 Hey you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, in today's video, I'm actually going to be sharing with you guys how to homeschool in the state of Georgia. I am so excited about today's video because I am actually a part of this huge collab posted from Christina from Rooted Homeschooling. She has gathered together a whole bunch of homeschooling moms from various states and regents to share with you guys our particular homeschooling laws and regulations. So I am very excited today to be sharing with you guys all of our homeschooling laws that I have to fulfill in the state of Georgia. So in my description box below, you guys, I will have the huge playlist of all the other moms sharing their particular state and or region. Please don't forget to check out all the other moms because you may be able to see your state listed in the playlist below. So if any of you guys are new here coming to my channel, again, my name is Brittany. I'm actually a mom of three girls. I have a nine, three and a one year old. And this is my second year I'm going into as far as homeschooling. I am like many of you who have been thrushed into homeschooling and really just trying to figure this journey out. And the first thing that I did while figuring out homeschooling was I had to figure out my homeschooling laws within the state of Georgia. So you guys, I'm just going to go ahead and get straight into it. But I will go ahead and add this little disclaimer saying that as far as homeschooling and laws and regulations, you guys, they are ever changing. And I would just encourage you guys to go back and do your own research and make sure you check these homeschooling laws yearly just because things change. And you definitely want to make sure you are up on your homeschooling laws to make sure you are fulfilling all of the regulations that you have to fill to satisfy your homeschool for whatever state you're in. And in my case is in the state of Georgia. So you guys, this year we actually had a huge change to our homeschooling laws. And I will share that with you guys in today's video as well. So when it comes to homeschooling in the state of Georgia, you guys, I do have a very low regulation state. We don't have like a big old list of rules and requirements. This is really basic and simple. And when I read our homeschooling laws last year, I really felt confident and I felt like I could do it just because I wasn't just throwing a whole bunch of just different things I had to make sure I got done. It was really simple and it really gave me the confidence to go ahead and pull that plug and withdraw my daughter, Brielle from the public school system last year. So the first requirement for our homeschooling laws is that we have to ensure that the person or people homeschooling your child has the required qualifications, which is either having a high school diploma or a GED. And if you so choose to have a tutor come in and tutor any particular subject, you do have to make sure that that tutor also has a high school diploma and or a GED before you can allow them to be a part of your home study. So you guys, I feel like that requirement is pretty simple. I mean, so if dad, mom, grandma, whoever is homeschooling your child, you just have to make sure they have a high school diploma and or a GED. The second requirement that we have to do is I have to submit an annual decoration of intent to the state of Georgia, showing them where my homeschool location is my homeschool children and also to showing them the dates of the year that I plan on schooling my child or children. So in the state of Georgia, we have to start adding in a child into I guess the Georgia Board of Education system with this declaration of intent. We have to add them starting at the age of six. So in the state of Georgia, Kenny Garn is not considered to be official homeschooling year as far as being able to put them in the state of Georgia system. So the declaration of intent form is really, really easy to fill out. All you have to do is just go to www.GeorgiaEO.org and I will have that website listed below in my description box as well to go ahead and submit that declaration of intent. It is just a completely form online. All you're going to be doing is putting your name, your address, your child's name, your child's age, the date in which you want to start school. And you have to make sure you submit that declaration of intent 30 days prior to your school start in and the deadline for that submission is September for the state of Georgia. So I made sure I turned in my declaration of intent. You guys, what was it? I think I finished mine a couple of weeks ago. I just wanted to make sure I had that already to go as far as my requirements here for our homeschooling. Now another requirement that we have is we are required to have a specific number of instructional days. We are required to do 180 instructional days. However, we can do those 180 school days all across the whole entire year. Meaning that when I filled out my declaration of intent, I put our start date, which would be July 1st of 2021. And I ended our date at July 1st of 2022, which means that I am allowing myself 365 days to complete my daughter's fourth grade year of homeschooling. And I know I'm going to have our 180 days fixed and set within well before we reach July. However, I do like the flexibility of giving myself a whole year to satisfy those 180 days versus me putting in a shorter timeframe. And I feel like I'm rushing and scrambling to get all of my homeschooling days satisfied. So if I can give a tip to any of you guys that are Georgia Mamas out there, just go ahead and set your date for a whole calendar year. Regardless of if you're going to start and do a traditional school year, just give yourself that time and that grace. Trust me. You're going to be very happy you did that. And I really feel like a sense of comfort, even though I am not technically a year around homeschooler, I do like that comfort in knowing that if anything happens, I have until July of next year to satisfy our 180 school days. Now another one of the requirements is that we also are required to have schooling done for a specific amount of hours. So in the state of Georgia, we're required to school for four and a half hours. Unless otherwise, our child is physically unable to comply with this particular requirement. And you guys four and a half hours of schooling, it was so easy for me to satisfy last year just because Brielle reads for 30 minutes out the day. So that's already 30 minutes that, you know, I don't have to worry about as far as her school time. And we can consider school time anything as far as the homeschooling parent. It's not any type of regulation saying that us cooking with our kids or them doing home economics is not considered to be our school time. So I know it sounds intimidating and you do think that you have to sit down with books for four and a half hours and you're just hammering your kids for that time. But no, that's