How do we catch up when we’re behind in math (or anything else)?

My sixth grader is really behind in math. She was struggling when we pulled her out of school last year, and she’s still scoring at least one grade level behind in every placement test. I don’t want her to stress about math, but I also don’t want her to keep falling behind. How can we catch up?

I’m going to answer the question that you’re asking, but first I’d like to tell you something that I think might reassure you. My husband teaches high school math, and over the last five years, he’s become a popular tutor for unschoolers who want to take the SAT or ACT. Most of these kids come to him with no formal math experience — many don’t know their multiplication tables or that decimals and fractions describe the same thing. He usually gets them about a year or two before they want to actually take the test, but sometimes they only have six months together. And you know what? All of these kids have always learned enough math in that time to get a decent score on their official tests. Obviously this isn’t the strategy you’re taking with your daughter — but isn’t it kind of reassuring to know that even if you do fall behind, catching up is easier than you probably think it is?

On to your question: If your daughter’s placement tests are putting her a year behind, I’d forget forging ahead and instead let her work at the level she’s ready for. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, you don’t have to hold onto rigid ideas about grade levels when you are homeschooling. I bet you wouldn’t worry if your daughter were a year ahead in math, right? The longer you homeschool, the more you’ll realize that grade levels are kind of arbitrary, and the important thing is to choose the work your child is ready for, whatever the number on the workbook happens to be. Second, there’s a good chance that your daughter just missed a foundational step in math that’s making it hard for her to move forward — she might have missed a few days of class or had a not-great teacher or just not been ready to make the mental connection. There’s a really good chance that if you go back and work through that grade level together, she’ll pick up what she needs to know and be ready to move on — maybe in less time than you think. (And sometimes it helps to play out the worst case scenario because it’s not as bad as you thought: What if your daughter is always a level behind in math? Maybe she won’t take calculus in high school, which isn’t terrible unless she has her heart set on taking calculus or a career in engineering.) Remember: You don’t have to follow the math book problem for problem. You can find the areas that are tripping her up and spend most of your time on those, and move on as she masters concepts. By not making a big deal about “being behind,” you’re also teaching your daughter that it’s more important to understand something and be able to put it to use than it is to learn just enough to get through a set of test questions.

At the same time, consider ways you can make math more of a part of your everyday life. Stock up on board games that make math fun (see the spring 2017 for ideas) and living math books. Use an alternative approach to math, like Simply Charlotte Mason’s Pet Store Math, which lets kids pretend they’re the bosses of their own pet store, or Life of Fred, which turns math into a playful readaloud. (Life of Fred isn’t secular, but I feel like the places where it’s not are so ridiculously over-the-top that it’s easy to discuss them as you go.) Encourage kids to use math in everyday life: Split your pizza into eight even pieces, double a cupcake recipe for a party, or see if your budget will stretch to that new video game. There’s so much math in life that it’s not hard to find opportunities to just do it, without a formal book or any worry about what level it is.

I honestly think a combination of these two strategies—being okay with starting at the level where your daughter is and increasing the numeracy, or math literacy, quotient of your home—will help your daughter’s mathematic knowledge increase significantly. But if you’re really concerned about getting her up to a specific grade level, double-time your way through the math she tests into—if you’d usually do three lessons a week, do five or six—until she’s working at grade level. Really, though, I think this is a place where going with your daughter’s flow and trusting that she’ll get where she needs to go if you keep working together will serve your homeschool best.

---

How much technology is too much for your homeschool?

There’s no single right approach to using technology in your homeschool, but here are some things to keep in mind as you’re figuring out your family’s perfect balance.

Technology can be a homeschooler’s best friend — but like any good thing, technology can take over more ground than you want if you let it. There’s no single right approach to using technology in your homeschool, but here are some things to keep in mind as you’re figuring out your family’s perfect balance.

“Learn how to use media responsibly.”

Technology is awesome, and whether you set strict limits or no limits at all, the most important thing you can do is teach your child how to use media responsibly. “Kids need to learn how to make media part of their lives, but in a planned, sensible way,” says Marjorie Hogan, a pediatrician at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The key, Hogan says, is to figure out a healthy media diet that balances technology with other parts of a full life. Kids should work with their parents to figure out the right amount of media consumption for their days and to understand how to make good choices about media.“We don't want to demonize media, because it's going to be a part of everybody's lives increas- ingly, and we have to teach children how to make good choices around it, how to limit it and how to make sure it's not going to take the place of all the other good stuff out there.”

“Enjoy the possibilities technology offers.”

Erin Elliot lives in a little town in South Carolina, but her 12-year-old daughter has friends all over the world who share her Minecraft obsession. Her town doesn’t have another homeschool family, much less a secular homeschool co-op, but Elliot’s daughter takes science and history classes online. “We couldn’t homeschool without technology,” Elliot says. Online classes and resources have made home- schooling possible for the Elliot family. Because technology is so important for her family, Elliot is very relaxed about screen time, though she says she would set limits if she felt like technology was creating a situation where her daughter didn’t have offline activities. “She plays outside, she takes karate, she volunteers at the library, she reads all the time, and yeah, she also spends a lot of time online. It’s how our homeschool works.”

