Why Less Is More

So you're planning your child's curriculum, and you've got all the basics: Math and Science and Grammar and Writing. You looked at what the laws require and if it's more than the above you have that all planned out too. You've got ideas for religious studies/Bible, you know you want your child to study Spelling and Handwriting, Literature is a MUST, and you want both a Health course and P.E. - they're different you know! 

You're looking into an immersive World Language program, you've joined a co-op which has the kids memorize and recite as a big part of it, and you have an extensive list of all the online and local offerings for tumbling, ballet, jazz, tap, piano, violin, art, and martial arts to choose from. You have a College Plan started and have bought access to a whole computer program just for keeping track of grades and transcripts. 

You've moved the table into the kitchen and turned the dining room into a classroom. You have 49 posters and charts on the wall (in as many different colors) teaching everything from weather (and appropriate clothing for each) to multiplication to the periodic table of elements. You have a "Family Goals Wall" and you bought desks from IKEA. Your whiteboard/blackboard is so big it would make a public school teacher green with envy. 

There's a schedule on the wall next to the clock that lists an exact time for every change, including bathroom breaks and meals, from 8am to at least 3pm. 

Maybe you even have a class pet or pet plant, a preschool table with built in crayon caddy and a colorful ABC rug, a science center with a microscope, and an educational listening center with audiobooks and classical music. 

Oh and perhaps your oldest child is 3 years old. 

...

None of those things I listed are bad things, themselves, but if you think you need all of them or even a lot of them, you need to take a step back and CALM DOWN. This is not a Pinterest Party, this isn't a contest, it's not a race. And it's most especially NOT public school. 

Trying to replicate public school at home actually negates most of the benefits of homeschooling. 

You can't force a kid to qualify for MENSA by loading them with electives, extracurriculars, and flash card drills. Maybe your child is already gifted... you're thinking that I don't know about gifted kids and that you believe they really truly need ALL this. You would be wrong on both counts. Maybe your child struggles with a learning disability or special needs and you think they need ALL this stuff to stay on track and that I don't know anything about that either. You'd be wrong again. I'm a second generation homeschool mama of 6 kids ages (almost) 4 to (almost) 14. When I was a kid I once stared at a wall for 8 hours making stories in my head and when I realized it was dark out I realized I hadn't done any school yet that day and my mom was not happy. Another time I read a 20 page chapter of a science textbook and couldn't recall one single word by the end. I couldn't spell until I was in 7th or 8th grade. When my firstborn was 13 months old she spoke in 2-word sentences, at 2 she asked me to teach her to read, and when I still hadn't by the time she was 3 she invented an entire phonetic alphabet of glyphs and wrote a story and several letters with them, then she decided she needed to teach me her alphabet so I could read the story and the letters she'd written me. One of my kids has trouble focusing to learn from anything on paper, but you place an engineering challenge in front of him and he's got it solved before he even knows how. Those are a few of many stories of atypical abilities and learning function levels displayed in myself and my children. Trust me, I hear you, I feel your stress. I still believe that in most cases, less is more. 

Have you ever tried to put balls away into a bucket or basket? And when you push "just one more" into the last crevice, all the balls just sort of POP out like popcorn and go all over the place. Then you have to start all over again from scratch. But if you fill the bucket reasonably, the balls stay in and you can even carry the bucket around without spilling them. This applies no matter how well-suited to ball-carrying that bucket is: if you over-fill it some of the balls will fall out all over the place.  

Do you remember "cramming?" Like for a test? For a while you just immerse yourself into test prep and try to temp-memorize as much as you can for that big test on Monday. You cram and cram and cram until your brain is numb, and then you take the test and then what? You forget almost all of it by the following week. How much of what you crammed do you remember today? It was too much all at once and when the pressure to cram for the NEXT test came, you purged some of it, didn't you? To make room for the next cram session. Looking back, was this the best way to truly LEARN or merely the best way to PASS the test? 

