Ronald Said:

Any parents with homeschoolers in Houston, TX?

We Answered:

I am in Spring. I haven't heard of anything that you go to. There are co-ops and things, but to me you would have the same issues as public school at that point. You would never know if someone was sick until you got there. There is a program at k12.org which is actually public school at home. It is totally free, they even supply you with a computer and help pay for internet access. My understanding is that you pull your child from the school saying you want to homeschool and then enroll with them. You will need to take her some place for standardized testing, and run your school year with that of the public schools so there are some differences from traditional homeschooling. Your child has a teacher assigned to them who calls like once a week to make sure that everything is going ok and there are monthly field trips.

I am not sure if it starts as early as 1st grade though. You may check their website. http://k12.com/ If this doesn't work there are a lot of really good homeschool curriculums out there and you can so it yourself.

Also, I do not recommend fighting for homebound. I had to use it my sophmore year because of health issues, and it was not very good. I could only take 4 classes instead of the 6 I needed for my credits, and I was smarter than the teacher. She was not knowledgeable on the subjects I was trying to learn. When you are teaching reading skills you cannot count on a teacher who will check in once per week, hasn't reviewed the materials, and doesn't usually work with kids this age. Just becuase you have a teacher does not mean they are better at this than you are. Many times they become homebound teachers because they can't cut it in the classroom.

Texas is very easy to homeschool in. The laws are used to encourage it and there are TONS of homeschool groups in Houston. If you have any questions or I can help in anyway, feel free to email me.

Good Luck