At the time of this writing, the first official recommendations have been released for schools to follow as they try to reopen for the next school year. Many parents are looking at this list in total disbelief. There is no way they can expect our children and teachers to do all this, right?
Naturally, many schooling parents are now looking into homeschooling rather than send their kids back to school in the fall.
Since coming home in March, parents have really had a mixed bag.
Some have children who really struggle without the support of their school. They might miss the support and connection to peers that school provides. Some parents may really have struggled with juggling everything through distance learning.
Others have found their children to be more relaxed, less anxious, and more eager to learn now that they don’t have the pressures of being at school. They’ve been enjoying the family time together. Maybe homeschooling is actually something your family wants to pursue now!
Maybe you’d been thinking about homeschooling before, but you needed this big nudge to try it out.
So what do you do if you want to officially homeschool next year? What can you do if you have NO idea what homeschooling really looks like? How do you find a curriculum? Do you even NEED a curriculum? What does a typical day look like?
How to Start Homeschooling (When Have NO Idea What You’re Doing)
The Quick-List
- Find Your State Homeschool Laws
- Take Time to Deschool
- Dip Your Toes Into Homeschooling
- Free Curriculum Guides and Resources
- Grab the free PDF Quick-Start Guide below to help you through the beginning phases of homeschooling
First of all, you’re in good company here. I never saw myself as a homeschooler and had no clue how to do it either. I have two education degrees and spent ten years in the classroom, so I had a lot of preconceived notions about what homeschooling was or wasn’t.
Related: How I Went From Frazzled Classroom Teacher to Relaxed Homeschool Mom
But the more I started digging into different homeschooling “gurus” out there by listening to their podcasts, reading their books, and attending conferences, the more I started to really think about my own philosophies on teaching and learning. As a result, our homeschool experience has taken a certain form.
We are very relaxed homeschoolers. If anything, I’d say we’re what you call “unschoolers”, but I’m not attached to any one label. I’ve had many years to think about it though, and that gift of time is not lost on me.
You haven’t been given time. The current world situation hasn’t exactly primed you for a period of rich personal development and refining of your educational philosophy.
You’re in the thick of it. You’re in the trenches.
You’ve probably had to deal with some amount of e-learning or Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI) over the last several months. You probably noticed your kids behaving differently at home, or had problems “getting your kids to do the work”.
So my first piece of advice to all you new homeschool parents is this:
1. Breathe and give yourself grace.
If you survived e-learning, rest assured that you are more than capable. Remote learning was hard for EVERYONE, and you are a rockstar for making it this far.
I want to make it abundantly clear: if you struggled with distance learning and called it “homeschool”, that is NOT what homeschooling is all about. In distance learning, work is mandated to you and you have to force your kids to do it. In homeschooling, parents and children have the freedom to choose the methods and materials they want to meet the learning goals they set together.
If remote learning didn’t look like school or go “perfectly” in your eyes, all the better. Because at the end of the day, what actually mattered was that you were there loving on your children and helping them learn and grow the best you could.
Breathe. The hard part is over.
Give yourself grace. “Perfect” is a myth.
If your official school year is over, CONGRATS! You can now fully embrace the next very important task.
2. “Deschool” your family.
What exactly is “deschooling”? And why should you do it?
Deschooling is a process.
Basically, you need time to remove yourself and your children from the rigid constructs of what you think school is or isn’t. If you’re like me, you probably went to school for K-12. Private or public, doesn’t matter. We’ve had this notion of what learning looks like ingrained in us through that experience.
For us schooled kids, learning looked like sitting at a desk. Like spending 7-8 hours a day in a school building away from family. It looked like having to follow the rules and not having the freedom to be yourself. Of being forced to do things you weren’t interested in. Of being forced to wake up before your body was ready to go learn something that didn’t interest you so that you could check it off on a box for your transcript.
Is that what learning should look like?
Deschooling is the time where you have the freedom to figure that out for yourself. It’s a time where you, as the parent, can think about your personal philosophies on teaching and learning. And it’s the time where your children are free to explore their own interests and passions without forced learning activities or arbitrary schedules.
This process will take some time, and the longer your kids were in school, the longer it will probably take you to reach a comfy point in your homeschool experience.
So again, breathe and give yourself grace.
Of course, as a beginning homeschooler you’re probably thinking, “Gee, all this relaxing looks great, but at some point we have to get into “real” learning right?”
