Julie Soul 0:00
Welcome to the creative homeschool podcast. And this podcast I'm coming at you to deliver you a weekly dash of creativity to make your homeschool exciting for your kids. But for you too, we're going to explore all of the different ways to creatively homeschool games, field trips, unit studies, writing activities, Kid businesses, art and more. I'm your host Julie soul, longtime homeschool mom, shenanigan enthusiast, espresso drinker and founder and co owner of soul Sparkletts art, I've helped 1000s Add creativity and joy to their homeschool and I'm ready to help you to ready to get started. Let's go. Welcome back, everyone.
Speaker 2 0:34
Many of you are considering homeschooling for the first time and many of you are veterans. And you have had this question, how do I find my first or how do I find more homeschooling friends? Maybe you live somewhere where it's more rural? There aren't a lot of people around? And if there aren't any homeschool groups, and you're thinking how do I actually get this done? Or some of you are just wondering, how do I find that friend who's right for me. And so I wanted to go over five easy ways to find homeschooling friends. Now these are going to really vary depending on where you live and what's offered in your area. But let's dive in and hopefully one of them will work for you. So the first place that you can really find other homeschoolers is a museum or zoo, like special events, homeschool classes, and events. So often, zoos will have kind of a homeschool week or a homeschool day. Museums can often have that too. I know that we have a Lego Land, we have an aquarium on the other side of the state. They have homeschool week, museums can have classes that are just for homeschoolers. So this is a really great way to look in your area. Look up your museums and your zoos that you have. You can check for classes, events, sometimes this information will be under educators. Sometimes it'll be under family. So it just depends on where they've decided to classify homeschoolers. But you will find that they might have homeschool weeks, the whole school events. And if you don't find one, take the time to send them an email and say hey, do you have any homeschooling days events planned? Or would you make one because sometimes it just takes that one person to ask for them to even consider it sometimes, you know, museums haven't considered it yet. So museums and zoos, having those homeschool classes and special events. Now the next one that I know we found friends at is for sports. I'm using sports as a really general term here. We're also talking dance classes, music, talking a whole lot of different classes that will have often a homeschool specific class. These classes are usually during the day. And that means that they're designed for homeschoolers to go you know, usually at like two or three I know my kids have a homeschool gymnastics class, right at three. It's where we met a couple of really, really good friends. But again, take a look at that the sports areas this is anything from soccer to basketball, your YMCA if you have a local YMCA or a community center, they often have classes too often, these aren't easily advertised, so you have to do a little bit of digging. So make a list of the places near you. This goes for museums, it goes for zoos. It goes for gymnastic centers anywhere that kids might learn how to play basketball or soccer or softball, and then just start looking up all of their websites and do some digging. But often there are homeschool classes that are specific. And you know you have kids in there who are all doing the same thing. Chances are that they want to be there so that means there's something that they want to learn so kids are gonna already have this thing in common. Number three coops are partnerships. Now let's dive into will in a future episode I'll kind of break down a little bit more of the differences. But a partnership is often done with a school system. So technically you are still a homeschooler but you're taking advantage of what schools have to offer. Now it adds a pick your own comfort level as far as if you like partnerships coops or groups, but partnerships often exist out there, again, usually tied to a school system. So usually what you're doing is you are able to take advantage of the money and the funding that they're getting And in return, you usually have to kind of check in with a mentor once a week, kind of let them know that you've done the work. So that is a school partnership. A co op, on the other hand is where a bunch of parents a band together, and someone will, you know, teach cooking, someone might teach art, we're talking about NON CORE CLASSES here for both. So we're talking about electives here. And they will all get together and someone will do teaching of one thing, some will do the other. This is a co op. So it's a cooperative effort. And coops often and partnerships, both they have a field trip opportunities for kids. If you run into a large contingent of homeschoolers out somewhere, chances are, it's a co op, or partnership field trip. There are also some looser groups out there. So let's go into number four, you know, Facebook groups locally or online. So online Facebook groups are a great way to say hey, you know, does anyone else live around me. But you can also start a Facebook group locally for your community, or there might be one already. And these might not be as organized as a co op or a partnership. But maybe everyone say they head to a local park, or maybe a couple times a month, they get together just to hook up and do something a little bit different. So these Facebook groups locally can be very different. But again, it's not a structured thing. You're not required to show up at a certain time, on a certain day of like the co ops and the partnerships are, and the Facebook group is a great way to kind of kick that off. The fifth way is to go during school hours and visit kid friendly places. So visiting museums, zoos, going to parks, but go during school hours, when you're going during school hours, chances are that you're going to meet other homeschoolers. And then I'm sorry, introverts are going to have to ask, Hey, do you go to school? Or are you homeschooled every once in a while, most of the time, if you are going during school hours, you will look out and you can make some friends this is especially if you go to the parks and the places near you, you might find some other homeschoolers in your area. So we've met some other people, but I tend to drive around a lot and go to packs all over the place, he's just really never know. But if you go to the parks near you, you might find other homeschoolers who are just kind of heading to that park for a little bit to kids to be able to run around. Now, I wanted to talk about these five different things. You might be one of the people who was saying, but this none of this is in my area. And I get that I had to start my own thing. And that can be really, really tricky. Originally, a long time ago, I went to somewhere called meetup.com. Not sure how useful it is nowadays. But Facebook can work just as well. or starting your own group. Or contacting your library is a really great way libraries are often really excited to work with communities and set up days, you know, hey library, can you set up a homeschool event, or asking the zoo or museum if they'd be willing to offer a homeschool class just to see if there's interest and they don't need to put it as a huge program, you can maybe see if they offer it for one hour and hope that there's some signups so it can take a little bit of elbow grease to get the stuff going. But don't lose hope it really sometimes just takes that elbow grease it can take anywhere from six months up to a year. So this is one of the reasons why I want to say you know head out to those places. During the hours that kids are in school homeschoolers are all around sometimes they're hard to find because they're busy, introverted. But chances are you'll run into them. If you're going to some of these locations and you're getting out yourself. If you just stay put, sometimes it's a lot harder to find those people. And it really does take a community. But if all of this fails, just remember, especially in today's day and age where everyone is just a little bit more comfortable. You can set up even in on Zoom. My girls every Friday night have a 7pm playdate, for lack of a better way to put it with a friend that they talk to you and this friend lives on the other side of the state. She's not local, they've never met in person, but they have just as much fun chatting away. So just remember, you can get really creative you can get really plucky with how you choose to create those relationships. If you're having trouble finding people, but the biggest thing I want to say is don't give up. Care everyone till next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
