After a description of home education, Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) is applied to the situation of home educators who join a neighbourhood home education group, a community of practice. This paper is based on an empirical study undertaken in aid of understanding the learning process of parents as they strive to become ‘home educators’. Data comes from thirty-four in-depth interviews of home educating parents who had been home educating for more than three years.