Laws/requirements

For Michigan, we have no reporting requirements, no registration requirements. The way the law is written a parent can homeschool for any reason that they choose. They are required to teach reading, math, language arts, civics, and social studies. How they verify that everyone is teaching that I have no idea. I think it is left up to the parent and if there are concerns and someone reports the parent for not teaching is when the authorities intervene. There are no required amount of hours for homeschoolers either. For us personally, we do it about 2-3 hours a day. The kids still do the same amount of work that they would in a brick and mortar school, it's just all condensed down to one sitting. They do chores and work on various life skills and just entertain themselves through the rest of the day. We belong to a local group of homeschoolers and meet up with them regularly for field trips to all kinds of places locally. My daughter's 2 best friends are a set of sisters that are in our group. It took a lot of time for my family, and my husband's family, to get used to us homeschooling. Three of our kids have special needs, and it was in their best interest to school at home. My 4 year old autistic son attends a specialized program, but when he is ready to be "mainstreamed" he'll be schooled at home as well. It's a very hands on process and requires a big commitment from both parents. While one parent may be the primary teacher, the other needs to be there for support. Also, frequently you'll find that homeschool families are one income families. It can be hard to work and teach and parent at the same time. For us, it is very much worth it over the public school option, but that can't be said for every family. It is a very individualized process.

Great questions! We home school our two little sponges of information. We use K12, its on line school but it basically the public school curriculum. Its worth it if you want to educate them yourself. You can tailor make a program for them, if they are good in one subject you can go as far as they can, they will get one on one study which is better than the public schools can offer. If you put in the effort to be hands on your see your child's eyes light up because they are learning from the best influence, you. We spend about 4 hours a day, that's start to finish and if a day isn't going well we scrap it and start over the next. Kids have the Monday's just like adults who have to go work.

We start our kids with some cirriculum before Kindergarten. Nothing complicated...just basics. We enroll them in a public school (it's spanish immersion) once they are old enough. After they've been in public school about 5 years we pull them out and my wife homeschools them. Life is pretty hectic so keeping up with all the ins & outs on the laws would be difficult. Luckily, we are part of a group of homeschoolers and all of the state testing is handled through the organization. They kids have a "class day" every other thursday where they have a normal class rooms with other students, lunch break etc. There are some basics that they have to take and they also have electives just like they would in public school. They even do field trips & have sports teams that compete with the other schools, drama club etc... They love it! My oldest is 14 and so far I think choosing to homeschool our kids after 4th grade was an excellent decision. The main reason we chose to do public school for the first 4 years is because of the spanish immersion and also to start them off with some normal public school interaction for social skills..etc. All of the kids are pretty much bi-lingual by the end of 1st grade.