What your homeschooler REALLY needs to know ~ Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

A Note from Jamie: This is Melissa’s final post here on Simple Homeschool. She has been writing in this space since 2014 – read her very first post here! I’ve been so inspired by her perspective, her approach to education, her sincerity, and her clear depth of love and commitment to her children. We’ll miss you, Melissa!

A few weeks ago, my son Owen was packing for a study abroad trip. He had just finished his second year of college, and instead of spending the whole summer break at home, he was getting ready to board a plane in Los Angeles to take him to a university in Denmark for the next few weeks. As we looked over his luggage piled by the front door, I took a deep breath and thought: He has everything he needs.

And then in the very next breath I panicked just a little, because: Wait, DOES HE?

Sure, he had a power converter and an international debit card and a change of clothes in his carry-on. But what I really needed to know was this: Had we given him everything he needed to go out into the world, across the ocean and onto another continent? To make his own choices? To be an adult in the world?

Did he have everything he needed?

What your homeschooler REALLY needs to know before they leave home

Sure, our kids need to learn math, science, history, and writing. I promise, we worked our way through calculus, chemistry, and To Kill a Mockingbird. And yes, they need to learn life skills: how to cook spaghetti, how to plan a budget, how to navigate a bus route or call a Lyft.

But if we missed teaching them a fact here or there, they have the whole internet at their disposal. They’ll figure stuff out. As I stood there, surveying the luggage, I wasn’t really worried about whether we had taught him the quadratic equation, just like I wasn’t really worried about whether he had packed enough socks.

He had a pretty thorough packing list for his trip. It’s harder to come up with a complete list of Everything Our Kids Need To Be Happy, Healthy, Functional Adults.

My list includes things like:

To know who they are, and that they are worthy just because they exist.

To believe in their own ability to do stuff, to make choices, and to sort things out.

To know how to ask for help when they need it.

To know that they aren’t going to agree with everyone they meet, but that there’s a difference between disagreeing and dehumanizing. We do the first one, not the second one.

To know that they’re going to keep learning more about themselves and the world forever. Learning is a lifelong job. We all have tenure and nobody retires.

Did we give him all those things?

I could probably come up with twenty more things that feel just as vital. There’s no test for any of it. I don’t know!

But even as I was trying to figure out if he had everything he needed, I realized that the answer is in the list. Learning is a lifelong project.

Our kids will keep learning this stuff forever.

Yes, we’ve taught them the things we think they need to know, sometimes explicitly, sometimes just by living. But they’re still learning. They’re not done growing, just like we’re not done growing.

Owen knows this stuff, and he’ll keep learning it by living.

We’ll still be in conversation about these things, maybe forever. I’ll keep learning new things to tell my kids. They’ll keep learning new things to teach me, too.

And if that’s the plan, then they have what they need.

I think that might actually be enough.

Spoiler alert: Owen made it to Denmark just fine. He really did have everything he needed.

Even if your own list of All The Things Our Kids Need To Be Happy, Healthy, Functional Adults might differ from mine, remember this: It is enough.

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your type needs most!

The most important thing to do before summer ends ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

I want to tell you a secret: there hasn’t been much space in my brain lately. The reasons for that are both super involved and kind of boring, so I won’t trouble you with them.

The reason I mention it at all is this: by the time June rolled around, I was so, so glad for summer to arrive.

Prefer to listen instead?

I was glad to let go of routines and bedtimes and the kinds of decisions that don’t relate to swimming and ice cream. I was ready for cutoffs and tee shirts and flip flops and sunglasses, all day, every day. I was ready for “playing with the puppy” to be the only thing anyone accomplished all day.

I was ready. It was time.

My brain was telling me it needed to slow things down. My body was telling me I needed more sleep. It was telling me to put down the nonfiction and to pick up a light, summery novel.

It was telling me I needed to find a handful of things I could say “yes” to every time the kids asked, so I wouldn’t have to decide about anything else.

(Right now I’m saying yes to letting the kids make their own milkshakes, watch movies in the afternoon, and swim every day. I can say no to pretty much everything else, I don’t have to make any other decisions, and everyone still has a glorious summer.)

Maybe you don’t need exactly what I need. (Honestly, that would be a little weird, right? We’re not all supposed to need the same things at the exact same time.)

Maybe what you need this summer is adventure, or to be outdoors for hours on end, or to take one amazing vacation, or to go deep on a creative project while your kids play outside, or to take time to plan for next year. But whatever it is, can I remind you of something?

You know what you need.