“Be realistic about educational screen time.”

Online learning can be a big plus for homeschoolers, but researchers at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research and production institute affiliated with the Sesame Workshop, say families aren’t always realistic about the way their kids spend time online. Less than half the time the average 2- to 10-year-old spends online involves consuming educational material, they found. “A lot of homeschoolers think, oh, it’s online, it’s educational, and online resources have been a great boon to homeschooling families,” says homeschool mom and pediatrician Laura Reynolds, M.D. “But it’s awfully easy to default to device, and we’re often tricking ourselves into thinking that technological habit is more educationally based than it actually is.” Not all learning takes place on educational sites, but it’s important to have a clear picture of what’s happening online if you want to make the right decisions for your family.

“Don’t trade real-life social experiences for virtual ones.”

A group of California sixth-graders who turned off their devices for a week of outdoor adventure were better able to read facial and nonverbal cues than their plugged-in peers, discovered researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It only took five days to see a marked difference,” says Patricia Greenfield, a senior author of the study and professor of psychology at UCLA. “We really need to be sure that children are getting enough face-to-face interaction to be competent social beings. Our species evolved in an environment where there was only face-to face-interaction. Since we were adapted to that environment, it's likely that our skills depend on that environment. If we reduce face-to-face interaction drastically, it’s not surprising that social skills would also get reduced.” For homeschoolers who want empathetic, socially intelligent kids, this might mean prioritizing field trips, park days, and other face-to-face activities over — or at least proportionate with — online activities.

---

Why can’t I get my homeschool life together?

We’ve been homeschooling for two years, and I still feel like I haven’t figured out how to balance everything. When homeschooling is going great, I’m dragging at my part-time job and the house is a mess. When the house is running like a well-oiled machine, homeschooling seems to fall through the cracks. I know there’s a way to balance it all because other people seem to do it. So what’s their secret, and how can I do it, too?

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I think you’re operating from faulty premises. We all want to believe that there’s some magical balance out there, but the truth is what you’ve probably always suspected on some level: There’s no such thing as perfect balance. There’s just finding an un-balance that works for you.

“I don’t know who came up with the myth of a balanced life, but it’s become a real problem for a lot of people,” says life coach Adrienne Harlick, who specializes in helping busy moms find ways to navigate the different parts of their lives. “You’re never going to find some magical equation that lets you manage everything perfectly all the time. What you can find is a way to set priorities and manage your time so that at the end of the day, you feel good about what you’ve accomplished.”

Harlick says that moms often react to this with disbelief and disappointment — they genuinely want to find a way to do everything and are dismayed when Harlick tells them they just plain can’t — but once they accept the initial premise that perfect balance doesn’t exist, most of them feel strangely liberated.

Georgia Parker, a homeschool mom with a full-time job, came to Harlick in the same situation you’re in now: She felt like she should be able to do everything in a way that made her feel less stressed and more competent. She felt like she was constantly dropping balls because every time she focused her full attention on one area of her life, another area suffered. “I kept thinking I was just doing it wrong, but Adrienne helped me understand that what I wanted was impossible,” Georgia says.

There is no perfect balance, so you’re wasting time and energy trying to find one. Instead, Harlick says, you need to focus on figuring out how to deal with the unbalanced life you have. You have to accept that you only have so much time, so much energy, so many resources — which means everything can’t be the most important. In order to find a way to balance your life amid perpetual imbalance, you’ve got to figure out what your priorities are.

This can be challenging because it often means letting go of some ideal of a “good mom” or a “good partner” you have stuck in your head. A good mom could keep the house spotless, shine at work, cook healthy, kid-pleasing meals three times a day, and homeschool kids in a way that’s both rigorously academic and relaxed and child-led. You are never going to be that imaginary mom. Setting priorities lets you imagine the kind of good mom you actually want to be and gives you the space to build a life that plays to your strengths. Yes, you will probably still have days where everything falls apart, but once you start prioritizing what matters to you, you will have a lot more days that end with you feeling good about what you’re doing.

• Make sure you’re setting goals that line up with your priorities. You’ll never feel balanced unless you can feel like you are making progress, and you can’t feel like you’re making progress if you’re stuck in an endless to-do cycle. Once you know what your priorities are, you can start setting goals that will move you toward reaching them. Setting goals helps you pinpoint what’s really important to you and gives you permission to sidetrack the things that aren’t. “You will feel much less guilty about not doing that co-op class if it’s because you are working on your dissertation, or much better about ordering takeout if you didn’t start dinner because you spent the day helping your kid work on a big project,” says Harlick.

• Recognize that you have a choice. When you’re feeling unbalanced, it’s often because you feel like you have to do everything, but you have more choices than you might initially think at any given moment. When you feel overwhelmed, Harlick advises pushing yourself to figure out what is the least important thing on your list — can you pause that? Outsource it? Let it go completely? What about the second-least important thing? The third? “People tend to fall into the trap of thinking that because everything they do is important, everything they do is essential, but that’s almost never the case,” Harlick says. “What if you didn’t make lunch for your 10-year-old? He’d probably feed himself when he got hungry.”

