Reading in PJs meets the dress code just fine; a trip to the grocery store becomes a lesson in addition and fractions; a forest walk morphs into a meditation on the circle of life. Zookeepers have time to answer loads of questions on a weekday afternoon. The same goes for gallery staff, store owners and the guy who drives the Zamboni?he might even take you for a spin on the rink if no one is watching. These are just some of the simple freedoms home-schooled kids and their teachers (usually moms) enjoy on an average day. 
Classes happen at or around the home for more than 26,000 Canadian kids, and their ranks are growing. Between 2008 and 2015, that number jumped by more than 36 percent, says Fraser Institute researcher Deani Neven Van Pelt, one of Canada?s top home-school experts. That?s fast expansion for a 50-year-old movement. ?Home-schooling is becoming more sophisticated,? she says. ?It taps into parents? imaginations about what?s possible for the education of their children.? What began as a largely Christian movement (by parents who wanted a religiously informed education for their children) has since become more of a secular pursuit and has definitely evolved. Families who home-school are diverse, not necessarily religious and quite entrepreneurial when it comes to finding novel ways to teach old lessons; they do it because they can, because it gives them more time together and because it?s more practical than ever before.

?We can all be self-educators in ways t...