Homeschooling is becoming quite popular. Every one is homeschooling at the moment due to this corona virus outbreak. But I know many parents are excited for school to start back up again and send their kids off. I also know that many parents are going to consider switching completely over to homescooling starting the next school year. So I just wanted to put together some info about a couple different options of charter schools that I know about.
Here are some benefits of homeschooling:
- You get to choose what you want to teach your children. You don’t have to worry about your kids being taught things that don’t align with your values.
- You get to choose your own time of schooling. The school does give you a calendar with school days and different break times, but you can move things around to work with your family’s needs, as long as you are doing school for a certain amount of days in the year.
- No homework! Well, it kind of becomes all homework, but because its a very small classroom, you dont spend as much time on the bookwork which in return gives your kid a lot more time to be a kid. Kids actually learn way better when they have plenty of play time and not spend most of their day in a workbook. *Do some research on how Finland does school and why the.
- You get to cater to your childs specific learning needs and they can learn at their full potential. If they are struggling in a certain area, you are able to notice that and give them the extra help they need. You are also able to teach your child in a way that they learn best.
- Your child gets to learn at their own speed. If your child needs more time on a specific subject, you can give them that time. They don’t have that pressure of being behind, because everybody else got it and they didn’t. Same goes the other way. If you child gets things quickly, they dont have to be bored and wait until other people get it, they can simply move on and continue to learn.
- You get funds for the school supplies. All these charter schools that I will mention give you funds, so that you can get curriculum, school supplies, pay for different types of lessons, take different extra curricular courses, etc. Homeschooling is not expensive. The only extra thing you have to buy is the food. Since kids are at home all day, you have to feed them all the meals. **They do not, however, pay for faith based curriculum, you have to purchase that with your own $$ if that is what you wish to use.
- You get to be the one that teaches your child everything. Maybe this isn’t something exciting for everyone, but I personally enjoy being the one to teach my kids all sorts fo things. Besides we have fun (most of the time) and it creates many memories.
Okay, now that you know all the wonderful benefits of homeschooling, here are some charter schools you can sign up for… (All of these schools are California based and accept grades TK – 12)
Visions in Education
I started out with Visions when I began homeschoooling. They are very strict as far as meeting certain requirements and teaching certain topics that are recommended by the state. I feel like if you have no idea what you need to or want to teach your kids, and would like to be told exactly what to do, this would be beneficial for you. But if you are set on teaching them a certain way and want to use a certain curriculum, you might be butting heads with the school system(depending on the curriculum). For example, they try to make sure you are using a curriculum that states that it meets California’s state standards, so if the one you choose doesn not clearly specify that, you can still use it, but you will have to supplement with assignments that do state that it meets the state standards, which would just mean extra work. Once a month or so, you have to submit a sample of work for each student for each subject.
Funds
Visions gives $2,700 per student per year. The funds can be used for curriculum, books, school supplies, subscriptions, courses, lessons, etc. You can purchase fun, on-site classes like cooking, art, PE, etc where you can drop the kids off for a few hours once a week or so. You can even rent laptops if you need to. The funds do expire in April of the school year, so if you dont use it up by then, its gone. Their ordering process is very simple. They have many vendors, one of which is lakeshore and amazon! You order through an account you have set up with them, and it’s a matter of click, click, click, and then waiting for teacher to approve your order.
Enroll here to Visions in Education
Horizon
I had a friend help me with this one. I, personally, have not had any experience with Horizon, but all these charters are pretty similar.
Here’s what Julie said:
They allow you to choose any curriculum you want, including Christian without supplementing. They have organized field trips/events monthly. They have on site classes availabe, like science, lego, art, atc. They have multiple vendors to choose from. They do online testing 3 times a year so you can track your childs progeess/achievements.
Funds
They give you $2,600 per year per child and that money does not roll over to the next school year if it is not used up. Julie said one negative is that Amazon is not one of their vendors and all of the orders have to be emailed to the teacher, which have to be typed out with item number, vendor and price then the teacher has to put it into the system, which is time consuming on both the parent and the teacher part.
