How to Start a Homeschooling Group
10/16/19 • 49 min
Building community is one of the most important things you can do as a homeschooling family. When I speak at homeschooling conventions, I invariably am asked how to start a homeschool group for various reasons. In this episode, I talk with Amber O’Neil Johnston, founder of Heritage Homeschoolers in Atlanta, GA, about how she started her group.
Amber is a homeschooling mom of 4 and business owner, who found herself in need of something that didn’t exist – a black homeschooling group in her county. Thinking she would find success if she could find 5 or so other families in her area, Amber’s group grew to over 90 families in only 2 years. An example of how there are always people out there for us to build community with, we just need to position ourselves to find them.
During this interview, Amber shares what led her to homeschool, how she discovered her need for a new homeschooling group (she was already, and continues to be, a member of several other homeschooling groups) and she details exactly how she started her homeschool group.
In this episode:
4:30 About Amber and her life in corporate america
6:00 How Amber grew her home business organically
8:00 What led Amber to homeschool her children
10:00 How she overcame the fear that she wasn’t capable of homeschooling her children
15:00 What led her to start her homeschool group (a must-hear for moms of African American children!)
18:00 Why community is important
22:00 Starting the Community
29:00 Homeschool communities and African American boys
32:30 Mechanics of how Amber started her homeschool group (exactly what she did and her thought process)
39:30 Recommendations for getting started
44:00 What to do if you can’t find a group you need
Links from the Episode:
One of the key benefits of homeschoooling is the ability to teach your child to think critically. You can truly help your child to move toward critical thinking versus memorizing just to pass a test. Grab my audio download, Teaching Your Child to Think to learn how to raise your child's analytical skills.
Join my Facebook group, How to Homeschool, to see videos, ask questions and join the conversation real time.
For videos and articles on homeschooling and education, follow me here:
Building community is one of the most important things you can do as a homeschooling family. When I speak at homeschooling conventions, I invariably am asked how to start a homeschool group for various reasons. In this episode, I talk with Amber O’Neil Johnston, founder of Heritage Homeschoolers in Atlanta, GA, about how she started her group.
Amber is a homeschooling mom of 4 and business owner, who found herself in need of something that didn’t exist – a black homeschooling group in her county. Thinking she would find success if she could find 5 or so other families in her area, Amber’s group grew to over 90 families in only 2 years. An example of how there are always people out there for us to build community with, we just need to position ourselves to find them.
During this interview, Amber shares what led her to homeschool, how she discovered her need for a new homeschooling group (she was already, and continues to be, a member of several other homeschooling groups) and she details exactly how she started her homeschool group.
In this episode:
4:30 About Amber and her life in corporate america
6:00 How Amber grew her home business organically
8:00 What led Amber to homeschool her children
10:00 How she overcame the fear that she wasn’t capable of homeschooling her children
15:00 What led her to start her homeschool group (a must-hear for moms of African American children!)
18:00 Why community is important
22:00 Starting the Community
29:00 Homeschool communities and African American boys
32:30 Mechanics of how Amber started her homeschool group (exactly what she did and her thought process)
39:30 Recommendations for getting started
44:00 What to do if you can’t find a group you need
Links from the Episode:
One of the key benefits of homeschoooling is the ability to teach your child to think critically. You can truly help your child to move toward critical thinking versus memorizing just to pass a test. Grab my audio download, Teaching Your Child to Think to learn how to raise your child's analytical skills.
Join my Facebook group, How to Homeschool, to see videos, ask questions and join the conversation real time.
For videos and articles on homeschooling and education, follow me here:
Previous Episode
Should You Use Book Lists in Your Homeschool?
In an effort to ensure that their kids are covering all the necessary academic material, homeschoolers will often turn to book lists. You know, that list of “great books” that all kids should read.
Some homeschoolers cling religiously to their book lists. While others eschew book lists and choose a different route.
Which approach is the right one?
In this episode, I talk about why I don’t use booklists, the benefits of using a book list, why finding diverse literature is important for all children and considerations for finding a book list.
One of the key benefits of homeschoooling is the ability to teach your child to think critically. You can truly help your child to move toward critical thinking versus memorizing just to pass a test. Grab my audio download, Teaching Your Child to Think to learn how to raise your child's analytical skills.
Join my Facebook group, How to Homeschool, to see videos, ask questions and join the conversation real time.
For videos and articles on homeschooling and education, follow me here:
Next Episode
Improving Your Child's Behavior and Executive Functioning
Your child can’t stay on task. Your son is impulsive. Your daughter has poor short-term memory. You have a child who has been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, ODD or any number of the alphabet cocktails that kids are being labeled with today. As a parent, all you want are answers. You just want to know how you can help your child.
Today’s episode explores taking a neurodevelopmental approach to tackling the symptoms that can lead to many of these diagnoses. Dr. Jan Bedell, a neurodevelopmental expert and founder of Little Giant Steps, discusses how we can help most children improve in their information acquisition and storage, which will directly impact their ability to stay on task, keep and follow checklists, improve reading and math skills and more.
Be sure to make the time to listen to this eye-opening episode!
3:15 What is executive functioning?
6:00 Labeling children vs dealing with symptoms
12:00 How to help kids stay on task
20:00 Examples of things you can do today to help with auditory processing
23:00 Why infants need tactile stimulation
25:30 Examples of things you can do today to help with short term memory storage
30:00 How Improving executive functioning can help improve test scores
33:30 Working with learning styles
35:00 How building new neural pathways helps the brain function better
38:00 Programs that could help develop executive functioning
43:00 Why movement and tactile experience is so important for infants and young children
47:00 Free Resources
49:30 There is help for older children and adults
52:30 Labels
Links Discussed
https://www.littlegiantsteps.com
YouTube @braincoachtips
Free Auditory Processing Test Kits: https://www.littlegiantsteps.com/auditory-processing
Free Math Facts Proficiency Recommendations: https://www.littlegiantsteps.com/math-proficiency
Visual Circle Math: https://www.brainsprints.com/math-proficiency/
To get a free consultation: https://www.littlegiantsteps.com/our-services
One of the key benefits of homeschoooling is the ability to teach your child to think critically. You can truly help your child to move toward critical thinking versus memorizing just to pass a test. Grab my audio download, Teaching Your Child to Think to learn how to raise your child's analytical skills.
Join my Facebook group, How to Homeschool, to see videos, ask questions and join the conversation real time.
For videos and articles on homeschooling and education, follow me here:
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