STONINGTON — From the outside, it looks like a home: a snug red cottage perched above Holt Pond with sheep grazing in a nearby field.

On the inside, however, it looks like a school, with lists of homonyms and class rules on the wall, two computers and eight children.

Then again the classrooms boast as many sofas as desks, and besides hanging up their jackets, the pupils kick off their shoes when they come in.

This cozy combination is only fitting for a place that bridges the gap between home and school. Founded this fall, the aptly named Bridge School is educating eight third- through fifth-graders whose parents pulled them out of Stonington Elementary School to try a more individualized approach to education.

Officially home-schooled, these children spend six hours a day in an unofficial school that’s a lot like home.

“It’s a home, not a school,” said fourth-grader Claire Eaton, explaining why she prefers the Bridge School to Stonington Elementary. “It’s not chock-full of kids. You don’t have to stick to a really tight schedule, and there’s a lot of things to do. You’re never bored.”

The pupils at the Bridge School are the latest recruits to a flourishing group of about two dozen home-schoolers in Stonington and Deer Isle. Their teachers include not just their parents, but full-time certified teacher Beth Warner, and some adult volunteers who teach yoga and Spanish classes.

“We’re somewhere between an unapproved private school and formal home-schooling,” said Warner. “We go with the students’ interests. It’s fun. It’s really, really fun.”

Each family contributes about $3,500 to pay Warner’s salary. Local weekly newspaper publisher Nat Barrows offered the use of his cottage for free, and most of the equipment has been donated.

This little school is just one example of the changing face of home-schooling around the country. Twenty years ago, home-schooling was a fringe movement conjuring up images of parents and kids sitting together at the kitchen table with a pile of textbooks. Religious education was usually their goal, and battles with officials over state regulations resulted in many places, including Maine.

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, mounting dissatisfaction with the public schools and looser restrictions on home-schooling have transformed the practice into a mainstream movement that now includes 1.2 million to 1.6 million students, according to the Salem, Ore.-based National Home Education Research Institute.

Parents can download lesson plans off the Internet, order materials from home-school catalogs, and subscribe to magazines devoted just to home-schooling. Their kids play on the local schools’ sports teams and use their science labs and computers.

Though cooperative learning efforts have been around since home-schooling began in the late 1970s, more families are joining together in informal group schools like the Bridge School to lighten the burden and isolation of home education for both parent-teachers and their students.

“There is more of this happening,” said Dr. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute. “Because the numbers are up, there’s a greater variety of philosophy out there.”

In Maine, about 3,700 students are home-schooled, including 166 in Hancock County. Edwin Kastuck of the Department of Education said the numbers have grown by about 250 to 300 every year since the laws regulating home-schooling were eased in 1991. Parents now need only notify the Department of Education of their plans, instead of seeking approval from local school boards.

The Bridge School parents got together over the summer, and quickly realized they shared many of the same ideas regarding their children’s educations. They wanted flexible schedules and a relaxed environment, hands-on learning in an integrated curriculum, an emphasis on the arts and writing, multiage classrooms and more individual attention.

“It’s a much better education,” said third-grader Parker McDonnell. “The teacher can pay attention to you instead of having all these kids and you’re sitting with your hand up way in the back.”

At the Bridge School, only math is taught from a textbook. Other subjects are introduced through real-world learning experiences, many based on the around-the-world solo sailing race called Around Alive ’98.

The kids are tracking the 26,000-mile race on the Internet. Warner uses the experience to teach about geography, navigation and sailing skills, foreign cultures and oceanography. Some topics arise based on pupils’ inquiries and parents’ knowledge — or their willingness to learn about a topic along with the kids.

“I feel like I have to work more, but I like it,” said Claire Eaton. “[Before], I always had to wait for everyone else to be done.”

The parents include a librarian, a fisherman, a dentist, a gardener and a house painter, said Warner. They wanted to be more involved in their children’s education, and the Bridge School gives them a way to share the responsibility.

“Home-schooling is really difficult,” said parent Bill Mor. “Kids want to be with other kids. This is sort of a compromise.”

Parents are reluctant to criticize the Stonington Elementary School, pointing out that no teacher with 15 or 20 students can possibly offer the individualized coursework and amount of attention that Warner provides to her eight charges. Nor are all parents willing or able to commit as much time and energy to their children’s educations as Bridge School parents do.

“I had great experiences in the schools here, but I do think this is a leap beyond to something different,” said parent Barbara Bennett. She also praised the school board for its cooperation. The Bridge-schoolers ride the school bus, and have been invited to sign up for French classes at Stonington Elementary School.

Such cooperation may come as little suprise, since the Deer Isle-Stonington school district has been a bastion of home-schooling since the early 1990s. Kastuck said about 4.4 percent of the island’s students are now home-schooled, three times the state average of 1.5 percent. Even in Hancock County, the average is only about 1.8 percent.

By ninth grade, most home-schoolers return to public or private school. But every year, a handful of students at the Deer Isle-Stonington Junior-Senior High School takes a few classes at school while continuing to be home-schooled. Home-schooled students come in to use the school’s computers, textbooks, library or science labs.

Other students learn calculus by the University of Maine’s ITV system, or study off-campus for Advanced Placement exams. The school has only 300 students in grades seven through 12, so it can’t offer a large variety of courses. Principal Art Wittine said flexibility helps accommodate a wide range of students.

“Realistically, the smaller the school, the fewer the options,” said Wittine.

On the Blue Hill Peninsula, however, the educational options are growing rapidly. A private high school in Blue Hill, the Liberty School, opened last year and now has about 50 students. The K-8 Bay School in Blue Hill has expanded 30 percent in the past five years, and 14 kids, mostly third grade and up, are on a waiting list for its 95 slots. Meanwhile, the Bridge School parents are talking about adding a second and a sixth grade next year.

“We’re hoping that it will be bigger,” said Bennett. “But this is still early days.”