FAQS

Janet Cox was born and raised in Idaho and is the mom of 13 kids. She started educating her kids at home back in 2005 when her oldest son was ready to start Kindergarten. It was a one year experiment that turned into a wonderful lifestyle of learning together, working together, and growing together. Janet has been very involved in the home education community and loves building the things her kids need and bringing other families along for the journey. She has worked with various home education programs over the years and became a certified K-8 teacher. Janet is looking forward to building out what her kids need at this time specifically a connected community, fun learning opportunities, and a chance to share their best work and see what other students are doing. Her children have helped design the motivation piece of the program and are excited to earn badges and pins.

IHLA stands for Idaho Home Learning Academy, a statewide public charter school offered through Oneida School District. IHLA works with educational service providers (like Home Ed 360) to provide virtual education options for families who choose to learn at home. IHLA is accredited through Cognia and provides all special education services for students enrolled in their program.  To participate in Home Ed 360, families will enroll with IHLA and choose Home Ed 360 as their educational service provider for the 2024-25 school year. For more information about IHLA, please visit the IHLA website.

Students who will be in kindergarten through 8th grade for the 2024-25 school year and reside in Idaho will be eligible to enroll. 

Enrollment is open now and families will start working with Home Ed 360 in August of 2024. We will be holding information meetings and communicating with families throughout the summer.  Priority enrollment ends June 1, 2024 and students who enroll before that date will have priority as we assign micro-schools. 

We would love to have you join our Facebook page to get updates. 

Yes, each student will receive educational credits that can be used to purchase secular educational resources, classes, technology needs, and more. Each student will receive $1700 in educational credits for the 2024-25 school year. Half will be available first semester with direct orders opening in August and reimbursements being paid starting Sept 25. Families will be able to purchase directly through Home Ed 360 or to submit for reimbursement. Receipts need to be dated May 1, 2024 through April 30, 2025 and need to have the seller's name, contract information, what was purchased, and the price. Receipts will be submitted through Schoology through your parent account. 

A special request form is required for single items over $600 or for single PE items over $150. You can find that form here: Special Request Form 

One challenge of educating at home is that students often don't have an audience for their best work and don't get to see the amazing things other kids their age are doing. When students know they will be sharing their projects, they care more about creating a great product. Parents become the helpers and facilitators instead of task masters. As students see what other students their age are able to do, they become motivated and excited about learning how to do that same thing. This could be creating a PowerPoint, writing a story, or doing a jump on the ski hill! As audience members they learn to encourage, support, and celebrate the others.

Students will be required to take the state required testing. 

Yes. We will offer several online resources that families can opt into using some of their educational credits. If you have favorite resources you would like to have us consider please let us know what those are on the registration form. Some of the resources we will be offering include Aleks math, Raz Kids, Mystery Science, Touch, Type, Read, and Spell. Additional resources will be added based on interest from families. 

Mastery based education is when students move onto new concepts after showing they have learned a topic vs after completing a specific number of pages or problems. 

No. There will be provided activities and curriculum resources, but families can always substitute learning from other curriculum and resources. 

We want to help parents cover the learning goals easily while engaging students. Each month there will be areas of focus in the provided curriculum that are aligned with learning goals. There will be weekly mini lessons and resources posted in Schoology for each subject-- a 15-20 minute webinar style presentation on a topic. Students can watch them and respond to the discussion board OR attend a teacher-led discussion/game activity OR report on other learning from their own curriculum. The guided activities (also optional) will go along with the topic and the showcase/activity/field trip will also be related to that topic whenever possible.   

The guided lessons are like an open-and-go co-op lesson. You can do this activity or substitute something else from your own curriculum to submit in Schoology.  The last part is the showcases/field trip activities. These are also optional. If you do a showcase/activity, the teachers/staff will take a picture and submit it for you. If you don't, you would need to upload a 2nd work sample for that month. 

Let's say the topic for the month is life science and the lesson for one week is on habitats. If your student already knows about that topic, she can just put a sentence or two response on the discussion board without needing to watch the lesson or explore any of the resources. The discussion questions are broad, ie. What is something you have learned about habitats? If it's something she isn't familiar with, she can watch the intro webinar and then use the other resources as much or as little as she/you want to be able to make a comment or participate in the teacher-led game that week. The goal is that students are introduced to things that might not be covered in your own curriculum, but can easily respond if they already know it. 

The guided activity might include learning about food chains/webs and making a game to play where they build and draw food webs. The showcase/field trip might be to go to the zoo. Students would be invited to create a presentation or paper or project about an animal to display. Everyone who wants to be part of the showcase or see what other students have done meets there a little earlier than families who only want to do the field trip. During the field trip check-in, we would also pass out something like a zoo scavenger hunt. If you do the showcase OR turn in the scavenger hunt at the end of your zoo visit, we would be able to submit that for you as your 2nd "portfolio" assignment for the month. If you don't want to do either of those options, you can submit something from your own learning. 

Throughout the year we will provide lessons, guided activities, and showcase/field trips to cover all the science and social studies learning goals. If you attend and participate, we will do the submission work for you. (You will still need to submit something from the guided activity.) If you prefer to just show learning from your chosen curriculum, that is an option as well. 

Home Ed 360 is brand new and we would love to have parents get involved to help us create the best program for families. If you have special skills or talents you think would be helpful please let us know! If you would be willing to host an in person information meeting and invite friends to learn about our program, Janet is planning to visit several parts of the state this summer to meet families and would love to work with you to set something up! If you have ideas for what your children need, we would love to hear them. Please email Janet Cox.

If you have a question that isn't addressed in the FAQs, please reach out to Janet Cox. She will be happy to assist you.