Well…
3. Dip your toes in the homeschooling waters.
Homeschooling looks different for every family. Some kids, like mine, do really well with an unschooling approach. Other kids may crave a more predictable structure, especially at first.
Most parents just starting out are looking for the security of a curriculum. If you don’t feel confident in your ability to teach your children or to know what they “should” be learning from year to year, a curriculum is a good place to start.
Luckily, you don’t have to spend any money on this. In fact, I would highly discourage you from spending a ton of money on any curriculums until you know how you and your kids actually learn and work together.
FREE ONLINE CURRICULUMS TO TRY
Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool – “A complete, free, online homeschool curriculum”; K-12, a great starting place when you don’t know what to choose or need general guidelines for what skills and topics to cover. The general curriculum can be used in a secular way, though Christian religious resources are available. You are free to pick and choose what materials you use and how.
Ambleside Online – A complete Charlotte Mason curriculum, including easy-to-read yearly overviews, book lists, activity ideas, and more. Charlotte Mason advocated that the child is a whole person, not simply a vessel to be filled. Studies in the CM tradition are rooted in “living books”, nature studies, handicrafts, and a rich connection to culture and history.
Mater Amabilis – PreK-12th, a Catholic Charlotte Mason program similar to Ambleside Online.
Khan Academy – Online video-based courses for K-12. They include a HUGE variety of courses, including Advanced Placement classes. Courses are high-quality and very engaging!
4. Take some time to learn about the beautiful world of homeschooling.
I have probably put more effort into refining my own philosophy of teaching and learning in the last three years of homeschooling than I ever did when I was in the classroom. There is something about being in the thick of it with your own children day in and day out that forces you to really confront what true learning IS.
There’s also something about going against the grain that makes you have to really think about it. No one questions your decision to send your children to school. In most cases, it’s just what you DO. But when you take the audacious step to homeschool, everyone questions it.
If you’re homeschooling this coming year because you don’t want to subject your children to whatever the “new normal” might be in the schools, I think you’re about to discover something beautiful about your family. Or at least, you will if you allow yourself to.
Take some time to read some good books or blogs and listen to some podcasts. There are dozens upon dozens of resources out there, but when you’re starting out it’s good to keep it simple. Here are my favorites to start with:
FAVORITE HOMESCHOOL PODCASTS
The Brave Learner with Julie Bogart
Honey! I’m Homeschooling the Kids
FAVORITE RELAXED HOMESCHOOL BOOKS
The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart
Teaching From Rest by Sarah Mackenzie
Call of the Wild and Free by Ainsley Arment
Homeschool Gone Wild by Karla Marie Williams
5. Start finding out what works (and doesn’t work) for your family.
You may choose to start with a free curriculum and find that you love having a plan of attack for each day. Or you might find curriculums to be too restrictive and against the flow of natural learning for your kids. And even still, you may find yourself in the messy middle where you don’t want a full-blown curriculum but choose individual subject curricula or online programs when it makes sense or fits your child’s interests.
But you won’t really know until you try.
Same goes for creating your homeschool schedule.
You may find that your family thrives on having a cozy Morning Time ritual with prayer, memorizing verses from scripture or prose, and read-alouds. Maybe you like having predictable blocks of time dedicated to certain activities.
Or maybe you’re like our family and you seize learning opportunities all day every day, 24/7/365. We don’t have a strict time to “do school” because we view learning as something that happens all the time in many forms. For us, “doing school” sucks the joy out of it. Learning doesn’t only happen Monday through Friday from 8:00-3:00.
It took me a LONG time to really figure that out though. I struggled at first because I tried to make my super active child sit and do worksheets from approved subjects. It went over like a lead balloon.
Related: What our homeschool looked like at the beginning (and why we learned to “break the rules”)
You can do this.
If you’re putting enough thought into this homeschooling business to be reading blogs like this, you’re well-equipped to be a homeschool parent. Why? Because it shows that you yourself are curious and willing to learn something new. Isn’t that what we also want for our kids?
If they can get a vibrant education through their homeschool experience, wonderful! If they get it by going back to school, also good! And if their education features a mix of both homeschooling and traditional schooling, they’ll still be fine. Love and support them through it all. Partner with them in the educational process. You’ll be amazed at how far they can go.