Reimagining Homeschool

some stories + a different way to look at home education

Hello! While we hope to support parents of all kinds and the various educational decisions they make, several of you have asked for some guidance on homeschooling in particular. If you don’t care about homeschooling, feel free to delete this email. This is probably the only time in the whole year that we’ll talk about homeschooling, and it’s a more personal post from me (Hope) mostly sharing a story of a family I met who did school differently.

However, if you are interested in possibly homeschooling, I hope this post encourages you and lifts some burdens you might be feeling. First, please read last month’s post on 7 Questions About Education and an interview I did with For the Love of Words. Since my oldest is only 10, I’m relatively inexperienced in my homeschooling journey, so I’m not going to try to be prescriptive here, but instead I just want to ask questions and find inspiration alongside you. At the bottom I will share a bit about what we do and how our homeschool area is set up, if you care to see that.

A Family That Disrupted My View of Homeschooling

I think a first crucial step when you’re thinking about homeschooling is to break apart your expectations. I was homeschooled until 4th grade—and loved it—but I came into my role as a homeschool parent with a very limited vision of what it can and should look like. This has changed a lot as I’ve talked to more people who were homeschooled—including my husband— and read more about school around the world (Finland’s approach seems particularly interesting.)

When my oldest child was ten months old, we moved across the street from a family of eight, and their way of schooling disrupted everything I expected for how school-aged children might spend their time. When we first moved in, the younger boys started mowing our lawn (for free, to welcome us into the neighborhood) and the oldest son brought us brownies he made from scratch. The daughters brought us food, too—fresh-baked bread!—and held my baby while I made dinner. Everyone could play an instrument, and nearly every morning, they sang together. I joined them sometimes, which was such a special experience.

The kids had dog-sitting, babysitting, and lawn-maintenance businesses, and they were known and trusted by just about every neighbor on the street. Every other Friday, the family went to a nursing home to sing for the residents and spend time with them. As a 21-year-old, I joined them once, and while I was busy thinking about how I was ready for lunch, the 16-year-old daughter asked the woman we were sitting with about who was in her pictures and asked follow-up questions that made the woman feel so loved. The mother of the family helped a resident try to figure out power-of-attorney stuff, which was so boring to me but truly a gift to that person.

I don’t know how much workbook stuff those kids did, but I saw them living life. I thought homeschooling was supposed to be doing normal school stuff—except at home—but this family showed me a different way. They spent their days doing things that really seemed to matter. Every single kid from that family was (and is) unique, confident, and a delight to know.

Unschooling Again?

Fast forward to 2021 when my husband and I had five kids of our own and we all lived in an RV. Baby life was intense, so yet again, we didn’t get to do as much formal schooling as I had hoped. I planned to give the kids a Charlotte Mason-style education, but for the third year in a row it felt more like unschooling. (See below for more on the different homeschool philosophies.)

When it came time for my annual portfolio evaluation by a certified teacher, I wondered—yet again—if our schooling was “enough.” The main thing that the state of Florida required to see was “Progress.” Did my children make progress?

I began to outline the ways they did, with a few before-and-after pictures of their handwriting and math, a list of some of the books we read together, and—this was the most powerful part—by going back through all our pictures from the year and taking note of the ways that we grew. Ahem, I mean the ways that they grew 😉 I looked at all the field trips, enriching activities, meals they learned to make, books that impacted them, relational hurdles they overcame…and I was astounded by the progress they made in just about every aspect of life.

One year, I bothered to count how many items were on the “proof of progress” list, and it was over 140. The homeschool evaluator did not need that many 😝 But it was such a helpful exercise that reminded me that the most important parts of education do not come from worksheets.
Facts are less potent than experience.
Living life helps kids grow.

Here’s an unfortunate note, however: some “homeschooling” parents are simply negligent. An anti-unschooling article by Forbes seems to misunderstand people who were “unschooled” who were really just “uneducated.” Their parents didn’t make efforts to give them enriching lives or truly prepare them for the future. This is gross mistreatment, not homeschooling or unschooling. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, look up “unschooling outcomes;” it’s easy to extrapolate terrible stories, but the general trend is that unschoolers adjust to adult life—and even college life—very well. This article by KQED sums up some of the research; it’s fascinating (and encouraging.)

Different Homeschool Approaches

As mentioned earlier, I entered parenthood assuming that there was only one way to homeschool, and that was the way my mom homeschooled me: the traditional method. This worked very well for me and my learning style. I was finished with school before lunchtime every day, and I even doubled up on some of my schoolwork so I could have Fridays off. When I went to private school in fourth grade, I remember feeling way ahead of the curriculum because I had such an excellent education in my earlier years. (Thanks, Mom ❤️)

Not everyone learns like that, however, and the traditional method can be especially difficult for boys. Many of these types of curricula also tend to be expensive; a leading brand’s 3rd Grade kit for one student is $443 on sale. I’m almost certain that using that curriculum would have made one of my sons feel deeply hopeless about school and probably even unintelligent.

