The homeschooling family does not depend not a regular school, so shifting homes, to a new location, city or state should not make much of a difference in the homeschool students life. Right? Wrong! A good homeschooling parent is one who has built up a great support system for the children. Friends to play with, hobby classes to attend, sports to play with team mates and music recitals to give.
Then you have to shift and there is chaos in terms of extra activities. All of these co curricular activities can take a huge step back when a homeschool family has to relocate. Finding and making new friends is never easy, but its all the more worse when you are missing your old friends in the old home. The only way to get over it is to go on ahead and find other homeschoolers or neighbourhood children who can become a part of the new friend circle.
It is never easy to break into a new friend circle and at a tender age your homeschool students will find it all the more difficult. An easy way to get them to slide into new friendships is to sneak them in along with new activities. If they were playing basketball in the old city, let them join a volley ball team in the new town. That way there will be no unfavourable comparisons with the old friends and they will enjoy learning a new activity as well.
Keep in touch with the old friends. There is no need to give up altogether on the old friends in this day and age where everyone is online. You can have specific times set aside for video calls where the friends can chat up about what’s happening in their lives. If you have not moved a very long distance, you may even consider weekend visits once in a while so that you get to go back to the old city. This helps ease the pain for the children and lets them know that while they may have moved away the friendships will still last them a lifetime.
