How to Start Homeschooling: What You Need to Know

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The benefits of homeschooling have become clear to you. Life has brought you to the opportunity to homeschool your kids, and now you’re wondering how to start homeschooling.

Am I qualified? Do I need a special curriculum? Are my family members going to think I’m crazy for attempting this?

I know that it feels like this big undertaking, and you have a lot of questions. But take a deep breath – you are qualified, and you can do this! I’m going to walk you through 9 steps new homeschoolers should take to get started. Let’s go!

Know Your Homeschooling Laws 

The first thing (and most important thing) that you can do is to learn your local homeschooling laws. Because home education laws vary from state to state in the United States, the best place to find your homeschooling laws is the Department of Education’s website for your state.  You can read the laws and make sure you are complying with them.

Additionally, you can also find resources on HSLDA’s website (Homeschool Legal Defense Assiciation), where the laws are broken down a little bit easier to understand. 

Some important things to understand about your state homeschool regulations: 

• How to withdraw your child from public school
• Does your state have portfolio or reporting requirements?
• Does your State have a testing requirement?
• Does your state have attendance requirements?
• What are the legal homeschooling options? 
• Are there state-mandated subjects? 
• What is the legal age of compulsory attendance (legal age that you have to go to school or be homeschooled?) 
• Are there immunization requirements? 

Additionally, browsing my Homeschooling in 50 States series will lead you to some advice from other bloggers and homeschooling experts around the United States! From homeschool laws and regulations to state resource recommendations, it’s another great place to begin gathering information.

Withdraw your Child from School 

If your child already attends a local public school or a private school, you will have to withdraw them before homeschooling. 

How you need to withdraw your child from local schools depends on your state laws. You should keep a copy of any written communications you have with the local school district. 

Join Local Homeschool Groups 

Joining local homeschool groups during your first year not only gives you resources for playdates, co-ops, and field trips, but it will give you a community of homeschool families who are going through the same experience as you. For new homeschooling parents, finding a group can be such a blessing.

Many homeschool groups also have ways of buying used curricula from other homeschoolers that will save you big bucks!  

You will also be able to get curriculum recommendations from these groups.  Having homeschool moms who are ahead of you in the process is always a good idea. 

Homeschool Hall has a free homeschool directory which is a great way to find local homeschooling groups, local support groups, and more resources specifically in your area.

Take Time to Deschool

Deschooling is taking time to basically detox from the school, and can be an important step that many overlook. 

Your child needs time to decompress especially if their schooling situation was toxic. 

But even if their schooling situation was not toxic, they have to readjust to learning at home and how homeschooling really works. 

Guess what? They aren’t the only ones who might need to deschool. Yep I’m looking at you. If you went through the public school system, you may need time to unlearn the way learning occurs in the classroom. 

Teaching a classroom is a lot about behavior management and working with multiple children around the same grade level. In homeschooling, you are often working with your child either one on one or with their siblings. You will deal less with classroom management and more with the individual learning styles of each of your kids. 

Remember you are homeschooling to give your child an individualized education, which is the beauty of homeschooling! It will look different for every family, every child, and it’s ok to take some time to try different things and find your groove.

Deschooling gives you a chance to do some fun learning with your child, like doing art together, watching documentaries, and going out to local museums and other educational opportunities. 

Learn about Your Homeschool Style 

While your child is deschooling, you should be learning about homeschooling, including homeschooling styles. 

There are many education philosophies that homeschoolers follow and they all look vastly different. That is why homeschooling homes can look so different from each other. 

Most families wind up taking a little bit from many types of homeschooling styles and philosophies and making it their own; this is commonly referred to as eclectic homeschooling. 

Some homeschooling and education philosophies to learn about include: 

• Charlotte Mason
• Montessori
• Unschooling
• School at Home
• Classical 
• Unit Studies
• Project Based Learning 
• Eclectic 

You do not have to choose a style right now, because like I said, most people choose a mixture of a few or just go with their own ideas. But it can be helpful to know some of the homeschool lingo, and understand the differences in how some curriculum is structured and meant to be taught.

Learn about Learning Styles 

There is some debate on whether there is actually any benefit to teaching to your children’s learning style.  The basic learning styles are audio, visual, and kinesthetic. 