• Give overlapping a try. So you want to start a garden, but you have no time to do it. Or you’d love to write that curriculum, but to do it, you’d need an actual moment of quiet. Try including your kids. There’s not reason your kids can’t help you get that garden going or test-drive a NaNoWriMo project while you’re writing, too. This doesn’t always work out, but it’s always worth a try because the times when it does work out are magical.

• Take the big picture view. Your goal shouldn’t be to find balance in one-day increments but over the long term, says psychologist Nigel Marsh. “Your days are always going to feel lopsided and uneven — because they are probably going to be lopsided and uneven,” he says. “But if you look at a six-month chunk of time or the course of a year, you can see more clearly where your time and energy are going.” If that view makes you happy, you’ve got as much balance as it’s humanly possible to have. If it doesn’t — well, you’ve got a much better perspective of what you want to change.

• Throw money at the problem. This isn’t always an option, but if your budget has some flexibility, consider outsourcing some of the things on your to-do list that don’t match up with your priority list. Georgia Parker hired a cleaner to come in twice a week to do the heavy cleaning so that she just has to keep a handle on everyday clutter and clean-up. If you need more time for your own work, an online class or hybrid homeschool might free up some of the hours you’re putting into homeschooling. A mom in our homeschool group raves about her dinner box subscription, which takes away all the time and energy she used to spend on figuring out and shopping for dinners every week. If you can afford to let someone else handle a problem area, you’re giving yourself more space to focus on what you care about.

• Stop putting off self-care until you have time. “You will never have time, so do it now anyway,” Harlick says. Harlick says ones of the symptoms of the balance myth is that women tend to put themselves last on the assumption that they’ll eventually figure out a way to fit their own self-care into the routine. The truth is, taking care of yourself will only end up in your routine if you actively put it there, so schedule your meals, your bedtimes, your free and fun time, just as you schedule park days and standardized tests. “Once you accept that you’re never going to magically get everything balanced, you can also accept that your own needs shouldn’t wait indefinitely,” Harlick says.

• Know what makes your good day highlights reel. What makes you feel really good about your day? A run in the morning? A book in the bath? Nature time with the kids? Identify the little get-to moments that make your have-to list a little easier to work through, and get them on your schedule at least a few times a week.

• Plan when you’re going to leave, not just when you’re going to get there. This applies to everything from social activities like park days to dance lessons to the office. “If you know when you’re leaving, you can start preparing to go 20 minutes in advance — you won’t have that and-one-more-thing stretching out activities, which can make you feel like you’re always scrambling,” says Harlick. Setting your exit in advance of your arrival reduces a lot of stress and hassle.

• Don’t be afraid to multitask when it helps. We’re always trying to be in the moment more, and that’s a worthy goal — but it’s not one we can meet every minute of the day. Sometimes a quick email check while the kids are working on their math means you can squeeze in a little work time, or it might make sense to practice your poetry verses while you tend the garden.

---

How do I raise kids who value diversity in a not-very-diverse homeschool community?

I want my kids to be the kind of people who value diversity, but our homeschool community is pretty homogenous. How do I raise open-minded global citizens when our opportunities to experience other cultures are limited?

This is something I worry about, too. Our homeschool community is vibrant, engaging, and full of creative, curious kids with diverse interests and talents — but it’s a very white, middle class community. And I worry: How will my kids be responsible citizens in an increasingly global and diverse world if they don’t have opportunities to spend time with a diverse group of people?

Here’s the good news: It turns out that just by talking about issues of race and difference with our kids, we’re improving their diversity IQ. This goes contrary to what a lot of parents think: By talking about differences and racism to our children, aren’t we really just teaching them to notice differences that they’d be oblivious to otherwise? In fact, no: Kids as young as three years old start to form ideas about race and act on them — not because children are natural-born racists but because they experience the world through cataloging and comparing the people and things around them. “Don’t you want to suggest to them — early on, before they do form these preconceptions — something positive [about differences between people] rather than let them pick up something negative?” asks Kristina Olson, a psychologist who studies racial bias and social cognitive development.

So talking about race and difference is important, and if your community doesn’t lend itself to natural segues into those conversations, you can turn to books and television to bring up the topic. Ask your librarian to help you find books that have been nominated for the Coretta Scott King Book Award (for books by an African-American author and illustrator), the Schneider Family Book Award (for excellence in writing about the disability experience), the Pura Belpré Award (awarded to a Latino illustrator), the Stonewall Award (for excellence in children’s and young adult LGBTQ literature), the American Indian Youth Literature Awards, and the Asian Pacific Awards, all of which seek out works by authors and illustrators that highlight diversity. But don’t stop there: Also talk to your kids about where you don’t find multiculturalism in books and television. Why aren’t there any black Santa Clauses? Why do people assume a character like Rue in The Hunger Games or Hermione in the the Harry Potter series is white — and get so upset when it turns out that she may not be? You can use these conversations as a starting point to talk about diversity in your real-life community: Why do you think we seem to see people who look the same everywhere we go?

