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?

Apples and Oranges, Rocks and Pears
Why homeschooling is unlike any other form of education. By Helen Hegener, publisher of Home Education Magazine.

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.

Homeschooling Styles
What will you teach? How will you teach it?

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

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?

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.

Helpful (and inspiring!) 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.

Please remember, if you buy one of these books, or anything new from Amazon while you're here, RMEC gets a [very] small commission. And every little bit helps support this site!


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
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? RMEC is darned proud to have been on the front lines of this mom's unprecedented fight for justice.

Your Homeschooling Decisions Affect
My Homeschooling Freedoms
New state regulations are introduced every year and the unnecessary ones hurt us a lot more than we know.


Homeschooling in Daily Life

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.

Media Madness
How a monster and a dead guy named Howard led a boy to an amazing world of learning connections.

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.

The Ultimate Unschooling Adventure
Take one homeschool mom, her son who has Asperger's, and put them into a 30-year-old old school bus which they converted into a traveling home, and what do you get? One incredible, unusual learning adventure. Don't forget to check out Anne's blog for some great pics and additional stories. Interview by Mary Nix.

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.


What's So Wonderful About Public School?

Arguments Against Homeschooling
One (supposedly unbiased) non-homeschooler thinks homeschooling is a way to cheat the system and that it offers our children lower-quality teaching. Valerie Bonham Moon replies with an excellent essay. Weigh in with your own comments if you like.

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.