Joe:
Welcome to our cyber-interview with Rebecca Rupp, Ph.D. Let me tell you a bit more about her. She has homeschooled her three sons for more than ten years. She is the author of The Complete Home Learning Sourcebook and How We Remember and Why We Forget. She writes a monthly column for Home Education Magazine and produces and hosts a local homeschool television program. She lives in Sharftsbury, Vermont. Thanks for coming by, Rebecca.

Joe:
Could you tell me a bit more about your TV show that you produce. How did you come to start that and what kind of format do you have?

Rebecca:
We started our homeschool television show - "Homeschool Talk" - last spring on local public-access TV after the boys took a class on studio/camera techniques. Josh, Ethan, and Caleb run the studio for the show: Josh as studio director (he keeps demanding a director's chair and a beret); Ethan on computer; Caleb on audio. The camera crew are also all homeschooled kids - most around 11 to 14. It's a blast.

It's a live call-in show dedicated to all things homeschool: experiences, opinions, issues, how-tos, resources, general info, good stories. We started out at half an hour; have now expanded to an hour - which gives me, the host, a few minutes here and there for pleasant small talk. Shows so far have included interviews with authors and prominent homeschoolers - we've had Natalie Casco, our state homeschool consultant from the Department of Education; Linda Dobson, a wonderful interviewee, author of "The Homeschooling Book of Answers;" and Joan and Larry Bangs, developers of the "A Bigger World" unit-study program. We've also done a number of shows centering on specific academic subjects, all with guests and lots of project and resource suggestions - one group of homeschoolers brought in their entire homemade cardboard castle. So far nothing too awful has gone wrong, though sometimes one can hear loud evil laughter from the control room. And you should see our homeschool-made backdrop.

Joe:
You had written The Complete Home Learning Sourcebook, where does this book fit for people who want to homeschool?

See the answer to this question
Homelearning Sourcebook

more Curriculum Guides
more homeschooling books
"Is Homeschooling Expensive?"
Frequently Asked Questions

Rebecca Rupp's Comments on:
Model Cities
Building a model can be a lot of fun and help you to learn more about the real world, because you really need to focus on reality to make a model. Here are some ideas that we are developing in our discussion groups.

Getting Started on Home Learning:
How and Why to Teach Your Kids
by Rebecca Rupp, Ph.D.

My latest book has chapter on "The Bottom Line, or How Much Does It All Cost?" - includes  results from a range of surveys and studies, a shameful confession about our personal homeschooling expenditures, a list of useful budgetary suggestions,  and a lot of good resources for pennypinchers. Surveys, which may or may not mean much, show that most families spend something between $500 and $1500 annually.