The Most Important Thing to Do Before Summer Ends

You are the expert on your own life, and you know what you need.

I bet you’re great at knowing what your kids need—from the daily stuff (whether she needs a nap, or he needs a snack, or they need to get outside) to the logistical stuff (who’s going to need a new pair of sneakers by fall?) to the growth and development stuff (maybe he needs a different kind of math program, maybe she needs a mentor, maybe they need a new project to focus on).

Especially during the fall and winter and spring, when everything seems to move faster, those needs can fill up a day without our even noticing. But as I’m writing this, it’s summer. The days are longer, no one is doing anything that looks like math (at least not at my house), and everything is moving a little slower.

It’s kind of the perfect time to practice listening to your own self to find out what you need next.

You are a whole person: mind, body, and spirit—and all the parts of you are trying to give you good information about how you’re doing and what you need.

If your body is exhausted and your muscles are tense, there’s probably a reason. If your mind is racing, there’s probably a reason. If your soul is whispering that something isn’t okay, there’s probably a reason.

If we ignore our bodies, minds, or spirits, we’re going to end up burned out and not able to show up for our families or for the wider world in the ways we want to.

And that’s not what I want my kids to learn from me, either. I want them to learn to listen to their whole selves and to pay attention to their own needs, just like they see me taking care of what I need.

Listen, and then take one next right step. You really do know what you need.

And I’ll be over here with my big old glass of tea, making as few decisions as possible.

Because that’s what I need right now.

What is the most important thing you need to do before summer ends – for your brain, body, or spirit?

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your personality type needs most!

3 Friendship lessons to teach your kids ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

If, way back when we first started homeschooling, I’d made a list of things my kids would learn, it probably would have included the obvious: Math. Reading. Writing. History. Science.

I might even have included Life Skills, meaning things like: how to boil pasta, how to plan a grocery list, how to do the laundry, how to call an Uber, how to apply for a school or a job or an apartment.

But I don’t think I realized how much we would be learning about life, all the time.

Now I would include other things on that list, things like: How to notice what you’re feeling. How to listen to your body and give it what it needs. How to express yourself when you disagree. How to decide for yourself. How to make friends and be a friend.

I actually think friendship is super tricky. How do you make a friend? Do I have to leave my house?

Does texting count as friendship?

It seems easier for kids, but you know what? Every time they take a class, join a group, go to the park, or show up at a birthday party, there are new people to meet! And every time, kids have to figure out how and whether to make friends.

So one of the things we’ve been learning about lately is friendship, for me and for them. Here’s what I’ve been learning, and what I’m passing along to my kids.

3 Friendship lessons I want my kids to know

1. Assume other people like you.

I learned this from Dr. Marisa Franco’s book, Platonic. Relationships involve a lot of ambiguity.

Why did she use that tone of voice? Why did he decide to leave early? Is she bored by my story?

And studies show that most of the time, we guess wrong about other people’s motivations, leading us to believe that other people like us less than they really do. Assuming other people like us is closer to the truth.

Of course, there will always be some people who don’t like you, and some people you don’t like. That’s just life. But if you don’t know for sure that someone doesn’t like you, you might as well assume they do and see how that goes.

Because when we assume other people like us and act accordingly, we’re more likely to build relationships rather than shut them down.

2. Be brave and start conversations.

Making friends means we have to talk to new people! But most of us are nervous about striking up conversations with people we just met. Sometimes this comes more naturally for kids than for adults, but not always.

Some of my kids really like having clear directions to follow. What should they say, to whom, when? Dr. Franco suggests starting with a statement about our shared experience, then following it up with a question.

So when my kid is taking off their tap shoes after dance lessons, maybe they could say to the person next to them, “Wow, I’m worn out! What did you think about that new music?”

Or when they’re at theater rehearsal and notice someone else has brought a fancy milkshake-masquerading-as-coffee-with-whipped-cream drink, they might say, “Ooh, I love those, too. What flavor did you get today?”

3. Not every friendship needs to look the same.

I learned this from Laura Tremaine’s book, The Life Council. I had always thought that “friend” was one giant category, with a continuum from “acquaintance” through “good friend” and all the way up to “best friend.” But Laura points out that there are lots of different kinds of friends, and they’re all important in different ways.

Some friends are companions in just one place (a dance friend, a soccer friend, a book club friend). Some friends might bond over just one shared interest. Some friends are day-in and day-out friends, the ones you hang out with as often as you can.

