HOME SCHOOLING: Some parents choose to edcucate their children at home. Anne Byrne checks out websites that aim to support and explain home-schooling to its consumers - and to inform the merely curious.

How many home educators does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but you must make sure you mark it down to physics (electricity and light), technology, PE (climbing ladder), logical reasoning and social skills (well, we can't see each other in the dark, can we?).

"How many curriculum-based homeschoolers does it take? None. Home electrics isn't something that should be studied until at least age 14, so they'll have to call in an electrician at the weekend.

"How many 'unschoolers' or autonomous educators? As many as want to, whenever they feel like it. But they'll probably need a whole box of light bulbs, because they'll want to experiment to find out how to make them break."

Okay, I'll stop there. But, there's a whole two more pages to go, including feminist home educators, PC users, lawyers and folk singers. These light-bulb jokes are, somewhat surprisingly, to be found on a site put up on the web by a "Christian home-educating family, from the UK"  www.geocities.com/heartland/lake/3262.

The family moved to Cyprus for a few years and decided to educate their children at home for a while. They expected the children would join a school after they had settled down, but found they enjoyed learning at home so much that they decided to continue.

It's a brave decision and a huge commitment to decide to educate your children at home, but the numbers of home-educating families are growing, particularly in the US and Britian.

In this State, an organisation called Home Education Network (HEN) provides support and information as a lobbying function http://acer.gen.tcd.ie/hen/info2000.html.

The website states quotes Article 42 of the Constitution and covers the legal ground, including how to get started. "If you are withdrawing your child from school, write to the principal to tell him/her that you are doing so and will in future be educating your child at home. Doing this within three days of withdrawal discharges your legal obligations."

In due course, expect to get a letter from the school attendance officer asking why you are not sending your child to school. "Say that you are now educating you child(ren) at home in accordance with your constitutional rights under Article 42 of the Constitution. This should serve as a reasonable excuse as required by the form," according to HEN.

A question-and-answer section begins by stating that anyone can home-educate their children. You do not need a formal teaching qualification. You do not need a curriculum, formal lessons or a designated schoolroom. You will need an interest in your children's education and a commitment of time and energy.

If you're thinking of home- schooling, or just interested in the idea, the HEN website is a good place to start, with lots of practical advice for Irish parents. It includes links to lots of useful sites.

Across the water, a Scottish charity, Schoolhouse Home Education Association, has more practical advice and information and offers a teen peer support network. It invites teenagers who are being educated at home to contact Schoolhouse if they would like to be put in touch with a home-educated young person of similar age, or if they would be happy to support another young home-learner by writing/phoning/e-mailing/just being there. There is also an e-mailing list for home-educated teens www.egroups.com/subscribe/schoolhouse-teens.

Free Range Education is another British-based site www.free-range-education.co.uk which includes lots of resources, links, information, legal help and e-mail support service called Ask FREd. It grew out of a book, The Home Education Book, free range education - how home education works, edited by Terri Dowty, and written by more than 20 home-educating families. The site includes a fairly hard sell for the book.

A US site, www.learninfreedom.org notes that there are more than one million home-schooled children in the US and tens of thousands of other home-schoolers elsewhere. One of the most frequently-voiced criticisms of home-schooling is the possible isolation and lack of socialisation. This site maintains that young people can grow up more mature and poised than their age-peers if they avoid the age segregation characteristic of almost all schools.

It further states that the first countries to have compulsory school-attendance laws were all militaristic dictatorships, including the countries that later "formed Hitler's Third Reich".

The anti-school rhetoric on this and some other sites is a little difficult to take, especially for those of us with children in school. Surely there's room to accommodate those who choose to send their children to school and those who educate at home, without either group being made to feel guilty about their choice?

On a lighter note, if you're already educating your children at home or you just want to keep them amused and entertained after school, then www.funology.com is worth a look. This lively site includes jokes, games, magic tricks, trivia, recipes, science experiments, quizzes...

My favourite section contains recipes for pet foods: Fido's favourite biscuit recipe, puppy ice pops and dog biscuits. Happy cooking.