Georgia Homeschool Groups

Carrie McGarry sent this photo of her beautiful children to share with you. (Thanks, Carrie!) Above is Alexandria, age 8, Gavin, age 5, and Samantha (Sam), age 1.

This is a column that I wrote for The Barrow Journal. The McGarrys are a local homeschooling family who have three young children, age eight and under. They are using a variety of resources to homeschool, including project-based, and like many families who homeschool, they feel that public schools are putting too much emphasis on standardized tests instead of the quality of learning. They are involved in the Barrow County Homeschooling Group.

Click here to read the full interview with this awesome family.

For other interviews with homeschoolers, be sure to click on the “Interviews with Homeschoolers” in the margin.

Below I’m listing a few of the e-mail groups that I have found in this area, but if you don’t live in my area, just google “homeschool groups” and your state or city. Keep looking because I’ve found that digging has paid off. Also, by joining a couple of e-mail groups, I have found other groups through recommendations.

I am not a member of all of these groups anymore. Either I don’t have time or the activities are too far for me to drive. But I learned so much about homeschooling by following all of these groups for a while, and then I picked the few that were most beneficial for me to keep subscribing to. I highly recommend that beginning homeschoolers do the same.

As I find more groups or resources, I’ll add them to this page. Feel free to e-mail me at writetospabis (at) gmail (dot) com if you have a group you’d like to get the word out about. I’ll add it here.

Creative Home Educators – North Georgia – Very active group. Mostly made up of families in the Atlanta area. I also like their statement about including homeschoolers of all spiritual beliefs. (They also have a large spin-off group for Gwinnett.)

Creative Home Educators – South Georgia – Same group but for South Georgia. Unfortunately, it’s not as active.

P.E.A.C.H. (Parent Educator’s Association for Children at Home) – Primarily for Gwinnett County. There’s so much going on in Gwinnett County that I almost wish I lived there!

Athens GA Homeschooling

Barrow Co. Homeschoolers

Walton Co. Homeschoolers

GAunschoolers – A group for Georgia’s unschoolers.

Secular Homeschoolers of Georgia (SHOG) – For families who choose secular homeschooling.

Walton County Secular Homeschoolers – For secular homeschoolers in and around Walton County.

2012 UPDATE

Alpharetta Inclusive Homeschoolers meets in Alpharetta and Cumming for regular Wednesday Park Days. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlphaHome/

Another note about signing up for homeschool listservs – you may want to create filters to sort these messages because these groups can fill up your inbox in an instant! I cannot possibly read every message, nor do I contribute much to the discussions yet. But they are a great source of information to keep on hand, if you are thinking about homeschooling.

It’s also important to keep in mind that you can always create a group of your own by meeting people through existing groups or perhaps posting a notice at your local library.

You can also read the newspaper column I wrote for the Barrow Journal titled, Doing Research on Homeschool Groups in Georgia. It has similar information.