Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax

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Stars: *** 1/2

The full title is Homeschooling for Excellence: How to Take Charge of Your Child’s Education – And Why You Absolutely Must. This book was counted towards the Casual Reading Challenge and 888 Challenge.

So far I’ve read two kinds of Homeschooling books: story collections and instructional manuals. This book is a mixture of the two, or perhaps a third kind. The authors are a couple with four children who have homeschooled for many years on their homestead. This is the story of their homeschooling adventure as well as tips and hints from years of experience.

The book is pretty short, at only 142 pages. If you don’t count the appendices, the book is 109 pages long. There were some good tips but it didn’t really tell me much more than I already knew. The chapters are: Teaching Our Own (Homeschooling day and general thoughts about their homeschooling), A Homeschooling Odyssey (how they came to be homeschoolers), The Trouble With School, The Homeschooling Alternative (pros of homeschooling), Before Basics (early learning), Tools for Learning (materials), The Three R’s, Beyond Basics (this chapter and previous includes the texts and materials they found helpful and not), Beyond Homeschooling (their experience with college application), Some Homeschooling Questions and Answers and Teaching Our Own – And Others (running a camp to teach others). The Appendices are: A Homeschooling Reference Library, Children’s Magazines: Four Favorites, Microscope Books for Younger Readers, One Hundred (More or Less) Favorite Books Remembered, Homeschooling and the Law (U.S. Law), Selected Resources and Daffodils and Diesels (A story told be a child, author unknown that illustrates the problems with school and how it squashes individuality.)

So far every book I’ve read on homeschooling has been written and published in the U.S. and so the sections on law don’t help me any. Also keep in mind that most of these books were written in the 1980’s and so laws may have changed since then too. As a parent who hasn’t started homeschooling yet but has read up on it quite a bit already, I’d say the parts I found most helpful would be The Three R’s and Beyond Basics.

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About Kathleen

I've been a nonfiction lover for as long as I can remember. I love children's nonfiction as well and love to share my knowledge and the books I gained them from, with the world. I wish more people would give nonfiction a chance.