It’s possible that in the course of your conversations, your kids will say some insensitive things. That’s great because it gives you the opportunity to talk about the thinking behind the insensitivity, says Howard Stevenson, professor of education and Africana studies and author of Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences That Make a Difference. Don’t admonish your child for saying something that’s off-base — instead, respect your child’s curiosity and help him explore the ideas that led him into narrower-minded thinking.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to teach children that diversity is a value. Your children probably aren’t going to be blind to the fact that other people look different, talk differently, and have different abilities — so instead of teaching them to ignore differences, encourage them to embrace them as good things and to look for commonalities with people who seem superficially difference. Reading a book about a first-generation Chinese boy, look for what you might have in common with the protagonist — an obsession with baseball or a bossy mother — as well as differences. The more similarities young kids see between themselves and children of other races, the more they may embrace them, says Stevenson.

Of course, there’s no substitute for first-hand experience with diverse people, so look for opportunities to explore different cultures. This can be as simple as loading up the car to check out festivals, restaurants, and cultural events near you, or as involved as planning immersion getaways to places that are totally different from your hometown or sponsoring a foreign exchange student. Ideally, you’ll guide your kids by being excited to explore and discover diversity, whatever your community, and following your lead, they’ll grow up to value and seek out diversity, too.

---

When is it OK to let kids quit?

When is quitting a smart way to cut your losses on a project that didn't work, and when is it failing to keep a commitment?

I signed my sons up for a class at our nature center because I thought they’d love it — but three weeks in, they’re asking if they have to go every week. I’ve probed and probed, but it doesn’t seem like the class is bad or the instructor is mean — a friend’s daughter took the class with the same instructor last year and loved it — they just don’t want to go. Should I let them quit? And if I do, am I raising them to be quitters?

It sounds like you signed your sons up for this class without really getting their opinion on whether they wanted to take it — which is fine. How will kids learn what they love if they don’t try lots of different things? Part of our job as homeschool parents is to plant seeds that might bloom into interests. But not every seed blooms. Trying lots of things means that you’ll also discover things you don’t like — and that often involves quitting something that just isn’t a good fit.

We’ve stigmatized quitting, pitting it against virtuous qualities like persistence and follow-through, but quitting isn’t necessarily a bad thing, says Shimi K. Kang, author of the book The Dolphin Way: A Parent's Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy, and Motivated Kids-Without Turning into a Tiger. It’s a normal part of pre-adolescent development, as kids experiment, explore, and find their passions through trial and error. The problem, says Kang, is often that we sometimes leap right into a three-month class commitment instead of giving our kids free space to explore their interests on their own. Just like you, we think, “Oh, Marshall loves going to the nature center — I bet he’d love this nature class,” when we might be better served looking for one-day programs (check nature centers, community centers, state parks, and libraries in your neck of the woods) that let kids sample an activity without commitment. And don’t underestimate the power of free play for letting kids test out different interests — the modern-day prescription to any childhood interest tends to be a structured class, but that isn’t always the best way for kids to test the waters. Kids who have a pattern of wanting to quit activities may just need fewer activities and more free time. This may be the case with your sons — they like nature study, they just don’t want to get up and do it every week in a structured way.

Now, if your sons were the ones who pushed to take this class, I’d feel differently. Yes, trial and error are an important part of finding your interests, but time and money aren’t unlimited for most of us. If a child is interested in a class or activity, it’s smart to talk about expectations up front. For team sports, choirs, theater troupes, and other activities where other players are depending on your child’s participation, your child should plan to see the season through before he signs up — part of signing on to that kind of activity is becoming part of that community. If you’re paying for a class or activity, agree together on what a “reasonable effort” before giving up entails. A full semester? A month? The length of the class? Then hold your child to her commitment. (Of course, if kids want to quit because they are being hurt, physically or emotionally, they should always be able to quit.)

Bottom line: Quitting isn’t all bad, and you should address it on a case-by-case basis before the activity even starts.

---

How do you plan a move when you’re homeschooling?

We’re trying to sell our house, which means no piles of books or stinky science projects for a while. Any tips for homeschooling while your house is staged? 

I am neither an expert on home staging nor on housekeeping while homeschooling, so I asked a friend in real estate for her recommendations. She says the biggest challenge most homeschool families face is returning their home to “normal.” For instance, lots of us use the dining room or formal living room as homeschool central, which can be off-putting to some buyers. If you’re so serious about selling that you’re actually staging your home, this may mean drastically changing your space to make it more neutral. Consider setting up your rooms with a traditional flow — a table and chairs in the dining room, an office or sitting area in the formal living room, etc. You probably know this, but decluttering and packing non-essentials will go a long way toward making your house buyer-ready. (As soon as you pack up a box of books, you’ll discover that the one title you really want is in the box — accept that this will happen, and just plan to hit the library when it does.)

Keeping things tidy is vital. If you have clutter-prone areas — our dining room table is our worst offender — make clearing them off a priority. If you aren’t naturally neat, keep a few big laundry bins under your table for emergency get-that-cleaned-up-now sessions — throw a nice tablecloth over the table, and no one will be the wiser. Move homeschool materials to free-standing dressers and armoires so that they don’t clutter closets — buyers will check out your closets, but they’d have to be pretty nosy to rifle through the furniture that’s not part of the house. 

