Sentinel article on homeschooling

[Kat Kanning]

Home-school year beginning now, too
   

Alex Hanson
Valley News of Lebanon


WEST LEBANON ? Next week, Kristin Small will begin her fifth year of home-schooling her children, but her schoolwork has already begun.

She has spent the last month ordering her curricula for the six students she?ll be teaching.

?My ideal is to take off most of the summer,? Small said. But that doesn?t always work out. Since she bore her eighth child last winter, she made up some of the lesson time she missed in February with classes over the summer.

With its sales and sense of beginnings, back-to-school time can have the flavor of a national holiday. But while many parents breathe sighs of relief when their children return to school?s structured environment, those who choose to teach their kids at home are building those structures themselves and creating their own rituals outside the retail madness.


      


Although home-schoolers can schedule classes year round, most tend to follow the school year, giving children the summers off. Despite home-schoolers? best efforts to define the first day of school, the flexibility of their schedules can make it seem like a gray area.

?I guess in a sense we slow down, but we?re never really away from learning,? said Margaret Drye, a longtime home-schooler from Plainfield.

Small plans to take her kids out for doughnuts, a special treat to mark the occasion. ?My kids like tradition ? so we do like to do a kickoff,? she said.

?It?s a time when our interaction with our kids becomes more intense,? said Michelle Grald, who home-schools her two sons, Wyat, 8, and Henry, 10, in Plainfield. ?I would say the parents probably more stressed out than the kid. ? I want to plan the best possible year.?

Grald plans to start the school year tomorrow, but has gradually ?ramped up? instruction for the last two weeks, starting lessons in French and typing and waking the boys up earlier. She planned to sit them down for a talk about what their core academic classes will be like this year.

At the same time, summer wasn?t really time off for Grald or for Small, who had to plan lessons and buy books.

?I type out a very detailed lesson plan for the whole year for each kid,? Small said. The children in her home-school program range from a kindergartener to a high school senior. She estimated that she spends about $500 at the beginning of the school year, mostly on materials.

While they spend on books and materials, home-schoolers generally don?t spend much on clothes and other items.

?We went out and shopped for school supplies, but it was more about what they thought would be useful,? Grald said.

The absence of a back-to-school spending spree points to something else the start of the home-school year lacks: the social pressure associated with returning to a traditional school.

?The main thing that gets relieved is the peer pressure,? said Shayne Small, 18. Before being home-schooled, Small attended Lebanon public schools.