For information about your legal rights as a parent in regards to homeschooling, check out National Home Education Legal Defense.

Former Motherhouse Board member, Vicki Harkness shares the following links and thoughts about home-schooling:

We homeschool because our son led us to it. There are many styles of homeschooling. We have found that unschooling works the best for us. .. Unschooling is child led. We follow his interests and live our lives. Everything we do is a learning opportunity… The following photo and thoughts  are from Vicki’s blog post.

Homeschooling information at Motherhouse

I love how his free mind can just keep on learning and diving in as deeply as he wishes to the subjects that interest him. I also found it interesting as to how he chose to use the words…. “I’m studying.” He was truly studying each and every facet of the plants. This was his choice, not because he had to study a subject that someone else told him was important or he had to because he had to prepare for a test. This was because he wanted to. He wanted to understand, observe, and discover.

This is the beauty I witness each and every day. Joshua chooses to learn more. He is interested and engaged. We are often learning together.

UnschoolingAmerica.com by Dayna Martin is a good website. I just love this paragraph from her home page. “For the involved parent facilitating their child’s learning with an environment rich with resources, attending school is completely unnecessary. Unschooled children do not have to deal with typical peer pressure. They are not graded or measured. They are not segregated by age. They are not bullied, or moved around by bells. Also Unschooled kids do not have to be away from their families. They do not have to ask permission to go to the bathroom or move from their seats. They also do not have a mundane life living someone else’s agenda. In short, our Unschooled children are truly free.”

My favorite Unschooling Yahoo group is All Children Shine w/Radical Unschooling. Anne Ohman started it several years ago. It is one of the most positive lists I have ever been on. This is a blog that Anne writes in occasionally; rad-i-cal.blogspot.com.

Other Yahoo groups are: Always LearningRadical Unschoolers List (RUL),Home Education Magazine – Unschoolingand Unschooling Basics.

Homeschooling books include; John Holt books (Even the book titles are informative and inspiring) Learning All the Time, Never Too Late, Teach Your Own;   John Taylor Gotto books;  Rue Kream’s Parenting A Free Child: An Unschooled Life (You can find it on-line at FreeChild.info);   I Learn Better by Teaching Myself by Agnes Leistic0; and And the Skylark Sings With Me by David H. Albert.

For older children: The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education by Grace Llewellyn (part of the Motherhouse Bookshelf collection) and A Sense of Self by Susannah Sheffer.