Different friends will fill different roles, and each role can be valuable. We don’t have to try to make every friend into a Diana-and-Anne-of-Green-Gables situation.

That’s what we’re learning lately. You can go over some of these friendship lessons with your kids today.  If you ask me, friendship is at least as important as algebra or biology or handwriting.

(Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re learning those things, too.)

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your type needs most!

How to introduce Shakespeare in your homeschool ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

Fun fact: the people in my household have a whole variety of opinions about Shakespeare.

Some of my kids love reading Shakespeare’s plays. (One of our teenagers has a goal of reading them all before the end of this year!) Others prefer to watch the productions, but have yet to fall in love with the language.

Either way, Shakespeare’s work is one of those things I’ll keep inviting my kids into year after year.

Why, though?

Well, the plays are funny, witty, and emotional. They make you think about love and friendship, fate and choice, power and family, consequences and betrayal, and morality and responsibility, as well as invite you to form your own opinions.

The language is playful and sometimes surprising.

The stories have been around for hundreds of years (most are older than Shakespeare himself!) and have inspired tons of retellings. The characters, lines, and plots are referenced all over the place in our culture. And being familiar with the source material gives you the tools to make connections yourself.

Plus, reading Shakespeare gives us a chance to talk about issues in the texts. Reading these plays helps us to see how the concerns we have with our world today, issues like racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and xenophobia, have very old roots, and we can see how some things have changed, while others haven’t changed nearly enough.

One quick note…

My goal is for my kids to be familiar with Shakespeare, not to require them to become Shakespearean scholars who’ve read and dissected every word. Some of my kids will have read tons of Shakespeare before they graduate from high school, and others just one or two plays.

And all of my kids have seen (lots) more plays than they’ve read. Shakespeare didn’t write his plays to be read, after all! They’re meant to be performed.

Okay, with that caveat out of the way, here’s how to introduce Shakespeare in your homeschool.

1. Start with the story.

Once you know what’s happening and who the characters are, plays are much easier to follow—even with unfamiliar language.

Some of the story books that have helped our kids get into Shakespeare include Bruce Coville’s Hamlet, (afflinks) Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, and Romeo and Juliet picture books (Coville’s versions of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are great too, but out of print); Marcia Williams’s Mr. William Shakespeare’s Plays and Bravo Mr. William Shakespeare; and Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.

2. See the play performed.

It’s easier to follow the action if you’ve already read (and understood) the text, but a great production helps you understand what’s going on even if you don’t catch every word.

Between youth theater, community theater, community college productions, and nearby university student productions, we can find inexpensive live performances several times a year.

Not every production is kid-friendly (and not every family agrees on what that means!), but you can always ask at the box office to see what ages the production is meant for.

When we can’t get to a live performance, the Royal Shakespeare Company has lots of filmed stage shows available through various streaming apps. You can find BBC productions streaming, too, including the Hollow Crown series. MIT’s Global Shakespeare site collects links to filmed versions of Shakespearean productions from around the world.

And there are movie adaptations of the most popular plays, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original text. (I like to check Common Sense Media to get an idea of what to expect before we dive in.)

3. Read aloud, or read and listen.

When our kids start reading Shakespeare on their own, we have them follow the text while listening to the play being read. If reading Shakespeare aloud isn’t your thing, no problem—kids can follow along to an audiobook recording checked out from the library through the Libby app.

4. Find a modern translation if anyone is confused.

We sometimes consult SparkNotes’s No Fear Shakespeare when we find confusing language. There are lots of other modern translation options out there, too.

If you’re lucky enough to live near a Shakespeare festival, or to see Shakespeare in the park summer performances, or to take Shakespeare-related field trips—go for it!

But for the rest of us, no worries. There are lots of ways to invite kids to get excited about Shakespearean plays right at home when you introduce Shakespeare in your homeschool.

Further Reading:

• Get your kids hooked on Shakespeare with 5 easy steps (written by Jamie)

Are you a GOOD or BAD homeschool mom? Take Jamie’s NEW LOL QUIZ now to find out!

Melissa’s homeschool day in the life (with an 9-, 12-, 15- & 16-year-old) ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

When my oldest kids were little, I used to read day-in-the-life posts like these feeling equal parts excited to find great new ideas to try, and totally inadequate comparing my days to the ones I read about.

They start their day with a poetry circle? I started my day wiping oatmeal off the kitchen table.

She got up an hour before her kids for exercise, quiet time, and reading? I barely peeled my eyes open when my youngest climbed into bed with me and started jumping on my pillow.

