Oddball homeschooler

I am a member of many homeschool communities on various social media sites and it's kind of interesting how I see all of the blogs and links all talking about Christmas and I don't do any of that. In my house it's a time for the family to get together yes but the whole presence and whatnot it's not as big of a deal in my house because I have a child with a birthday in December. It has never been a big deal in my house we put up the tree and do all those normal things but it's not as big as everybody makes it out to be. At this point in time I'm usually trying to reassess my business, make plans for the next year and create benchmarks. I had said before that this is basically the time that I do most of my planning considering that this is when we spend most of the time in the house. All of the things that I do during the winter most people are doing during the summer so considering that a lot of people are talking about unschooling world schooling and all of that I wanted to have my blog be a little bit different while everyone's talking about Christmas I'll be talking about planning.

 That works best because that is what comes naturally to me. I've never really been one to follow the crowd I've always been the oddball. Conformity has never been my thing because then what makes you stand out if you're just like everyone else.

My home school year doesn't look like everybody else's homeschool year. So why on earth would I blog like them. Following blogs that post about the same thing at the same time messes with algorithms if people like myself want to plan when I do, they are searching for something different. 

The state of Ohio is a notification state and they expect you to send a notice of intent to homeschool at the beginning of the school year but they failed to consider that when homeschoolers might consider themselves year-round homeschoolers there final semester, as it were, doesn't fall in line with their supposed due date. In Ohio they say that they want your notice of intent by the beginning of the school year which is like August or September but for me that is the beginning of my final semester. And my final semester doesn't end until October 31st or Nov 2 . So, I don't usually send my notice of intent to homeschool for the next year until the first week full week of November. We do have to have a review notice signed for completed work and it didn't feel right to prematurely sign one. It's kind of funny to think about because I have all of my notice of intents all the way up until the final year of my now 5-year-olds School year already created ready to print I have a few of them printed out. I actually printed out 3 years in advance just to make sure I don't forget. This year we have a new superintendent so printing them all out to the end of my little ones school age span would have been a waste of paper. I actually don't have to notify the school district about my 5-year-old until 2025 because his birthday is long after the cut off. It's even more perfect that I don't send it in until November because my 5-year-old's birthday is at the end of September anyway and the cutoff is the beginning of September. The best place to look to verify that information is the the state's website as well as hslda.or

I love homeschooling in Ohio because it is so easy and it is the most accommodating for a single parent working from home and homeschooling their child at the same time. The requirements are enough for me because obviously I'm going to give them the best education and there are still ramifications for those who do absolutely nothing and are using their children for child labor. I have to admit though the people that work in the home school office are pretty ignorant to the actual homeschooling laws so although I'm going to put a link to the Ohio education website I wouldn't recommend using any of their paperwork because it is not compliant with the law at all. It's an overreach.

I am a firm believer in a parent's right to educate their children as they see fit. The state of Ohio website is a bit misleading and the paperwork asks for way more than you are legally required to provide. It can be confusing for new parents and unnecessarily overwhelming. I became an HSLDA MEMBER and found a reference to the Ohio homeschooling parents Facebook group which provides the templates HSLDA AGREE WITH and I use. I prefer to use their templates and files and I recommend that you do the same. They are as passionate about parents rights as I am, they keep the templates updated and compliant with the law. I will put a link to the updated templates here because they are free. This year we have a new superintendent in my district and the laws have changed.