For a variety of reasons (many of them pandemic-related), I’ve been having similar conversations with lots of worried first-time homeschoolers in the past few days. I found myself thinking I should find a way to make this information easy to share with people who ask.
Then I found myself thinking, Um. You have a blog. That’s literally what it’s for.
So, here’s my “surprise! You’re homeschooling!” pep talk and advice. It’s not meant to be the end-all, be-all of home education, and it comes with the strong caveat that you’ll need to figure out what works best for your learner, and that takes trial and error.
Still, if you’re brand new, unexpectedly homeschooling, and feeling overwhelmed (I’ve been there!), this might give you a good starting place.
First Thing's First: Know the Legal Requirements
My very first piece of advice is to make sure that you fully understand the legal requirements for homeschooling in your particular location.
If you’re in the United States, you’ll quickly learn that every state has its own set of requirements. Some have virtually no record keeping requirements or oversight. Others require annual testing and a portfolio review.
While the nuts and bolts of how to create a learning environment that works for your family look similar across the board, the specific details of how you keep track of that work and to whom you report it looks different. Knowing your legal requirements from the beginning can save you a lot of headaches down the line.
It’s much easier to keep compliant documents from the beginning than to scramble to remember your work later.
Understand Your Curricular Choices
Most of the questions I’ve been fielding lately are from people looking for curricular options. In other words: the actual content of homeschooling.
This is not only the most important part for your learner’s success, but it’s also the most fun part!
When it comes to homeschooling, there are many different ways it can look. Here are the most common ways that the content of the education gets delivered to learners:
Basically, you have the choice of online classes, in-person co-ops, print curricula you purchase, and DIY curricula you build yourself using resources like books, documentaries, etc.
Online classes have the benefit of creating some of the best parts of a traditional learning experience in your own home. Depending on the contours of the class, students may have classmates to share in the learning, a teacher who can answer questions and direct exploration, and assignments laid out and ready to go with little prep work from parents/guardians.
In-person co-op experiences share many of these benefits. Learners can work together with a cohort, build friendships, and work on group projects. Both online classes and co-op classes can also offer you (the parent/guardian) some time to yourself to work or take care of other responsibilities.
Of course, that convenience often comes at an expense, and it’s often not practical (from a budgetary or a schedule perspective) to take every class online or through a co-op.
My advice is to pick one or two subjects (the one your learner likes best or the one you struggle the most to teach) for the most robust online or in-person offerings.
I recently wrote a post about finding the right kind of online class for your learner’s needs, but here’s a quick overview of the general types of materials available:
- Live Online Classes– These classes meet face-to-face (via Zoom or some other teleconferencing software) on a regular (usually weekly) basis. Learners are given assignments, get feedback from teachers, and usually interact with classmates.
- In-Person Community Classes- Many of the extracurricular resources available to children in traditional school settings are also available to homeschooled learners. Whether it’s joining a sports team at the Y, going to the zoo’s weekend science offerings, or joining Girl Scouts, there are plenty of chances for meaningful in-person interactions through these more traditional avenues.
- In-Person Co-op Classes– Many areas will also have in-person events specifically for homeschoolers. Many of these are set up by a collective of homeschooling families. These cooperatives can vary in how much they cost, how often they meet, and how they function. Some are mostly social events with low costs. Others are nearly full academic schedules with drop-off hours and tuition.
- Guided/Flexible Online Classes- There’s still a teacher giving assignments and feedback, but there are no live meetings. Students interact mostly asynchronously on message boards and by submitting assignments.
- Self-Paced Online Classes– An instructor has created a class and set it up in a Learning Management System (LMS) so that learners can work through it at their own pace. There are no teacher-student interactions, and parents/guardians will likely have to give feedback and assessments themselves (often with a provided answer key or rubric).
- Print Curricula– Educators create entire curricula or single unit studies that can be purchased, printed, and used in the home. These might be PDF downloads or books.
- DIY Projects– Rather than buying a curriculum, many homeschooling parents piece together materials to create a unit study for a subject. These include curating library books, websites, documentaries, and projects related to the given theme.
At this point, a lot of people ask me what I use, and my honest answer is all of them. I am an “eclectic” homeschooler, which means I take what works, leave what doesn’t, and am happy to experiment along the way.