Overall, she thinks with any school, a lot depends with what type of supervising teacher you get. She says she has an amazing teacher that gives her the independence that she needs yet at the same time she’s there for support if she needs it. [I completely agree with her on this. Having a good teacher plays a huge role in what type of experience you will have.]
(Thank you Julie for your help with this)
Here is the link to enroll to Horizon Charter School
Inspire
I switched to Inspire in 2018 and have not looked back. Inspire has different branches for different counties. So when you go search it and find your county, it will have a different name for it. So for Sacramento and Placer County, its called Winship Community School.
Inspire is all about letting the parents teach the way the parent think is best. Their cornerstone is about supporting parent choice. They have internal assessment in the beginning of the year, middle, and end that is aligned with state standards or “I can” statements to help guide instruction and see where more help is needed. The teacher meets with you once a month where he/she checks in on how everything is going and collects a sample of the students work. They require all their credential teachers to have some sort of their own homeschooling experience, so that they can better understand what the parents are going through.
Inspire has so many activities going on. They have field trips every month, sometimes even more than that. They also have community connections activities that are events led by teachers and are held regularly that focus on families interacting and connecting.
Funds
Inspire gives $2,600 per student per year. These funds can be applied towards curriculum, books, field trips, school supplies, lessons, courses, etc. Pretty similar to what Visions does. One difference is that Inspire funds can also cover a chaperone(aka parent) for the field trips, like tickets to museums and certain parks. You are also able to share funds amongst siblings. The biggest difference though, with the funds, is that it rolls over to next year if its not all used up. And there is no deadline as far as when you can order.
The ordering process is pretty simple. You choose a vendor, and they have tons(including Amazon),then you put in item name, price and url for the item you want and then the teacher approves it later in their special ordering system for the school.
Here is where you can enroll to Inspire Charter School
Other miscellaneous questions:
What are the requirements to be able to homeschool?
A lot of parents might be thinking that they need to have some sort of education or degree to be able to homeschool their children. That is not true. The only thing that is required is that whoever is doing the teaching knows English and is able to teach in English. That’s it.
How will I know what to teach?
When you choose a curriculum, which is all the lessons/subjects for the school year, it comes with teachers manuals/guides. These guides tell you exactly what to say to the child as you are teaching them. They also come with all the answer keys. I dont know about you, but when I was in school, I used to think that the teachers manuals were the coolest thing ever! Like, it had ALL THE ANSWERS in them. Its kind of cool being the one with all the answers. But anyways, you don thave to worry about not knowing things, you can just review the subject prior to teaching and them teach it no problem.
How many hours a day do I need to teach?
While there is a recommendation on how many hours you should spend “schooling”, it all depends on each child and how long they take to complete the days work, or how long you take on a certain lesson. For example, our science and history lessons can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the topic and what the activity is. So some days we are done with school in 2 hours and other days it takes 4/5 hours. And if one of the kids is taking their sweet time completing an assigment, they can be “in school” for 6/7 hours. It all depends.
At what age can I start homeschooling?
If your child turns 5 between September 2nd and December 2nd, they are eligible for TK.
If your child turns 5 on or before September 1st, they are eligible for Kindergarten.
But you can start teaching a lot ealrier. You do not need to wait until a certain age to start teaching. Kids are very smart and they learn very quickly, so start them young. Make it fun. Also, one way to keep the littles occupied while the older siblings are doing schoolwork, is to buy them their own workbook and have them join. 🙂
What about social life?
This is a concern for a lot of people when they hear about homeschooling. Everyone is worried that kids will grow up socially awkward if they are homeschooled. I think it all depends on the parent. If that is something that is a concern of yours, then you will make the effort to create atmospheres where the kids can socialize. You can sign them up for classes, put them into sports, take them out on playdates, go on the school field trips,etc. There are plenty of options out there. And I dont think it is absolutely necessary to “socialize” outside of the home every single day to have good social skills.
I hope this helps and answers some, if not all, of your questions. If you have any other questions that I didn’t talk about, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will try to answer.
