We are an inclusive homeschooling group that seeks to support homeschooling parents and their children through group events, informational materials (on-line) and this web listing.

Our beginnings: A group of us, called the Waldorf group due to the location of the early founders, began putting together parties, activities, events and eventually support groups. We originally met and participated in Southern Maryland Homeschoolers Network. Over the years the group grew as more and more families became interested in our activities and philosophy of group activities.

Our philosophy: Inclusion to us means that part of you can identify with and support part of others. You may have extremely divergent view points in some areas of your life, and there are many, many on-line sites that support or strongly don’t support your view points. Inclusion does not mean advocating or not advocating your view point. What it does mean is that the part of you that identifies with others will be emphasized here. It most often will come from homeschooling itself but not necessarily. Support in the form of child care, child rearing, behavioral problems, social interactions, teaching lessons, classes, marriage pluses and minuses, field trip desires, parties (we host a fair number of them Halloween, Holiday (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa), Egg hunt, etc), group events, phys ed, etc, etc. We tend to be a very dynamic group. All of these are part of our inclusive philosophy. Many in our group have very strong bonds with similarly inclined members and of course, we actively agree and disagree with each other, just not on-line at this forum and not without respect.

What we are not: We are not a place to actively be divisive. We feel there are many, many websites and groups that encourage that. If you have a need for that please bring it to those lists not this one. The subjects of Religion, Politics, Censorship, Types of homeschooling philosophies, and especially relations between adults should be Extremely carefully monitored. We understand that no one is ever completely Politically Correct and no one wants to live walking on egg shells so we simply will ask you to check yourself before posting and ask. Would you say whatever you are saying directly to a friend on the list that you knew was not of your belief system? If the answer is no, then don’t post it. Post it elsewhere. Again, plenty of websites for that, we strive for civility here. Also, that means that our members are expected to be tolerant of others misstatements. Give each other the benefit of the doubt.

We will not tolerate: We will not allow any abusive language, put downs, character assassinations, cursing. Again, not that we all wouldn’t love to do it at some point in our lives but there are other sites for that and we want to encourage our better natures here not our worse ones. Chaos breeds chaos, look at the statistics. We would like this group to be able to go on for years. The average site lasts a very short time when civility is not encouraged.

We are not secular. We are not religious (Christian of any certain types including Evangelical, Jewish, Muslim, Mormons, Buddhist, etc). We are not spiritual. We are not unschoolers. We are not inclusive schoolers, We are not religious schoolers. We are not curriculum schoolers. We are not Republican, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives or Libertarians. We are not vegans. We are not carnivores. These are all labels that describe only one or several sides of members of this group but our group is not any of these things. The group is much more than this and allows each other to be any, all or none of these things but still be capable of supporting those areas where we very much agree with each other and seek out friendship and understandings. We know the nature of homeschoolers; we are every one of us rebels. And most of us are very secure, and sometimes very vocal, in our belief systems or we could not be homeschoolers. The only way this works well as a large group is to encourage not discourage the commonality of our lives to raise our children in absolutely the best way we possibly can in this not so supportive world. We are homeschoolers. We are not trying to run this website based on any agenda other than being truly supportive of all homeschoolers that can be supportive of others. That is who are members are and that is who we encourage to join us. No event is ever mandatory and no web-active participation is required. We only ask a nominal fee to help cover the website costs, to help defray some event costs and most importantly to help ensure commitment to our minimal but inclusive philosophy.

If this all sounds great to you then please feel free to join us and participate in all of our events.