What about when your mom would tell you something interesting and low-pressure like, "Uncle Jack bought a motorcycle." Or maybe, "Tonight's carrots are from our garden from the seeds you helped me plant." You would remember those things because you wanted to tell your friend about them. What if Mom said, "After supper I need you to sweep under the table before I let you have a popsicle on the deck." You'd probably remember that too. What if Mom said, "After supper please sweep under the table, clean out your backpack, load the dishwasher, walk the dog, do your homework, and sort your dirty laundry. Don't forget you have a science project due Thursday and you should phone Grandma and wish her happy birthday before it gets too late. I'm going over to Aunt Kate's for an hour and when I get back I expect you to have it all done. If you do a good job I'll let you take a popsicle out to eat on the deck." Popsicle or no popsicle, how much more likely is it that you're going to forget a bunch of stuff on that list because there was just too much on it? If this routine continues for 3 days, how likely is it that on day 4 you remember that if you sweep under the table you can have a popsicle for dessert, vs. if you do >insert long list without forgetting anything< you can have a popsicle for dessert? When your kids ask you 20 years down the road, "Did you have to do any chores when you were my age?" which scenario is more likely to bring total recall? Or a bad memory... 

Now think about your goals for homeschooling. Do you want an atmosphere of temporary cramming or one of lifelong learning? Children were designed to learn through play. What happens if you take a creature which is literally built to learn through play, and convert all or most of their play time into hours in which they have charts and worksheets and memorization and recitation and drills drills drills? This will negatively affect focus, memory, engagement, and both mental and physical health. Is it more important that they can multiply at 5 years old or that they are healthy and happy and can observe in nature worms in mud and birds in nests and caterpillars into butterflies? 

Have you heard of being snow-blind? That's when there's bright snow on everything so your eyes can only see white and can't make out the shapes that would tell you what's under it. You can only see the brightness and it's like being blind and lost and what you are looking at is devoid of meaning. When you put 472 charts on the wall in bright primary colors, you're making your child 'snow-blind' to the charts. There are too many of them and they blur together and mean nothing. In the case of a child with attention deficit or one easily overstimulated/with sensory issues, you're literally SCRAMBLING their brains with all that wall stuff! How can they be expected to focus on their lessons with that many "look at me!" colored charts all over the place! Charts can be GREAT but try this: decide a small number of charts to have, 1-3 at a time perhaps. Start with 1 chart. Introduce it, the purpose, how it will be used. Go over it daily. A month later add another, or replace the first one. Or if your student is old enough to have a binder, either put the charts in the binder for reference after you're done having them on the wall, OR keep the charts in the binder from the beginning INSTEAD of having them on the wall, small 1-page versions, and go over them at a specific time of day so that they can be put away for the rest of the day where they're not distracting or disorienting. 

Here's my suggestion. Write down the required subjects, legally, for your locale. Then for the rest of the possibilities of classes and studies, TRY to cross off as many as possible. Don't think of it as depriving your child of tumbling: think of it as FREEing them. You're giving them more time on the trampoline. Don't think of it as depriving them of the memorization co-op, think of it as freeing them up to observe science outdoors with their own eyes. You're not depriving them of P.E., you're giving them the gift of more time for climbing trees. 

What if your kiddo is UNDER the age of compulsory attendance? (Which is around 7 in most US states- obvs. check your local laws.) Just let them play! Unless they are asking you "teach me this," just let them learn life skills alongside you and play play play. Don't start school with a little one just because you CAN, actually have a reason based on their showing of desire and readiness for it before you sit them down with a lesson in mind. Once they start formal education, they have to keep progressing every year. They can never go back to when they were little and free, when play was their whole job and their life-school. So let them have it while they are little, before it's gone! It's a gift we often overlook the preciousness of. 

Older students are less interested in climbing and running around outdoors, but you and they will know far better by then what their long-term interests are, what they might need or want to take with them into their adult lives. It's not too late to start Karate and Piano lessons at 13, or 30. Think about it: Kids who start training for a career path at 2-6 years old aren't able to wisely choose what suits them best. It's their caregiver choosing for them, it's not their choice, though they might think it is. They haven't had enough time to play and explore and live, the basis on which they can decide what they find interesting enough to pursue. So don't base your little ones' educational plans on what they might be like as a teenager. Don't plan a life on nervous what-ifs, especially not someone else's life. 

