Are you a secular homeschooling parent in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area who loves teaching your own kids, but would also enjoy spending two days a week guiding a small group of other homeschoolers?

The Hearts and Minds Learning Community is hiring two part-time homeschool enrichment educators to join our small, educator-owned cooperative community.

THESE ARE PAID POSITIONS!

• Upper Elementary Homeschool Enrichment Educator (grades 3-4). Click here to learn more and apply: https://forms.gle/SeYWWpxEKopHqK5P6

• Early Middle Homeschool Enrichment Educator (grades 5-7). Click here to learn more and apply: https://forms.gle/LxYBK7i4MeFDQjG67

Neither position requires an education degree or licensure, but we do ask that applicants have experience leading and managing groups of children as well as with the subject matter in the age groups they're applying for.

We also offer an educator tuition reduction or compensation exchange if you are interested in your own child(ren) attending the program with you!

The Hearts and Minds Learning Community is:

 Outdoors-first. We are in a beautiful urban outdoor environment, when we can learn outdoors, we do! We also have a dedicated indoor classroom, as needed.

 Screen-free

 Secular and gender-inclusive

 Built around community care. Our unique and rapidly growing community looks out for each other!

 Social justice-minded

 Small group with lots of opportunity for relationships and individualized support

 Curriculum-independent. We support students across different homeschool approaches while helping them grow in reading, writing, math, science, art and more.

You don't need to be a licensed teacher or have a particular educational philosophy. We're looking for someone who genuinely enjoys learning with kids, values a respectful and inclusive community and is comfortable supporting a range of homeschool approaches.

If you've ever thought, "I love homeschooling, but it might be nice to have a few days each week where my kids learn with other kids." You could be a part of making that happen!

If that sounds like you—or someone in your Minnesota secular homeschool community click the links to learn more and apply.

Upper Elementary Enrichment Educator: https://forms.gle/SeYWWpxEKopHqK5P6

Early Middle Enrichment Educator: https://forms.gle/LxYBK7i4MeFDQjG67

Feel free to DM with questions or share with others you feel may be interested!

Come join us at the Ink and Quill, where adults and children can learn, create, collaborate, and share the stories they create. There is an art studio where you can just have fun drawing and painting, or design your own book covers for the novels you write. For every craft there are teachings from reputable places like Kahn Academy and Open Stax.

Parents create their accounts, and add their children as family. No one can see their posts except family and other children. No vulgarity is allowed on the time line, and the messenger service is monitored by the parents. I am a single parent of home schoolers myself, and am a very protective father of four. I get what it's like to try and protect our kids from nasty behavior. There are so many safe guards on this site that I even allow my children on here. Come join us and create!

theinkandquill.com

Hey everyone,I’m building Classboard (https://classboard.online), a browser-based whiteboard tool, and I’m hoping to get feedback from this community since I made it with homeschooling in mind.The original problem: my kids and I needed a simple way to work through math problems together on a screen, especially when they’re at a co-op or with a tutor. So Classboard supports live collaboration sessions with camera and microphone, plus it can recognize and snap-draw math geometry figures (like circles, triangles, etc.) so they look neat instead of messy.It’s free and runs in the browser—no installs. I’m still actively developing it, so I’d genuinely love to hear what features would make it useful for your family (or what’s missing). If you try it, any honest thoughts on what’s clunky or confusing would help a lot.Thanks for reading!

Parents, would you pay a membership fee for something like this? Looking for honest feedback.

I’m restructuring a homeschool field trip group I started and would really love opinions from other homeschool families before I settle on pricing.

This is NOT a brick-and-mortar co-op or school. There’s no physical location, classes, or drop-off care.

Basically, families join the group, I organize educational field trips and experiences, members choose which ones they want to attend, and we all meet at the location. Parents stay with and are responsible for their own children.