But now, I’ve been homeschooling for 18 years. I’ve homeschooled with babies and toddlers underfoot. I’ve homeschooled elementary school and middle school and high schoolers all at the same time.

Our oldest two kids were homeschooled all the way through high school; our twenty-two-year old graduated from college last June and our nineteen-year-old is in his second year of college right now.

In all that time, we’ve tried a whole lot of things.

And here’s what I’ve learned: these day in the life posts… they can’t cover every single thing that happens in a day. They sometimes leave out the boring bits, or the cranky moments, or the parts where the plan fell apart—not because the writers are trying to be sneaky, but just because one post doesn’t have room for every single thing.

So I was comparing my whole messy, noisy, sometimes-wonderful-and-sometimes-exhausting entire day to just a couple of snapshots of theirs. And even apart from that, I’ve also learned this: What’s good for someone else’s day might not be right for mine.

And that’s okay. We’re not the same person and our families are different. That’s how things are supposed to be.

So nature walks, field trips, book clubs, family art projects, and all the other things I’ve read about in other people’s days… we might try some of those, or we might not. We might decide they’re just not for us. No big deal.

We do other things: our daily learning activities, taking the dog for walks, family read alouds, family movie night, family game night. When the kids were all little, there were a lot more park days and library trips (and no family anything nights, because nights were for early bedtimes). Now that they’re all older, there are a lot more driving practices and various kinds of lessons and theater rehearsals and… still library trips.

Even if we never do some of the cool things other homeschoolers might, it all works out.

So here’s what we did today.

Melissa’s Homeschool Day in the Life (with a 9-, 12-, 15-, and 16-year-old)

My sixteen year old got up first to let the dog out, not because she loves getting up early, but because she loves the dog. By the time I came downstairs, the 9- and 12- and 15-year-old were all up, too.

Everyone made their own breakfast, as usual, and then brought their learning activities to the dining room table to work while they ate.

I sat there, too, and drank my tea and read Samanth Irby’s Wow, No Thank You in between answering questions about graphing lines in slope-intercept form, the definition of wetlands, and how many chromosomes fruit flies inherit from each parent.

The teenagers have online classes, some through UC Scout and some through a local community college. The younger kids have Math-U-See , Singapore math and lots of books to read: the Story of the World on audiobook, Tales from Shakespeare, Princess Academy, the Dungeon Academy series, this book about engineering and this one about Scratch coding (afflinks) were all on the table today.

After awhile, I went back upstairs to get Actually Dressed instead of Loungewear Dressed while the youngest two kids played a card game.

When I came back downtairs, the 12-year-old and 15-year old were deep into a game of Codenames Duet.

By then it was time for lunch, which—just like breakfast—everyone makes for themselves when they’re ready.

In the afternoon, our 16-year-old had lines to memorize and Khan Academy SAT prep she wanted to work on. Our 15-year-old practiced at the keyboard. And the 9-year-old invited me to play a round of Sleeping Queens 2, which turned into three rounds of Sleeping Queens 2 while the 12-year-old watched and made helpful suggestions.

Here are other things that happened. The 9-year-old checked if we could watch a movie at least 67 times. The dog needed to bark over and over in the direction of the neighbor’s house, where solar panels are being installed on the roof. Our adult kids texted the family group chat various Star Wars and Lord of the Rings memes.

And I typed up this day-in-the-life post for you, first on the notes app on my phone, and then on my actual computer.

Soon it will be time to make dinner, which my husband will do, and our 16-year-old will head to theater rehearsal. After dinner, the kids will help with dishes and cleanup, and then we’ll read a chapter of By the Great Horn Spoon. The youngest two will get into bed, where they’ll read more or listen to audiobooks they’ve checked out from the library.

The 16-year-old will come back home, my husband and I and the big kids will all play with the dog some more before putting her to bed in her crate and heading upstairs.

Tomorrow will look the same…and different. It will be a little bit wonderful and a little bit exhausting. Someone may be grumpy. The dog may wake us all up early barking at a bird in the backyard.

I may lock myself in my office to write for an hour. The teenagers may bake chocolate chip cookies right after breakfast. Anything is possible.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

My, how the days have changed:

• 2022:Melissa’s homeschool day in the life (with an 8-, 11- 14-, & 15-year-old)
• 2021: Melissa’s homeschool day (with a 7-, 10-, 13-, 14-, 17-, & 20-year-old)
• 2020: Melissa’s homeschool day (with a 6-, 9-, 12-, 13-, and 16-year-old)
• 2019: Melissa’s unschool day (with a 5-, 8-, 11-, 12- and 15-year old)
• 2018: Melissa’s day (with a 4-, 7-, 10-, 11-, 14-, and 17-year-old)
• 2017: Melissa’s day (with a 3-, 6-,9-,10-,13-, and 16-year-old)
• 2016: Melissa’s day (with a 2-, 5-, 8-, 9-, 12- & 15-year-old)

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your personality type needs most!

