From the Southtown Star, an edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, an article by Fran Eaton titled Homeschooling taught lessons for both children and parents:

Any day now, we’ll all be hearing those familiar sounds of school buses and young voices shouting out as the kids head back to school. That first day marks a fresh beginning in a child’s life.

I’ll never forget our daughter’s first day of kindergarten more than 20 years ago. Determined to be independent and on her own, the little blond 5-year-old went out the door with lunchbox in hand. I stood and watched as she walked down the sidewalk. Within minutes, she entered the front door of her school – back home, right where she started.

“I’m ready for school,” she said. And she was.

Homeschooling was our family’s choice. During the 1980s, a revival of home education hit the United States, and we, along with tens of thousands of other young couples, were swept into the tidal wave.

Continue reading Fran Eaton’s article at the link above.

As her always-homeschooled children enter public school for the first time, Andromeda Romano-Lax, an Alaskan writer, author of The Spanish Bow and more than 10 travel and natural history books, shares her perspective on lessons she learned while homeschooling her children. Andromeda’s post is at 49 Writers, a blog for Alaskan authors:

They were giddy this morning; my husband and I were happy for them, but also a little sad — in that normal parents’ way — to turn the corner on a decade of family adventure, cooperative learning experiences with other homeschoolers, world travel, and a hundred strange little projects, like the year we all watched and reviewed as many famous American movies as we could, from the 1920s to the 1980s; or the Ancient Greek plays and mini-Olympics we staged with family friends; or the Novembers when my kids had the freedom to spend part of each morning working on their own novels for National Novel Writing Month.

ParentDish, a new weblog launched by AOL and dedicated to parenting, asks Would You Homeschool Your Kids? and the lengthy comments are as interesting as the well-written pro and con commentaries about homeschooling, penned by Amy Hatch and Crystal Paine.

An article in the Frederick News-Post, from Frederick, Maryland, titled Students go to head of the class with homeschooling:

If there is a common myth or misconception about homeschooling, it’s that people believe homeschooled children are being educated in a vacuum.

“I wish people would stop asking me about socialization,” she said. “My answer is always, ‘What about it?’”

An article in the Detroit Free Press online, also appearing in the print version, titled More resources and support help metro homeschoolers go mainstream, profiles homeschooling families in Michigan:

“Michigan doesn’t have an accurate count of the number of its homeschooled students. The state stopped requiring parents to register with a school district in 1996; registration is now voluntary. For the 2009-10 school year, 1,123 students in 684 homeschools self-reported.”

Boat Schooling, by Ruth Berkowitz. Another great article about a sailing homeschooling family:

Before kids, in 1998 my then fiancé and now husband Tim and I met a family sailing with three children all under the age of 11. They were sailing their boat, Margarita from Washington State to Mexico, Pitcairn Island and beyond. We met them in an anchorage off of Espiritu Santos in the Sea of Cortez and spent the day spinnaker flying and feasting. I noticed how strong, capable, educated and interesting the kids were. That evening, Tim and I promised each other that when we had children, we too would take our family sailing. Fast forward twelve years to the present time where we’re executing our promise…

A couple more articles on the continued growth of homeschooling:

• Georgia:
Homeschooling a growing trend

From doctors and dentists to teachers, many professions are represented among the parents who homeschool children. For parents who own a business, homeschooling allows children to help out with the business while still receiving an education, she said.

Latimer said she has never heard of a student who regrets not attending a public school.

• Virginia:
Homeschooling and Unschooling Growing in the Valley

Unschooler Joe Sullivan says, “When you have a system of telling other people always what to do and how to do it and what is necessary, you’re not going to foster in the population the ability to decide that for themselves and to make better choices in the future.”

Laura Weldon’s new book, Free Range Learning, received a glowing review in the news-tech magazine Wired’s blog, GeekDad:

Free Range Learning by Laura Grace Weldon is a new book about homeschooling. It isn’t a strict how-to, nor is it just about someone else’s personal experience. It’s a mixture of the two, intertwining real families’ experiences about teaching their children and lists of project ideas and resources. In between, there is plenty of guidance and information about teaching your kids, and even about scientific studies on how people learn. Yes, the audience of this book is mostly homeschoolers, but if you’re the kind of parent that tries to teach your kids during evenings and weekends, this book will have as much to offer you as it would a homeschooling parent.

An article in the Northern Virginia Daily titled Religious exemption criticized and subtitled Homeschooling group objects to modified policy, lack of say:

FRONT ROYAL — Homeschooling advocates on Thursday appealed to the Warren County School Board to void an amended religious exemption policy approved in July.

The School Board voted 4-1 in July to approve a modified regulation and policy to excuse pupils from mandatory school attendance based on a draft consensus policy.

In June, the School Board held a first reading of a regulation requiring a sworn release form from parents to receive a religious exemption.

The draft regulation also included the option of submitting a letter describing religious beliefs.

Continue reading the entire article at the link above.

Heather Idoni, a homeschooling mother, originator of HomeschoolingBOYS and owner of Beloved Books (home of the Sugar Creek Gang audio series), is a speaker on homeschooling topics at conferences and curriculum fairs. Heather edits The Homeschooler’s Notebook, and also manages EasyFunSchool as well as several other websites and homeschooling email groups.

Heather has also been the target of an ongoing campaign by Mimi Rothschild to discredit her for taking a principled stand against Mimi’s notoriously unethical business practices, and now Heather is embroiled in a lawsuit brought against her by Mimi.

A short excerpt (click the link above to read Heather’s post in it’s entirety):

While I was not surprised to be threatened with a lawsuit by Rothschild, I was completely taken aback to find out, by Mimi’s own admission, that (supposedly as a result of my newsletter issue last August), there were at least 4 major homeschool conferences who refused to allow one or more of her companies to be vendors at their major state conventions recently. Some of these she had been admitted to in past years; at least one had already accepted her application and payment. I have never spoken or had any correspondence personally with any of these decision makers — I can only believe that they made their decisions based on what they read independently on the Internet; heartrending stories of despair and desperation from Christian homeschooling families who realized, too late, that they had been taken.

So now, glory to God, I get to go to court!

Heather’s original Homeschool Fraud Alert, August 13, 2009.