Homeschooling in Five-teen easy steps:

1. Decide that you are going to home school your child because for right now this is what is best since you are considered homeless and he would probably have to start at a school only to switch schools once we have a house. It will definitely be better to home school until you have a local address and then no school switching will be necessary. Whats a few weeks? This will probably be so awesome we may home school forever!!!! (Homeless even though you are still paying a mortgage on a house you don’t live in, which is totally unfair!)
2. Sign legal documents making you responsible for the education of your child. Not only are you responsible for keeping him alive, but now your also responsible for teaching him everything. Oh goodness.
3. Sit down and panic because you have no idea what to do now because you thought the hard part would be signing up and didn’t fully consider curriculum for kindergarten. It’s fine. Everything will be fine. You do/did ________ for a living and went through _______ many years of school. You can surely teach kindergarten. How hard can this be?
4. Google what kids learn in kindergarten and make a plan as best you can. Whatever you come up with will be fine. Look both ways, hold hands when crossing the street, letters, numbers, easy peasy.
5. While google searching purchase whatever products and programs look and sound good to use to teach your child. The more fun it looks the better.  It’s best to find ones that include things they can do independently, games, or anything that doesn’t really look like learning. Just buy all the things.
6. This is the point when you find out you have to log and keep track of the hours you are in “school”. WTF! That’s right, you have to keep records of what you taught and how long was spent DAILY. PANIC. Now take some deep breaths and find an App and/or teaching program that will log the stupid time for you. Good, crisis averted, and now we can move on.
7. Its time to plan out all the field trips, extracurricular activities, and leaving the actual house things. Yay we get to go out and play all day! Not. It’s time to figure out ways to make outings educational, plan group activities, sports, etc. Then you remember you have no idea what is even in this town, where Walmart is, it’s cold outside, and you don’t know anyone. Nope, never mind, it’s too much, who leaves the house that often anyways? Get rid of this plan, instead when its time to go out due to necessity or because everyone is going crazy you can always add in some kind of random learning or we will just call it learning.  Just wing this part. Remember, you are the fun parent and it will all be fine.
8. Get on Facebook and join at least one homeschooling group. It’s a lot, just read little bits at a time. Who are these people? Her kid is 4 and speaks 3 languages and they are looking for a 4th language to start? Look at your child. Close Facebook.
9. Load up the electronics with all those fun programs, tools, Apps and such that you bought to do this teaching stuff.
10. Decide that electronics aren’t enough because it makes you look bad so you have to go to the store to buy all the things. ALL THE THINGS. Art supplies, flash cards, writing books, pencils, a sharpener, scissors, paper, again ALL THE THINGS. Load up that cart.
11. It’s time to start the teaching/learning process. Get your child and sit them down to get started with your amazing, spectacular, and fun plan. Day 1 will be AMAZING!
12. Day 2 and every day hereafter is where the real fun begins. This is when you realize your child is a monster. A crying, screaming, snotting, tantrum throwing monster. Uncooperative. WTF! Unwilling. WTF! This cannot possibly be your child right? Do/did they do this in regular school? Remember to question the next teacher you meet and then hug and thank them for their service.
13. Remember that murder is still illegal in all 50 states and you are too cute for prison. They also know that you have this child, he has a social security number, it has been recorded. Remind yourself that you love them even though you don’t like them right now. Regroup. Make a plan.
14. Decide that reading really isn’t that important, nor letters or counting above eleven-teen. Who needs to read? They already took cursive out of the curriculum so reading will probably be next. He will be ahead of the curve. Yep, he’s going to be illiterate and will have to take up a trade. It’s fine.
15. Figure out which school district your new house will be in and go enroll your child in elementary school because his life and yours depend on it.
16. Sit back, have a glass of wine, and know that you tried and in a couple days you will have some peace and quite. You won’t have to log time, fight over the fact that eleven-teen is really just eleven and the next number is, in fact, twelve, and five-teen doesn’t cover 14, 15, and 16, you don’t have to go outside or make going outside some kind of learning exercise, and he may not end up illiterate after all. He may even make some new friends! You are a good parent. You are making the right choice.