YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — Darcy Castle never had considered home-schooling her four children before moving to Seoul two years ago.

The thought of parents teaching their kids math, history, language and science at home, all day, every day, was almost too much to imagine, she said. But here at the U.S. military’s main base in Seoul, she kept running into people who home-schooled.

“And at first, I thought: Weirdo,” she admitted.

But Castle, and her husband, Tom, soon found their children needing a different learning environment. One child was falling behind at Yongsan’s Department of Defense Dependents School. Another had physical limitations that required extra attention, Castle said.

The kids had come from a private school in Africa — Tom is an Army chief warrant officer who works at U.S. embassies — where the teacher-to-student ratio was 1 to 4, Castle said. The larger classrooms and block scheduling at DODDS weren’t working for her family.

After many meetings with teachers and principals, the Castles saw home schooling as a solution. “It has completely changed our lives,” she said in April.

Now, she and her kids — four boys ages 5 to 13 — don’t argue as much about homework, tardiness, or school notes reporting problem behavior. Like many other home-schooling families, the Castles cater the curriculum to match each student’s pace and interest. And like many other home-schooling families, they incorporate religious beliefs into the schoolwork.

Like the three other families interviewed for this story, Darcy Castle said she’s seen dramatic changes in her kids since she began teaching them at home. They like learning more. They are more self-motivated. They absorb knowledge more quickly than they did in a traditional classroom.

About 100 children in the Seoul and Uijeongbu area, connected with U.S. Forces Korea, are home-schooled, according to Melinda Waterbury, a home-schooling parent who helps other families get government money to support teaching at home.

Waterbury is holding a workshop from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the South Post chapel to discuss home schooling.

DODDS Superintendent Charles Toth also will attend the workshop to explain how home-schooling families can still participate in his schools’ activities. DODDS supports parents’ rights to educate their children at home, Toth said during an interview last week, and he pointed to a Pentagon memorandum as proof.

Waterbury home-schools four of her five children: Meghan, 14; Brendan, 11; Cameron, 9; and Ian, 6. Liam, the 3-year-old, stays at home as well. Brendan and Cameron go to DODDS on Yongsan each Friday for gifted class, a program open to regular students as well.

The Waterburys chose home schooling strictly as an educational, and not religious, choice, she said. Each year she and her husband, Matthew, who works for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Seoul, talk about each child’s progress and needs. Sometimes they go to school, sometimes not.

This year, all four kids opted to stay home. Two said they weren’t learning enough at school and got bored too easily.

Waterbury also helps run the IDEA program in South Korea. The International Distance Education of Alaska parcels out money to military families in the Pacific on a first-come basis to help buy educational materials. Each student can qualify for $1,200 to $1,600 per school year. That money cannot be spent on religious materials, she said.

Frances Koch, a teacher by profession, now teaches her two sons, Daniel, 9, and Robbie, 5. She and her husband, Kurt, a Marine major, also have a 3-year-old daughter, Emma.

For the Kochs, home schooling was about both learning and religion. To Frances Koch, the opportunity to teach her own children was too hard to pass by.

“I loved being the one who taught them to read,” she said.

Waterbury and Castle weren’t teachers but said that shouldn’t be a deterrent. Home-schooling curriculums abound on the Internet and are written to teach the parent to teach the child, they said. Waterbury said she knew of moms home-schooling in Area I, the military’s camps north of Seoul, who didn’t have a high school degree.

The mothers also had words of caution for prospective home-schooling parents. “It’s not the answer to everything,” Waterbury said.

Scheduling spelling sessions and math problems around laundry and bath times can be extremely trying. Waterbury has virtually no free time to herself; she even schedules — on a weekly grid with each child’s lessons and activities — play time with her 3-year-old.

Waterbury said the most important thing is evaluating each child’s progress in the program. Castle, with her four boys, agreed.

“It’s whatever works for each kid,” Castle said.

Home-school statistics

Home-schooled children registered in DODDS:

Seoul: 39Osan: 1Humphreys: 11Taegu: 7Pusan: 0DODDS student population: