{"id":19869,"date":"2012-04-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/?p=19869"},"modified":"2019-09-30T13:58:59","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T17:58:59","slug":"five-things-i-wish-i-had-done-before-homeschooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/five-things-i-wish-i-had-done-before-homeschooling\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Things I Wish I Had Done Before Homeschooling"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a post from contributing writer Angie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In June, we’ll be wrapping up our fourth year of homeschooling.\u00a0 When I reflect back on the time when we decided to homeschool but hadn’t yet begun (because it was during a school year), I realize that there are things that I wish I had done in that period of time before starting that I didn’t.<\/p>\n

Since I know some families are gearing up to start homeschooling for the first time after this school year ends, here are some tips that might help you on your journey.<\/p>\n

Things I Wish I Had Done Before Homeschooling<\/h2>\n

Attend a Homeschool Convention or Conference<\/h3>\n

One of my favorite things each year for preparing for the next school year is to go to a homeschool convention and look around at a vendor hall.\u00a0 It makes all the difference in my decisions when I’m able to get my hands on items and really check them out beyond just online descriptions.\u00a0 It’s a wonderful way to see what I think will actually work for my family and what won’t.<\/p>\n

In our first few months of homeschooling, we decided to abandon almost everything that we had originally ordered.\u00a0 It would have made a huge difference if I had originally seen all of those items in person to make a better decision.<\/p>\n

Wait Until The End of the Summer to Start<\/h3>\n

Like many people, we thought we should give it a trial run during the summer, so we started officially homeschooling on July 1st that first year.\u00a0 Although this wasn’t the case for us, I think this gives people the opportunity to get too nervous about those first kinks and struggles of homeschooling, and then enroll their children back in school before the school year has even started.<\/p>\n

For us, this was an issue because it was a transitional period for two of our children, since they were leaving public school.\u00a0 By the time we had been at it for several weeks, they felt lonely.\u00a0 I hadn’t taken into consideration that all of our extracurricular activities with other people wouldn’t begin until August (when the schools start here).\u00a0 My kids needed to know in a very concrete way that they really were still going to be around other kids.<\/p>\n

Join a Local Homeschool Support Group<\/h3>\n

I actually did<\/em> do this one.\u00a0 But, it was so important to me, that I didn’t want to overlook adding it to this list.\u00a0 It can be easy to feel alone while homeschooling if you don’t have people in your life that understand and support your homeschooling.<\/p>\n

I joined my local homeschooling support group approximately six months before we started homeschooling.\u00a0 It was through that group that I have found many of my now closest friends, as well as where my children found many, many friendships and opportunities to be with others.<\/p>\n

Be Open Minded to Changing Plans<\/h3>\n

As I shared earlier, I changed almost all of our curriculum in the first couple of months.\u00a0 As quick as that sounds, I actually wanted to get rid of it all even more quickly.\u00a0 However, I was so wrapped up in the idea of how much we had spent on it, that I made us miserably trudge through it until I decided that it was destroying our view of homeschooling.<\/p>\n

I wish I had gone into homeschooling knowing that I would probably want to change things from my original plans and been okay with that.<\/p>\n

Read About Many Homeschooling Styles<\/h3>\n

I will admit that I just didn’t really know very much about the different homeschooling styles when I began homeschooling.\u00a0 As a matter-of-fact, I mostly thought of homeschooling as doing school at home.\u00a0 I wish that I had read about many different styles of homeschooling in order to better zero in on what would work best for our family.<\/p>\n

If you’re already homeschooling, what is something that you didn’t do before homeschooling that you wish you would have done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

photo by jimmiehomeschoolmom<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a post from contributing writer Angie. In June, we’ll be wrapping up our fourth year of homeschooling.\u00a0 When I reflect back on the time when we decided to homeschool but hadn’t yet begun (because it was during a school year), I realize that there are things that I wish I had done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":19874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-helps","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19869"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28497,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869\/revisions\/28497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/homeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}