Yes, You Can Homeschool (Keep It Simple, Sister!)

Many Christian parents have ruled out the idea of homeschooling without even seriously considering it. Their expectations of what homeschooling requires – in terms of time, money, materials, and/or knowledge – has intimidated them into thinking there’s no way they can do this. Maybe that’s you. But homeschooling can be much simpler than you might think!

Not Public School

When you have no experience with anything other than institutional school, it’s easy to picture homeschooling as just like conventional schooling: a teacher directly instructing a student or students in 6-10 different subjects from a variety of textbooks. Homeschooling can be any or all of those things — but it doesn’t have to be!

If you have nothing but a Bible, you can homeschool. A Bible, a library card, and an internet connection? You’re golden!

Obviously, most people are going to want more than that, but homeschooling doesn’t require all the same things a brick-and-mortar school uses.

Rethink Your Assumptions

See, we’re led to believe the goal is replicating school, but the actual goal is learning. Most of us have been trained to believe those are inextricable — that learning requires replicating school.

But why?

How do your little children learn?  Not by sitting down with a textbook and a teacher, right? They learned to crawl, walk, talk, etc. without any of those institutional trappings, didn’t they?

How do you, as an adult, learn new things?  Most of the time probably not by sitting down with a teacher and a textbook, right?

Humans are wired to learn.  We can’t not learn.  Surround us with information and ideas and…we learn. A teacher, a textbook, and direct instruction may sometimes speed things along, help define the boundaries of learning, and so on, but learning can happen without them. 

What I really want you to take away here is that if almost nothing you think is necessary is really essential to learning — and it’s not — then you have immense freedom in what materials you do or don’t use and how formally you do or don’t instruct.

Keep it Simple, Sister

We have a tendency to overcomplicate things.  We look for the best homeschool Bible curriculum — for every grade — overlooking the value of reading the Bible. We look for the exact right history curriculum — overlooking the value of reading books (or even watching movies) set in various eras. We think we need to go to the gym or have “P.E. class” — overlooking the value of working hard in the garden/yard, building things, playing sports, etc.

Life provides plenty of opportunities for learning, if we don’t have our heads too buried in textbooks to see them.

Independent Learning

Kids naturally gravitate toward these opportunities (if we haven’t trained that tendency out of them), so you’d be surprised by how much they learn without your needing to sit down and teach them. My kids learned about constellations from a Barbie movie, of all things. They’ve learned about birds and plants from casually reading books in our home library. They’ve learned about obelisks, elements (as in the periodic table), multiples of 8, and much more from playing computer games.

All of those things were without my involvement (or my husband’s). That doesn’t even count all the things they’ve learned in conversation with us without sitting down for formal lessons.

But What About Math?

I know; math is the really scary part for most of us. It’s important, and it doesn’t feel intuitive, so we don’t feel confident in passing it down naturally the way we do language.  We do actually use quite a bit of math in everyday life, and every time it’s used is an opportunity for learning, but as a skills subject that builds on itself, most people are still most comfortable having a “real curriculum” for that.

It still doesn’t have to be “big and scary.” I have a child who went through the entire Life of Fred “alphabet series” this year, of her own volition, requiring very minimal help.  (If necessary, the author/publisher will provide help with this one, too.)  Award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto estimates that it takes only 100 hours of direct instruction for children to learn all the math and language skills they need to be independent learners. (In some places he’s been cited as saying only fifty hours.)

Imaginary Case Study

So let’s assume, by way of example, that you decide to rely on actual curriculum for the “skills” subjects of math, English grammar, and phonics. And you have to invest the full one hundred hours of Gatto’s estimate in explicitly sitting down “teaching” your child.

For our imaginary case study, you’ll purchase the full set of Life of Fred (from kindergarten right up through higher math).  (You could totally choose other companies; I’m just pulling some options here to use as an example.) You’ll need phonics, so let’s say you get All About Reading, levels 1-3. (I prefer TATRAS, but unfortunately, it’s currently out of print.)  For grammar, you can use KISS, and we’ll say you add the IEW Essay Writing Intensive.

You’re spending about:

• Life of Fred: $430-630 (depending on how extensive you want your child’s high school math to be)
• All About Reading: $600
• KISS Grammar: $0 (maybe some printing costs)
• IEW High School Essay Intensive: $70
• 100 hours

This is for the whole of school — kindergarten through 12th grade. And almost all of the financial costs are for non-consumables that can be reused with all of your other students and, in many cases, resold when you’re done with them.

That averages out to less than $150/year (with all of the high school higher math included) — if you don’t resell anything — and less than 10 hours a year (although in all honesty, the 100 hours and much of the cost will be concentrated in the first few years).  This is accessible to almost anyone, and reasonable enough that churches or local homeschooling communities would probably be willing to help the minority of people who really can’t swing this.

Is it worth $1300 to have your child educated in an environment where the glory of God is top priority?

Community Helps

One of the biggest factors in making homeschooling feel doable is having supportive community — whether that’s family, friends, church community, a structured homeschool support group, or even online community.  As with all things parenting, there are hard and frustrating moments and days.  Having people who will remind you why you’re doing this in the first place and reassure you once again that you can, is priceless.