As for academics, the selling-your-house period is an ideal time to dive into unit studies or intensive projects like NaNoWriMo (most people do it in November, but you can write your book any time of year). Focusing on one topic at a time makes it easier to quickly shift gears if you need to—and gives you the freedom to take spontaneous field trips during house showings. 

---

How can we do a better job homeschooling science?

Homeschooling science can get more complicated as students get older. A flexible plan, clear goals, and a great secular science curriculum can make it a little easier.

Science always seems to fall by the wayside for us. We start out strong with a different curriculum every year, but by the winter holidays, we’re months behind and barely logging any science hours. The experiments end up taking too much prep time or they’re not well organized, and the curriculum either ends up being boring or not giving enough information so that I am always having to spend way too much time tracking down resources or books. I kept thinking we’d figure it out eventually — but now we’re starting 7th grade, and science can’t keep being optional. Do you have any recommendations for finding a curriculum or a routine to make science easier?

Honestly, this is a common problem — science may be the hardest subject to pull off entirely as a homeschool class once you move past the elementary years. A good science class requires two things: information, which homeschoolers have in spades; and the ability to test that information with critical thinking. This is where things get hard: Even if a homeschool parent has a strong science background, running a science lab in your laundry room can be challenging.

The easiest way to solve this is with strategic outsourcing. If you have a homeschool coop with a science lab or — for high school students — an accessible dual enrollment program at a convenient college, in-person science with a small group is the ideal learning environment. If in-person classes aren’t available, Next Level Homeschool has solid science classes for middle and high school. For older homeschoolers, I always recommend spending your budget first on the subject your kid is most excited about and second on science classes with a lab component.

If you’re committed to finding a curriculum to use at home, I recommend focusing on one subject at a time — you probably will not find one good curriculum creator that includes great at-home biology, great at-home chemistry, and great at-home physics, so you will likely need to shop around. You might look at the options at Conceptual Academy, which are video-centric and designed by science educators but allow students to work at their own pace. They’re similar to classes you’d get in traditional schools, but you can supplement with fun readings and activities to keep things interesting. Similarly, Oak Meadow offers major middle and high school science classes in a traditional school format, with all supplies included. If you love Real Science Odyssey, Blair Lee has shared tips at SEA Homeschooler conferences for expanding these curriculum into high school-level spines.

As far as finding a routine that works goes, start with science your next academic year. In other words, start your homeschool year with just science, doing a little every day, and gradually adding the other subjects for the year around your science classes. It may not come naturally to your existing routine, but you can make it part of your homeschool rhythm.

---

Who should we ask to write college recommendations for our homeschooler?

We’ve homeschooled all the way through school, and now my high school junior is getting ready to apply to college next fall — but because we’ve done almost all of our learning at home, there’s no obvious person to ask to write a recommendation for him. Should I just write his counselor recommendation and his teacher recommendation and explain that we are homeschoolers?

Congratulations! You must be so proud and excited for your son.

What colleges are looking for from a recommendation letter is deeper understanding of a student’s personality, ambitions, academic interests, successes, and challenges. Recommendations, along with your student’s transcripts, test scores, and application essay, give colleges an idea of what kind of personal and academic contributions your student will make to their institution.

The truth is that you’re probably the most qualified person to talk about these things for your son — but you should do that in your counselor letter, and ask someone else to write your son’s teacher recommendation. There’s a reason for this: If you’re putting together your son’s transcript, writing his counselor letter, and writing his teacher recommendation, colleges will only get one view of what your son is like as a student. Ideally, you’d want to offer them a variety of perspectives so that they get a more holistic view.

An obvious way to find someone to write a recommendation for your son is to sign him up for an outside class, preferably one that ties into his interests and abilities. I write lots of these letters for students who take my classes, and it’s always a pleasure — in fact, I assume that one of the reasons students are taking AP Literature or philosophy with me is because they want experience with an outside teacher, including a possible recommendation. But that’s not the only option: You can also ask troop leaders, teachers from art, music, or drama lessons, employers from internships or part-time jobs, volunteer directors and managers, or other adults who have a mentor-type relationship with your son. All of these people can speak to your son’s willingness to work hard and ability to work with other people, his time management and organization skills, his resourcefulness and talents — all information colleges look for in a recommendation later.

What if you’re really the only person who can write your son’s recommendation? Unless your son has stellar test scores (and even then), I’d really encourage you to consider at least a semester with an outside teacher so that you can add independent verification of his grades and abilities to his application — for homeschoolers, this kind of verification can be a big deal. (And really, it’s not a bad idea to let your son test the waters learning from someone other than you before he heads off to college anyway.) If you’re determined to write his recommendation, stick to the facts and try to give as many concrete examples as possible — don’t say “Allen is hard-working and responsible,” give a specific example of a time when he demonstrated hard work and responsibility. The more concrete examples you can give, the more your insight your letter can offer into your son’s abilities and ambitions.

---

How do I put together a high school transcript for an unschooled student?

