Screen Time

Beyond the curriculum: which of the library, the co-op, the outside class, and the online supplement add to a K-3 homeschool, and which only add to the schedule

The curriculum is chosen, the day is assembled, and the family can read whether it is working, which finishes the core of the early-grades year and opens the question of what to add around it. Four resources present themselves to every new family, the public library, the co-op, the outside class, and the online supplement, and each is sold as enrichment while each also carries a cost in time, money, and attention that the core program has first claim on. This issue takes the four in turn, names what each one genuinely adds to a K-3 home and what it mostly adds to the calendar, and gives the test a family can apply before saying yes: does the resource serve the curriculum and the child, or does it serve the family's worry that it is not doing enough. Plus the policy dispatch as the first Texas purchasing cycle closes.

The prior three issues assembled the core of the early-grades year, the curriculum chosen, the day built, and the progress read through observation rather than a school's testing machinery, and this issue turns to the resources a family adds around that core. Four of them arrive at every new homesc…