I am still posting videos over on the Video page, so please keep check back.

You have questions. A lot of questions. So, let’s start you off on your journey. I’m going to start with some tech basics and if you already know this then awesome, simply jump to the next thing! Let’s get you started:

1. When I google about homeschooling I get so overwhelmed! Everyone knows how to Google something, right? Well… there are some tricks and tips that will help you to be come a googling guru! https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-tips-use-google-search-efficiently.html Learning how to precisely google what you are looking for will save you time and hopefully keep you from starting down a “bunny trail” and getting lost on the internet.
2. How can I keep a lot of the ads that show up on my computer away from my child’s eyes? Glad you asked! You need to check out https://adblockplus.org/
3. How do I allow my kids to watch a You Tube video without them seeing the other video’s on the side of the screen? You need to check out http://www.viewpure.com/
4. How can I track what my kids are doing on the computer? In our home we use https://www.qustodio.com/en/
5. Help my email box is being overwhelmed with homeschool related emails! This is a simple fix and one I suggest people do all the time. Head over to Gmail and create a new account. You can call it yourlastnamehomeschool @gmail.com. So if your last name is Howson it would be howsonhomeschool@gmail.com. When you need to sign up for homeschool related websites, blogs, etc you can use that email address and your regular everyday email address will stay neat and tidy.

Now that we have those tech questions out of the way, lets move onto some questions about the structure of your homeschool day!

How do I home school while working full time? That’s a great question and many people believe that since both parents are working full time they can’t homeschool but that might not be the case. Check this out: How To Homeschool When You Have a Full Time Job and Working and Homeschooling – Yes, It’s Possible.

How smart do I have to be as a parent to homeschool my Grade 8 student? Smart enough to buy homeschool curriculum that will teach your child for you! I had a friend who thought that since my daughter was in Advanced Algebra that I was able to teach Advanced Algebra. That would be the furthest from the truth. I am smart enough to find a solid, time-tested curriculum that I knew my daughter could use and I also found her an online math tutor that helped her when she didn’t understand something. You as a parent don’t have to teach your child every subject; you have to teach your child how to learn and how to enjoy learning. If you as a parent teach your child the joy of learning, they will always want to learn.

I feel totally inadequate to teach my kids, what do I need to be capable of pulling off homeschooling? You need to be able to read. That’s it. Let’s start by taking a deep breath. You are capable. You are not inadequate! You might feel inadequate simply because no one has ever taken the time to tell you that you have been successfully teaching your kids from the day they were born. Don’t believe me? Who taught your child to use a spoon? You did. Who taught your child to count to 10? Most likely you. Who taught your child to use the toilet? You did. Who taught your child to tie their shoes, zip their coat up, put on gloves (ok, I still have a problem with this one at times). YOU did all that! Ok, I can hear the arguments now: “but that’s not the same teaching them school work!” Don’t be so sure! You can help your child learn everything in life using these three key ways:

• Instructions
• Modelling
• Step By Step.

Don’t believe me? Read this: Teaching skills to children: different approaches This applies to schoolwork as well! There are some homeschoolers who want to build their own curriculum. I did that for a season, it was fun and I learned a lot. However, for the majority of homeschoolers they simply purchase a homeschool curriculum program. This curriculum is designed for and written for parents to use to with their children. It’s not rocket science! Many textbooks have guided sections for you, the parent, to read. It would have questions for me to ask the kids and the answers were right in my teacher’s manual so I knew what the answer was supposed to be. Easy-peasy!

Unfortunately, you have been taught to believe the misconception that you can not teach your children, only certified teachers can. Don’t get me wrong, I love my teacher friends and family members. I would never want their job. I’ve taught in a classroom setting and frankly I didn’t really enjoy it not because I didn’t enjoy the material I was teaching. It was the attitudes and misbehaviour of students that I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t enjoy having to make a class behave. The management of 24-30 unique individuals each with their own emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual needs is not something I would want to do. I suspect many reading this wouldn’t want that job either. So, don’t get overwhelmed with the thought of teaching a class of 20+ kids. Think about teaching just your children.

