The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child: Your Complete Guide to Getting Off to the Right Start

This is probably the best book on the subject. It covers learning styles, homeschooling myths, deschooling, learning readiness and more. A unique feature is the chapter that presents "a week in the life" profiles of families using various homeschooling methods. Scattered throughout are highlighted tips on the topic "What I wish someone had told me during my first year of homeschooling." The book includes learning resources, the "weirdest homeschooling laws" segment, and state by state legal information. Very informative. Elementary education is changing in this country. Public schools are raising bars on curriculum and more standard tests are introduced. So I hope to see a new edition of this book to have the trend covered. Meanwhile, I let my child use Beestar (a nice web site for weekly practice, www.beestar.org). So I can see how my child is doing compared to those formal school kids.

I stepped into homeschooling in 2001 as scared mom of a burned-out child. This book was not in print at the time that we began our homeschooling adventure, but I came across it several months later. What great gift it was to read! I learned that I was doing okay, that my decision to "deschool" was on-target and most of all, this book gave me priceless peace of mind that homeschooling does not have to replicate school in order to be a viable means of educating my child. I found particular comfort in the chapter on Homeschool Myths, especially the myth that all homeschool children are National Spelling Bee champions, science fair winners, etc. While it may seem contraindicated to have lowered expectations of one's children, this advice nugget helped me understand that my children don't have to confrom to society's expectations of success in order to be successful. I don't need to push them to achieve based on some artificial, media-biased standard. I can let them be -- and share the joy of learning as a family. *That* is the greatest gift of homeschooling which this wonderful book taught me to see. Thank you, Linda Dobson!

I bought this book a week or so ago and in a few days have learned a whole lot about how to homeschool, what not to fret about, and the different types of homeschooling, learning types, etc. It's given me the lift I needed to relax and ponder the thought of doing the educating of my children myself. Very encouraging in a practical and realistic way. Highly recommend!

As a mom who is looking to homeschool, I am in the process of researching the subject. This book is very well and logically laid out and is objective in its approach, using both religious and secular families in its examples. The "What I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me..." excerpts throughout the book were great, as I had some of those same preconceived ideas in mind -- what a relief to know I won't have to go overboard on expensive curriculum and extremely structured "class" time!Ms. Dobson lays out the different homeschool approaches as well as goes through one week examples of each, most of which were interesting (although I must admit that after reading this part I found a couple of the approaches a little questionable ... it seems like class time is squeezed in between extracurricular activities (discussing topics in the car en route to/from karate or piano lessons)). Overall, I was pleased with the different approaches that are available (including online!), which has gotten me thinking about how I might want to do things, as well as eased some of my anxiety.The only thing I did find missing from the book was that several people said they came up with non-confrontational answers to people who question their homeschool decision, but no actual answer examples were given. I plan on going to several of the websites and user groups she has listed in the resource section.I plan on re-reading this book several times!!!