Time for a confession. When my eldest child was five years old and we had decided to keep her home for kindergarten, we also had an almost three-year-old and a newborn and I had no, as in zero, idea as to how I was going to manage kindergarten at home. I’m not going to say that it was haphazard because I don’t really roll that way, but let’s just say it was…not precisely planned out that far in advance. The year before had been filled with planning for the new baby and participating in the sweetest pre-k program at a Waldorf school that even had a name to match; The Peach Blossom Program. Wherever you are Mrs. Ward, we loved our time with you and still talk about making apple crisp in the light-filled, blond-stained, wood kindergarten room. Still, the sweetness of that time was not enough to overcome the very real decision that we were leaning into about educating the children at home. Once the letter of intent was mailed, the feeling of swimming through dark waters, trying desperately to reach a surface that seemed endlessly far away, commenced. I had no idea what was next. I immediately did what I always do when I need information and there is no internet, because, well, there wasn’t, or at least not like we think of it now. That being: I called everyone I knew and harangued them for details, contacts, information, phone numbers and resources. I eventually discovered that there was this thing called a co-op. “You mean, like Honest Weight? Where we buy food?” “Yes, but for children. Or, rather, the education of children.” I was even more confused. What in the heck was this? Anarchy or something?

That information came with a name and phone number and, being a fairly bold-ish person, I called them and begged for their attention. It did exactly the right thing at the right time and they gave me their attention and so much more! I was invited to visit a brick and mortar building that looked like a school, smelled like a school and even held dozens of small people all participating in various activities. So, like a school, but…not. It was also filled with all of those children’s moms, nursing babies, strollers, food, a gym filled with mayhem and So Much Noise. It was absolutely glorious.

Thus began my entrance into the world of homeschooling co-ops. Wait a minute…you wanted to know about curricula. Yes, and I’m getting to that. It was here, at the glorious, crazy Gathering Of The Homeschooling Tribes, that I learned that there are untold numbers of ways to teach your children at home and that curriculum design can look like just about anything you want it to, as long as you are able to satisfy your district’s requirements for each grade. So, for instance, because I was kind of freaking out, my extended family was kind of freaking out, and we had three five-and-under in our house, with no plan for kindergarten, I decided to use what is known as “curriculum in a box” for our first year.

This turned out to be both the best and worst thing ever. Best because I learned rather quickly that my eldest was not going to stand for any boring nonsense when there were books to read and music to listen to and music class to attend, and that this curriculum, Kindergarten with The Calvert School, was unbelievably boring. I’m sorry if this is your most favorite curriculum in the world and your children adore its fat red pencils in ways they find difficult to express, but we just couldn’t abide its boringness. It was stultifying. And that wasn’t the worst part. I had spent quite a few dollars on it and felt obliged to, you know, actually use it, so we suffered through no small amount of dull work until I had an idea that perhaps we could use it as “supplemental” material and I could design something a little less boring for the main lessons. This mental gymnastic maneuver worked and I no longer felt guilty about not using it as our central learning tool.

It was at around this time that I discovered, through a new friend at co-op, The Story Of The World and The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and her mother Jessie Wise. Jessie had home schooled her children in the late 1970s and 80s when there was barely even new math, and had realized that her knowledge might be just the thing to share with all of the families who were clamoring for her help including her own now grown children who were home schooling their kids. I looked through a copy of The Well Trained Mind and then bought my own and just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Neat, organized chapters detailing the various levels of learning that children go through, the types of materials that are appropriate for them at each level and then…resources!! Actual names of books, texts, supplemental materials, on-site resources like museums, organizations that held workshops and events and field trips designed for home schooled children, book sellers, as well as the names, addresses and actual phone numbers of home school conference contacts. There is a one-hundred-page bibliography, sources and an index as well as an entire chapter dedicated to finding tutors, online resources, correspondence schools, various cooperative classes and how to best utilize the resources available to you at your local community colleges and/or universities. To say that I was gobsmacked and an instant fan-girl is putting it mildly. It became our go-to book for resources for the next 18 years. It was my home school bible.

The reason I’m singing this particular book’s praises really has to do with how utterly liberating it was for me to discover that I could be the one to sit down and write a curriculum. I could design the what, how, when and where of my children’s education and it would all either meet or, and truth be told, in most cases, exceed that of the state requirements for learning. I was elated. Using this book, I designed a curriculum using resources that I found in each section for the age group of the children I was working with and was even able to pivot, mid-year if needed, and redesign said curriculum. I highly recommend at least looking over this book for ideas and, even if the trivium methodology doesn’t suit your family’s educational needs, it will give you some guidance on how to proceed when you begin your design.

In the meantime, I hear you cry, I have to get a Letter of Intent, an IHIP and my reporting schedule into the school Right! Now! Help! And so, to that end, I’m going to show you how to write up your instruction plan in a manner that your school district will accept and maybe even love. Let’s say you are teaching a child in the 5th grade. This falls in the Grammar Stage of the trivium and the state, according to section 100.10 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education on home schooling, expects that you will teach math, reading, spelling, writing, the English language, geography, US history, science, health education, music, visual arts, physical education, bilingual education patriotism and citizenship, highway safety and traffic regulations including bicycle safety and fire and arson prevention and safety.

–Heidi Liscomb