Welcome, friend, to the start of a wonderful journey— a journey that you, perhaps, feel ill-equipped to begin. And perhaps rightly so, as this is not the sort of thing one wants to haphazardly muddle their way through. So take heart in your proper understanding of the weightiness of the situation.

Yet also take heart in the fact that if our Founding Fathers and Laura Ingalls could be more than well-educated without electricity, plumbing, or the internet that you, too, can home educate your child.

And so whatever your personal reasons, the time has come and you have decided to homeschool your child(ren). Congratulations! There are seven steps I propose all homeschool parents take as they begin their homeschooling journey for, as Stephen R. Covey writes in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” we must begin with the end in mind. Because if we do not know where we are going, any ‘ol path will get us there, as is illustrated in the iconic dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

And so, let us, too, begin with our end in mind as we explore homeschooling purpose, philosophies, and methods in light our 7 Actionable Steps for a Successful First Year of Homeschooling.

1. Define the Purpose of Education

I am firm believer in setting out on all sorts of adventures in a spirit of joy and anticipation, as opposed to a spirit of fear or trepidation. We cannot and must not be driven by worry and so it is of the utmost importance to sit down now and consider these questions with thoughtful enthusiasm:

• Why am I considering homeschooling my child?

• What do I hope to gain from this intentional time with him?

• What do I hope she gains from this intentional time with me?

• How would I like to see this transform my child’s relationship with education?

• How would I like to see this transform my child’s relationship with the world around him?

• What would I like for her to have experienced as a result of being home educated?

• Would I like them to have more time for sports or instruments?

• Would I like them to savor more literature?

• Would I like to better honor their academic strengths and weaknesses?

• Am I hoping for more time to travel?

• Do I want to have more input into the perspective in which the academic material is presented?

  Remember, there are a myriad of wonderful reasons to homeschool your child and understanding your set of motivations will help you (1.) understand what sort of homeschooler you want to be and (2.) stay the course when the going gets tough.

2. Identify Priorities

Once you have considered your motivation behind homeschooling, you will need to consider how this impacts your priorities. Keep in mind, these are not necessarily academic priorities. Here are a few priorities parents have within their homeschools:

• Guiding their children toward knowing God and enjoying him through their academic studies

• Encouraging their children to think and act rightly through their academic studies

• Allowing children to pursue their interests on their schedules at their own pace

• Designing integrative studies that combine history, literature, science, and even mathematics

• Developing occupational skills to prepare their children for the workforce

• Creating a challenging curriculum to prepare their children for college

• Science, Technology, Engineering, (Art), Mathematics (STEM/ STEAM)

• History, Literature

• Sports

  Understanding and remembering why you are homeschooling is key in identifying your priorities within your homeschool. There are a good many ways to homeschool but your focus is on taking the path that honors God’s calling on your family.

3. Explore Educational Philosophies

There is most likely a philosophy (or model of education) out there that currently encompasses your homeschool priorities. Only you know why you homeschool, but there is a philosophy that upholds your same priorities— there’s no need to reinvent the wheel (which I find so encouraging). Here are a few popular philosophies to get you started:

• Essentialism: this is the philosophy behind today’s public schools. It is geared toward teaching children the basic skills required in society. It is a teacher-centered philosophy in that a child’s education rests upon the teacher delivering the essential information to the child. Unit Studies and textbooks are popular methods of implementing this educational model, in that the necessary information is predetermined and prepackaged for the child’s mind to digest.

• Alternative: alternative philosophies tend to be a more open-ended child-centered or play / project - centered approach. Their priority is on helping the child become more of who they already are, who they were born to be. Some popular alternative schooling philosophies are:

  • Unschooling / Delight Driven: With Unschooling, a child explores a topic of his choosing at his pace and (more or less) his own oversight. When he feels he has learned all there is for him to learn on the subject, then he is finished. Delight Driven is similar but with more parental oversight. The child chooses a topic that interests him and then the parent plans the lesson around that interest.

  • Montessori: a Montessori classroom is a child-centered, self-paced, carefully prepared academic environment. The specificity of the classroom materials and lessons is one major differing aspect of this philosophy from the next one.

  • Waldorf: a Waldorf classroom is child-centered, and play - based with an emphasis on the arts and emotional and relational awareness and competency, with mathematics and science being woven in.

• Classical Education: a classical approach to education is one that has an emphasis on the seven liberal arts and the Great Books. Education is viewed as a feast that the teacher prepares but the student eats and assimilates of his own volition, thereby making his own connections. A popular thought among classical educators is that education is meant to nourish the student’s soul on truth, goodness, and beauty. The aim of this sort of education differs on whether or not one is a Christian or a Humanist. The Christian’s aim of classical education is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, especially through the continual growing in the knowledge of Him, while the humanist’s aim is to educated an informed, moral citizen. Some specific philosophies include:

  • (Humanist) Classical Education: The Humanist would say that the aim of classical education is to raise up a generation of virtuous (right thinking, right feeling, right doing) citizens for the benefit of society. The method of imparting this education — the seven liberal arts, Great Books, Socratic discussion, the study of Latin and the ancient texts — are the same as with Classical Christian Education.

