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Homeschooling – Milpitas Homeschool Support Group

I, Ann Zeise, your GoMilpitas webmaster, also had a very large and popular homeschooling website, A2Z Home’s Cool for over 2 decades. In 2017 I sold it to Time4Learning as the site had become too large for one person to run. I needed “staff.” In 2023 they removed to site from the internet, so I created this archive of the site from the Way Back Machine.

Locally, though. I continue to serve homeschool families in my area in California. For those in Milpitas considering homeschooling, check Should we homeschool independently during Covid-19?

On Facebook I have a page for Milpitas Homeschool Support – East Side Silicon Valley, California as well as the Milpitas Homeschool Support Group for discussing more private matters and field trip plans among ourselves. This is ONLY for families currently homeschooling from their home in Milpitas CA. If your profile says you live elsewhere, even San Jose or Fremont, your application for membership will be denied. If you are thinking about homeschooling, contact me directly.

On the page I post interesting, educational, and fun things for Milpitas and other area homeschool families to do. Just “Like” and “Follow” the page to the degree you want to see the ideas and events posted there. Those who “Like” the site are encouraged to also offer interesting activities. While I would like to offer a park day, there has not been enough interest. I’ll leave that up to someone else to organize. The Group cannot be viewed by others than members. It is a good place to talk about how you and your kids are fairing, without concern about your mother-in-law seeing the post.

Social Distancing Activities for Kids
Whether you have been homeschooling for years or find yourself “accidentally” homeschooling because of the pandemic, you may find it even more difficult to incorporate socialization into your school day. Parks and museums may not be options right now, but there are still some social distancing activities for kids that will allow socialization while safely social distancing.

If you’d like to come play at Ben Rogers Park on Wednesdays, please come. My home is on the west side of the park, the one with all the red geraniums you can see from the playground. If the dark gray Rav 4 is in the driveway, then I am home. Just knock on the door, and I’ll come out to join you. My homeschooled kid is now in his 30s, and hasn’t played in the park for decades. But this grandmother still likes to walk in the park, pet the dogs, and enjoy watching the children play. If you happen to have questions bout homeschooling, I’d love to do my best to answer, or point out resources. The park has picnic tables and barbecues, a sandlot with playground equipment, dog-friendly (with bags, leashes required), a geocache and tons of good Pokemon destinations. Plenty of space to fly a kite or drone.

If you’d rather call, our home phone is 408-823-8247. Leave a text message for a quick response.

Call me to ask me questions about homeschooling in California or text via Facebook, if you’d like, but ONLY if you live in California.

Here are some useful links for local homeschoolers.

Homeschool Rooms
While homeschooling can be done in any room, indoors or out, some families want to makeover the playroom into a place for learning and projects. Here are some ideas…and some that I have reviewed as to be avoided.

HomeSchool Association of California
First look at their Quick Guide to Homeschooling During a Crisis. It will give you all you need to know to get started and get in touch.

Starting to Homeschool
Families decide to homeschool for all sorts of reasons, and then often continue homeschooling simply because the freedom is so sweet and they like the affect it’s had on their children and family life. They like living joyfully with children.

Starting to Homeschool in Milpitas, California

By Ann Zeise

So you’re considering homeschooling? Wondering about starting to homeschool? Has it been the “year from hell” for your child at school or out of school because of COVID-19? Is your little one just not ready to deal with crowds of unruly children in a public school situation? Perhaps your family situation or business would allow you to travel often, and you want everyone to enjoy the opportunity. Maybe your religious beliefs or cultural values are so different from your community, that you are looking to homeschooling as a haven. Maybe you just stumbled on this page and want to see what the controversy is all about!

Homeschooling – Milpitas Homeschool Support Group

Families decide to homeschool for all sorts of reasons, and then often continue homeschooling simply because the freedom is so sweet and they like the affect it’s had on their children and family life. They like living joyfully with children.

Remember when you were expecting your first child and you thought you’d never, ever be able to enjoy those things you enjoyed pre-parenting? Then you found you could get a jogging baby carriage! You could get a backpack and take baby along! That a baby could be taught to swim! That the toddler seemed perfectly content to go along with you so many places. You found that your children were picking up some of your interests, and finding some of their own. Homeschooling is really a continuation of this learning-within-the-family lifestyle.

Where Not to Start Your Homeschool Information Search

OK, so where do you start looking for information about homeschooling? You’ll want as broad a picture as possible, before you narrow down to a “fit” for your family. There are some homeschooling organizations out there that, unfortunately, feed newcomers a rather narrow and sometimes negative picture. Be wary of any group that could make money, lots of money, off of your family. I’ll tell you where not to go first and why:

Your local school district – it is in their best interest to keep you tied to the district so they will continue to get attendance funding. They may either tell you independent homeschooling is illegal in your state or will greet you enthusiastically into their Independent Study Program. They’ll encourage you to duplicate at home what wasn’t working when your child was in their schools.
A homeschool legal group – it is in their financial interest to scare the daylights out of you so you’ll buy into their insurance plan. If you follow the laws of your state, it is unlikely you’ll need legal representation. A family really needs a good, local family lawyer, anyway: one to draw up a will, and to be there should you need representation for anything, say, for an auto accident, let alone a confrontation with the school district.
An exclusionary group of any kind. While it may seem comforting at first to find “your kind of people,” these groups often don’t see the whole picture, and tend to propagate misinformation because they are out of the loop.
Any curriculum company or distance learning program – of course, their objective is to sell you a big package of books and materials, and maybe throw in a supervisory teacher for a lot more bucks.

Where do I Start Searching for Homeschool Information?

“So where do I start? Those are the easiest to find!” If the information is free or for the few bucks, go for it, as we say in California. You may find free material at your local library, or need to pay a little for a few magazines or books, or maybe a tad more for conference admission, but these are the best sources.

Your local Milpitas homeschooling support group – which is a group of families that meets on a regular basis, and can tell you how the homeschooling laws of your state are really applied in your town. Maybe the law says to keep an attendance record, but has any official ever asked to see one?
Your California homeschooling association – join this group for the $30 or so that they’ll ask for membership. You’ll usually get a newsletter and invitations to various activities, such as conferences and campouts. They can keep you informed about the homeschooling laws.
Homeschooling in California Conference – typically in the spring and summer. Do try to attend the full conference. Bring along someone to watch the kids so you can concentrate on the information. The Homeschooling Events calendar is loaded with upcoming conferences. Early registration is often at a discount, so check the calendar and the Association sites often. Most have an associated curriculum fair where you can waste tons of money buying things your kids will never use. Either kid-test the products, or bring the vendors’ catalogs and flyers home. Buy when the pressure is off. Alternatively, get the catalogs before you go, know what you want, and save shipping costs. Many vendors will lower prices last day of the conference.
Homeschooling laws for California – I put this 4th so you’ll talk to the others first. The laws can seem pretty convoluted at times, but you need to have a good copy on hand to see all the options. The state associations can usually provide you with the current laws and an interpretation. Homeschool websites may or may not have current laws posted. “Current” is the keyword here. The most accurate links are the ones directly to the homeschooling laws on the state’s department of education web site.
Homeschooling chats, email lists and message boards – people mean well, but can sometimes steer you wrong, so take what you get here with a grain of salt. On the other hand, they can also give you exactly the specific information you need for very unusual questions. (I can’t help you with such questions as “Help me find homeschooling material for my blind, adopted, 10 year old child from Romania who speaks no English.” but someone on a message board might!)

Most of all, relax! As my friends Bill and Win Sweet say, the goal is to:
Maximize Freedom and Success
minimize stress and failure

Ann Zeise had been homeschooling since 1993, been helping folks online since 1989, a teacher “forever,” and will gladly answer homeschool questions from those who have visited her former site, A2Z. My old site was merge with another, they said, but it appears all the information there is gone.

Should we homeschool independently during Covid-19?

I have already heard from several parents who are open to homeschooling independently from the Milpitas School District this coming school year, 2020-2021. If you have additional questions, please use the chat bot to contact me, Ann Zeise. If you want me to call you, please leave your name and phone number and a good time to call. I will only use that information to contact you.

First, what do you need to consider?

Primarily consider putting your family health first. If someone in your household is compromised such as they might die if they catch Covid-19, then definitely read on.

Did your children enjoy the online EcuatEveryWhere virtual classroom?

The district has learned some things, so they are calling it Version 2.0 this year. But if learning at the computer is not ideal for your child or your home life, consider that, when homeschooling outside of an online program, your child could spend more time learning with you or other family members, or on their own, reading a wide variety of books on all sorts of things they’d rather be learning about. They could be playing games with other family members, learning strategies useful through life. This is not to say they would never be on a computer, but it would be for learning computer applications, or learning with resources there that they truly enjoy and find worthwhile.

Does you child expect the same social experience that they had at school pre-Covid?

It won’t be like any new school year.

Their best friends may be in a different class. They will be assigned a new teacher, and will be with the same 10 or so students throughout the year, virtually now, and in maybe 2 days of school each week in 2021. Does that sound like normal socialization to you?

Milpitas USD plan for the 2020-2021 school year

When in-person instruction is appropriate, we have a phased-in hybrid plan to minimize risk for students and staff, with consideration of scientific research regarding the spread of COVID-19. This includes:

Limiting numbers of students on campuses to meet PHD guidelines
Maintaining stable cohorts of students & teachers with measures to avoid mixing elementary students with other classes on campus

There won’t be time to be social with the other children: no recess play, no lunch break. Grab & Go lunches will be provided for kids to take home, which I’m sure will be nutritious, but will they be foods your child enjoys?

