My husband and I are going to make a donation of a special collection (section) to our local public library for homeschoolers, in memory of my husband's sister who was a homeschooler and who passed away suddenly and tragically.

Does your library have a special collection or section specifically for the needs of homeschoolers? What do you think needs to be there? What would you want to see? What could your library have that would make your life as a homeschooling parent much easier?

We are going to give an initial donation of about 5K to start it and then a sum every year to update and maintain the collection. I am going to meet with our local association of homeschoolers to see what their needs are, but I thought I'd ask you guys, too.

So, fire away!

Thanks,
Ame

By Marg on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 07:05 am:

This sounds stupid, but if we want we can go to the school board and request a copy of the books/curriculum from them, but it is really a pain.

It would be nice to have the local school district's full curriculum in the local library from K-12.

What a wonderful and thoughtful gift Ame.

By Yjja123 on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 09:22 am:

I do not know. Any book we need for research we find readily at the library. We buy our own curriculum, so we do not look to the library for that. I would not want the schools curriculum (part of the reason I homeschool).
The only thing I wish the library would do is have more events for homeschoolers. They often have book readings and events during the day but they are geared towards younger kids. Homeschool programs would be great.

By Marg on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 09:30 am:

We don't use the school's curriculum either, but I like to know that my kid's are on the right track with our home school curriculum. So it's nice to use as reference material.

How about a small scholarship program? We homeschool 3 and it averages about $250-300 a year per child in homeschool curriculum.

By Yjja123 on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 11:40 am:

Yeah, a scolarship program would be wonderful. I only homeschool 2 and I spend, on average, $2000 a year on school curriculum and supplies.