I love this time of year, when the kids are doing their math by the twinkle lights, with a soundtrack of Christmas carols in the background and the smell of gingerbread in the air. But along with all the holiday magic comes the fact that there’s just a lot going on.

I know some families are dashing to Nutcracker performance rehearsals or Christmas pageant preparations, and others of you are expecting holiday visitors.

Maybe you’re baking cookies for friends and neighbors. Maybe you’re trying to get dinner on the table early enough to light advent candles before little ones fall asleep. Maybe you’re trying to remember where you stored last year’s winter coats, or trying to figure out which winter shoes can be passed down to whom.

There’s a lot to keep track of, even before we add in things like hanging lights and choosing gifts.

I could use a little help with all the details, is what I’m saying. Maybe you could, too? I can’t deliver cookies to your doorstep, sadly, but when it comes to gift ideas… I might be able to help!

I can’t wrap the packages, but I can tell you where I find gifts that feed our kids’ imagination and curiosity.

So here’s my big secret for where to find the best educational gifts:

Shop at museum gift shops.

I don’t live close enough to visit the Smithsonian or the Exploratorium or the Met myself, but lucky for me, they all have online shops, and they’re all full of cool ideas.

I’m not talking about souvenirs, here. I’m talking about museums that aim to inspire kids’ interest in art or science or history, museums that stock their shops with carefully chosen books and activities so I don’t have to hunt those down myself. (Ahem.)

Want to see what I mean?

For Your Science Whiz

For explorers, tinkerers, and the scientifically curious, my favorite is the San Francisco-based Exploratorium. I kind of want to link to everything. (The puzzles! The books! The games! The outdoor toys!) Look at all these tinkering kits!

And their under $15 section has lots of cool options, from a naturally occurring bubble rock to “caffeine molecule socks” for coffee-loving teenagers.

Or check out the Lawrence Discovery Store from Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. They have a whole selection of robotics building kits, and this sunprint paper is great for exploring at the intersection of art and nature.

For Your Art Lover

For young artists, I’m checking out the arts and crafts section of the MOMA Design Store. This kite looks amazing, these colorful versions of board games are so fun, and these art puzzles are gorgeous for older kids.

For Your History Buff

For historical toys and crafts, living history museums have great options. For example, the Plimoth Patuxet museum has toys, crafts and books that explore what daily life was like for both the Wampanoag people and the pilgrims in the 1600s.

I recommend looking into your favorite living history museum—especially one that explores history from more than one perspective.

This list is just a starting point. The beautiful part of buying gifts from a museum is that you are then supporting these institutions, which allows them to continue to offer the wonderful history, education, and memories we love.

I hope this list helps you find the best educational gifts, too – feel free to also browse your local museums’ gift shops and shop small!

What about you? Where do you find your best inspirational, educational gifts?

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your personality type needs most!

There are so many ways to learn the concept of times tables/multiplication facts—maybe you’ll share your favorite methods with us in the comments?! But no matter how you learn, at some point you just want to know that 6 x 7 is 42.

It’s always the sixes, sevens, and eights that give us trouble around here!

And I know, I know, my nine-year-old doesn’t mind figuring out what 8 x 4 is every time. She’s willing to add it up, or to count by fours, or to use a model to work it out. She doesn’t really care about memorization at all.

But I also know that one day, eventually, she’s going to want to work with quadratic equations or find the sum of a geometric series. (Ah, the joys of high school math!) Having multiplication facts at her fingertips then will make life infinitely easier.

Here’s what we’re using to help teach times tables in the meantime:

1. Multiplication By Heart Flash Cards

These aren’t your ordinary flash cards. For one thing, these show times tables math facts visually (afflinks), not only as equations.

And for another, these include a method for moving through the cards in an order that helps kids practice just the facts they don’t know until they stick. It’s a clever system, and pretty painless.

The only trouble with these is that each set is intended for just one kid to use at a time—all the way from beginning to mastery. For more than one kid to use them, you would need more than one set.

2. Prime Climb Board Game

I probably looked at this math game one zillion times before bringing it home. If I understood how helpful it was going to be for teaching times tables, I would have gone for it much sooner.

