Homeschool resources: everything I would hand a new mama over coffee.

Find out what your state asks of you, file a notice if filing one is required, and then pick one thing to do tomorrow morning. One book read aloud, one walk, one page. Families who begin with a full timetable have usually quit by November. Families who begin with one read-aloud are usually still going at Easter.

Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states. What differs is what each one asks of you: some want nothing at all, some want a notice of intent, some want attendance records or an annual assessment. Check your own state's requirements directly before you rely on anything you read anywhere, this page included. We are not a school and this is not legal advice.

More than anyone can sensibly compare, but they fall into a few families: classical, Charlotte Mason, unit study, Montessori-influenced, and the boxed all-in-one homeschool programs that arrive in a crate. For a child aged 2 to 7, almost any of them works if you actually do it, and almost none of them work if you do not. Ours is Guiding Lights, a faith-rooted Christian homeschool curriculum written for Kindergarten.

Less definitively than either side of the argument will tell you. Most homeschool research draws on families who volunteered to take part, which is not the same as a random sample, so the headline numbers deserve to be read slowly. The National Center for Education Statistics publishes the figures on how many families homeschool and the reasons they give; NHERI collects the academic outcome research. Read them yourself rather than trusting anyone's summary, ours included.

Not at the ages we cover. For 2 to 7, a rhythm matters more than a curriculum — the same handful of things in roughly the same order most mornings. A curriculum buys back your planning time, which is a real and reasonable thing to want. It does not buy back the teaching.