It's popular now to say we should let teens do stupid things, fail, make mistakes, engage in risky behavior, because once they're legal age they'll need to sober up and be adults. I disagree. First of all even adults fail and make mistakes. Second, they should be horsing around at age 5 and at least starting to try not to do stupid risky things anymore by age 15. Are teens behaving more and more immaturely these days because their play time is taken away earlier and earlier when they are toddlers, I wonder? I'd prefer my child act the fool at 5 than 15, if they must. And they'll be less inclined to act a fool at all if they have proper and healthy outlets for their wildness such as digging in the dirt, climbing trees, running with the dog, building a playhouse with Dad, baking cookies with Mom... 

Less is more. 

Less is more. 

Less rigidity means more flexibility. 

Less planned subjects means more time for spontaneous teaching or learning moments. 

Less charts on the wall means more focus - and more engagement with what IS important enough to be on the wall. 

The less like public school it is, the more homeschool-unique advantages there are to enjoy. 

Less seatwork means more exercise. 

Less forced memorization means more time to make memories. 

I'm not saying to avoid desks, school rooms, charts, lessons, memorization, etc.! I'm saying don't overload your kid. Less is more. Even the gifted child will get overwhelmed with a crammed schedule and their clever little brain will decide to shut down for a while and take a break from the scheduling. Just like if you click too many keys on your computer at once it will protest and freeze up. Less at a time, less pressure = better results. 

Less is more, fellow homeschool mamas. It really is. 

P.S. Check out this pinboard of what NOT to do.

Rooms that try to duplicate public school spaces at home and walls with too much color and chaos that would be great for a hype-me-up playroom but horribly distracting for a study space. 

The Teenager Who Couldn't Spell

 Have I ever told you about how, when I was in about 7th grade, I couldn't spell? I couldn't even spell 'their' or 'baby.' 

Now, my mom was what I jokingly call a "serial curriculum switcher." She tried something new almost every year. Probably a good part of that was due to my own personal issues with learning. One of those issues was being 13 and unable to spell simple words. 

So in desperation, having tried other things with no success my mom ordered Rod & Staff Spelling By Sound & Structure. It goes from grade 2 up to grade 8. She ordered all six levels. 

When I found out she intended me to start at the 2nd grade level and work my way up, I was not happy. I mean what 13 year old wants to be in 2nd grade spelling? But she offered me a deal: If I could pass the tests I didn't have to do the lessons. So she started giving me spelling tests from the grade 2 up, and if I got them all right I could just skip the lesson. 

Being a lazy 13 year old, I didn't want to do baby lessons and I wanted out of the humiliation of being in a lower grade for spelling, so I would study those words like crazy so i could pass all the tests on the first try. I would read the whole lesson and answer in my head, then put my hand over the word list and guessing and then checking and repeat repeat repeat... and you know what? I got through all of them, even grade 8, in a few months. And then I could spell better than my mom. 

I remember liking the way they grouped the words. Liking how they triggered my brain to go "OH so THAT'S why it's spelled like that!" 

Different things work for different kiddos, of course, so this may not be the "magic Bullet" for your child like it was for me, but it is a good solid spelling program and it's simple, the kids can do the lessons quickly and without much help. 

I use it for my own kids and still like it. We actually "test" daily and the ones they got right 2 days in a row they're done with for good. The first 10 they haven't gotten right 2 times yet, they type into spellingtraining.com and practice. We do 1 lettered "part" of a lesson a day. If they are ahead in one aspect (workbook/tests) but not the other, we pause the one they're ahead on at review lessons until they've caught up to themselves. My kids are often getting ahead at testing out of their words before they've completed all the lettered parts of the lesson. Since we started doing this, my 12 year old son (who was as bad at spelling as his mom) has improved by leaps and bounds. 

Teaching Preschoolers

If you haven't read my post on why preschool is a thing in the first place, you might be interested in checking that out before reading further. Sometimes people think they *need* to do preschool with their little ones in the same way we *need* to teach an older child division, or their child will be "behind." When you have a classroom with a lot of students, you need to make sure they are all as close as possible to the same in terms of development and education because it's hard to move forward to the next lesson if many are still struggling with the previous lesson. That's what Pre and K are for. They are to try to get the stragglers up to speed so they don't hold the class back. 

However at home, ideally the mother will nurture her child naturally rather than trying to speed them up or slow them down to match other children. Ideally at home a child can be educated as a whole human being, different from other human beings and with a unique approach to the world. Rather than beginning their education from a place of trying to calibrate them to match, we should begin by meeting the child where they are at and helping them to grow and thrive based on themselves and not on other people. 

