Article: Expanding the Horizon for Home-School Students

Expanding the horizon for home-school students
Advocates cite wider range of shared outside activities as helping
fuel growth of practice once relegated to fringe

By Lisa Kocian
Boston Globe Staff / December 6, 2007

Eight-year-old Ben Shapiro's days are a blur of gymnastics, piano
playing, and art history lessons. He can also be found doing
fractions, reading a biography of Marco Polo, and, soon, delving into
physics. But he's not at school. And he's not alone.
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He is part of a fast-evolving home-school movement that is traveling
away from the stereotype of child and parent at the kitchen table.
Shapiro does spend most of his day with his mother, but not alone.
Instead, she shuttles him from one group activity to another.

The home is no longer where all the action is in this new wave of home
schooling. Although some instruction takes place at home, parents now
choose from an increasing number of options that allow their children
to interact with and learn alongside other home-schooled peers. The
opportunities for socialization are numerous - swim lessons at the
YMCA, staging a play with like-minded friends found over the Internet,
or any of myriad academic courses offered at cooperative schools in
the area.

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