Considerations when Making Curricular Choices
The problem is not going to be that you can’t find materials. The problem is going to be that you have too many options. It’s helpful to think about your choices with some of the following considerations in mind:
Quality/Expertise
Homeschooling materials run the gamut from peer-reviewed content overseen by multiple experts who hold advanced degrees in the field to PDF downloads put together by another homeschooling parent who is just sharing what they did in their own home.
Materials across that spectrum can be valuable, interesting, and worthwhile.
But you probably want to make your choices with the creator’s expertise and depth in mind.
The age and goals of your learners change these considerations as well. What works well as a first grader’s introduction to geometrical shapes might not be a great fit for an eighth grader who is advanced in math and dreams of being a physicist.
Pay attention to who created the materials. If you can’t find out, that’s probably a red flag.
Perspective/Bias
Many homeschooling materials are intentionally religious in their perspective. The religious homeschooling community has long been the most organized and well-resourced branch of homeschoolers, and the materials reflect this.
If you care about presenting materials through a secular lens, it matters how the materials were created. Those who attempt to just “skip over” the religious parts of a religious curriculum are often very disappointed or don’t realize how much subtle bias has leaked into the rest of the materials. It’s better to pick a curriculum that aligns with your goals from the beginning.
Science and history are the two areas where secular vs. religious differences (even when they’re not overt) are most pronounced.
Time Commitment/Supplies
I’ve purchased some amazing curricula — that sits on my shelf gathering dust.
I wasn’t being honest with myself about how much time we had to commit to that subject or how willing I was to gather supplies and set up elaborate projects.
If that’s what you’re looking for, excellent! Make sure you pick curricula that will give you lots of projects and a very robust set of weekly interactions.
If that’s not what you’re looking for, however, buying something more hands-on and time consuming is probably just going to leave everyone frustrated.
Advice and Tips from the Field
The rest of this is definitely a “take what works; leave what doesn’t” situation. I was an unexpected homeschooler, and it was panic-inducing. Now that I’m more than four years in, things are much less scary, and here’s what helped me get there:
Time is On Your Side
Do not think of the school year as two, 15-week semesters if you don’t want it to be. You have 365 days. Divide it up in the way that works for you.
- Intense focus on a single subject for a month at a time.
- Interdisciplinary projects where the time gets divided up between multiple subjects.
- One subject per day five days a week.
- One subject per week in a five- or six-week cycle.
- School in the evenings, on weekends, in the early mornings.
- School in two-hour chunks with lots of breaks.
Don’t let the preconceived notion of a “school day” force you into a box you don’t like.
Staggered Starts
A classroom teacher has an entire year’s worth of curricular choices made for all the subjects they’ll teach when they start the new school year.
You don’t have to do that.
Much of that work is done to meet the needs of having up to 30 learners in a single classroom with a very regimented day.
If you have a science curriculum you love but you don’t know what to do for ELA yet, then start with science. Research ELA until you’re comfortable.
You don’t need to start all the subjects at the same time. Staggered start dates can help build routines and give you time to research and plan while learning what works best for your learner.
Pick Two: The Weakest and the Strongest
Not everyone is going to agree with me on this one (and that’s fine), but it works well for my family.
I put a ton of focus into planning the areas where my learner and I are really rocking it (for us, that’s language arts) and where we’re struggling (that’s math).
For one of these, I have carefully curated tons of homemade curriculum that’s engaging, time-consuming, and lots of fun.
For the other, I outsourced it completely to someone more skilled.
I spent a lot of my time and money budget on these two areas. The other subjects get slightly less robust coverage, and I’m okay with that.
Final Thoughts
The most important thing I can tell you as you start this journey is that it will change. No matter how hard you work to figure out a plan that provides everything your family needs, the needs will shift.
I say this not to scare you, but so you don’t feel like a failure when it inevitably happens. Every single homeschooler I know (and I know a lot of truly amazing home educators) has said the same thing. There is no one-size-fits-all curriculum, and there is no plan that fits all the ages and stages of an individual learner’s life.
The fact that your learner will eventually have new needs and that you’ll have to stretch new muscles to reach them isn’t a sign that you did something wrong — it’s a sign that you did your job right.