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                <p>BOSTON (Reuters) – Studying at Harvard, meeting for group French lessons, volunteering at a hospital and spending a day in the wilderness are just a glimpse into a typical day of home schooling, which looks dramatically different today from just a mere decade ago.</p>
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Once considered distinctly Christian, the movement is deepening its mainstream roots, experts say.</p>
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While a majority of home school parents still cite religion or values as a top reason for keeping their children out of public schools, home-school education has been increasingly appealing to a broader audience.</p>
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The ranks of home-schooled students swelled to more than 2 million last year, by some research estimates, compared with about 850,000 home schooled a decade ago.</p>
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"It's a mainstream option now for most Americans," said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, which compiled the latest home school data.</p>
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Home-school families include varied religions, members across the political spectrum, a range of income brackets and parents with different levels of education, Ray said.</p>
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Home schooling is no longer "seen as fringe at all," he said.</p>
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Among the reasons for choosing home education cited by secular parents are strengthening family ties, providing more time for children's interests and developing individualized curricula -- reasons that resonate with religious families pursuing home education as well.</p>
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They too cite concern about public school environments, family ties and academic standards as reasons to home school, research shows.</p>
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Home school is more visible than it once was, with museums catering to home-school groups, home schoolers performing in concerts and local theaters and students earning college credits while still in their early teens.</p>
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Such accomplished students include Sophia Sayigh's son, now 21 and on his own playing in a band, teaching music classes and working to get a studio off the ground.</p>
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Classes that he took at Harvard Extension School while growing up in the Boston suburbs translated into college credits, and he graduated from Berklee College of Music in just two-and-a-half years, his mother said.</p>
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Neither Sayigh's son or daughter, 18 and pursuing a nursing degree, ever went to public school, a choice their mother said stemmed from anxiety she felt sending them into a world of grades, tests and stifling structure.</p>
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On a typical Wednesday in Pamela Victor's home classroom, her 14-year-old son works on structured academics while her 12-year-old daughter heads out to a wilderness program to learn to track animals, find edible plants and build a fire.</p>
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An extended family trip to Florida will let her daughter pursue her interest in marine biology, Victor said.</p>
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"Home schooling has had the benefit of making our family unit much stronger than what it ever would have been," she said.</p>
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The trend could grow exponentially, according to NHERI research that shows about three-quarters of a sample of home-educated students who are now adults raising their own children are opting to home school.</p>
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(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jerry Norton)</p>
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