  • Classical Christian Education / Charlotte Mason*: Christian Classical Education maintains that the fullness of education was manifested during the Greco / Roman / Hebrew cultures; that is, that true education (and therefore it’s ultimate purpose) is found in the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

  • Neo-Classical Education: this subset places an emphasis on the first three liberal arts as not only subjects to be studied but stages of a student’s academic development. There is often an emphasis on rote memorization.

4. Find Curricula

Alrighty, so now you know why you want to home educate and what you hope to accomplish. Now is the time to consider how you will get there and the curriculum is that “how.”

Finding your resources could be as simple as buying textbooks for each subject along with a corresponding work book, if that is what fits your philosophy.

It could also be as simple as buying a “boxed curriculum” in which all the Great Books and the parent script come in one easy to open and go package, or a "boxed curriculum” with a ready to go unit study, again if that fits your philosophy.

There is also the freedom of finding a predetermined booklist and reading through it or simply reading whatever books fancy the interest of your student.

The exciting and encouraging fact of the matter is:

• There are a variety of textbooks

• There are a variety of boxed curricula

• There are a variety of book lists

• There are variety of books

Your needs and the needs of your child can and will be met. I go into more of the specifics on what these resources are and where to find them in this post.

4. Implement Curriculum (but as you see fit)

You might be surprised to find that there is more to a curriculum than executing it exactly as the creators recommend. You might be surprised at the flexibility and power you have as the educator to implement the curriculum as you see fit. And I want to affirm you in this: you have the power to use the curriculum as you fit.

For example, let us consider a traditional public school. If the teacher allots four school days to learning arithmetic before taking an exam, then the teacher is grading the student not on how well he knows arithmetic but on how well the student knows arithmetic after four days. As your child’s teacher, you can spend four weeks on arithmetic if that is what it takes for your child to master the subject. And as a throwback to your academic priorities, wouldn’t you consider mastery of the subjects to be a high priority?

Or let’s consider something more specific: the Charlotte Mason philosophy holds that for elementary aged children, the time spent on each subject should not exceed 20 minutes. Math lessons? No more than 20 minutes. Handwriting? No more than 20 minutes, and preferably 10 - 15 minutes. She also maintained that, for example, literature (reading) should be followed by drawing (hands on) should be followed by history (reading) and then followed by geography (hands on).

Or then there’s this: not every subject has to be done everyday. If geography is one of your subject, geography doesn’t have to studied every day. Or maybe you have a category called Fine Arts and Fine Arts includes Artist Study, Composer Study, Drawing, Poetry, and Drama. Not every one one of those Fine Art subjects needs to be done everyday. One day could incorporate Drawing, and the next could incorporate Composer Study.

And so in this way, you can see that the way you schedule your subjects and the timeframe you allot these subjects give you a good deal freedom in the way you implement your curriculum.

6. Create Community

A great deal of concern exists that homeschooled children lack proper social maturity. I suppose that could be true, but I suppose that could be true amongst children schooled within an institution as well. Regardless, a great tool in developing your child’s social skills and maturity is community.

Community might include visiting your local nursing home, volunteering at a food shelter, hiking with a guided tour at a state park or, yes, attending a homeschool co-op. These options provide your child the opportunity to “socialize”, certainly, but more than that, these options allow your child to “socialize” with a variety of people, in a variety of age brackets, in a variety of circumstances. If we want to our children to have competent socialization skills, having them interact within multiple settings provides lots of opportunities for growth and practice.

The benefit of a co-op is a bit different, however. Here the stability of people along with a like-mindedness allows our children to develop deep and meaningful relationships. These outings are great for mothers, too, as we engage with others who can more easily identify with our unique situation.

Classical Conversations and Wild + Free are two nationally recognized groups that can help facilitate community in your homeschool.



7. Remember to Rest

Rest is an important part of home education— both for you and your students, I mean, children. Remember that public and private school teachers are not with their students in the evenings and the weekends, but you are. And you do not get sick days or personal days— you don’t have a substitute teacher option.

So whether that rest means you school for six continuous weeks and then take a week off (like Sarah Mackenzie suggests) or you have a field trip once a week or, heck, maybe you even take a break from a subject and come back to it. Taking a rest might also mean stepping back so that you can evaluate what’s going on in your school— what’s working, what’s not working— so that you can make some changes.

A rest can mean a break, it can mean a reset or a redo, or also a reflection. It could also mean preparation for the next big push. Remember, you’re resting, not quitting.