Support
Often the key to whether a family can successfully homeschool is the type of support they receive. Unfortunately, we don't always receive encouragement from our family or community. Connecting with other homeschoolers is the best way to make new friends, and to get information, ideas, and support. We've compiled support group resources and offer simple ways to connect with other homeschoolers through email groups, website forums, and in your community. You'll also find information on local and state events, cultural and educational institutions, field trip ideas, tutors, bookstores, and much, much more.
Support Groups
Homeschoolers have created networks of support to provide a way to make friends, get ideas and information, and to offer positive socialization opportunties to their children. You can join in! There are many groups to choose from, many with specific affiliations, like Christian groups or unschoolers' groups. Some are eclectic, inclusive, and open to anyone. Whatever your interest, you are sure to find other like-minded parents. And if you don't find what you are looking for, we've put together tips for starting your own group.
Humor
We all could use a little chuckle every once in a while--especially on those days when things seem a bit bleak and challenging. Enjoy some humor from the home front.
Events
You'll find everything from homeschooling conventions to used book sales to camps for homeschoolers. Read about local and state events and submit your event for posting.
Local & State Resources
Homeschoolers learn as much outside the home as in it. Here you'll find listings of cultural and educational institutions, government resources, libraries, and bookstores. If you need a tutor, this is the best place for you to find one near you.
Publications
Want to learn more about homeschooling? Need a monthly or weekly boost of enthusiasm and ideas? You may be interested in a subscription of a homeschool publication. Whether you are looking for a hard copy magazine or an e-newsletter, we've got the best listed here.
What's Popular
Atrium School
Phone: 561-496-3044 Atrium School exists to support and facilitate family based learning as an educational choice. Atrium School is a private school offering two distinct enrollment programs so that families can select the level of support and guidance that's right for them.
Central Alabama Independent Homeschools
This group is open to anyone homeschooling, or interested in homeschooling, in or near Central Alabama. This group is primarily for those who have chosen to homeschool under their own umbrella, without the use of a cover school. This group is intended to be a tool to meet parents in similar circumstances to discuss issues, curriculums, challenges etc.
Lakepoint Resort State Park
Located seven miles north of Eufaula off Highway 431 on the Alabama-Georgia line, Lake Eufaula is known as the "Bass Capital of the World." This picturesque 1,220-acre park complements the beautiful 45,200-acre Eufaula Impoundment with many resort facilities including a full service marina. You may also enjoy the adjoining National Wildlife Refuge.
Huntsville Museum of Art
The Huntsville Museum of Art, North Alabama’s leading visual arts center, fills its seven galleries with a variety of exhibitions throughout the year, including prestigious traveling exhibits and the work of nationally and regionally acclaimed artists. The Museum’s own 2,300-piece permanent collection also forms the basis for several exhibitions each year. In addition to its exhibitions, the Museum offers art classes for children and adults along with special programs, lectures, and musical pres...
Gadsden Center for Cultural Arts
The Center is a multi-purpose facility that includes Imagination Place (a children's museum), three visual art galleries, a 72 foot model of 1948 Gadsden with working trains, an art studio, and two performance halls which are home to the Etowah Youth Orchestras and the Kings of Swing and the Gadsden Symphony. The Center also has a full service restaurant. Special programs include reservation accepted guided and narrated tours, field trips, planetarium shows, special children's activities, conc...
Homeschool - AL -Pinson, Trussville, and Center Point
Support group for homeschoolers and potential homeschoolers in the Pinson, Trussville, Center Point and surrounding areas in Alabama. Offers area park days, field trips, book swaps, clubs, information, support, and more.
Nanette's Books & Trims
915-B South Jefferson St. Athens, Alabama 35611 Phone: 256-771-9910 Nanette's Books & Trims offers teacher's supplies, Christian materials, reference books, and much more.
Alabama Virtual Library
The Alabama Virtual Library provides all students, teachers, and citizens of the State of Alabama with online access to essential library and information resources. It is primarily a group of online databases that have magazine, journal, and newspaper articles for research.
AL Christian Homeschool
This email group is provided for Christian homeschoolers in Alabama.
George Washington Carver Museum at the Tuskegee Institute Historic Site
The legacy of Booker T. Washington, George W. Carver and many others has been preserved in the Historic Campus District where original buildings built by the students, with bricks made in the Institute brickyard still stand. The historic site also features the George Washington Carver Museum.
Bladon Springs State Park
Located one mile north of Bladon Springs, this day use park features Sulfur Water Springs and basic facilities for daytime family outings.
Paul "Bear" Bryant Museum
The mission of the Paul W. Bryant Museum is to collect, preserve and exhibit items, and to disseminate information relating to the sports history of the University of Alabama.
North Alabama Trailblazers
North Alabama Trailblazers is a group of homeschooling families in Madison, Morgan, Limestone, AL, and Lincoln, TN, counties, meeting together for mutual socialization and companionship of children and parents alike. Offers field trips, seasonal and holiday parties, play days, and other activities.
Florala State Park
Located in the city of Florala, along beautiful Lake Jackson, this 40-acre park offers swimming, fishing, a community building, campground and picnic area along the shore.
Creative Play Workshop: Gentle Parenting at Play
This is an Attachment Parenting oriented group of parents who gather together with their children in the Birmingham area weekly. Workshops are fun, casual, parent-child interactive, and currently designed for toddlers through preschoolers, with younger siblings welcomed and arrangements that can be made to help older siblings feel at home, too.
Resources
Educational Travel on a Shoestring : Frugal Family Fun and Learning Away from Home
Educational Travel on a Shoestring shows parents how they can help their children learn–and have a blast–while traveling. From researching destinations to sharing activities that both teach and entertain, this priceless guide offers practical information for parents who want to have more fun with their kids, build closer family ties, and enjoy richer educational experiences–all without spending a fortune.
America's National Parks: The Spectacular Forces That Shaped Our Treasured Lands
From stunning mountain ranges to arid expanses of desert, America has been blessed with an incredibly diverse land -- and the vision to protect it for our and future generations to enjoy. These lands are ours to view, wander, learn from, and revel in. America's National Parks captures all that is great about all fifty-six parks in the national park system. It also gives interesting, easy-to-understand background on the geological and ecological forces that continue to make each national park so worthy of protection.