If you're new to homeschooling, there are a couple things you need to 'throw away' from your thought process right away. Think of these things as social conditioning or brainwashing and you're about to throw them off like unlocked shackles so you can walk the homeschooling path freely. 

1. Your child is not behind. Behind what? Behind whom? They are not in a race, this is not a large school with a class that needs everyone to be at the same level. Your child should each year be ahead of where he himself was last year, and that's the only thing that counts. Thus if your child is ready to read at 2, teach him. If he's not ready to read until he's 9, teach him what he is ready for and wait him to be ready for the rest. I know this is somewhat more challenging in states where yearly testing is required. Which is why I strongly encourage you to advocate for and vote for the freedom to homeschool without interference from the creators of government schools, because that freedom is the key to those shackles. Stepping out of the classroom means nothing if you're still required to follow the classroom rules. Do your best with the laws you've got, and vote for freedom every chance you get. 

2. This isn't public school. Leave the public school environment at the public school. Do not duplicate it in your home. By doing so you are replacing something organic and wholesome with something that has a lot of issues. If it didn't have issues you don't want (even if those issues in your mind are only the ones related to the virus this year) then your child would be there instead of home. And this includes "preschool" as a means of calibrating your child to match other children. Your child is not other children. Make your home/school/space customized to your child and not to mimic a classroom environment. 

Now assuming you've freed yourself from those two shackles, let's talk preschool! :) 

You taught baby to use a spoon, use the toilet, chew with her lips closed, say please and thank you, walk, run, ride a bike... Preschool and beyond are a lot like that. It's not something that requires a curriculum or a lot of time lesson planning. It doesn't take workbooks and a tiny school desk and chair and a whiteboard or chalkboard. 

It can, but it doesn't have to. Usually you just teach preschool the same way you taught everything else so far. 

The same way you heard baby say, mumumumum and repeated back to her a bunch of times, "That's right, say Mama! Say Mama! Mama loves you! Mama!" 

The same way you tried 43 books, dvd's, and programs to teach toilet use, and finally wound up saying, "Look Sweetie, the diapers are going bye-bye today. I've tried everything else and this is my last ditch effort. Work with me here."

The same way when your tot saw a kite and hollered in excitement you bought a kite and showed him how to run and fly it, helped him get it high in the sky and hold tight to the string so it doesn't escape. 

So preschool is the same: Look at the road construction sign. It says S-L-O-W! It says B-U-M-P! What color is the vest she's wearing? Orange! What color are the flowers on the tree? Pink! Show me your toes! Awesome, now let's put your sock on. Do you see the pretty bee? We can't pet a bee but we can see how pretty they are! What is the bee drinking? What is the yellow dust on the flower? It's pollen! Look here, it's a caterpillar. Did you know a caterpillar is a baby butterfly? 

Teaching moments. Every day is a series of teaching moments and sometimes you'll miss them and think later about what you "should have" said, and sometimes you'll recognize it in the moment and you'll tell them something about whatever they are showing interest in and it will stick. It will stick a million times better than if they saw it in a book, I can tell you from experience. When I was a tot, a child, a teen, my dad would always grab the teaching moments. He'd explain things, stop working to answer my questions, and to this day I remember those lessons far more clearly than the ones I learned from books. 

One time when I was about 2, small enough to crouch under a dining chair, it was after supper and Mom was washing dishes. The door was open to the screen storm door because it was so hot inside, but there was a lightning storm and I was scared. Dad got home late to find me under the chair crying. Mom was tired and asked him to explain lightning to me. He looked at her like she was crazy and said a baby can't understand lightning, but he tried anyway. He took me with him to the door and told me that it was static in the sky, zooming so fast that it made a loud sound, and he told me more and more and I still recall every word. Nitrates. Electricity. Heat expansion. Sound barrier. I drank it in, one eye nervously on the sky. We counted the miles - one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand... 

From then on, he explained everything to me as though I could understand it, even if he wasn't sure if I really could. He grabbed ahold of those teaching moments and every one of them left a mark on who I am today. Lessons, education, but ones that I enjoyed and remembered and recall with fondness. 

