Homeschooling: How to Start

School districts are starting this school year in all different ways: all-remote learning, hybrid learning (specific days/parts of the day in-school and some remote), and some offering families a choice among these options. No matter how the school year starts, it could change at any moment depending on assessments of the pandemic. A lot of parents are understandably worried about the disruption in learning that the likely switching among these learning modes may cause. Many families are considering homeschooling right now, scary and unknown though that may be, because they want some control and consistency in their child's education. I get that.

We frequently marvel at the fate or luck that brought us to choose homeschooling over a year ago. Our family's experience last spring when all the children were sent home, and this summer as so many have been on tenterhooks, has been different from most. I decided to homeschool over a year ago because we actively wanted to. I had months to research math programs, think about how the roles of "teacher" and "student" might affect my relationship with my son, and to talk until late at night about what my schedule and approach should be. I'm no homeschool expert but starting any new venture is the hardest and where you find the most obvious kinks, and we're happy to have already survived that part! I look forward to our second full year of homeschooling with optimism and a greater sense of calm than I had last year at this time. If you've decided to go the do-it-yourself route and homeschool, here are some tips from my perspective a year in.

Homeschooling: How to Start

Consider your approach. Think about the big picture. You get to decide. What is your philosophy about what education should be? What do you wish your years of schooling had felt, and what is it you really want for your children? How do they each learn best? Like everything else, you don't have to have this all hammered out in order to start, but it's worth giving thought to and having conversations about. Answers to those questions will inform your overall approach and from there your schedule and day-to-day functioning.

There are several distinct styles of homeschooling with different names that families might choose depending on what they value. For me it comes down to a spectrum between "unschooling" at one extreme and traditional schooling at the other. Unschooling is essentially the idea that life is learning, that kids should be kids and free to follow their interests and learn in an organic way as things come up. Traditional schooling is replicating school at home. Unschooling vs. traditional schooling is a choice between little structure and a lot of structure, between kids having a say in everything about their learning or little, between having no schedule and having a rigid schedule, between seeing the world as your classroom and creating a classroom in your home. In thinking about where you fit along this spectrum, I think one key is to accept that it's reasonable to start where you are comfortable. (It was sort of inevitable that I started with a pretty traditional approach last year, coming from teaching in a public school for years. As I approach year two, I find myself edging a bit more toward the middle of this unschool-traditional school spectrum.) Think about what philosophy feels right for you and your family.

Find out what the homeschooling requirements are in your state. Each state is different. We live in New Hampshire. The main things I have to account for are a letter I send to the superintendent over the summer stating our intention to homeschool, which he signs and returns, and a choice among a few options for an end-of-year evaluation to demonstrate learning. Last year we chose a pencil-and-paper mail-order standardized test because it seemed easiest at that point. That's it. Our neighbor, Vermont, has more detailed requirements in comparison, but they sound doable. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has really helpful overviews by state. To double check and feel you have your bases covered, also visit your state Department of Education's web site (here is New Hampshire's) and find the link for homeschooling or "home education." There you'll find any rules and regulations that exist. Once you've gotten a sense for the things you absolutely must do, you can relax a little. Or at least, you can reassure yourself that any pressure you feel is self-induced.   

Choose a space. Do you want and have an extra space in your home where you can store the books and papers and other school supplies, where you will do school work, and where you will be able to post a few posters or visuals as needed? There are advantages to this. It keeps all the school stuff out of the rest of the house and helps to define school time and free time. OR, on the other hand it's nice to ultimately blur the lines between learning and life. Kids need to do quality work whether they're in a classroom or not, and maybe it's good for them to learn through trial and error that it helps to do certain work at the table rather than on the couch, or in the morning rather than the afternoon. If you do school in the lived-in parts of your home, they can be involved in those choices, and see their impact, and learn more about themselves.