Most math games seem to throw in multiplication facts as the boring thing you have to do in order to get through the game, sort of the eat-your-broccoli-before-dessert method.

But in Prime Climb, the math is built into the strategy of the game, and color-coding helps to guide younger kids who don’t yet know their math facts. And… it’s actually fun. Surprise!

My nine-year-old and twelve-year-old are super into games, so finally trying this one out was a big win.

3. Schoolhouse Rock Videos

These song-and-cartoon videos were made in the early 1970s, so you might find their style and content a bit… dated?

But the songs themselves are catchy and they’re streaming on Disney+ right now, so if you already have a subscription, this won’t cost you anything extra to try. You can find several on YouTube as well!

4. Multiplication Nation Audio

One of my kids learns best by listening rather than by reading and writing. For kids like that, the Multiplication Nation album from The Rappin’ Mathematician is terrific—the songs are easy to remember, and the sound is more current than the Schoolhouse Rock options.

We listen through our Apple Music subscription, so again, this doesn’t cost us anything extra to try.

Multiplication is not always the most enjoyable subject to learn or teach. I hope that these resources make it a little more fun for you and your family.

If you know of any other helpful resources, please share in the comments below!

At our house this year, we’ll be homeschooling two high schoolers, one middle schooler, and an elementary schooler. Our oldest kiddo graduated from college last spring, and our next oldest has just moved back to school for his second year of college.

Which means I’ve been homeschooling one or more of our six kids for every one of the last seventeen years. Oh my.

Alongside our homeschooling adventures, I’m also an author – Have you read my book, Permission Granted? (afflinks). My husband was an English Literature major once upon a time, too. We’re all about words and language around here.

Not every one of our kids is going to grow up to be a writer, of course, but they all get to practice using their words in the meantime! Here’s how we’ve helped our kids on their homeschool writing journeys.

8 Tips for Teaching Writing in Your Homeschool

1. Read Lots of Everything

Reading is the best way that I know to teach writing.

Kids are learning about story structure and characterization and plot from reading, sure, but they’re also learning grammar, and spelling, and vocabulary, and sentence structure, and how to listen for the musicality of language. They’re absorbing so much, whether you’re reading aloud or they’re reading to themselves.

Our kids read all kinds of things: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, news (when they’re teenagers), even product packaging and advertisements (a form of persuasive writing!). They learn to write by seeing it done well first.

For kids who are still learning or who struggle with reading to themselves, audiobooks count as reading. Following along in a physical book as they listen can be helpful, too.

2. Take Dictation

Kids don’t need to know how to write their letters to be able to write stories or letters or ideas.

If your kids are still learning handwriting, or if the act of writing letters is still difficult, let them dictate their stories while you write them down.

Or try a dictation app or setting on your phone/computer. (Tip: read over the dictation app’s translation for accuracy—kid voices can be tricky for apps to understand, and those apps know a whole bunch of words that your kindergartener doesn’t. I’m just saying. ;))

3. Encourage Writing Just For Fun

Buy (or make) fun stationery or cards and encourage your kids to write letters to friends and relatives. Let them write stories on printer paper or in journals.

Or suggest that they create a story out of pictures, and then tell you what’s happening in each drawing.

4. Play Word Games

This could include word searches or Scrabble or Banangrams or Boggle, but also games like the license plate letter game: on the road, make up a phrase using the letters on a license plate as the first letters of your words. (Ignore the numbers.)

RDW in the middle of a plate becomes rhinos dancing wildly, or robots devouring wetlands, or raspberries dunking on wildebeests. You’re teaching your kids that words are tools they can use to create, even if they’re just creating quick, funny images.

5. Decide What They Need to Know

By the time my kids finish high school, we want them to have experience writing lots of different things, like short fiction, poetry, informational essays, persuasive essays, literary analysis, and MLA-style bibliographies.

But your goals might be different. Maybe you want to be sure your kid understands business communication. Maybe writing plays and skits is more important to your kid than writing short stories. Choose what’s important for your own family’s goals, and start there.

Please notice that I said by the time my kids finish high school! We don’t try to learn everything at once. And when they’re younger, reading and playing with words is our whole goal.

6. Use a Curriculum, or Don’t

We’ve tried a few different types of homeschool curricula for writing, and I’d love to hear about your favorites. But we haven’t found one that sticks for us.

We’re usually more comfortable deciding together what to learn next, then finding resources for learning that type of writing and giving it a try. Our resources might come from books, online videos, or just a parent explaining.