Little ones can understand a lot more than we think. The biggest part of homeschooling a preschooler is to keep them nearby and tell them about things. Talk to them and answer their 479 questions a minute as well as you can. Involve them in what you're doing. They LOVE to help with whatever you are doing. Are you doing laundry? They feel so big and helpful if you hand them the wet clothes and they put them in the dryer and close the door. Let them put away the flatware and praise them like crazy. Have them stir while you add ingredients when baking. Chores in older kids build character, chores for a little tot though, if they can do them alongside you, are a source of self-satisfaction and a form of play for them. If they're willing to help, it's a teaching moment. 

Count everything and point out every letter. If they can say a number or letter before you, praise them like crazy! If they want to practice writing, let them try to trace or copy their name. If you write it with a highlighter it makes a good tracing line. But keep in mind that littles don't have much hand strength. Their hand bones haven't fused yet; inside their little hands are to a degree "incomplete," so I don't require too much in the way of writing. It's hard for them to even hold a pencil correctly (tiny hands, long skinny pencil) but also important not to let them get too far into a bad habit of holding it wrong, so make them hold it right but don't have them write for long at a time. 

Non-academic education by approximate age (go by what your kid is ready for): 

1 to 2 years

-Most kids are still putting everything in their mouth so I don't give PlayDoh usually, but I had 2 kids who stopped tasting everything around 18 months so those two I let do it. 

-Baby dolls are great for boys and girls for empathy and social development if proper treatment of babies is demonstrated by adults and the little ones can mimic it with the dolls. 
-Wooden toy cars and trains made with nontoxic paint.
-Giant wooden lacing beads (too big to fit in mouths) - you can use large empty spools from thread with the papers peeled off as well. 

-Bowls and spoons- the noisier the more fun. 
-Scholastic Petting Farm book & DVD - hear and see cute farm animals. 

2 to 3 years 
Same as above, plus 

-There's a company that makes toys from recycled milk jugs. My children love their little tea sets- so thick and sturdy, sized for tiny hands, and can be used for real chamomile tea and cheerios or crackers for a fun snack. Great for developing pouring skills. 
-Melissa & Doug toys. 

-Lauri toys. 
-Save those big sheets of packing paper and empty cardboard boxes to let them scribble on with crayons. 
-Busy books. (They might not be interested in those yet or they might like them sooner.) 
-Toddler-safe pull-back toy cars. 

3 to 4 years 
Same as above, plus 

-Crayola mess-free Color Wonder coloring books. 
-Dress up clothes and costumes. 
-My current 3 year old hasn't put non-food in his mouth for YEARS so I don't stop him from playing with his older brother's LEGOs if big bro doesn't mind. YMMV - know your kid. He's often talking big bro into lending him whatever cool contraption he's made, and then accidentally disassembling it and returning it for fixing many times. 
-Schleich animals!! Many 3 year olds LOOOOVE to have collections of little figurines in their pockets or carried in their chubby little fists all day long. Some of my youngest's favorite things to carry around all day are his little Schleich animals. 
-Small empty plastic containers in which to keep their collections of random little things. 

Academic+ by ability/age (again, go by what your child is ready for.) :

3-4 years or willing to attempt to follow directions, trace a line, or connect two dots 

>Study Time About Three workbooks. From an Amish publisher - the illustrations are so sweet and old-fashioned. Do one page a few times a week, give or take, don't rush. If they don't want to, put it away for a month and then try again. [I didn't know about this with my firstborn and don't remember using it for my secondborn, but I used it for kiddos #3, 4, 5, and #6 is using it now.] 
>IF your child is begging to read and seems ready, you can try Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I suggest you do 1 lesson per day and repeat that lesson the next day and the next until it becomes easy before moving to the next lesson. I also suggest that for a child under 5 years old you do not do the writing practice portions unless the child requests it. Your child will probably be reading before they get halfway through the book. [I have never finished the whole book with any of my kids but all of my kids have done at least 20 lessons of it, except my youngest who has so far done 2.] 

>IF you want a whole-curriculum approach you could look into My Father's World. (Only do a whole curriculum if you have a child who keeps asking you all day to make them worksheets and assignments. If you put a curriculum onto a very young child who doesn't want to, you squash their desire to learn and set a precedent of them hating school.) [I have used and still use My Father's World for Kindergarten since my firstborn was 5, but I have not used their preschools since I feel it is more developmentally appropriate to keep the schooling very short and have them play outside most of the day or work alongside me off and on.]

