Here are a few of the States that I am familiar with:

Florida—Letter of Intent (the rest is up to you)

Alabama— Umbrella School or Church directed Homeschool

Virginia— Letter of Intent, basic curriculum, Copy of GED or High School Diploma of parent/guardian

Penn(PA)—have to follow the age/grade curriculum of what the schools are doing.

The age/grade of your son along with his learning style will be your guide on teaching him. I do not advocate going out and spending money on a prepackaged curriculum for the simple reason that you can NOT guaruntee that it will work for your child (too hard,too easy, too much religion, not enough relgion,not interesting).

Do remember that field trips count as a school day. Do find a group whether it is via the internet or face to face. Do keep his work for 2-5 yrs. Do get Teacher Discount cards from the BookStore, Office Supply Store, etc, as they can help save you money. Most importantly do NOT allow people to scare you with the whole anti-social homeschool thing or make you believe that you are incapable of teaching or that your son can’t get a Diploma or get into a good College…because they aren’t, you can, he can and he will.

Good luck and welcome to the wonderful world of homeschooling.

Next, make a plan for what you want to teach and how you want to do it. This is a big task and your plans will change as you go along, so stay open to discovering your son’s learning style and your own teaching style. Do a Yahoo! search and you will discover a million resources.

Good luck!

My son is in a local charter school that is 2 days at school (reinforcement of what he is learning at home and socialization) and 3 days at home (primary work in subject areas with cirriculum chosen by me), so we are not eligible for membership in the HSLDA. However, I think they are a great organization.

There are many things to consider. Cirriculum, finding local homeschooling groups for social interaction, scheduling (or not)…

I have a lot of experience around homeschooled kids. They are not poorly socialized. Sure, if you kept your son at home and refused to put forth the effort to take him to park days, events, extra-cirricular stuff, then he’d be terribly socialized. I don’t know a single homeschooling family who keeps their kids at home all day, every day!

Those who complain that homeschooled children have no social skills are either not familiar with many homeschooled kids or have had a very bad, unusual experience with homeschooling. Much of the socialization children recieve at school is negative and not at all relevant to the real world.

Start with looking up _homeschool laws [your state/province/wherever you live] . You can look at http://www.hslda.org and check, but they aren’t always updated or fully accurate. Homeschool support groups are usually great places to learn about laws and also to make connections to get advice and support. Join one if you can.