Lisa asked: My always-unschooled 17-year-old has always been adamant that college isn’t on is to-do list — but now, just as he’s getting ready to start what’s technically his senior year this fall, he’s fallen in love with a fairly traditional college (with a reputation for being tough on homeschooled applicants) and made up his mind that’s what he wants to do next. I want to support him, but I have no idea how to pull together a high school transcript (which his dream college does require) when we’ve done very little formal schoolwork for high school. Can you help?

Obviously your life right now would be a little easier if you’d been keeping careful records for your son’s high school transcript since eighth grade, but honestly, it’s no big deal that you’re just starting to think about it at the end of junior year. (I’m not sure if it’s exactly comforting, but there’s a not-small percentage of homeschool parents who don’t start thinking about transcripts until their student’s senior year is ending — and many of them do just fine pulling them together even at that very last minute.) Putting together this transcript is totally doable.

Start with a simple transcript template like this one so that all you have to do is fill in the blanks. (Transcripts for very traditional colleges are one place where creativity doesn’t really pay off — you’ll usually fare best if your transcript looks like everybody else’s.) Now look at the college your son has his sights set on: What core academic classes does it require for incoming freshman? Often, the requirements look something like this: 4 units of English, 2 units of algebra, 1 unit of geometry, 1 unit of trigonometry, calculus, statistics, or other advanced math, 1 unit of biology, 1 unit of chemistry or physics, 1 unit of additional science, 1 unit of U.S. history, 1 unit of European history, world history, or world geography, 2 units of the same foreign language, and 1 unit of visual or performing arts.

Now a list like this might initially make you feel kind of panic-y because it seems like the most structured thing ever and your problem is that you’ve got almost no structured stuff to draw on, right? In fact, though, a list like this is a great thing for homeschoolers because it helps you focus in and figure out how all the learning your son has been doing might fit into a more traditional framework. Just because he hasn’t been checking off boxes for the past three years doesn’t mean he hasn’t been learning — which you know, of course, but which can be easy to forget in the face of a form full of those boxes. For instance, all that time he spent hatching tadpoles, creating microscope slides, growing carnivorous plants, dissecting owl pellets, and volunteering at the zoo? That might add up to Biology. Or the year he spent reading every Philip Dick book and comparing the books to movie interpretations of them? That’s comparative literature in action and can count as a semester of English. What about math? Frankly, if you haven’t done organized classes, the simplest thing to do may be to just to ask your son to take a few placement tests to see what math he’s mastered — then you can list the maths he’s mastered on his transcript. As you realize how much your son has actually accomplished over the past three years, his transcript will fill in pretty quickly — and you may be tempted to get whimsical with course names and descriptions, but if the school he’s aiming for really is super-traditional, it really is best to just keep it as simple as you can: Biology, rather than Exploring the Natural World, or Literature: Science Fiction instead of The Worlds of Philip Dick. Yes, coloring inside the lines is a little boring, but you’ve happily lived outside the lines (and can continue to do so). This is just a hoop that you’ll jump through more easily if you present your out-of-box experiences in a form that fits neatly into the admission committee’s boxes. (Plenty of colleges are receptive to homeschool resumes and appreciate the kinds of interest-driven classes that homeschoolers have the opportunity to take. You just want to know what the school you are applying to is looking for.)

After all this list-making, you may have some holes — but you’ve got his entire senior year to fill them. Don’t worry if you have multiple classes to fill in — maybe you need to cover geometry and trigonometry or take two English classes. This is pretty easy to manage with a little strategic planning. Sit down with your son, and come up with a game plan for what to do over the next year so that his transcript matches up with the requirements for his dream school. (If you need to, you can set your graduation date for the end of summer instead of spring to get a little more time. Remember, you’re the one who has the power to determine your academic year.)

You don’t mention whether you’ve been doing any outside classes, but if you haven’t, make sure to enroll in a couple this fall. They’ll make your transcript a little easier, yes, but they’ll also connect you to other teachers who can help describe your son’s achievements and college suitability when the time comes to start soliciting teacher recommendations for your application. You can handle the transcript thing on your own, but you will definitely benefit from having outside, unbiased teachers for your son’s teacher recommendations.

Good luck! It can feel intimidating to tackle this on your own, but just like every other part of homeschooling, taking it one step at a time and keeping your student top of mind will get you through.

---

How can I help my homeschooler learn to focus?

Now that my son is in 6th grade, he’s doing work that requires him to really dig in and focus. He’s doing good work, but he’s so easily distracted, and he has trouble concentrating. Is there anything I can do to help improve his focus?

It’s totally normal and developmentally appropriate for tweens to need a little support as they move into work that requires more focus and concentration, so if your middle school homeschooler is finding stretching his attention span a little challenging, building focus should be part of your secular homeschool curriculum. Learning to focus can be hard even for adults, but most of the time, all you need to boost your concentration is a change in your routine and regular practice, says Michael Coates, M.D., chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Try these easy-to-implement actions to help your son improve his focus.

Set a timer. Something about an established time limit — “Work on this math for 15 minutes” — inspires focus, so don’t hesitate to break out the kitchen timer when you get to a subject you know taxes your son’s concentration skills. Start with small increments of time, and gradually increase time spent until you reach the amount of focused time you’re shooting for. This works best if you don’t rush — you don’t have to increase the time every day. Instead, give your son a chance to really adjust to each increase before adding more time.