I need to know what’s expected of me for a day of homeschooling? Well, that would depend on the curriculum you decide to use. Most curriculum will have an information section for the parent telling you want you will need for each lesson. I would gather those lists for each subject and after I gathered the items I already had in the house, I was able to pick up the majority of rest of the items at a dollar store. Some companies will even sell you a kit with all the items you need, if you pay for that service. I was always able to get the items myself at a fraction of the cost. As the years went by, I would reuse many of those items over and over. If it is software based, you would need to make sure the computer is set up and ready to go. If it is textbook based, you would need the textbook. Once you have those expectations met, then you need to have the kids get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and do any morning chores, not necessarily in that order. Then you would start with your first subject. For us that was Math. We were using a textbook:
I would read the lesson to the kids (Instructions), we’d do some practice questions together (Model) and then they would start to do their worksheet on their own.

I’d stay and watch the first few questions and if they weren’t getting it I’d re-read/teach the part they weren’t getting and explain it Step By Step to them. They would finally understand, and demonstrate that they could do a few again and I’d go flip the laundry.

I’d usually bring the laundry to the table and sit and fold it while they did their worksheet. Once their worksheet was done, they’d help put the laundry away while I set up for our next subject, Language Arts.

We’d start of reading on the couch, sometimes hanging upside down on the couch. Sometimes we read under a tree, on the porch, in my bed, under the table, or everyone piling onto Daddy’s chair. We’d read wherever it felt like fun. If your reading a book and they are talking about a river, then go sit by a river that day and do some school work at the river!

I would read a chapter or two to my children and then we’d do some activity. Where did I get these activities? My teacher’s manual. It had all the questions I needed to ask, all the answers my children should give me and a list of things I would need to make the activity fun. Some of the Language Arts curriculum I used had worksheets for my kids to do. We did them. I used a program called SpellingCity.com to teach them spelling and vocabulary skills. Then while the kids were on the computers, I’d go flip the laundry and prep for supper.

Then we would have lunch. The kids learned to cook, clean up and we would work together as a team. Then we’d go back to the living room to do Social Studies.

First we’d watch a DVD, then we’d discuss what we watched and how that would relate to other areas of our lives and sometimes how it related to the book we were reading in Language Arts. Then the kids would head to the kitchen table to do their worksheets. I’d go flip the laundry and bring it back to fold while they did their work.

Can I be brutally honest here? When I started to homeschool my kids, I didn’t have a smart phone. We had dial up internet. I didn’t have the distractions that you as parents currently have today. The hardest part of homeschooling for many of you will be shutting off your phone and focusing on the task at hand. I made the choice to not call people while I was homeschooling because I needed to focus for a few, very short years completely on my kids and set aside my desires. Was it a sacrifice at times, yes. I look back now fondly at those years that seem to just fly by compared to now. I can promise you that the world will not stop if you don’t look at your phone during school hours but please take a picture every now and then…. just for the memories.

Now, if you chose homeschool curriculum that is all online your day will look very different from mine. But here’s the key points: stay close, stay accessible, stay off your phone and be involved.

What are the hours of homeschooling? This depends on which curriculum you use, how quick your child gets a concept and how many subjects you do in a day. Here is an example of a school day from the www.time4learning website.

Though each homeschooling style and schedule varies, here is what may be a “typical” homeschool day.

• 10:30 AM – School starts in the morning with a Time4Learning Language Arts lesson, and then a subject of the student’s choice.
• 11:30 AM – Lunch
• 12:30 PM – More Time4learning.com
• 1:15 PM- Snack
• 2:00 PM- You’ll work with your students on worksheets you have printed-off from the computer.
• 3:00 PM- School is finished for the day.

And everyday will be different. If we had a doctor appointment in the morning, we wouldn’t start school until after lunch and we’d run school a bit later. No one is going to slap your hand if you don’t put in eight hours of schoolwork a day! Oh and I need to share another secret here. My kids only had homework at night if they were really misbehaving and didn’t get their work done during school hours. Once they realized they would have their evenings free, they did their work quick so they could just go play after supper chores were done.

How much prep time does it require for each student? The really depends on which curriculum you decide to go with. As a general rule of thumb: free curriculum equals more time prepping for the parent. More expensive curriculum equals less time prepping for the parent.

What about the socialization aspect? Please go read this: Socialization of Homeschooled Children I can wait.
My kids had so many homeschool activities available to them that I had to tell them to pick one thing each otherwise I’d have turned into a professional taxi driver! Our local groups used to have park days when the school kids were in school. The group would pick a park to gather at and the parents would visit while the kids played.

