What is the round about cost of home school, and what do I need to do to get started?

Answer 1

It can cost as much or as little as you want. If you buy the boxed curriculum (a waste of time and money if you ask me) then you will spend a small fortune. If you order workbooks for Frank Schaffer (they have a website, but I'm not sure of it at the moment) you can get fairly cheap workbooks. You can find out if your public school district has a warehouse for obsolete books (many do and they are free). You can buy supplies on the cheap, like right now when you can get crayons for a quarter.

Answer 2

I agree with what's been said about how little or much it can cost depending on what you want to spend! Homeschool mom's are often among the cheapest and most creative folks I know. There are some great books, Homeschooling on a Shoestring, The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling, and Homeschool Your Chilld For Free. You can find many of them at your local library. You can check also, since you must be online, you can check to see if your state offers any charter schools or even cyber charter schools. In PA you can sign on to a charter school that uses the Calvert curriculum and they state will pay for it, or if you chose to use a cyber charter school, they will provide a computer, the ISP, the curriculum, everything you need. There are all sorts of options when you educate your kids at home.

My best advice to you would be to do a web search with your location's name and the word homeschool and see what support groups you come upon. You can aslo check the Homeschool Legal Defense Association's web site for help in finding local help.

For me, the cost was low compared to the changes I saw in my kids after bringing them home from public school!
Good luck

Answer 3

The first year, you will have more expenses. You will purchase a reference library, some wall maps or a globe, maybe a computer, different reading books, assorted school supplies. You then have to get curriculum. Depending on the children's ages, it can cost as little as zero, or several hundred dollars. You can teach a child using library books, used books, or borrowed books. During high school things become costlier. You may want to invest in a microscope, or chemistry set, or other science materials, a calculator that can do graphs, foreign language tapes or videos and outside lessons or a tutor.
I tried to keep my expenses each year below $200, and I knew that none of the materials would get lost or stolen, so I made sure I got the right stuff. I also allowed my kids to decide with me on the curriculum and subjects they wanted to learn. I used a lot of workbooks on the side, that I found at teacher supply stores, like: Roman Empire, Greek Mythology and Statistics. Lots of things I copied out of library books as well, for a few dollars!

Answer 4

The options are limitless for starting home school. The local home school association will most often have contact nubers for recycling school books. For grade school and middle school, the computer is the cheapest route for teaching. There are a million internet sites with printable work sheets and quizzes. High school is the only area that you will need to keep a record of GPA and may want to try a corraspondance program like Thompson or The American School. Both are cheap and give the option of diploma or college prep.

Answer 5

I second that it can cost as much or as little as you want.

To get started, you need to find out about the laws in your area and if you have any paperwork to fill out. After that, try to get in touch with other homeschoolers--Yahoo groups, local support groups, etc. and ideally get a chance to talk with them about the different programs they use. Also, check out your public library. They should have a lot of books on homeschooling and it will give you some information on different styles, each style having its own requirements in terms of materials.

There's a lot out there so just start out simple and take care of the basics while adding in the extra stuff as you go. Unless you feel prepared to jump in completely with a program like Sonlight or other prepackaged curriculum!

Answer 6

To tell you how we homeschool and why there's no set cost, my answer to another question about unschooling and what it is:


When our child was very young, we read him lots of books, devoted lots of one on one time to his adventures and to walks in the woods, and discussions with him about anything that interested mom and dad and then, him.

By age 3, to help him fall asleep, I started reading Homer's The Odyssey outloud. I wouldn't get far each night, because I would stop every few stanzas and talk about what the words meant, and later, we talked about what the symbols meant, how phrases (like 'rosy fingers of dawn') were repeated over and over. It took 18 months to finish as a bedtime story. At some point in there, he said "Now I know how Odysseus felt when he landed on the beach in Ithica. " His interest in myths spread to Jesus Christ Superstar and from their to comparative religions and miltary history. For literally years, he has had nearby "the History of Warfare" and has an astonishing knowledge of western history.

At one point, he got interested in vikings. He ended up devouring thousands of pages of Norse Sagas. From there, he got interested in Russian history, and from there, an in-depth study of WWII. He's read several memoirs by soldiers on all sides. The books he reads are for adults, not kids.

He knows enough math to pass the required test every year - and math we've taught all by cooking, gardening, building, banking, monopoly! His reading, as you can imagine, is superior, and we never sat down and taught him how to read - except that i would often point out a letter, mention the sound it made, etc. Over the years, this added up to reading.

If your child has already been to school, they often need to 'de-school' - get out of the mode of having all their learning planned for them and limited and structured by others. Some kids need months to just read, unwind, play, discover themselvs. (I would strongly limit ninetendo style games and tv time, but allow great computer games like Age of Empires and Civilization and Sid Meir's Pirates, because there is solid info there that kids really learn from. Some unschoolers say they don't limit any media, and my husband says they're unparenters, not unschoolers.)

Anyway, the model also works for our 9 year old, who has a very different personality than our oldest, but who is amazingly bright and is a strong reader, too. It's a great way of life.

Their outside activities include music, martial arts, chess club, weekly park days where they hang out with friends, 'field trips,' many performing arts events, and any other gathering we wish to arrange or attend.

I think mom and dad have to have enthusiasm for learning and some interests of their own, to inspire kids.
Source(s):

http://www.naturalchild.org - search their site for unschooling, also check out growing without schooling and search for john taylor gatto's writings.