CARROLLWOOD, Fla. — There are more than 150,000 students home-schooled in the state of Florida, and the majority of them obtain their curriculum online.
So a Carrollwood woman decided to open up the first store in the state dedicated specifically to home school families.
Kimberly Tucker started home-schooling her own daughter Sophie more than a decade ago, and she’s been an advocate for home-school families ever since.
While conducting evaluations for 2,000 home school students every year, Tucker noticed there was a need that wasn’t being met.
“In the state of Florida, there is nothing where a homeschooler can come and look at the curriculum they want to use during the school year,” said Tucker.
So in September, Tucker addressed that need by opening up The Homeschool Hive.
“They are coming in, and they are going, ‘Oh my gosh,’ I can actually look and touch and see and go through and compare and then make an educated decision, not just based on a couple of sample pages on the Internet,” said Tucker.
The Duperon family said when it comes to your child’s education, you want to be sure.
“You know you are investing in these books and the curriculum, and to be able to see it and they actually get to participate in choosing their curriculum, that's been great,” said mother Jenny Duperon.
“Online, you get little excerpts and things, but here you can actually see what you are learning and see what it actually is,” said student Lucas Iman.
Tucker said the popularity of homeschooling has only increased since the pandemic, but not all of these parents can’t expect to do it alone.
“It’s amazing to meet families that come to me and say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, help, help, help, I’m failing,’ and they aren’t failing; they just need to find the resources,” said Tucker.
Tucker just doesn’t sell the materials, she holds workshops at the hive guiding parents on how to teach it.
“Because a hive is a community of bees that work together to create something, and that is what homeschoolers do,” said Tucker. “It’s amazing to broaden and expand what I started 12 years ago into this, it’s a living dream.”