What is the cost to homeschool? I did a video on this question. Click on the video tab of this website and scroll down you will see it there. Or you can click here.

How do I get information about homeschooling? Read this website and thecanadianhomeschooler.com and homeschool.today. Take an hour and Google “Homeschooling in Ontario, Canada” and read those pages. Google is an amazing thing!

Where can I find curriculum? On this website there is a tab that says Homeschool Helps. Hover your mouse over that word and a drop down menu will appear at the bottom it will say: “Where can I find….”

How does a parent teach multiple students across different grade levels? Honestly if you’re trying to align to the Ontario curriculum for every single student it is going to be a lot of work, that’s why they have different teachers for different grades. But when you sit down as a parent and look at what is the expectation for each subject for each student for each grade, you can start to see how there is some overlap.

In Grade 1 the overall expectation for number sense and numeration is: read, represent, compare and order whole numbers to 50, and use concrete materials to investigate fractions and money amount. While in Grade 2 the overall expectations for number since numeration start with: Read, represent, compare, and order whole numbers to 100, and use concrete materials to represent fractions and money amounts to 100 cents. No one is going to freak out if your Grade 1 student is learning some of the same things as your Grade 2 student, and no one is going to freak out if your Grade 2 student gets a good solid review as your Grade 1 student is learning their math lesson.

Once you understand that there is some general overlap across every single subject across every single grade level that helps you to realize that you can meet these expectations. Since we generally feel that children in Grade 3 could handle a little bit longer of a math lesson then children in Grade 1, and if I had kids in grades 1, 2 and 3 I would start by teaching Grade 1 math. Then I would have my Grade 2 and Grade 3 students listening in on the lesson. As my Grade one student was doing their worksheets, I would then move on to the expectations of the Grade two math. It’s the same basic lesson we would practice it, I would demonstrate it I would teach it step-by-step, I would model it and then I would have my Grade 2 child start on their worksheet.

By now my Grade 3 student would be having a really good review of Grade 1 and Grade 2 so when then I explain to them how we’re going to start to learn about whole numbers to a thousand they’ve had a good refresher on the base information that they need before I actually start to teach their lesson.

But honestly I probably wouldn’t teach this way because this just seems like too much work. Instead I wouldn’t worry about trying to follow the Ontario expectations, I instead would find a homeschool curriculum and pick the appropriate curriculum for each of my children. Why would I do this? Well, simply because the homeschool curriculum is written for parents to easily teach. I would literally be able to read the lesson from the textbook word for word of what they wanted me to teach. Remember most homeschooling children can get their school work done in 2-3 hours. So, I could read the lesson to the Grade one student and get them started on their worksheet. Then read the lesson to the Grade 2 student and get them started on their worksheet and read the lesson to the Grade 3 student and get them started on their worksheets.

Math is going to be the hardest subject for teaching individually because frankly for the rest of the subjects I would teach them as a group. For language arts we would all be reading the same book, now I would be reading that book out loud to all three kids. I might expect my Grade one student to draw me a picture and come up with a sentence that I would help them copy about the chapter we just finished reading. I might require my Grade 2 student to fill in a daily journal about the chapter we just read telling it from their point of you. My Grade 3 student might have vocabulary words that they have to look up in the dictionary. These words would come from the chapter we just read. Then they might have to retell the story from the point of view of a specific character who wasn’t the main character. Each child is doing their activity from the same chapter that I read to all three of them at once.

One of the curriculum we used for history had this literally laid out for me. It would tell me what I needed to read to the kids and then it would have activities for kids in up to Grade 3, up to Grade 6, and then up to Grade 9. So I would pick the appropriate activity based on my child’s age and have them do it. So if you’re a family looking at homeschooling multiple grade levels I would suggest to you that you look for curriculum that is written to be taught to multiple grade levels to make it your life easier.

As for aligning to the Ontario curriculum that is your own personal choice. Know that the same kind of scope and sequence expectations at the Ontario curriculum has you will find a crossed other curriculum companies also.

I know you might still have more questions. Please keep sending them in to us and I’ll add them to this document as I get them. I am working on another document specifically for parents with multiple children and parents with special needs children. Please stay tuned for those documents to be posted.

Blessings to all,

AH