Get a feel for what your child "should" learn this year. Regardless of what you may have heard about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), they're adopted by over forty states, and give a pretty comprehensive overview of reading, writing, and math by grade. Read through the CCSS for your child's grade (and glance at the grades above and below) and get a feel for the things your child would be learning if they were in school this year. That said, don't get stressed by it or bogged down in the nitty gritty. Save the link to the standards to look over from time to time as a reference. Also, recognize that it's okay if your child is in 4th grade but doing 3rd grade work in some areas and 5th grade work in others. You can provide work that's at whatever stage they are at. I think it's just good to be aware of.

List the subjects to be taught or studied. As far as academics, your child will need to do at least the "three Rs" (reading, writing, and math). Perhaps also science, social studies, spelling and grammar (upper elementary) or phonics (primary grades), art, music, sports or exercise. You could add things left and right because the possibilities in homeschooling are endless: foreign language, cooking, computer coding, dance, knot tying, learning an instrument, or just following your kids' lead based on whatever interests spark. You won't be able to do everything (it's amazing how the time fills up even when you have the whole day), but you will be able to have your kids do and learn things they wouldn't be able to in school and they'll be excited about that and you'll feel good about it. Don't let the possibilities overwhelm you. Start with the basics and add things in from there.

Choose which programs, if any, you will use to help you teach. Once you know the subject areas your child will study, you have to decide where the day-to-day lessons and activities will come from. You can design them yourself from scratch, research online and pull ideas and resources from different places, or a program-- or boxed curriculum-- can do this.

Sometimes "programs" get a bad rap. Maybe people imagine that with a packaged, store-bought curriculum teachers become robots just turning the page each day and parroting what the book says. But good programs are the result of a lot of research and testing. They incorporate good practices as well as the standards, making sure to "hit" all the things within a topic that are important. There is still plenty of room for putting your stamp on learning-- from how you present it to deciding what to use and what to skip. But they can provide peace of mind especially if it's not your area of strength or inspiration.

There are programs out there claiming to provide a year's worth of lessons and activities in every possible area if you just buy the books or subscribe online. You don't need most of it, and homeschooling doesn't have to cost much. For me personally, I feel it's important to have a math program (we've used Singapore Math). I like knowing my bases are covered with all the little skills and the sequence of skills the kids need to get experience with in math. I also appreciate having something to guide us through science. I couldn't dream up all the good, hands-on, inexpensive activities that Mystery Science guides us through even if I spent all my planning time on science. On the other hand, I don't feel a program is necessary for me to teach reading or writing or social studies or art or music in homeschool. But that's just me. Think about in what areas you have more confidence, and in which areas you have less. Shop for programs to help in the latter.

One other note: I find the idea of homeschool "all-in-one" curricula limiting and too risky. How does any company know "all" I want to teach my kids? I like to pick and choose each resource for the subjects I need. There are sites that review homeschool products and curriculum, such as Cathy Duffy Reviews. But I also don't like to limit myself to just homeschool-specific products. I do general searches for the types of curriculum I want and choose what's best as long as it's affordable and will work at home, whether it's marketed for homeschool or not.

Make a curriculum map. This is something my principal first asked my fellow teachers and me to do about ten years ago. At first it just felt like a lot of work. But now it's an ingrained habit that I can't drop. Essentially it entails making a grid (I use a Google Drive Spreadsheet) and mapping out when during the year you will teach/study what. I put the months of the school year across the top and subjects down the left-hand side. Then I plug in bits and pieces where they make sense throughout the year. Include your kids' interests in your planning, even though more interests will come up throughout the year. You could even add an extra-curricular row to keep track of the "extra" things you hope to do with them or make time for the to do on their own. Of course things will change. You'll get behind in some areas or move faster than you thought through others. But it gives you a nice broad picture of the year-- what you've already covered and where you're going. I find myself checking in with it regularly and glad I took the time to think it through before the year started. Here's a blank version of ours from last year:

Make a schedule or a routine. I started with a pretty intense, detailed schedule last year and I'm edging toward a slightly calmer, more doable routine for year two. As I think through which kid can be doing what when, I need to consider start and end times to be able to gauge what's realistic, but then I might erase them from the written routine we go by; I don't want any of us to get focused on exactly what time it is or on being ahead of or behind schedule. Some days math or science may take more or less time, but we'll always read for about the same length of time each day. It's more about accomplishing the goal or finishing the work for the day. Everyone benefits from some amount of routine. Some (kids and adults) in particular work well with predictable routine and clear structure. Think about what works for you and what works for your kids. Would they benefit from a schedule of when each thing should happen or can you let them choose when to do some things? Which things can they do independently and which do they need your time and help on to get started? Some principles I am trying to work into my plan for this year's basic schedule are as follows:

Do what we can together (art and music for sure, and I know many homeschool families do shared science and social studies as well or fun little community-building activities like memorizing a poem or listening to read aloud).