7. Expect Messy First Drafts

When we’re learning to do something new, we don’t do it perfectly the first time. Of course not!

So make sure your kids know they’re not meant to know how to do this yet, and that getting words (any words!) on the page is the first goal.

After that, they can decide how to revise to bring what they’ve written closer to their vision. But the first step is just to get anything out.

8. Edit Respectfully

Remember that writing is subjective, and that—unlike arithmetic—there’s no one right answer when it comes to a writing project.

Try to see what your writer is trying to create, rather than judging it against your ideas of what it should be. Praise the stuff your kids are doing well before pointing out what needs more work.

Not sure what to praise? Maybe point out their creative ideas, their voice, their interesting word choices, or even their careful spelling.

Our Favorite Writing Supplies

Want even more ideas? Here are our favorite writing supplies that may also come in handy as you’re teaching writing in your homeschool.

For Encouraging Play With Words

• Story cards: Create a story using images, like the ones on these fairy tale themed cards or on these animal village cards
• Story dice: Roll the dice and make up a story using the icons on the dice
• Letter dice: Make up sentences where each word starts with the letters you’ve rolled
• A library card, for checking out lots of different kinds of books

Wordy Board Games

• Boggle
• Sight Word bingo
• Bananagrams
• Scrabble

Poetry Supplies

• Silly poetry books, like Shel Silverstein’s or Jack Prelutsky’s or the mischievous I’m Just No Good at Rhyming.
• Or poetry collections, like The Random House Book of Children’s Poetry.
• Magnetic poetry for the fridge or on a magnetic board. Take photos of your favorite creations.

For Young Kids (or Parents) Who Want More Structure

• Building Writers, a series of writing instruction workbooks from the same company that produces Handwriting Without Tears
• Wordly Wise for vocabulary (Though for a kid who struggles with words, this could easily feel overwhelming. Use your best judgment.)

For Middle Schoolers Who Want a Plan

• Everything You Need To Ace English Language Arts

For Kids Who Want to Be Writers

• Gail Carson Levine’s Writing Magic
• Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook
• Avi’s A Beginning, A Muddle, and An End

For Teenagers

• Our friend Kara S. Anderson recommends this book for college prep: Wordsmith Craftsman
• To start learning to dissect what we read, try Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose, or the more accessible How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids
• Khan Academy’s SAT Prep: Essay writing instruction and automatic essay scoring
• Spark Notes: Instruction and prep for writing literary analysis and for AP English tests
• Write the World is a free non-profit (writetheworld.org) for ages 13 – 19 to explore free writing prompts and join monthly writing competitions.

For High Schoolers Who Want an Online College Prep Class

• UC Scout offers accredited or self-study classes for English 9 – 12, AP English Language, and AP English Literature

Your Turn

How about you? How have you handled teaching writing in your homeschool? What are your favorite writing-related resources? Share with all of us in the comments!

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7 Things to Keep in Mind While Homeschooling ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

As I’m writing this, it’s June. My oldest kiddo just graduated from college. (!!!) My second oldest just finished his first year of college, too.

All six kids of my kids are home for the summer, and the youngest four will be homeschooling (still, again, always) in the fall.

So while we have this little break from regularly scheduled activities, I’m thinking a lot about what we want our next school year to look like.

I came up with seven things to keep in mind while homeschooling – the things I need to remember when we start school again, the ones that help me keep going when everything begins to go sideways.

Things always start to go sideways eventually, and I like to have a plan to keep me grounded.

7 Things to Keep in Mind While Homeschooling

1. Remember why you’re doing this.

Whether this is your first year or your millionth year of homeschooling, you chose this for a reason.

When I feel like I’m trapped in an alternate universe of math facts and peanut butter sandwiches, remembering WHY we’re doing all this helps me to stay focused on what matters (the kids’ curiosity, our relationships) and let go of what doesn’t (memorizing math facts according to someone else’s timetable).

If you need help to remember—or to find!—your deeper reason, try this.

2. Check your scripts.

The scripts we tell ourselves over and over again shape how we show up in the world.

Inevitably, this affects our perspective, attitude, and pours out into our homeschooling. Are you saying any of these seven things?

3. Just do the next right thing.

Sometimes everything works out according to plan and that is great!

But then there are other times, also known as most times, when the plan goes out the window. Here’s how we can do just the next right thing to keep moving.

