, but online, the gloves are usually more off than on. By Valerie Bonham Moon.

But I Wanna Go To School!
What do you say to that? By Alison Moore Smith.

The Magic is in the Child
There is one thing I want you to know when the homeschooling road gets bumpy. By homeschool author Diane Flynn Keith.

Socialization
Does it really mean what we think it means?

You Might Be An Unschooler if
. . . you don't tell your homeschooling friends that you don't "teach" your child because you are sure they wouldn't understand and that you would be thought of as 'weird' and 'strange'. By Karen Gibson.

Why I Will Not Sign the"We Stand for Homeschooling
Statement and Resolution"
The ongoing debate on real and faux homeschoolers again rears its ugly head. By homeschool author Mary Griffith.

Books That Inspire Cindy
Carschooling by Diane Flynn Keith
The Complete Home Learning Source Book by Rebecca Rupp
Things We Wish We'd Known by Bill and Diana Waring
The Unschooling Handbook: How to Use the Whole World
As Your Child's Classroom by Mary Griffith.



Why We Left Public School

Pretty Good Is Not Really All That Great
Humorous, yes. But Charles Osgood pulls no punches on what he thinks of our public school system. And this was 20 years ago.

The Six Lesson Schoolteacher
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are. By John Taylor Gatto.