Nature lovers will be captivated by gorgeous photos of landforms, flora, and fauna. Families will appreciate the information that is sure to enhance vacations at the parks. And visitors to any of the country's national parks will forever treasure this book as a memento of past visits and an inspiration for future ones.

Unlike any other book published on national parks, America's National Parks is a must-have for anyone who relishes America's natural wonders and wants to learn more about the powerful forces that created them.

Great Lodges of the National Parks: The Companion Book to the PBS Television Series
Stand amid soaring Douglas fir in the great hall of Glacier Park Lodge or sit in the setting sun and gaze into the Grand Canyon at El Tovar. This beautiful gift book will transport you to the majestic lodges of our national parks to relive the glory of past vacations or plan adventures anew. This book and the PBS television series of the same title (to air in spring 2002) take armchair travelers into these architectural wonders and explore the surrounding natural beauty of our national parks. Lodges, wildlife, and stunning vistas are showcased in 175 full-color and black-and-white photographs, along with historical documents from the PBS series. In his introduction, Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, offers a call to preserve this national heritage, and a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book go toward the rehabilitation of these magnificent buildings.
National Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the United States, Fourth Edition

Now in its fourth edition, the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America is the ultimate birder’s field guide. Sturdy, portable, and easy-to-use, it features the most complete information available on every bird species known to North America. This revised edition features 250 completely updated range maps, new plumage and species classification information, specially commissioned full-color illustrations, and a superb new index that allows birders in the field to quickly identify a species.

The National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fourth Edition will continue to be a bestseller among the fastest-growing sector in the U.S. travel market—the nearly 25 million people who travel each year specifically to observe wild birds.

