In general, government officials, education bureaucrats, and teacher’s union advocates do not know what makes home schooling work. Two of their most common misconceptions are that homeschooled children are disadvantaged regarding social adjustment, and that homeschooling produces inferior academic results due to lack of teacher training.

In reality, the exact opposite is true! Normally, homeschooled children are very much involved in social, athletic, business, and community activities. They have the benefit of interacting with people of all ages and many walks of life, facilitating rather than hindering their development into mature adults. Read more…

A typical high school morning for fourth-year College student Erin Avery began like any average teenager’s. Wake up at 8 a.m., get dressed, eat breakfast, start school. The difference, however, was that Avery’s classroom was the same as her home. She began home-schooling at age 7, a choice her parents made to have greater voice in their daughter’s education.

“My parent weren’t trying to shelter me through home school but were able to push me harder academically, and I had more flexibility with my studies,” Avery said.

Like other home-schooled students, Avery designed her own personal academic schedule. She read lessons on her own and taught herself material at a pace that allowed her to allot time for interests and extracurricular activities, such as dance and swim team. Read more…

A Christian University in Texas has received a $5 million gift to establish an endowed scholarship fund for home-schooled students — the single largest donation ever given for that purpose. Read more…

The Texas Education Agency has begun an investigation into the large number of high school students who have withdrawn from public school to begin home schooling in the past couple of years.
More than 22,620 Texas secondary students were listed as withdrawing to home-school in 2008. That number represents a 24 percent increase from the year before. TEA officials have expressed concern that some public schools could be disguising their dropout rates Read more…

Founder Elise Eaton says this banding together of instructional know-how forms the core of her home-schooling co-op.

“Everybody benefits because we suddenly have a huge amount of skills and abilities and interests to all share with one another,” Eaton explained. Read more…

There’s no question that statistics provide great insight into trends and success vs. failure rates. However, as someone who has taught at the middle school, high school, and college levels, I’ve found that sometimes being up close and personal provides an awareness that no statistic could ever dream of eliciting.

With that in mind, I set out to speak to parents who home-school their children, most of whom transitioned them from the public school system. Why did they make the switch? How has the performance of their child/children changed since? Read more…

It’s carnival of homeschooling time again and I am serving as your host. I just discovered recently that our digital camera has a panorama setting. It allows you to take up to 3 shots and it will automatically blend the image into one shot. Read more…

Getting accepted at a top-notch Ivy League college like Harvard or Yale is a dream of many students.

When siblings Anna, now a senior, and Jacob Pritt, a sophomore, were both accepted at Harvard, it was cause for great celebration at their alma mater, the School of Mom and Dad.

Christine and Mark Pritt took responsibility for their children’s education when Anna was in fourth grade and Jacob was in second, and they still homeschool their other four children who range in age from 11 to 17. Read more…

Many children in the area have started their school year. But not everyone is leaving home to do it!

The Bradley family from Granger has chosen to homeschool their children. The kids do five or more hours of homework every day, but it’s not because they have unreasonable teachers. They’re homeschooled, all seven of them. Anastasia, Moses, Isaac, Gusti, Maggie, Giles and Francie will all learn right from the comfort of their own home. Which means mom, Angie, has her hands full.

“The work is considerable, especially for the first child because as I plan each child’s program I try to do it to cater to what their strengths are and their interests are. But at the same time they all have to do grammar and spelling and math and science and those kinds of things,” Angie said. Read more…

Welcome to the August 17, 2010 edition of carnival of homeschooling. Let’s start with a little housekeeping. Please, Please, Please, promote the carnival on your blog. If everyone participates, then everyone will benefit even more. Failure to promote the carnival may get you excluded from future carnivals. (I know I wasn’t afraid of using the delete button.) It wouldn’t hurt to use the graphic either.. it is here:

Now on to our back 2 Home… school edition… hope you enjoy the personal photos I have enclosed. Read more…