I am going to start home schooling 5,4,3 yr olds,how do i go about this?any forms,courses,special test?

Question

and i live in texas. i travel around in a rv for my job.going to get my step children and my wife is going to home school them.so far its my understanding that there are no forms to start home schooling just picking out the right course for the children.can any one give some light to shed on it?

Answer 1

I don't live in Texas but I do know it's a fairly easy (as far as laws go) place to homeschool.

Look into what method might suite you and get started. It's the journey of a lifetime and it's a good one.

Answer 2

Strictly speaking, if you intend to 'pick out a [sic] course for the children', you're talking about using Distance Education, not Home Schooling.

Strictly speaking (and to satisfy the pedant in me, lol), homeschooling your children/step children means putting together your own courses for them to use (or going the same way we do and doing without any particular course/curriculum/syllabus!). Buying in your course, curriculum, syllabus or using correspondence lessons/cyber school/school-in-a-box type programmes puts you into the realm of using distance education.  

As far as I know (and I'm not from America, Texas or otherwise, so really this is just hearsay but I didn't want it to look like I was only interested in bashing you over the DE/HS thing; or look like I'm just an obsessive compulsive pedant, lol!) there's nothing you're required to do; I'm pretty sure you don't have to register or tell anyone that the kids are being homeschooled or have any contact whatsoever with the authorities/school board if you don't want to -especially given how young they are and so they presumably have never been registered at school, so their mum won't have to go through the hassle of de-registering them.

Answer 3

In Texas, you just run your homeschool.  You are considered a private school, and there are minimum skills that you have to keep up with once they are school age, but the laws are very easy to comply with.

For kids that young, keep it fun.  Work on basic skills - let them trace their letters in shaving cream on a cookie sheet, play skills-based games, and read lots of stories.  You may want to try lapbooking with them - there are so many skills-based lapbooks out there that are really great for learning preschool and early elementary skills.  Here is a site to go to, to learn about this:

http://www.handsofachild.com/shop/index....

Once they are older - 1st to 2nd grade - you will have a better idea of their learning styles and needs, and you'll be able to pick out a curriculum that will meet those needs.  Honestly, before that time, most children are not developmentally ready for a formal curriculum anyway.

Hope that helps!

Answer 4

In Texas, you do whatever you please. www.hslda.org will have more explicits on the laws, but there's really nothing special to do. You don't even have to pick out a curriculum--you truly educate your children in the way you see fit.

Answer 5

Considering their ages are so close together, you may find that the unit study method will be ideally suited for the history and science side of things because they can all be learning the same topic together. Quite likely they will need separate curriculum for reading and math so they have something on their own level. I started out using KONOS with my kids when they were in pre-school to early elementary ages, but there are also other unit study curricula you may want to check out such as Five in a Row and the Weaver curriculum.