People with audio learning styles learn best by hearing things. They are the people who pick things up in lectures and need to read aloud to themselves to really get what is being said. 

Visual learners love drawing or writing their notes. Charts, graphs and maps make complete sense to them and they may make idea maps to help remember things better. 

Kinesthetic learners are people who need to learn by doing or being active while they are learning. Sitting still in a chair at the kitchen table and listening to someone lecture or being forced to learn through a textbook is like being in a prison. These people pace and lay in weird ways while reading. 

So why do you need to know your child’s learning style as a homeschool parent? Knowing the best way your child learns and making their education more suitable for them is your full time job now.  It will make your life much easier if they are given information in a way that makes sense for them and it will help them to retain learning better. 

The good news is there are so many curriculum options nowadays that are multisensory, and take all learning styles into consideration. But knowing the needs of your children regarding how they learn is still good to be mindful of.

Start Following Educators on Social Media and YouTube

Yes, you left the public school system to homeschool, but educators have great resources to help your on your homeschooling journey. 

You need to always be learning about learning.  Following educational websites which focus on specific areas of education is going to help you so much and make your life so much easier. 

They will have tools and tricks to help you get over slumps in your child’s education. Tiktok, YouTube, a Facebook group, books and blogs are great ways to learn more about educating your child. 

Speaking of books, you’ll definitely want to check out my list of books all homeschool moms should read as you are soaking in information. Lots of great wisdom here!

Choose Curriculum 

You now know something about learning styles and homeschool styles, and even what you must teach according to your state laws. Time to gather curriculum. 

Here is a homeschooling curriculum secret: You are likely going to go through a lot of different publishers and homeschool curriculums before finding what works for your child. And what works for one of your children may not work for another.  The best thing you can do is adopt the ability to see when something is not working and move on. 

That being said, if you can find free samples of curriculum to try before you buy it do it. Many curriculum websites will give your worksheets, lesson plans, free trials, or projects to use before you buy it. Read their content on their website before making a choice. There are also a lot of options for free homeschool curriculum out there. 

I highly suggest getting a curriculum for math and learning to read first. Those two areas need to be individualized even if you are teaching multiple children because they will likely be at different levels.

When choosing a curriculum, you need to consider the format. Some important questions to think about:

• Do you want an online or offline curriculum?
• Do you want someone to give you what to say to teach your child (a scripted curriculum)?
• Do you want more freedom in the way your do lessons or something more like traditional school?
• Would you rather have a literature based curriculum where most learning comes from story type books with activities?  
• Would you enjoy using an online school?

If you have the opportunity to attend a homeschool convention, I highly recommend it. When we first decided to homeschool, a friend invited us to the Teach Them Diligently Homeschool Convention, and was it ever life-changing. We go every year now to refresh, re-energize, and visit popular homeschool curriculum providers in the exhibit hall.

Take your time browsing curriculum options. Don’t just adopt whatever your best friend or another homeschooling mom or blogger uses. Research curriculum choices to make sure that what you choose is a good fit for you and your family’s needs. 

You can grab a copy of my FREE homeschool curriculum planner printables here. Included are a few great curriculum recommendations, separated by homeschool method.

Start Slow 

Okay it’s first day of homeschooling time! It is very tempting to have a full day’s homeschool schedule like breakfast, math, language arts, science, lunch, recess, history, geography, spelling, and civics.  But you are going to burn out hard and quick and be questioning if you should even be homeschooling in less than a month. 

Your first steps should be slow. Instead, only do one subject and keep adding a subject every few days as you gain more confidence. 

Starting with a fun subject can be a good way to ease into your homeschool. Art, History, Physical Education or Science are all fun project based subjects you can start with. 

How to Start Homeschooling

Homeschooling is a wonderful opportunity to grow as a family and help your child reach their goals in a way that suits them best.  Just know your laws, withdraw your child from school, make some friends with other homeschooling parents and get started. Starting homeschooling does not have to be difficult; there is a learning curve but you can go slowly and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You can do this!

If you know anyone just beginning their homeschool journey, please share this post with them, or pin it on Pinterest for easy reference.

And while you’re here, make sure to bookmark my page of homeschool freebies so you can access it when you’re ready. I update it regularly with helpful printables and resources you can use in your homeschooling journey.

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