4-5 years or questioning "what does this say?" about letters/words, attempting to count higher than 5 
>Rod & Staff ABCDEF workbooks. From a Mennonite publisher. Use the Bible Story Book and the matching coloring book (B) once or twice a week, and the others go in alphabetical order starting at A and do about 2 pages a day (1 on Bible/coloring-book-day). Sit next to the child to make sure they are holding their pencil correctly and are following the directions. Once the pages are completed, I will walk away to help my older kids and allow the little one to color the pictures on just the completed pages. Some children do not have the restraint to limit themselves to only coloring the images on the pages they have done and will color on whatever they please, in which case I allow them to pick ONE picture to color while I stay with them and then the book is put up- they aren't left unattended with it. 
>Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. See previous section. Pick up where you left off last year, or begin it if your child is just now ready for it. You could use this with the Rod & Staff ABCDEF workbooks above, or just use one or the other, but I wouldn't use it in combination with either of the following. 
>IF you want a whole curriculum (see my notes on that in previous section), again My Father's World has preschool packages which I have not tried. Here is the one for 4's. 
>A phonics-only option is Easy Peasy. Here is the preschool. It teaches the alphabet through the school year, and then instructs you to go through the summer using the McGuffey Primer to teach sight reading before beginning Kindergarten, then phonics later. I am opposed to teaching sight reading first and believe children will be stronger readers in the long run if they are taught phonics first, so I do not use this one. Please look up research on phonics vs. sight reading and decide for yourself if you will begin this way. 

5-6 years or recognizing some letters, counts at least to 10, shows interest in doing seatwork 

>My Father's World has the sweetest Kindergarten which is what I have used with every one of my kids. Many people complain of it being "too light" but it'a actually developmentally appropriate for a 5 or 6 year old child. The curriculums that people are thinking of when they say MFW K is "too light" are actually not developmentally appropriate - they are too time consuming and intense to be appropriate for a child below 1st grade. MFW K is gentle, but gentle isn't weak. The kids learn well and because it's taught gently they actually retain it better. Because 1st grade is such a step-up as far as how hard it is and how much work it is, some people do 2 years of Kindergarten, which they may call them both Kindergarten or they may call whichever they do first by Pre-5 or Preschool or something else. My Father's World K is gentle enough to do this with if you have an almost-5 year old or young 5 year old and want to do K for 2 years to give them more time to mature (and for their hand strength to develop) before 1st. I've heard of homeschoolers who intend to use Abeka from K on (Abeka being a more rigorous and in my opinion often too much, program) actually use the MFW K as preschool and then go into Abeka. 
>Rod & Staff GHIJKL workbooks. From a Mennonite publisher - since they don't do Kindergarten, this "preschool" is actually what functions as the Kindergarten for the Rod & Staff curriculum. Since it's gentle, in workbook format, and you would have the child do only 2 pages per day, it's also ideal for a "one of two years" Kindergarten, of which you may wish to term the first year another year of Preschool. 
>Another option for K if you chose to do Easy Peasy Preschool phonics and the sight reading over the summer would be to continue with their Kindergarten, which says it teaches phonics in addition to continuing the sight words from before. I tried it over this past summer with my two youngest girls and found it rather bland and disorganized. I wound up picking out the math and not using the "phonics." (Actually I never got to any phonics. Whatever it was I was looking through just seemed like more sight words. When it was the same after a couple weeks, that was the end of my perusal.) We were only doing it for 6 weeks for summer break (to keep them fresh so they didn't forget things) and I admittedly wasn't paying enough attention at the time to have an opinion on whether it would make a good "advanced preschool" or "one of two years of K." 

Whatever you wind up doing or not doing for whatever years of "preschool" you do, keep in mind that once they start 1st grade they can never again just spend their days free without a thought of school and without a paper and pencil calling them back to study. Once they start 1st grade they have 12 grades and then college and then work/marriage/parenthood and they never get that time back to just play and be little. So for now, no matter how ready they are, remember to prioritize keeping it light and fun so they still have plenty of time to play without the worries of a student. If they are advanced and need to do some academics, you know best, don't let anyone talk you into ignoring that need. But also don't let yourself feel burdened that you have to do a full curriculum, all subjects, every day, or for great lengths of time. 10-20 minutes a day for a preschooler is plenty and there's nothing that says if it's a busy week you can't just take off doing any academics with your preschooler. Less is more. Stay flexible, stay open to changes. You'll do fine, and your preschooler too. 

