How to Choose a Home School Blog
Finding a Home Education Blog to Support Homeschooling Families
Aug 20, 2009
A well chosen blog can go a long way in motivating parents and children to keep up with homeschooling. It is probably best to choose at least one blog with other homeschooling parents using similar methodology and materials. There are many different types of homeschooling blogs out there, and there are some that should probably be avoided.
Homeschool Blogs from Families
These may be some of the most helpful, especially if it is one where the parent is similar, stays on topic, and does not philosophize nor theologize too much. Blogs, after all, are for the world to say what they want.
It helps, however, to find someone dealing with similar issues, with the similar number of children and the same socio-economic level. There can be all sorts of sharing on the same level, which can be incredibly encouraging.
Families.com and Homeschool Blogger are two good resources, but any Google or Yahoo search with keywords matching one's religious and/or methodology bent should yield numerous sources to choose from.
One of the problems with these family blogs is very often:
- these can digress into family issues irrelevant or uninteresting to the rest of the world. Homeschooling parents are extremely busy, so picking a blog that has good information without too many irrelevant digressions is helpful for time management.
- bad and good advice abounds. There are more than 1.5 million homeschooling families. Be careful to think through any advice given, especially if it means major changes or a major expenditure. Get a second opinions from someone who has personally been involved in homeschooling.
Subject-Specific, Special Needs, and VIP Blogs
Blogs can be located on every subject, and often on every type of homeschooling material. A simple Google search for "classical education math blog" revealed some very helpful blogs to consider.
There are preschool special needs homeschooling blogs, a Twila Paris Christian homeschool blog, Kindergarten eclectic homeschool blogs and many more. It shouldn't be hard to find a place to plug in to a homeschooling family or group.
How to Discern an Excellent Homeschooling Blog
- Is the writing creative and interesting? Does the blogger appear to be trying to be a good writer?
- If there are serious spelling errors at the beginning, consider moving on to another blog.
- Check that the blog has almost all blog entry titles related to homeschooling or homeschooling material.
- Avoid ones that have many entries about personal issues or stories seemingly unrelated to homeschooling. Emotional boundaries should be observed. An education blog is not the place to regurgitate all of one's personal problems accept as it may pertain to surmounting problems to have a good homeschool.
- Check the side links – are there links to quality homeschooling materials, or other mainstream homeschooling resources?
- Avoid blogs where the links lead to other blogs of people or companies abnormally narrow minded or appearing "fringe." There are some theologically and socially weird groups out there.
- Are the blogs somewhat popular? Are there some regulars responding to the blogger, so that there is an actual community and dialogue occurring?
- Are the Blog entries recent, or does the blogger not appear to be making this a priority?
- Is the "About Me" or "My Family" a separate link, and not the primary focus of the blog?
By taking a little research and reading time, a homeschooling parent can find a helpful community of other parents to go through homeschooling experiences together. The Internet can be a wonderful place to find others to help, encourage, and motivate homeschoolers to persevere and enjoy what they are doing together.
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