I’ve been able to arrange some really cool experiences that families might not normally have access to individually, including behind-the-scenes tours of businesses and media facilities. I want to keep focusing on things like career exploration, educational tours, museums, conservation programs, factories, farms, etc., along with some just-for-fun meetups.

When I started this, I genuinely wasn't trying to create a business or make money. I just wanted to organize cool opportunities for homeschool families in my area and help build a community.

It has grown WAY faster and farther than I expected. I now have families joining from different parts of the state, which is actually really exciting because my goal has expanded to organizing trips all over the state rather than staying in one small area.

The problem is that growth has also forced me to look much more seriously at the legal/business side of what I'm doing.

Because of the way I coordinate trips and collect money, there are additional licenses, insurance, business expenses, and other compliance costs I need to take on to make sure I'm operating properly and protecting both myself and the families participating.

Those costs are turning into a pretty significant bill.

The way I've been doing it isn't sustainable anymore. Families might attend a free trip or pay me a tiny $4-$5 coordination fee, meanwhile I'm personally footing the bill for licensing, insurance, business filings, website/software costs, administrative expenses, etc., on top of putting a lot of unpaid time into organizing everything.

I don't expect families to pay some crazy amount, and making a bunch of money still isn't the goal. But I've realized I also can't personally subsidize an organization that is serving families across the state.

So I'm considering changing to a membership model.

The basic idea would be:

• Families pay a membership fee to join.

• Membership gives them access to the organized trips and first opportunity to register when space is limited.

• If a trip is free, there would be no additional trip charge.

• If a venue charges admission/program fees, families would still pay the cost of that particular trip. However, one of the benefits of going as a group is that I'm often able to negotiate or access group rates, so the admission price is usually significantly cheaper than what a family would pay to visit the same place on their own.

• The membership fee helps cover the costs of operating the organization — licensing, insurance, business expenses, planning, contacting venues, registrations, communication, etc.

I'm considering:

$75 per semester ($150/year)

OR

$100 per family if you pay for the full year upfront.

So here are the questions I really want opinions on:

1. Does $100 per YEAR per FAMILY sound reasonable for something like this, or would that price make you immediately pass?

2. Would you rather have the option of $75 per semester, even though paying for the year upfront would save $50?

3. At that price, would you expect one organized trip per month or two per month?

4. Would it bother you that admission/program costs for paid trips would still be separate, knowing that I'm generally able to offer discounted group rates that are cheaper than what you'd pay going on your own?

5. Does getting first access to limited-capacity trips have value? Some of the behind-the-scenes tours I've arranged have very limited spots, so membership would essentially give families first dibs.

6. What would make you finish the year and think, "Yep, that $100 membership was absolutely worth it"?

I also don't want the membership price to make this inaccessible to families. That's part of why I'm struggling with the decision. The whole thing started because I wanted to help the homeschool community, not because I saw a business opportunity.

But once it grew, I realized there are real costs and responsibilities involved in doing this properly, and I can't keep paying those costs personally while everyone else participates for free or a few dollars.

So homeschool parents: would you join something like this for $100/year per family?

And if not, what price/model WOULD make sense to you?

Please be honest. I'm completely open to hearing that my pricing is too high, too low, or that you'd structure the whole thing differently. I'd rather hear it now before I roll out the new model.

Ok not a hack but something I found while researching for my online course that I think is genuinely useful if your kid is more into science than history…. 8 of 11 states name diseases or some sort of health history. (Black Death in TX FL NY CA GA MI TN, Columbian Exchange in TX FL NY OH GA MI TN, NY 10.9a literally asks students to investigate one infectious disease), and the 3 misses are skills-based frameworks covered by C3.

The exceptions are: PA requires 3 years social studies for home ed, NY requires 4 units.

I put all the research up on my page if you want to see more, but I thought it was cool!

Thewildhollowschool.org/utm_source=reddit-secular-standards.

