What we have here is an incredibly easy start-up guide to homeschooling (for public schooling, see the Steader Guide to using institutional schools as part of your parent-directed education).
Multiple steaders have tried the Steader Homeschool Method. It works. Some have used it as a launchpad. Some have more or less stuck with it. With very little effort, it will give you results at minimum equal to what your young would get in school, without the bullying and the propaganda.
It’s streamlined.
It’s low-hanging fruit.
It’s easy as pie.
It’s so easy you will have to have real mental discipline to take this post seriously.
Here it is
Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.
Step 1, Teach your child to read.
Step 2, Have them read lots of things, and teach them math.
Everything else is gravy and can be added later, or not, as you want. It is that simple.
Homeschooling is easy.
Reading
Any option that works to teach your kid to read will work.
Multiple steadermen highly recommend Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The woman who invented the Steader Homeschool Method uses Hooked on Phonics and makes a side living using it to teach reading to kids who are falling behind in public school.
But any method you choose will work, as long as it works. Don’t sweat it, kids like reading, most methods will work.
But here’s a key point.
Wait until they are at least 5.
Teaching kids to read early is pointless and frustrating. The only rewards are empty style points.
The woman who invented the method won’t teach children under 5 and banned her own children from reading until they had reached that age. She got the notion from Susanna Wesley, who was no slouch of a mom.
Once they can read, have them read.
Have them read whatever. The baseline goal is have them enjoy reading and read frequently. Everything else is secondary. Tintin and Calvin and Hobbes comics are fine. Dumb comics are fine. Pulpy trash like Goosebumps is fine. Boxcar Children is fine. It doesn’t have to be art. It doesn’t have to be ennobling. Dumb kids sports books for boys are fine. Don’t worry if its it not bragging-rights material. Don’t worry if it takes a couple of years for them to warm up to reading. Just keep plugging away at it without being too heavy handed.
Once they love it, you can start working in the Junior Classics, Andrew Lang, and even better books. Reading to them out loud can expand their envelope faster, but its not required.
Case study: a girl with two older siblings who read a lot. The girl begged to be able to read but her parents wouldn’t let her. On her fifth birthday, her mother started her first reading lesson. She was very excited and learned to read basic material quickly. Her mother was using the 100 Easy Lessons program. The girl is of medium intelligence and extremely sociable and girly. Once she learned to read she would read basic material occasionally and would read ability-level stuff as assigned, but wasn’t thrilled by any of it. Around the 7 to 7 ½ year mark, the reading taste suddenly clicked. She went nuts reading the Boxcar Children, Tintin comics, and as many trashy girl’s princess books as she could check out from the library. We are told she recently started reading fairy tales voraciously.
The steadermen have a list of books that really work which we will make available some time. But the important thing is the reading. Even pulpy trash, sheer entertainment, empty mind calories, are teaching children literacy, English, and advanced compositional organization by sheer exposure. The kids are also picking up a surprising amount of world knowledge. WARNING – be careful of too modern material. Empty is ok, poisonous is not.
Talk to your kids about what they read, a lot. You don’t need the kind of insightful, probing question that changes lives. Just ask what they liked. Your goal is to get bored stiff because they like to chatter with you about any old thing they happened to read.
Note: One advantage of the Steader Home School Method is it focuses you on essentials. We know too many cases where shiny gee whiz education distracted the parents from the kids’ reading problems
Math
Just do a program. Proven math programs include Math-U-See and Khan Academy. Saxon Math. Others Beast Academy. Singapore Maths for faster/quicker kids.
On Saxon Math, the detractors and the supporters both agree that it is meant for mothers who are intimidated by math and need their hand held. It is a pretty rote approach. Which is really, truly fine. It still meets or exceeds the instruction the little critters would be getting in the school. More teachers than you would like to think know nothing about math and would get better results if they just taught a basic program by rote. Use Saxon Math, no problem. People worry too much about this stuff.
That’s it. That’s the program. We’d say that’s the program in a nutshell, but there is no expanded program. That’s the whole program.
Reading and Math is good enough to go with.
Reading and Math . . . and Beyond!
You will probably find that from time to time you and your child are ready for more. Great!
But we want to emphasize that good enough is good enough.
George Washington was a good-enough general.
Casablanca was one in a series of movies that were cranked out to be good enough.
Many people never reach the island of greatness because they won’t jump in to the waters of good enough.
The Steader Home School Method is almost insultingly easy. So what? Start with it, and build from there if you want, but never feel you have to build. It would be a pity if you never got anywhere at all because you felt you had to have a grand plan before you started.
We remember the story of the Israelites during the Exodus. Poisonous snakes bit them. Moses sat up a brass serpent and said anyone who looked at it would be miraculously healed. But in the legend, some people wouldn’t look. It seemed too easy. Almost dumb.
Real smart people are too smart to reject things just because they are stupid easy.
But if you do feel like going beyond, have at it! There are so many different directions you can go, and you can always pick and choose. Or change when convenient. Ignore the purists. You can do an entrepreneur-based education. Unschooling, which is a method that involves ‘flooding the zone’ based on the child’s interests. The Good and the Beautiful. Charlotte Mason. Classical Conversations. Engelmann Direct Instruction. Co-ops. Tutors (cheaper than you think). The Harp and Laurel Wreath. Hands on science. The Well-Trained Mind. Mother of Divine Grace. Field trips. Working the family business. Go wild.
YOU CAN’T GO WRONG.