Ron,
I live in Lakeland and am a retired teacher from Polk County Schools. I am not a strong supporter of Home Schooling, mainly for some of the reasons you have mentioned already. However, I do know that there is a Lakeland based Support Group for Home Schooling Parents.

I can put you in touch with a lady that belongs to such a group. She does a Home School 4-H group and they visited my yard as a field trip and I did a presentation on Butterfly Gardening for them.

Explorations Childrens' Museum has monthly Science Sessions.

If you want to get in touch with me, my email addy is mboston@hotmail.com

Rob and mboston,
There is soooo much help out there for homeschooling. You can teach as much or as little as you want. If there is a subject you are not very good at you have many options on what you can do. You can trade or pay with someone else that is good in that subject, there are online schools- private and public where you can pick for them to teach all or just one subject, you can also learn it yourself.

There are tons of homeschooling groups out there for support and ideas. Many also offer classes, fieldtrips, get together weekly and more.

When I pulled my kids out to homeschool I was terrified since I had never done it before. But the way I looked at it. They weren't getting much of an education at there school to begin with so I had nothing to lose. Yes, I know not all schools and teachers are bad, infact I had a few great ones growing up.

If you feel strongly about homeschooling, just google it and you will find tons of links and info and yahoo probably even has a support group for your area/county.
At worst you put your kids back in public schools.

I know that there a tons of people who don't like homeschoolers and thats ok. That is their choice. But there are planty of people that do.
Homeschooling is not for everyone. Had someone told me a few years ago that I would be homeschooling my kids. I would have never believed them. But things happen. I will do whatever I think is best for my children.
Just so you know, I have 4 children ranging in ages of 3-17. My 17 yr old still attends public school, and that is fine with me. She is doing great where she is at and I have no desire to change something if it is working. My 2 middle boys were having some struggles, especially my 8 yr old. trust me when I say I fought with the schools to get my son the help he needed. I did everything they asked of me and they still wouldn't give me son the help he needed. If I had the time and money I would have sued them for all the crap they put me and my son through and the lack of education. My son sat in the back of his class room and did almost nothing for a year. The teachers were required to send the students papers home every month. And my sons papers were lucky if they had his name on them much less any work done.
Since I started homeschooling my boys, their self esteem has improved so much, they are learnig well. They have plenty of friends and are in sports, scout, church groups and more.
Homeschool children have to be tested at the end of every year to make sure they are getting a proper education.

I know that this is all over the place but I was trying to type what came to mind.
Good luck

There are a lot of different reasons that people home-school, and just as many methods for doing so. I use a method called "Unschooling" which seems much like doing nothing, but which works beautifully well for my family.

I unschooled Skye from part way though the second grade, until she was accepted into an art program at Blake Highschool. Her integration into a regular classroom went well, and at one point, one of her teachers even comented that "Of course YOU know that, but not everyone has the advantage of your classical education."
Her classical education consisted of us following her passions and inspirations, of reading and of musium tours, of late night conversations and explorations though many environments. It consistaed of no formal "teaching" on my part, with the solitary exception of math.

Unschooling is based on the simple principle that rote memorization is useless. That most kids start out very curious and eager to explore their world, but that by makign education "Work" and by focusing on memorized material, we remove that curiosity and joy.

People seem to think that the transformation of a curious and eager 5 year old into a cynical and turned of middle schooler is natural, just a part of growing up, but I can tell you after following Skye and now Adrian though the age changes, I can say that it is certainly NOT inevitable. Both are still eager, curious, and very turned on by the world. Both are active learners.

In Florida (All states have their own guidelines) a child must be tested once a year, to see how they meet the expected goals for their same age peers. My kids have always placed very high on those tests, though math is our challenge.

Thank you all for your responses. I have no children and this information is for my personal enlightenment. I have watched the 'Homeschool' movement grow from the early days of court battles over 'truancy' to today. It occurs to me that Homeschool is a misnomer today. With the resources cited, from trading areas of expertise to gathering in groups to pursue similar interests, it does not resemble my misconceived notion of 'one parent trying to teach everything'. It seems that Homeschool should be renamed Community Schooling.

Was particularly interested in the hi-school aged children.
Had often reflected on how my parents, not uneducated, would have coped with my public hi-school curricula. Long ago, hi-school was 4 years and required 3 Majors (3+ years English, Math, & Science) and 2 Minors (2 years History)and another 2 years of Foreign Language, Music, Art, etc.) as a minimum to graduate. Somewhat challenging for one person to teach, wouldn't you say. Even one subject, Physics, was challenging enough as my professor was constantly throwing out chapters of the text book and replacing them with latest info from scientific journals. There was no internet.

Another early argument I remember against Homeschooling was the isolation and lack of opportunity to develop social skills. As mboston said, she gave a presentation on Butterfly Gardening to a group and Ariel talked about classes, field trips, and get togethers. These do not sound like isolation to me.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me as if it's a more integrated society. By that I mean that a child may be at one level in one subject and another level in another subject. I'm using the word 'subject' very loosely to denote area of study. And by integrated I mean by ability and not discriminated by age/grade. Thus, a student may meet minimum test standards for English while happily discussing physics with a much older group and be accepted by each group as an equal.

So far, I can't see any downside for the student. Thanks for the education.
ron