Check your sleep habits. Around sixth grade, some kids start making the shift to adolescent sleep habits, which means their bodies naturally want to stay up later and sleep longer in the mornings. Kids really need at least seven hours of sleep a night to concentrate during the day, so if your child’s sleep patterns are changing but your schedule isn’t, it may be time to try something different. Even just starting an hour later in the morning may be enough to improve your son’s concentration.

Practice mindfulness. If your son starts to drift off during reading assignments or conversations, it may be that he’s spoiled by the everything-now nature of video games, Wikipedia, and Twitter. To help him shake that I-could-be-doing-10-other-things-now feeling, encourage him to pause and wiggle his toes or snap his fingers. That moment of focused concentration will help his focus settle back down.

Have a glass of water. A 2012 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that being as little as two percent dehydrated — such mild dehydration that your body doesn’t even feel thirsty — can negatively impact concentration. Pour your son a big glass of water before his next intensive focus session.

Jump around. Exercise is one of the best ways to improve focus, so take plenty of action breaks to walk around the block, kick a soccer ball in the backyard, do jumping jacks in the living room, or play a quick round of Wii Sports between subjects.

Bottom line: Don’t expect your son’s concentration abilities to develop on their own. Help him sharpen them over time by test-driving different focus-boosting techniques.

---

How do I grade my homeschool student’s written work?

The best way to grade an essay is to know what the purpose of the assignment is — and to be sure your student is on the same page.

Now that my daughter is in middle school, I want to start giving her real grades on her essays and papers—but I am really not sure how to decide whether an essay should get an A, B, or C. Do you have any tips?

You can make yourself crazy trying to grade essays because there are so many possible components to consider. So make it easy on yourself, and determine the purpose of your essay upfront: Is your essay an analysis of a story? Then your grading should focus on how successfully your student analyzes the story. Is your paper a traditional research paper? Then your grade should focus on how well-researched and organized the paper actually is. This does mean that you’ll be mentally shifting gears with each essay assignment, but that’s really the key to thoughtful essay grading. Beyond that, here are some practical tips for grading essays that will help keep your grading consistent and helpful for your student:

Know what makes a good essay.

It seems dorky to write a rubric for a single student, but you really should. Write down what differentiates an A paper (all sentences are well constructed and vary in length and structure) from a B paper (most sentences are well constructed and vary in length and structure) from a C paper (most sentences are well constructed but have similar structure and length). If you’re new to rubric-writing (and most homeschoolers are), this example from readwritethink.org is a good starting point that you can tweak as you go.

Let your student know your method.

Say “For this book report, I’m going to be looking mostly at how well you explain the strengths and weaknesses of the book. You can use the plot to help support your argument, but you don’t need to summarize the plot for me.” If you make a rubric for grading essays, you should definitely share it with your student. 

Don’t play copyeditor.

Your job isn’t to correct every misspelling and grammatical gaffe in your student’s paper — this isn’t a manuscript, and you aren’t an editor. Pick two or three grammatical concepts to focus on per paper (using quotes correctly, for example, or including citations appropriately), and limit your red-penning to these specific concepts. Look for patterns rather than specific instances—it’s more helpful to say, “I notice that you’re having trouble trying to squeeze too much information into one sentence, and you’re ending up with a lot of run-ons and hard-to-read sentences” than to mark up every awkward sentence. If your student seems to be backsliding on a grammatical or structural issue that should already be old hat, return his paper and ask him to do the grammatical revisions before returning the paper to you. (“It looks like you didn’t break this essay up into paragraphs — why don’t you fix that before I grade it?”)

Look for things the writer is doing well.

I think you should always try to point out two things your writer is doing successfully in a paper, even if they feel like small or unexceptional things to you. It’s not that you want to cast faint praise or give a participation ribbon to your kid, but young writers need to know what they are getting right as well as where they can improve.

---

What homeschool subjects are good when you have kids across a wide age range?

My kids cover a wide age range. Are there any homeschool subjects that are good for tots through teens to do together?

When you’re teaching across an age gap, the biggest challenge is finding something that’s engaging enough for older students while still being accessible to your younger ones. Fine arts classes, like art, music, and poetry, often fit the bill. A program like Meet the Masters or a book like Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters gives kids an opportunity to study art history by making their own artistic creations, which can be as appealing to an artistic teen as to a scissors-happy kindergartner. (If you want to skip the history and go straight to the art-making, Mona Brookes’ Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too, is a fantastic resource for this.)

For music appreciation, it’s hard to beat the Classical Kids series (including Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call, and Mozart’s Magnificent Voyage), which introduces composers through music and words. These programs are just as likely to pop up on college radio stations as in preschool classrooms, so they really do have multi-age appeal.

With its dramatic costumes and exciting storylines, opera has surprising kid appeal, and the free Opera for Everyone podcast introduces the genre well.

And don’t underestimate the power of poetry as a multi-age study! A stack of poetry books from the library can be a springboard for great learning conversations.

