Guide for Novice Home-schoolers: How to Prepare for Your Child's School Year

Well you have finally done it! You have made the fateful decision to home school. You have notified your local school that Junior won't be returning and you have received every catalog and read every website and book on the subject. Now just kick back and relax until August, right?

Wrong! Now it is the time to get to work. Preparing for your child's curriculum for the new school year can take months in planning, not to mention budgeting the money that it will take to prepare for this adventure into education.

There are literally hundreds of home school catalogs and books on the market to guide you to their products. Whether you are teaching by a certain 'style' such as un-schooling, school-at-home, or the Classical method or teaching in the Christian or secular mode, there is a lot to inspire and to confuse you. Making preparations on how you plan to teach will make it easier to decide 'what' you plan to teach when the first day of school rears its head.

First of all, decide what method you plan to teach by and, more importantly, what best fits your child. Is your child a visual, kinesthetic or auditory learner? Would you rather teach in a more Christian way versus a secular mode? Does your child learn better from textbooks or from CD-ROMs? Are you more inclined towards the Charlotte Mason style or the child-led approach? Once you have made this very weighty decision, you are definitely on your way.

The next decision is whether or not you are going to teach with an 'all in one' curriculum or specialize your child's curriculum. 'All-in-one' curriculum, like Alpha Omega, will sell all the subjects that you are required to teach in one package (plus extra courses such as art or health for extra charges) for one set price. These are convenient and some children do well with this but there can be a problem in the 'one size fits all' philosophy. And, that is, a single grade curriculum may not fit your child.