The National Parks of America
For tourists, family campers, and serious lovers of the outdoors, here is a big, beautiful, color-illustrated book that describes more than 50 national parks, sites, and seashores that stretch from Cape Hatteras on the Atlantic coast to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Yosemite in California, Haleakala in Hawaii, and Glacier Bay in Alaska. More than 400 breathtaking photographs capture the beauty and atmosphere of each site, and 54 color maps show each park's location and major features. Visitor information panels give important details on access points, accommodations, and recreational activities such as hiking, rafting, birdwatching, and fishing. Here is a wonderful volume that will inspire plans for trips and evoke marvelous memories of past experiences in America's great outdoors.
America's Spectacular National Parks
The concept of the national park is an American contribution to world civilization, and it remains a defining characteristic of our country. From the rocky shore of Maine's Acadia to the barren crater and lush rain forest of Hawaii's Haleakala, America's national beauty is celebrated and preserved in its national parks. This book retells the history of each park, describes its most important features and wildlife, and reproduces its gorgeous scenery in full-color photographs that will enthrall armchair travelers and entice others to lace up their hiking boots and reach for their sporting gear. Organized by region of the country, it includes well-known parks like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Glacier as well as lesser-known destinations like Shenandoah, Biscayne, and Kenai Fjords.
These Rare Lands
If a picture's worth 1,000 words, this book--with its hundreds of breathtaking photos of America's National Parks--is a well-stocked bookstore. Accompanied by the words of poet laureate Mark Strand, These Rare Lands is a perfect coffee-table book for anyone who has enjoyed the wonders of nature's wildest places. From a storm over Sequoia National Park in California to the otherworldly stalactites and stalagmites of New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns and an Atlantic sunset in Maine's Acadia, this is a book that draws you back again and again. Photographer Stan Jorstad's obvious love of nature comes through in the thoughtful approach he takes to his life's work, contained in the pages of These Rare Lands.
Fort Toulouse/Fort Jackson Living History Events
Wetumpka, AL
Events include monthly living history programs (the French period and the early American period), monthly meetings of the Historic Blacksmiths, French and Indian War Encampment (held annually in April and re-enacts the time period of the war between the French and the British), Alabama Frontier Days (held annually in November and depicts life on the frontier from 1717 to 1820).
America's National Parks for Dummies, Second Edition
What makes a trip to a national park so wonderful? For starters, America's national park system is more diverse than any park system in the world. You can stroll the seashore at Olympic National Park in Washington or Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, climb craggy mountains in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, or go underground into the world's largest cave system at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. You can marvel at the largest canyon on Earth (Grand Canyon National Park), hike among the planet's largest collection or rock arches (Arches National Park), explore the lowest and hottest place in the Western Hemisphere (Death Valley National Park), or wander a realm of forests and misty mountains (Great Smoky Mountains National Park).

And these are just a few of your park options.

America's National Parks For Dummies gives you guidance to decide which park is for you, when to go, and what to see when you reach your destination. This guide will help you plan the best trip imaginable, whether you are

  • An inexperienced traveler looking for guidance in determining whether to take a trip to a national park and how to plan for it
  • An experienced traveler who has yet to explore the national park system and wants expert advice when you finally get a chance to enjoy one
  • Any traveler who doesn't like big, thick travel guides that list every single hotel, restaurant, or attraction, but instead looks for a book that focuses on the places that will provide the best or most unique park experience

America's National Parks For Dummies is user-friendly and organized in a logical fashion. Each park is broken down in a chapter that delves into the nitty-gritty of trip planning and highlights, including tips for

  • Planning your trip by touching on the diversity of the park system, explaining some of your vacation options, and telling you when parks are the most (and least) crowded
  • Ironing out the details by describing how you get to the parks and how to find your way around after you arrive
  • Exploring America's national parks by giving you the lowdown on 15 of the best parks, detailing things like each park's wild kingdom, the best spots for memorable photographs, and a few safety issues

The pages of this book resemble a great long-distance hike – you never know what's around the next bend in the trail. So throw on a backpack, take a swig of water, and get ready to explore the national parks!

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