Home educating one's children has become an increasingly popular option for thousands of parents over the past couple of decades.  The reasons parents choose to educate their children at home are as varied as the families themselves.  These reasons can range from geographic location to religious convictions to personal safety to quality of academics. These parents choose to home educate their children out of a deep love and an earnest desire to do what is best for them, to prepare them for life in the real world.

Home educators come in all shapes and sizes and long term studies have shown that the economic level, geographical area and parents' education do not dictate how well a child is home educated.  Some Saskatchewan home educating parents receive funding to facilitate their children's education and some do not.  Students can take the usual six hour school day or just a couple of hours.  Academics can be learned by textbooks, workbooks, hands-on manipulatives, field trips, DVD's, computers, online classes or a combination of all of the above.  Some home educating parents are "unschoolers", some are very structured and others are eclectic in their approaches.  In addition to academic studies, home education can include field trips, libraries, part-time classes at the local high school, driver's education, school sports teams, school music groups, long distance learning, college level courses, travelling, working for the family business or for someone else's business, volunteering, local clubs and groups, extra curricular lessons, serving in the community, creating and running their own business...and on and on the list can go.  Home education allows a freedom and flexibility with what you want your children to experience as part of their eduction.

Let's take a look at what home education is not.  Home education is not illegal.  It is a protected legal right of parents in this country.  Home education is not sub-standard education.  Many university professors have noticed the difference in college students that were home educated.  They tend to ask questions, read the assigned readings, work/study more independently, discuss their studies with their professors, seek out help if they require it and take more ownership of their academics.  Home educators are not hermits who hate society.  Families that home educate are generally very involved in their communities and have their children involved in various activities.  Home education is not a bed of roses.  Home educating your children takes sacrifice, time, energy, finances, patience and perseverance.  Some days it's a blessing and other days it's a challenge.  People are people.  We all have our days.

Home education has many benefits.  It provides much more time for you to get to know your children.  Your children have more time to get to know one another better.  Children have time to explore topics of interest.  Right now my son is cutting cardboard apart to make weapons like the Vikings he's studying about and my daughter is making an ancient Viking game to play.  These extra activities/projects create an interest, desire and excitement about learning.  Isn't that what we all want for our children?  A desire for and love of learning that will be lifelong?  Children that are home educated can learn at their own pace, whether they need extra time or very little time for different subjects/projects.  The gifted child can advance and the child with learning issues can be given more one on one tutoring to help them achieve their academic goals.  Home educating parents have the freedom to choose the curriculum that best suits each child.  Children have different learning styles and cannot all be put into the same "learning box." 

Parents also have the freedom to teach their children according to their moral belief systems, with the end goal of providing our country and world with solid, upstanding citizens who want to make this world a better place.  Home education provides flexibility with your time.  You decide when and how long academics take each day, week, month, and year.  Life happens and sometimes you need to go with that and put aside the books.  That's real life though, and this teaches your children that life can be unpredictable...and that's OK.  We have taken a month off to travel at times and our children were learning all through the trip...and it wasn't through textbooks either! 

Many parents panic when they think about teaching their teenaged children.  Home educating parents come to realize that they do not have to know everything about everything.  Whew...that takes the pressure off!  Educating your children goes in three stages:  teaching them, facilitating them, and finally, learning with them.  What about that academic holy grail called a government issued high school grade 12 diploma?  Universities, colleges, tech schools are becoming increasingly open to home educated students.  These students have proven themselves in the past and have been found to be high standard students.  And who says college level learning has to wait until they are actually at college?  The internet has made distance learning one of the most popular means of learning.  We're embarking into the world of CLEP - College Level Entrance Preparation - and there's no minimum age for that.  Why not let your high school home educated student gain some college level courses while at home?  Why not combine high school with some college?  The American Junior Colleges have been doing it for years.  Less time...less money...less stress.  Sounds like a winning combination to me!

There are so many resources and resourceful people out there to help answer your questions, to help you get started, to help you find the best curriculum for your children, to help you find other home educators, to help you when you're discouraged, to help you with your school division, to help you with the provincial and local policies, and to just listen when you need to talk, vent or cry.  Every province has an official body to represent home educators at the government level.  In Saskatchewan, we have the Saskatchewan Home Based Educators (SHBE for short).  This group has been in existence for about 25 years and has helped formulate home education policies with the provincial government.  They are an invaluable source of information, resources, and support to home educators.  SHBE has board members that represent every area of the province, puts out an informative quarterly journal to its members, provides a Help Desk for questions and holds an annual two-day convention for anyone interested in home education.  This year the convention is in Regina.  This convention is where we went when we were considering home educating our children.  We asked all our questions, got real answers, talked with real parents who experienced real life home educating and learned about a ton of curriculums that exist for home educators.  The convention is always held late winter, right when you're thinking you're running out of juice.  It's the perfect time to be re-energized, get new ideas, be encouraged, be challenged, get a new perspective on life and home education, and enjoy meeting other like-minded parents.  The convention is not to be missed if you can help it!  I am headed to my fifteenth (did I just say that?) convention next week and, as always, I am looking forward to it just like every year.

There are tons of websites you can google to find out more information about home education than you ever thought possible, but here are some that you might find are a good place to start:

www.shbe.info/index.html

melfortjournal.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2369012

homeschooling.about.com/

www.homeschoolandmore.ca/abouths.asp

www.homeschooling-ideas.com/advantages-to-homeschooling.html

homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/regional/Saskatchewan.htm

www.homeschool.com/

explore.usask.ca/admission/

www.uregina.ca/newstudent/homebased.shtml

www.siast.sk.ca/admissions/home_based_learners.shtml

SASKATCHEWAN HOME BASED EDUCATORS 2010 CONVENTION

                     "STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE"

                              February 19-20, 2010

                                    University of Regina, SK

             Register for convention at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .