JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Diary of a single mom and her homeschooled daughter—Part Five

by

2315 days ago
20190319

This week we con­clude our home­school­ing se­ries, so I will at­tempt to an­swer all the FAQs based on the emails you guys sent through­out the se­ries.

Home­school­ing dif­fers from fam­i­ly to fam­i­ly and child to child, so it's al­ways dif­fi­cult to give gen­er­al an­swers.

There isn't any law that says you must in­form the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. Your lev­el of in­ter­ac­tion with the min­istry all de­pends on the lev­el you are at and your plans as it re­lates to sec­ondary school and UWI. In our case, she may sit SEA, there will be ab­solute­ly no pres­sure. She won't even un­der­stand what all the fuss is about. I will reg­is­ter her as a pri­vate can­di­date when it's time and we will de­cide if we take the spot or not when we cross that bridge. We prob­a­bly will home­school all the way through to uni­ver­si­ty but sit­ting SEA gives her an­oth­er op­tion.

Yes, most recog­nised home­school­ing cur­ric­u­la will ad­e­quate­ly pre­pare your child for SEA. There are over 3,000 cur­ric­u­la from which to choose, all avail­able on­line. You can use the MOEs but this is not set out for home­school­ers, so it can be dif­fi­cult to fol­low. The prices can range from US$20/month to as much as US$2,000/year. We use "My Fa­ther's World" which costs us at 2nd grade lev­el US$2,000/year. Some cur­ric­u­la are on­line based, some are read­ing in­ten­sive, and oth­ers are more hands on. There are those that are heav­i­ly Chris­t­ian based, and I am sure there are those less spir­i­tu­al­ly based. Most sites of­fer sam­ples that you can view to help you make a more in­formed choice.

Even at high school lev­el most of my home­school­ing net­work would agree that the av­er­age school day ranges from two to five hours a day and cur­ric­u­la do not in­clude Fri­days. This is the most at­trac­tive part in my opin­ion…the flex­i­bil­i­ty.

Just like tra­di­tion­al school, the suc­cess of the ex­pe­ri­ence de­pends on you. If you cur­rent­ly do not sit with your child to do home­work or have any in­volve­ment in your child's ed­u­ca­tion oth­er than drop­ping them off and pick­ing them up from school, then you may not want to con­sid­er home­school­ing as an op­tion for your fam­i­ly. Some peo­ple con­sid­er us­ing a tu­tor. In my opin­ion that is school at home, not home­school­ing. Home­school­ing is much more than read­ing and writ­ing. It is an ex­pe­ri­ence that lends it­self to bond­ing and greater fam­i­ly con­nec­tion. There is some­thing mag­i­cal that hap­pens when we do a sci­ence ex­per­i­ment to­geth­er. Most cur­ric­u­la, in fact, are de­signed for fam­i­lies, not for tu­tors. As you will of­ten see projects that are sched­uled dur­ing din­ner time. This is a cru­cial as­pect of the de­vel­op­ment of an all-round­ed child.

Yes, I think a work­ing moth­er can home­school her child—I work. The mom that ad­vised me when I was con­sid­er­ing the op­tion, has three busi­ness­es and six chil­dren, her hus­band works and trav­els, and she home­schools all of them. Her chil­dren have busi­ness­es as well and they do not have a maid at home. It is a team ef­fort, it en­cour­ages or­gan­i­sa­tion, con­trol, and fo­cus but the re­wards are price­less.

If you work an eight to four job in an of­fice, then you must con­sid­er who will look af­ter your child dur­ing the day. Will they be com­mit­ted to tak­ing them on out­ings, spend the day at the park ver­sus be­ing in front of the tele­vi­sion etc? We do school at night, so there is no rea­son you can­not as well, but Jess en­ter­tains her­self us­ing craft projects, play­ing out­side and help­ing at var­i­ous neigh­bour­hood busi­ness­es. Her day­time sched­ule is by no means filled with screen time.

I hope this se­ries has shed some light in­to the en­tire busi­ness of home­school­ing.

Since this ar­ti­cle was pub­lished two years ago, CARE has done sev­er­al in­ter­views with oth­er home­school­ing fam­i­lies and with the as­so­ci­a­tion, you can vis­it these links for more in­for­ma­tion.

YouTube Playlist on Home­school­ing: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAek9Fu5rob0Vl7Hg­Bixa8Py­OrvgVl­HG5

Home­school­ing As­so­ci­a­tion's Web­site FAQ Page: https://www.home­school-life.com/1450/faq/?pub­lic=1&pri­vate=


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored