*****
Jason and I have both read The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child: Your Complete Guide to Getting Off to the Right Start, The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas, Homeschooling Success Stories, What the Rest of Us Can Learn from Homeschooling and Homeschooling: The Middle Years.
We read parts and skimmed others. I am a librarian, so we got most of these books out of the library and for the most part, I thought that I may want to take them out again when and if we decide to homeschool. But for now, they were sort of dated and showed a bit of the odd side of people who make this choice. I didn't see our family in these books. I didn't see these families as mainstream, but as eccentric and odd and all of the stereotypes of homeschooling. That being said, there was some very good advice, especially in the First Year of Homeschooling and What the Rest of Us Can Learn. Linda Dobson seems to understand that there will be moments of self-doubt and that those feelings are natural.
I really liked the format of these books. They were written in such a way that you can easily skim them for what you are looking for. There are darkened patches of stories or anecdotes or ideas or advice from different homeschooling families all over the country. The main text is Linda's experience and research. She does qualify everything and quote studies and seem very knowledgeable on education and learning, as well as the lifestyle changes of homeschooling.
IF we decide to homeschool, I plan to look for some used copies of these books so that I can make notes and refer to them when needed.