4. Make an Enough List.

Skip the to-do list and make a list of what will be enough for today instead. It shifts your mind from feeling unable to keep up to knowing that you’ve done what matters most.

Want to hear more about that one? You can find the whole story behind the Enough List and how I use mine in my book, Permission Granted.

5. Focus on belonging first.

Making the time to be together and present matters more than checking things off the curriculum task list.

If the math doesn’t get done, but everyone knows they belong in this family, that is still a successful day around here.

6. Remember that some days are just hard.

Some days are hard, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

Simply put, things are just hard sometimes. Keep these words close by for hard days.

7. Everything will be okay.

It really will my friend. Things may not look the way you expected. Plans may change.

What worked yesterday might not work today.  As long as you keep paying going back to what you and your family needs, in the long run, it really is all going to be okay.

I hope that you are able to remember these seven things not only during the school year, but also this summer. Let this list be there for you whenever you need encouragement and comfort as a homeschooling parent – you’re doing better than you think!

This post contains affiliate links, which means Simple Homeschool receives a small commission from some of the links on this page.

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your personality type needs most!

Your Must-Have Homeschool Supplies List for All Ages ~
Written by Melissa Camara Wilkins

When hanging out with other homeschool families, I always want to hear about their favorite things. What’s working for you? What isn’t?

Sure we might all have different homeschooling styles, but no matter what we’re learning, we all need pencils and erasers to learn with.

I figure collective wisdom is a good thing when it comes to all those basic, yet essential homeschool supplies.

So I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you. (Plus that way I have them all in one place next time I need to reorder! Convenient.)

My youngest kids are elementary-school-aged and my oldest are in college, so we’ve had the chance to try out a whole bunch of stuff over the years. This is what works for us—and what we change as kids grow.

Your Must-Have Homeschool Supplies List for All Ages

Pencils

We really do all need pencils. For kids who are just learning to write, we use these thick chunky ones (afflinks) paired with a nice big eraser.

When they’re ready for a standard size pencil, we like to keep these classics around, along with an electric pencil sharpener. Why is sharpening pencils so satisfying? I can’t explain, but it is.

We have this simple sharpener, but this one looks like it can handle more pencil widths. We use these pencil caps for extra erasing power.

When our kids get to be middle school age, graduating to a fancy mechanical pencil is a rite of passage at our house. (Yes, we are exactly that nerdy.) We pair them with these stick erasers.

Markers

For littles, we haven’t found anything we like better than classic Crayolas. As they get older and want pens with thinner tips and more colors, we switch to these Pentels.

And if they’re into fancier art making, we’ve found these markers to be a great deal for pigmented markers.

I couldn’t live without Flair pens myself. I use them for writing in color in notebooks and calendars, and for addressing fun envelopes. But they’re technically felt-tipped markers, so… I’m putting them here with the other markers.

Crayons & Colored Pencils

These beeswax crayons make nice saturated colors, and the block shape is great for making rubbings. There aren’t a ton of colors, though, so if we want to color with more choices, we use these Crayolas.

These triangular colored pencils are great for little hands that are still learning to write. For skin tones, we go for these. For older kids, these have worked well for us, along with this “Portrait” set for skin tones.

Calculators

I know there are calculators on every device these days, but we still like ones with bright colors and chunky buttons for exploring number concepts. For middle schoolers, we go for this scientific calculator.

And this graphing calculator has served every one of our high schoolers well so far.

Cozy Blankets & Library Cards

My actual favorite item on our homeschool supplies list ever is my library card, and it doesn’t cost a thing. Between physical books and audiobooks (using the Libby app), the library has been our best resource for everything from easy readers to college test prep books.

Pair a book with one of these cozy blankets and really, it’s hard to imagine what else a person might need in life!

Headphones

Okay, the truth is, I don’t have a good suggestion for kids’ headphones! We seem to be perpetually in need of new ones, and we use them all the time—for listening to audiobooks, for learning foreign language skills, for practicing the keyboard, for road trips…

So if you have a great recommendation for kids’ headphones that last, please oh please let me know in the comments!

*****

And there you have it – our basic, yet can’t-live-without homeschool supply list. Often it’s the simple things that make the biggest difference, isn’t it?! Remember that even as you compile your own homeschool supplies list.

Please share with us what your must-have homeschool supplies are and help us discover some new favorites!

This post contains affiliate links, which means Simple Homeschool receives a small commission from some of the links on this page.

What’s Your Homeschool Mom Personality? Take Jamie’s quiz now and receive a free personality report to help you organize your homeschool based on what your personality type needs most!