New Homeschoolers

The first two weeks: what a new homeschool should actually attempt before it tries to cover anything

A family that has chosen the curriculum, built the day, learned to read progress, selected its outside resources, and worked out what to do when a child refuses now faces the part none of that prepares it for, which is starting. A family can be tempted to open on day one at the pace it intends to hold in March, and that temptation can lead to a collapse a few weeks later. The first two weeks are not for covering material. They are for installing a routine that a family can repeat on a bad morning, and the schedule that survives that test is often shorter than the one written in July. Plus the policy dispatch as North Carolina extends its ESA+ offers and the Texas funding calendar turns out to work differently for homeschoolers than for private school families.

The last five issues built a working early-grades year and then addressed what to do when it meets a child who will not participate, which completes the planning and leaves the execution untouched. This issue takes up the first two weeks of an actual homeschool year and argues that they serve a dif…