absolutely not the case. It's just saying that we have to be intentional with that four and a half hours to be teaching our children. And that's how I look at it as far as the requirement goes. Now we are required to teach specific subjects. We're required to teach math, language, arts, reading, science and social studies. However, we are not required to choose a specific state curriculum or anything like that. We can choose whatever curriculum we want to choose if we want to take a literature based approach to English or if we just want to do unit studies for science. However, and whatever we want to do, we can do it. As far as history goes, if I just want to go over just a particular time period throughout that whole year in history, I can do that and go ahead and check off that certification for history. So again, I love the flexibility. We do have to satisfy those subjects. However, you can do it in any form and or fashion you want to. And I definitely love that freedom when it comes to the state of Georgia. Another thing that we do have to do is we have to write an annual progress report at the end of the year. And the progress report must be made for each of the required subjects, meaning that I have to write a list of all the things that we've done in math, science, social studies, reading and what math, language, art, social studies, science and reading. You guys, I'm all over the place. But yeah, so you do have to write individually what you did, how you did it. If you feel like your child has met those requirements for those specific subjects. Now another thing that they did say is that if you just want to just pull out that scope and sequence within the front of your curriculum page and file that away, check off the things that you felt like your kid met, that your kid mastered, you can go ahead and do that and an annual report can be just as simple as that and or you can make your annual report custom. I made mine custom where I typed out a list from each of her subjects using her scope and sequence and showing all the things that Brielle mastered in her math, mastered in her language arts and I found it away as far as our homeschooling laws. We have to hold on to those records every three years. So that means that I have to hold on to her third grade year for third, fourth and fifth. So by the time she goes into sixth grade, if I want to, you know, discard the files from her third grade year, I can go ahead and discard them. However, you guys, I made the personal decision that I am possibly going to keep all of the years we homeschool and I'm not going to discard anything just because homeschooling laws change and I want to make sure I hold on to those files. I do have copies of those files digitally and I have a paper trail copy just because you never know what will happen and I do encourage all of you mamas, especially when it comes to state regulations that you do keep a digital and a paper copy just to always be able to have some form of backup when it comes to especially something like an annual report that you have to write. Now, the last requirement that we actually have is that we have to test our child at least every three years after he or she completes the third grade. So when I felt when I started homeschooling, I fell into the first year of testing within the state of Georgia. So we have to test the third grade, sixth, ninth, and twelfth grade are the required years that we have to do standardized testing. On the www.Georgieo.org website, they do have a list of test providers that they want you as the homeschooling mom to use and what they consider to be an approved national standardized exam. And when I went to go test Brielle this school year, I made sure I went on that list and I chose a test that was able to satisfy that particular requirement. The test that we actually did was we did the CAT test, which is the California Achievement Test and we did it through the publications of Academic Excellence. And if you guys want to know like any particular details about our testing experience and how it went, I could definitely make a separate video all about that. However, I will let you know, I think I chose the perfect test just because I was able to do that test in the comfort of my own home. That test year not required to have a college degree to take or to administer to your child. Most testing national tests, they do require you to have a college degree in this one. In particular, it didn't. So I was able to set Brielle up right here. She actually did her test in this room. It was quiet away from all of my two toddlers and she was able to really get her test done and she was able to take as many bricks as she want because she can pause the test. And we've really had a positive experience when it came to our testing. And like I said, I can make a separate video all about that. But yeah, so honestly, you guys, this is all of the requirements that I do have to satisfy for the state of Georgia. It's really, really simple and I'm really, really blessed to have started homeschooling in such a low regulation state. Now, the state of Georgia has introduced a new act, which is called the Dexter Moseley Act for all homeschooling parents, which allows us from our kids, great ages of six to 12, to be able to allow them to participate in extracurricular activities from our local public schools. So I live really close to a lot of public schools in my area. So when Brielle enters the sixth grade, if she decides to do track and field soccer, basketball, cheerleading, any extracurricular activities that my local public schools offers from the great age of six, sixth grade, Brielle will be able to, you know, do an extracurricular activity. They do have other specifications within the law that is again on the www.GeorgiaEO.org site that I will have below for you guys of other requirements. You do have to satisfy in order for your child to do the extracurricular activities within your local public school, but they are very simple. I breeze through it and I am very excited. That means that I have one more year or actually two more years before Brielle will be able to join extracurricular activity if she still chooses. And I'm very excited about that law. I really feel like it's going to open up a lot of opportunities for homeschooling parents and homeschooling kids all across the state of Georgia. And yeah, I mean, I think it's going to be great because they can put these extracurriculars on their high school and college applications and things like that. So this is awesome. This is really, really awesome. I hope you guys enjoy hearing about all of the state laws and requirements for the state of Georgia. I hope this video was informative and helpful to all of you guys. Please don't forget to check out all of the other moms and them sharing all of their state requirements for their particular state and or country. And as always, you guys, please don't forget to comment, like and subscribe. And I hope to see everybody in my next one. Bye.