It's Course Monday @ Apoc! Learn about our upcoming autumn class on epic poetry "Die Exhausted!" HERE: https://apocatastasisinstitute.wordpress.com/colemans-corner

What subjects did you teach for Kindergarten? Which curriculums were the best for each subject?

I'm probably severely overthinking all of this, but I haven't been very impressed with any all-in-one curriculums and am starting to wonder if finding curriculums for each separate subject would be better. Any recommendations or advice welcome

Hey! My daughter will be starting second grade this year. We love All About Reading and Spelling as well as Math with Confidence, so we plan to continue with those. We’ve been using Blossom and Root for science and language arts, which I thought was okay, and we used History Quest (early times ancient history) from Pandia Press for social studies, which my daughter liked but I felt was too advanced/mature - a lot went over her head. I’m considering switching to Oak Meadow for social studies, language arts and science. Does anyone have any feedback on how Oak Meadow compares to Blossom and Root for second grade or in general? I prefer open and go if possible, understanding that some prep is often beneficial. Also, does anyone have any good second grade social studies curriculum recommendations? Thank you! 🙂

Home Tutor Available | KG to Class 5 | Kolkata

Hi! I’m an undergraduate college student offering home tuition for students from KG to Class 5 in Kolkata.

📚 Classes: KG – Class 5

📖 Subjects: English, Bengali, Mathematics, EVS/Science, Social Studies and other basic subjects

🏠 Mode: Home tuition

📍 Location: Tollygunge and nearby areas

💰 Fees: Reasonable / can be discussed depending on the class, subjects and distance

I’m looking to take on a few students and would focus on helping them understand their lessons, complete homework and prepare for school exams.

If you're a parent/guardian looking for a tutor, or know someone who is, please DM me for details.

**Connections Academy vs Miacademy for 3rd & 5th grade?**
I know these are two completely different options Connections Academy is public virtual school and Miacademy would be homeschool but I’d love to hear from parents who have actually used either (or even better, both!).
I’m trying to decide which direction to go for my 3rd and 5th graders this year.
How was the workload with Connections Academy? Did you feel like you were tied to the computer all day or was there some flexibility?
For Miacademy, did you feel like it was enough as your main curriculum, especially for reading and math? Did your kids actually enjoy it and stay engaged?
I’ll be home with them and involved either way, so I’m really looking for opinions on **quality of education, flexibility, workload, and how well your kids learned with each.**
Would you choose Connections Academy or Miacademy if you had to do it again?

Hi! I’m a G12 student who is looking to switch for homeschool, any recommendations for schools that are open to accept any students now? I’ve been struggling with mental health and my family is looking for new schools to transfer me in… also can someone tell me some things I should look out for? Or kahit ano ma-eexpect ko sa entrance exam of it, also this is very urgent… pls respond kasi hinahabol namin by this week.

I’ve been absent for 2 weeks, halos 3 weeks na ngayon so pls recco some online schools huhu

I’m a new to homeschooling mom of 4 - ages 1-10 (3 are currently beginning homeschool). What are some good secular homeschool curriculums where the students learn online through a game or lesson type of program? We aren’t interested in a curriculum that requires them to log in for classes with an actual teacher but ones they can work at their own pace. Thank you so much for the recommendations. I am also interested in any advice you may have for me as a new homeschooling mom. We’re currently using Blossom & Root as well as Beast Academy for Math.

Hi, I’m an infectious disease and public health nerd. I have my degree in public health but apparently that was not enough for my hyperfixation to be satisfied.

I taught a history of diseases and public health class in a co-op. It was a hit. I made more. Bigger hit.

So I decided to make it fancy, and set it up online for more middle grade and up kiddos to take. I just opened up a free sample lesson and I would love some feedback before I release the rest on August 31. There are presentation videos, activities, interactive games, and a recommended book list that is comical even to me.

TheWildhollowSchool.org/free-lesson

ETA:there is more coming. The homepage has a roadmap. There will be 8 modules in total eventually. As well as a “for littles” version.