♥

Preschool

-You've decided to homeschool your school-aged child, and you don't want your little one to feel left out.
-You've decided to homeschool, but your oldest child is still a toddler and you're excited to begin. 
-You've decided to see how it goes homeschooling your toddler before you make the decision to keep going past Kindergarten. 
-You have a toddler who is advanced or enjoys "playing school" and asks for lessons. 

Do any of these sound like your situation? 

Homeschooling is amazing and beneficial for most children, however lets back up a little and look at the idea of "pre" schooling...

Once a long time ago, kids went to school for the first time at about 6 years old. There was no such thing as preschool. Pre-school-learning was what the parents taught them before the age of compulsory attendance. Kids were arriving at school for the first time with varying skill and knowledge levels. Some could read and write, some didn't know the alphabet. Seeing that those with two parents, one of whom stayed home to care for and teach the children, had a head start over those in families where both parents worked or where the only parent they had worked, and where children being raised by natural born citizens had an advantage over immigrant children, the idea was conceived to begin school with Kindergarten. Kindergarten was to be a pre-school class that was optional for those who for whatever reason could not sufficiently prepare their children for school. An equalizer so that the children would begin grade 1 at closer to the same level. It would be so much more efficient to shuffle the kids through the grade exactly matched to their ages and all of them learning the same thing at the same time like nice little cookie cutter robots. 

Well, kids are kids. They are so vastly different from one another that what one child learns most easily at 3, another may learn most easily at 9, and so Kindergarten didn't magically fix the problem of children entering school with varying abilities. 

In the 1950's a book came out called "Why Johnny Can't Read" which shed unwelcome light on the way children were shuffled through like little memorizing robots, being taught to read by sight-memory and not by phonics. Well phonics, as you will soon discover (if you have not already), takes one-on-one time and attention to teach. The child needs to be shown, listened to, and gently corrected until it sticks. It's not a method that works well in a large classroom setting, but it's the method that works best for children's futures. If they're taught to memorize whole words then once teacher isn't there to tell them what a word is, they can't figure it out and their vocabulary has maxed out. Teach them phonics and they can learn new words anywhere they find them until they are 115 years old. But again, it's not a method that works well in a classroom. The larger the class size, the more you need to have all the kids do the same thing at the same time so they don't confuse each other, and you can't check each one every minute to make sure they are all getting it. Best they can do is start them early in hopes that any child who is behind will be able to keep up anyway somehow, and figure out whatever they missed in time. 

Schools back in the 70's and 80's in the area of the US where my family lived were giving parents lists of requirements of what they had to have taught their child by the time they entered Kindergarten or 1st grade so that they would be on the same level as their peers. This didn't work to make the children into exact educational replicas of one another either! Shocking, right? The parents were blamed. They were too lazy, too busy, too stupid, too uneducated, or didn't care. Obviously. Or else all the kids could and would know the same things by the same age. /sarc So the parents were blamed and pre-schools were invented so that children could go to learn the 'right things' to be able to enter Kindergarten on the same level as their peers. 

Do you see what happened there? Slowly through the ages, parents went from Ma Ingalls capably teaching Laura, Mary, and Carrie just fine in the wagon or the cabin in between living near schools; to parents can't be trusted to teach their own children properly after age 6; to parents can't even teach them to be ready for school so we need Kindergarten to teach them to be ready for grade school; to parents can't even get them ready for Kindergarten properly because they're still not all coming out at the same level so we need to have preschool to teach them to be ready for Kindergarten. 

The goal has been to have the kids pop on through their age-assigned grade levels at exactly the same rate as their peers - and it keeps not working because they are human beings and the primary-age development of math and language and logic skills varies WIDELY from human child to human child. So the parents were blamed as being unable or unwilling to teach their children to be school-ready - and sometimes, because the schools had failed those very parents in their own childhoods, they truly were unable. How can Johnny teach his kid to read if he's functionally illiterate? How can Johnny have the CONFIDENCE to teach his child even what he DOES know if he's been told he's a stupid failure and can't possibly teach his own kid? 