It turns out that there are many other homeschooling styles, such as the Montessori method, Classical Conversations, unit studies, or an eclectic approach where you use a little bit of everything. You might even hear about “worldschooling” or “gameschooling” but a common theme that defines most of these methods at their core is raising lifelong learners.

My personal favorite style that I think feels most natural and works best for multiple kids at once is the Charlotte Mason method. This approach can be basically free, since the primary “textbooks” are library books and outside play. You can check out Simply Charlotte Mason or Ambleside Online for guidance. The curriculum The Good and the Beautiful, which also has free downloads for some of the subjects, leans most closely toward the Charlotte Mason method, too.

P.S. While curricula companies would love to sell you products for your younger kids, children under six really don’t need to do any formal schooling unless you both love it 😉 They’ll still learn their colors and letters even if you don’t do a single flashcard with them. But please do read to them and let them play outside a lot ❤️

What Our Homeschool Looks Like

Our homeschooling varies by the year and by the season. We had a nearly nonstop stream of guests from April to early July, so we focused on being present as hosts, going on adventures with our guests, and, I don’t know, feeling like we were sinking a little 😅 instead of doing formal schooling.

In school, grade level typically determines just about every class and every friend a kid has access to, which seems to be an arbitrary way to determine one’s identity. My kids don’t know what grade they’re in, because we don’t believe it’s important. I asked one of my kids what they tell people when asked about grade level. “Different grades for different things.” I think that’s a perfect answer. That child’s Language Arts curriculum is 2nd grade and math is 5th grade, and they can understand any abstract concept I try to explain to them, they’re a great older sibling, and I’m confident that they could survive in the woods for months if needed 😅

I want each child’s curricula to meet them in a place where they are challenged but not discouraged. It’s a customized education, after all, so I can kind of do whatever I see fit as long as it meets my state’s standards.

This was during Movie Week 😉Also, if we stay up late with the kids, I make our start time later to make sure they get at least 10 hours of sleep. Sleep is one of the big reasons I’m grateful to homeschool.

Here’s what I’ve been using with my kids who are 6+:

Math: Sylvan math workbooks or Teaching Textbooks (math on the computer)
Language Arts: The Good and the Beautiful and/or reading a ton—see The Read-Aloud Family and our post on readalouds
Science: outdoor time, botanical gardens, living science books, Usborne books, CrunchLab boxes
History: currently A History of Us by Joy Hakim (reading + audiobook), living history books, field trips
Art and Extracurriculars: Family Scripts activities, museums, Doodle Crates, and little enriching lives

So far I’ve used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to teach three children to read—at various ages, when they seemed ready and enjoyed it—and I plan to use it on the rest, but you must know that it’s terribly boring 😅

And what do the younger ones do while we homeschool? I haven’t nailed that one down yet. I offer puzzles and coloring, but oftentimes the toddler still wanders around and gets into trouble 😬

There are so many good books on homeschooling, but I think Sarah Mackenzie is just the queen encourager about being realistic and enjoying your kids; check out The Read-Aloud Family and Teaching From Rest as well as her podcast The Read-Aloud Revival.

Whew, this was one of the longest posts ever! I’m still figuring things out. Experienced homeschool parents are still figuring things out. It’s a happy journey, though.

Thanks for reading, and I hope it was helpful.

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts

P.S. See below ⬇️

A Note on Worldview

I can’t really talk about American homeschooling without talking about the Christian bent in most of homeschool culture. I am a Christian, some of the books I mentioned are written from a Christian perspective, and Charlotte Mason’s faith is interwoven into a lot of what she wrote about homeschooling.

However, I’ve seen this done very, very poorly. Some parents homeschool because they want to control the outcome of their kids and their beliefs. I’ve gone to homeschool conventions and seen low-quality curricula with 90’s fonts that are super popular just because parents want to make sure they get a math curriculum that teaches that the earth is only 6,000 years old 🤔 (Not sure why math needs to be a religious curriculum, but we digress…) But I’ve also seen “secular” companies that didn’t seem to put much work into their product because they knew it’d be an easy sell in their niche, too.

If a curriculum is not high-quality, it is not a good curriculum. I don’t believe it’s honoring to God to skimp on quality, as curriculum creators or as parents who facilitate what takes our kids’ attention.

An open-minded person can read something that contradicts their beliefs and figure out a healthy way to interact with it. In fact, if a curriculum sometimes contradicts your worldview, that’s such a great way to have conversations with your kids!

Put quality first 😊