Bottom line: When it comes to teaching multiple ages, hands-on topics that can go deep or stay light are your best bet. You can’t really go far wrong with fine arts.

---

Do you have any advice for homeschoolers writing their college essays?

My daughter is just starting to think about applying to college (yikes!), and I am feeling nervous about the application essay. Do you have any advice for homeschoolers writing their college essays?

People often ask me for advice on writing application essays, but there’s really no secret to a great college application essay. The only trick is getting away from the notion that your essay has to be A Very Special Piece of Writing and giving yourself permission to just tell a story about who you are.

Think of it this way: Admission offices go through thousands of application packets, many of which contain earnest essays about mission trips to Haiti, learning about leadership on the sports field, or similarly repetitive topics. Don’t waste your big chance to break out of the dry application box by writing about what every other hopeful applicant does. And don’t repeat the same information over and over either: If you’re sending a recommendation letter from your creative writing teacher and your application includes a long list of writing awards and publications, don’t also use your essay to focus on your love of writing — share something else. Skip the stories about life-changing trips abroad, too — you’ve had plenty of epiphanies in your own backyard, and those are often the most compelling ones to focus on. Seize the opportunity to talk about something more personal instead, like how you made the decision to become a vegetarian, why you decided not to get your driver’s license, or how you spent an entire year studying Minecraft as an academic subject.

Bottom line: Aim for an essay that makes your daughter’s friends say “That’s totally you,” and she’s on the right track.

---

Do homeschoolers need an accredited diploma to get into college?

I keep hearing about accredited diplomas and programs now that my son is in middle school. Do homeschoolers need an accredited diploma to get into college?

There’s a lot of confusion around accreditation when it comes to homeschooling. First of all, curriculum can’t be accredited; only institutions can be accredited. So unless you’re enrolled in an accredited institution — which makes you a student at that institution rather than a homeschooler — you won’t receive an accredited diploma.

And that’s fine! No U.S. state requires any homeschool curriculum or diploma to be accredited. Some homeschoolers look into accreditation because they plan to return to traditional school at some point and want the work they did as homeschoolers to “count.” In most states, it will count whether it’s accredited or not until your student starts 9th grade; from 9th grade on, homeschool credits probably won’t count as required credits toward graduation whether they are accredited or not. U.S. public high schools also don’t always accept credits from private schools or public schools in other states, so if you know your plans include a return to public high school after 9th grade, accreditation may not be the solution you need. (In that case, it’s smart to talk to a counselor at the actual school you want to attend; they can give you the best advice about transferring as a homeschooler.)

As far as life after high school, it’s worth asking yourself whether anyone has ever checked that your high school diploma is accredited. (Don’t assume it is if you graduated from a public high school! Not all public schools in the United States are actually accredited.) My hybrid high school is not accredited, and our graduates go on to great colleges every year. Colleges are waking up to the fact that homeschoolers make great additions to the university scene, and in recent years — especially since COVID threw learning off the rails — they’ve become much more flexible about requirements for homeschooled applicants. You may have a few hoops to jump through with some colleges or after-high school programs if you bypass accreditation (here in Georgia, for example, you’ve got to hit a certain SAT score to qualify for the state’s merit-based HOPE scholarship if you graduate as a homeschooler), but if you’ve made it through SAT tests, dual enrollment, AP classes, and all the rest of it with your homeschooler, you’re probably pretty good at jumping though a few hoops. You don’t need an accredited diploma, and most homeschoolers won’t have one.

So why consider accreditation? If your son has his heart set on one of the very few universities or programs that actually requires an accredited diploma, it’s obviously worth setting the wheels in motion to obtain one. If you’re hoping to get certain state-funded college financial aid, check the requirements — an accredited diploma might be a smart choice for students who struggle with tests if it overrides a minimum-score requirement. I’ve had students get their diplomas at our hybrid homeschool accredited through Bridgeway Academy and Clonlara School. (It feels a little like paying to get your diploma rubber-stamped, but sometimes a rubber stamp gives you extra peace of mind.)

Bottom line: The transcript is what counts. Your child’s classes, test scores, and other academic and extracurricular achievements are what colleges will really be looking at.

---

What’s the easiest way to homeschool a subject my child hates?

Option A: Skip It

Sometimes, your child’s brain just isn’t ready to process certain kinds of information — and no amount of solving for x is going to make algebra click for her until she’s ready. Instead of powering through, consider pulling back and taking a three-month break from your problem subject.

Option B: Outsource it

A bad subject can make homeschooling feel like a chore for you and your child. If you’re both struggling, let someone else do the heavy lifting. You can find a teacher to tackle almost every subject — check with local classes and co-ops or on Outschool to find people excited to tackle the class that’s sucking the joy out of your homeschool. Homeschooling doesn’t mean you have to take the reins for every single subject.

Option C: Streamline it

Some curricula script every lesson and schedule everything from practice problems to review sessions. If you’re really struggling, de-personalize the subject by using a boxed curriculum. (For math, try Saxon or Teaching Textbooks.) Sure, you’ll sacrifice some flexibility and spontaneity, but it’s a small price to pay for your sanity.

---