There will be lots of time spent reinforcing “wellness protocols.” Try to imagine what keeping 10 kids 6′ apart for a full school day is going to be like?

Establish daily wellness protocols
Ensure we have adequate supplies of personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, and access to handwashing
Establish protocols to sanitize frequently used facilities and high touch surfaces
Signage and floor markings directing students moving between classes and using safety precautions at all times

Are you or your child concerned about grades?

When home educating, parents instruct their children until they are pretty sure they understand a concept. Only then do they give them some time to work independently for practicing the new skill. The parent stays nearby and answers questions as they come up, when the child isn’t confident about something in the assignment. There is no shame is asking for help from mom or dad or an older sibling. Thus, the assignment is 100% correct. Both the parent and the student knows this. You don’t have to report an “A” to anyone else.

What if you have a high school student who is college bound or intent on a career that takes special skills.

Homeschooled high schoolers get into colleges all the time. Have for decades. Colleges love them! They have learned to research independently on some topic of high interest, much like a grad student. Yes, they need to show mastery in what that college expects, but not some general competency required by some unnamed university. In other words, they can create a portfolio of the amazing things they’ve accomplished where they have talent: might be an artist wanting to get into an art college, an aspiring scientist wanting to go to MIT, an entrepreneur starting his own business at age 15, a writer completing and publishing her first work at age 16. The list is endless. Colleges are like orchestras: they are looking for a diverse student body, with enough students that can thrive in each of their many programs.

What about state standards? Do we have to follow them?

Take a look at the skills that are recommended at each grade level. They may give you some idea of what children in each grade level should be able to learn, if they are have a “standard” intelligence level. Is our child “standard?” Have yet to have a parent tell me their child was average.

Here’s what the Reading Comprehension and Writing Skills overview looks like. Could you do this at home?

“With an emphasis on developing comprehension with texts, students are exposed to a variety of literature and informational texts and learn how different genres, or types, of books have different structures. Students are encouraged to read, read, read and to expand their knowledge in areas of personal interest or new research topics. They begin to develop analytical skills, going beyond stating explicit information from the text to learning how to draw inferences and how to summarize what they read.”

“In grades three through five, students are becoming more sophisticated writers and speakers. These skills include engaging in research projects that question what they read and hear, taking information and putting it into their own words, and creating written pieces that follow a structure geared toward a writing purpose (e.g., a narrative story, an informational report, or an opinion text). Classrooms allow children to explore new topics using books, videos, and technology and participate in interactive, collaborative activities with teachers and classmates.”

At home, of course, your children will collaborate with other family members, usually people of a variety of ages, more like the real world. Have you ever collaborated with only people born around the year of your birth? Probably not.

OK, what about something harder than elementary language arts. How about high school science!

“The goal of the California Next Generation Science Standards (CA NGSS) is to prepare California students to be informed citizens and future scientists. Students build science mastery through repeated learning experiences centered around everyday events in nature and their lives (“phenomena”). Focusing instruction around these observable phenomena allows students to understand how their world works and gives them the tools to solve problems they identify in it. Students shift from learning facts about science to actually engaging in the practices of science. They learn how to be scientists!”

I emphasized that phrase about nature and their lives, because I don’t believe that the controlled experiences at a high school are at all as wide and interesting as the experiences a teen has in their home and neighborhood. They will be able to devise their own hypotheses, design experiments over and over, and draw their own conclusions based on scientific evidence they have uncovered. No time limits! If the experiment will take weeks, so what? Here are some scientists who were homeschooled or have homeschooled their children.

Where do I learn more about homeschooling?

If you want to learn a whole lot about homeschooling in California right NOW, may I suggest you check the HSC Conference site. They have been having it in San Jose recently, so handy for us here in Milpitas. It is usually held in late July or early August.

We also have a virtual homeschool group here in Milpitas that has both a page and a group on Facebook.

Milpitas Homeschool Support – East Side Silicon Valley, California
Are you transitioning from the school district’s online program, to homeschooling on your own? We long-time Milpitas homeschoolers can tell you about the various ways to legally homeschool here, resources, and connections. A page, open to anyone for comments. Full of resources for homeschool families, and those who enjoy doing things with their kids.

Milpitas Homeschool Support Group
This is a private group for those who homeschool or plan to homeschool in Milpitas to look for nearby homeschool friends, invite others to join them for an event. You need to be homeschooling a child Kindergarten age or older. Younger and older siblings may attend events if appropriate. This is not a religious group, but is tolerant of all. If you wish to discuss something related to your religion, be very clear about your beliefs so that replies will be relevant. If your Facebook profile says you live in any other city other than Milpitas, you will not be allowed to join, as we want to find homeschool kids ages 5-17 and living nearby.