ABCs of Homeschooling - Academics.

A is for academics.

Okay, I'm starting a 26 day series on homeschooling, with a different subject for every day of the alphabet.  I think the first thing that people think about is academics, as in, what will I teach them?  In what order?  How will I make sure everything is covered.  There are several ways you can approach this.  You can enroll your child in a correspondence or online school like K12, you can use a "boxed" curriculum from a company that sends you everything you will need each year, you can follow one of the free online curriculum lists like Ambleside or Old Fashioned Education or you can look up what each child needs to learn each year on World Book.   You could also purchase a book I've always wanted to buy but never somehow, have, The Checklist by Cindy Downes or the What your 1st Grader needs to know book series.  On the more casual end of the spectrum, you can just think, okay, math, history, science ... and buy books that are for your kid's grade level for each one, mix and match.  You can do unit studies, there are tons of free ones on this site, Homeschool Share.  You can also unschool, that is, follow what your child is interested in and learn about that, it's also called delight led learning.   After 7 years of homeschooling, what we do is use textbooks for the basics, resources from here and there for other things and also give them plenty of time to pursue their own interests.  It works for us.