Meanwhile, as the parents were being blamed and convinced that they were all too dumb to educate their own kids, that education must be done by trained government employed licensed teachers only, the public schools continued to fail the children. And they failed them because they did and do continue to operate on the assumption that at least "most" kids can and should be forced to learn assembly-line style as if they were a car being assembled rather than a human being. Kids who couldn't conform were labeled with "learning disabilities" and that was another excuse on the list of why some kids weren't coming out of each grade "matching" the others, academically. Blame them getting started "too late," blame the parents, blame the kids, blame the disabilities. 

As if it weren't already painfully obvious that the government school system wants to educate identical robots, next they tried to blackmail the individual schools by saying that if some of the children didn't test as well as their peers, the school would lose funding. No child left behind sounds so nice, until you realize it's just another attempt to smash the ill-fitting children into the same molds again. If they lose funds they can't pay the teachers, so they require the teachers to teach the kids how to pass the tests. If they pass the tests, the school won't be penalized and can still pay the teachers. And can the kids actually understand and apply what they are learning? There's no time for that! There's only enough time to teach to the test. Teach to the test. Teach to the test. Pass the test is all that matters. And in order to make sure the kids cooperate like good little memorizing robots, we should start them earlier. And so making preschool and Kindergarten mandatory (or K at the very least) has been seriously debated among many. (Note: I have nothing against school teachers. I believe they are being failed by the system too. Maybe I'll write more on that someday.) 

What can we take away from all this? Firstly that you're probably going to meet with some friction when you decide to homeschool your kids. We've been conditioned for generations to believe that parents are incapable and only trained professionals can educate children. We've been told that the earlier the government teachers get them the better! This is in part because it takes an 8 hour schoolday to teach a child what they can learn at home in an hour or two. So if you're at home with your kid and they are done 4 subjects by 10am? Your friends and family are going to think you're not educating them properly. They can't see right off the bat that your kiddo isn't standing in line for untold minutes, raising their hand to go to the bathroom, waiting 20 minutes for the teacher to get around to them, drilling and testing and doing busywork, so they can be more than sufficiently educated in a shorter amount of time. 

And like it takes less hours in the day to educate a child at home than it does in a school classroom with 20+ other students, it also means it's completely unnecessary to start them sitting at a book with a pencil at <5 years old. When they are ready, they will learn it quickly and easily. If they're not ready, you can start them at 6 months old and it still won't make them be ready, it will only stunt their development. 

Preschool is 100% unnecessary. 

It's true. Preschool, like Kindergarten, was invented to help the school system get their little robot clones ready for synchronized learning. And like Kindergarten, it doesn't work to magically make all kids learn the same way at the same time. 

Preschool is 100% unnecessary... BUT parental nurturing, praise, teaching, and guidance to little ones is like sun to a flower. 

So am I saying not to teach your babies and toddlers? NO. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying that the time for book-learning isn't when they are little. That's the time for play-learning. They were created to learn through play. To learn about gravity by dropping their cup off the highchair, to learn object permanence by peek-a-boo, to learn about zoology by playing with puppies, botany by picking dandelions. 

Newer homeschoolers have coined the word "unschooling." While the meaning is a bit different depending on whom you ask, basically it means learning that is based on interest and activity rather than textbooks and worksheets. Unschooling is perfect for your preschooler. Toddlers have been learning through unschooling long before that word existed. 

And sometimes, because human children are not little robot clones, you'll get a child who is asking you to teach them to read at the tender age of 2. (Ask me how I know.) 

And someone is going to be horrified and tell you that you'll scar them for life physically and educationally if you place a pencil in their hand before 7 years old at the least and you must go read "Better Late Than Early" rightthisinstantorelse. 
And you will hear from the other side that a child like that is too gifted to be taught at home and you should look into getting them into a gifted preschool ASAP because if you wait they will lose their chance to get into MENSA and it will be all your fault. 
And you're just going to have to tell yourself (and your critics) this: 

"I am this child's parent. I know my child best. I will teach my child better than anyone else because I love my child better than anyone else. I will base my child's education plan on their cues and abilities. If that means delaying seated instruction until they are compulsory age, or if that means teaching a 2 year old to read, then that's what I will do! Because I will do what's best for my child as an individual and not a clone, as a human and not a robot." 

You've got this! ♥

Suggested post:  Preschool Curriculum Ideas