How to legally home school in Alabama

You live in Alabama and have decided to home school, but now what? Well after you have made the decision to home school the worse is over. Below is the steps to legally home school in Alabama.

You must find a cover school, also know as a church school, umbrella school. This list has grown over the last few years and each cover school has its own list of requirements, rules, and fees. Check out http://www.alabamahomeschool.org for a cover school that has only what the state requires of home school families. Read each schools requirements and find one that fits your family, then enroll. If you want to home school your way do not enroll with a cover school that has a lot of rules and requirements. If you want rules, requirements then do not enroll with a cover than has only state requirements.

After you have enrolled with a cover school. Make sure either you or your cover school notifies your public school system superintendent that you are enrolled with them. This must be done within 3 -10 days depending on the school system. You do not do this each year. You do not have to notify superintendent again unless you change schools, at which time both schools must notify superintendent.

Follow the rules, requirements of your cover school. You are now legally home schooled in Alabama.

Now you have enrolled with a cover school, your family is getting used to being at home. What about teaching and curriculum. Well if you type in any search home school curriculum publishers you will be bombarded with web sites. Thankfully we now have thousands of publishers, but this can be very overwhelming. So let me help you out on this one if your child is in grades k-8 go to time4learning.com . This is a wonderful program. Your child does all work online but you can print worksheets etc.

It grades all work for you. Your child works at his own pace. If you just don't want to use the computer for school work, but want a curriculum. Go to alphaomega.com or schooloftomorrow.com here is complete curriculum with all subjects and is very affordable. These curriculums work very well the first year of home schooling because you have the information needed to teach the children, it is very easy to understand, you do not have to spend a lot of time on lesson plans, etc.

What about your schedule? Well I will suggest you find out first if your child is a morning or evening person, and you as well. Lets just say you are a morning person, wake up wide awake and ready to go. Your child is sleepy, slow, doesn't focus well, but at 4-5 PM the child is wide open. Well you might want to consider doing school work between 2 and 5 PM. If this time is just not possible, change the time you do school work each day until you find a time that seems to just go well with both you and child. Then try to stick to it as much as possible. Once you have been home schooling for awhile you will except the fact the schedule is broken more often than not.

How long should you spend on school work each day? Well if you are using a curriculum it usually never takes more than 4 hours a day for any grade level. But your child will be learning all day. If your child is young say between 1-3 grades spend a couple of hours a day on school work. Make sure you read to your child each day, something the child enjoys, likes, wants to learn.

About The Author-- Alabama Hope Academy Administrator. Covering entire state of Alabama. We welcome all home schoolers. Please visit: www.alabamahomeschool.org and www.ahakids.org.

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