Grammar instruction is one of those subjects where homeschool parents frequently choose between two extremes — either heavy, formal grammar study using traditional workbooks and diagramming, or almost no explicit grammar instruction at all, based on the assumption that good reading and writing will develop grammatical competence naturally. The research on effective grammar instruction suggests … Read more
Spelling is one of the most taught and least understood subjects in elementary education. Most adults who went through traditional schooling remember weekly spelling lists, Friday tests, and a cycle that produced test scores without necessarily producing spellers — the words learned for Friday’s test vanished by the following Wednesday. If the weekly list approach … Read more
Critical thinking is one of those educational goals that nearly everyone endorses and very few people define clearly enough to teach deliberately. Every school mission statement includes it; relatively few classroom practices develop it systematically. Homeschooling offers a genuine opportunity to do better — not because critical thinking is uniquely suited to home education, but … Read more
Reading comprehension is the point of reading — not the decoding of letters into sounds, not the sounding out of words, but the understanding of meaning, the building of mental models from text, and the ability to think with what has been read. And yet reading comprehension is the dimension of reading instruction that receives … Read more
Foreign language is one of the most commonly skipped subjects in homeschool curricula — and one of the most commonly regretted gaps when families reach high school and discover that most four-year colleges require two to three years of the same language for admission. The skipping happens for understandable reasons: it’s the subject parents feel … Read more
History taught well is one of the most engaging subjects in a homeschool. History taught poorly is one of the most reliably deadening — a march through names, dates, and events that feel disconnected from anything that matters, measured by whether a student can recall what a textbook said on page 47. The difference between … Read more
Science is the subject homeschool parents most often feel under-qualified to teach — and the one most commonly reduced to reading a textbook chapter and answering comprehension questions, which is arguably the worst way to teach science and the approach least likely to produce either understanding or interest. The irony is that homeschooling’s flexibility makes … Read more
Math is the subject that makes more homeschool parents anxious than any other. Partly because mathematical confidence is genuinely uneven among adults — a parent who reads voraciously and writes well may have significant anxiety about their own math ability. Partly because math is sequential in a way few other subjects are — a gap … Read more
Writing is the subject that makes more homeschool parents anxious than almost any other. Partly because it’s genuinely complex to teach well — writing involves mechanics, organization, voice, and thinking, all at once, and those dimensions develop at different rates and require different types of instruction. Partly because many parents feel less confident in their … Read more
Of all the scheduling approaches used in homeschooling, loop scheduling is one of the simplest in concept and one of the most reliably effective for families whose days don’t follow a predictable pattern. It’s also one of the most misunderstood — frequently dismissed as too informal by families who haven’t tried it, and frequently described … Read more