Do core subjects in the morning when energy is high and save the fun stuff (like art projects or whatever is seen as fun and easy) for later in the day.

Build in breaks in your schedule or have a routine of a regular 5-minute break between subjects.

Build in outdoor time before lunch to work up an appetite.

Consider regular mindfulness or yoga or meditation or other quiet time for a few minutes after lunch to refocus and resettle before the rest of the day.

You don't need to do everything every day, but for core subjects four times a week is important. For things like spelling or science, in elementary school three times a week may be enough.

Other tips/reminders/encouragement:

Be a parent first. When there comes a moment to decide whether to do what you think a teacher would or should do or say, and what a caring parent might do (and there will be those moments, every day), always be the parent. There are not hats coming on and off; you are always Mom or Dad to them. If your relationship is struggling, so will everything else about their learning.

Remember you don't need to try to replicate school. Homeschool is not the same as school, or whatever our memory or image of school is. Homeschooling is something beautiful and different. Nothing says math is best done at a desk. It may be best on a clipboard on a couch next to your dog. There are things about the traditional school environment that are not ideal. You can let go of those things. Embrace all the things that are great about kids being at home to learn-- the time you have with them, the ability to take breaks when needed, their developing sense of agency, the right to quiet when they want it. You can make sure you give your kids more help when they need it and more of a challenge when they need it, and give them whatever special tools or structures or visuals you find they need in order to do their best work. They can learn to get along with their siblings rather than be separated from them all day. Kids can be more involved in household chores and family routines because there isn't the daily rush to get out the door. They can spend time learning other things that are important to them or your family. 

You don't have to have it all worked out on day one. You can change the program you chose or your schedule or your rules and expectations or even your overall approach at any given time. The best you can do in the beginning is to come up with a starting point and agree to talk with your kids frequently about how it's going and be flexible enough to make changes as needed.

It might make you feel more sane to make your own plans rather than try to follow someone else's. Getting started may be overwhelming, but ultimately you may find homeschooling more satisfying than trying to follow a (well-meaning) teacher's remote plans or than sending them off to school each day and not knowing much about what happens there.  

This is not impossible. Lots of families who homeschool do it in lots of different ways. Your family situation is probably far from the strangest. There is no one way to do it. You can join online forums and Facebook groups for homeschoolers and you will quickly get a sense that families make this work in all sorts of ways. Some families have their kids do lots of online classes, some do none. Some families school on the weekend and any other hours that one parent is not working while other families school during normal school hours. Some parents split the school week with a nanny or grandparent or their spouse. You don't have to stress if you can't do school from 8 - 3 Monday to Friday. One thing I've become clear on is that lots of families who have valued homeschooling for a long time have been doing wild things to make it work.

Make use of the library and other free resources. Homeschooling doesn't have to cost much. Our libraries aren't open, but the books are available to be borrowed. We can send them an email or submit a request online for the books we want and they will put them outside for us to pick up. There is something like a 40-book limit and I regularly make use of that. Every few weeks or once a month or so, I look over what our needs will be going forward in books-- for leisure, for science or social studies topics, certain genres we might be focusing on in reading or writing-- and I get a bunch of those books out. Also, there are sites/apps such as Epic which offer online books. They offer free trials and fairly inexpensive monthly rates after that. Under one household account, each of my kids has their own interface which suggests books for their interests and age range and has search options. There are even a lot of books that the app will read aloud to my youngest. I know we don't want too many screens, but Epic has been a nice supplement to the library for us.

If you've read this far, you might also be interested in some of the lessons I learned during our first year of homeschool. Good luck!