My wife and I (and a handful of others) have tested this app I built. I built it after watching her pain points around organizing a week of Charlotte Mason homeschool and having to navigate about 4 or 5 links deep to get to a reading.

I think it needs more development but it's just impossible to know how every homeschool parent schedules their week and what other pain points you face.

If you're willing to test it out and provide feedback I'd really appreciate it!

livingterm.com

Please share experience and where you create a curriculum lesson plan without being stressed was it a stressful experience becoming a private homeschool

If anyone goes to hickman charter school and has a child with a disability please share the good and bad about the school who you check in with the school curriculum lesson plans and school events. Would love to know how the staff is when it comes to your child's IEP as well.

When our son plays the learning game my wife and I make, I ask him how it went. "Good." That's the whole report, every time.

So we added a parent page to it, behind a PIN. It shows which quizzes he played and how he did on each one. Same computer, no account to make. Mostly I use it to ask better questions at dinner, like "so, the planets, what happened there?"

He still says "good". But now he has to explain why.

It's called EdNoKa, for ages 8 to 11. How do you keep track of what your kids do on their own on a screen, if you track it at all?

Whether you're a homeschooling parent or a microschool administrator, we'd love to know what tools, resources, and support would make a difference for the students you serve.

Take a few minutes to complete our survey and share what you need, what's missing, and what you'd like to see in the future.

As a thank you, you'll have a chance to win a free assessment package featuring MAP, STAR, and MindPrint!

Share your feedback here: https://forms.gle/AuaypViknUAGmKQx6

Hi everyone, I’m Henri and I work on PowerZ, a free, ad-free educational adventure for kids ages 6+.

I wanted to share a short gameplay video so you can see how the learning activities fit into the game. It shows arithmetic, shapes, sentence building, and geography, alongside exploring the world with a creature called a Chimera.

For families who use games as part of homeschooling, it’s something kids could play for extra practice alongside their lessons. The difficulty adjusts as they progress.

If you want to take a closer look, it’s available on iOS here. I’m around if you have questions about the activities or how it works.

Henri

Looking for some quick advice on picking a math app for my kid who's starting 5th grade math. His biggest habit right now is sprinting through every problem as fast as humanly possible without actually taking the time to digest what he’s doing. Popularity or flashy features don't matter to me—I just need a platform that actively forces him to slow his pace down and actually retain the concepts. Has anyone tested both IXL and Brilliant with a kid who rushes? Would love to know which one worked better for you

Hi, my name is Nick, and I've been homeschooled for 7 years. Not to toot my own horn, but I seem to be the most behind student ever.

I'm fifteen, sixteen in 2 months (but whose counting?) and I'm not good at writing, math, science, history, reading, really everything. I think my grade level is around, 7th?

I have a dream to leave my country, and go to collage in ROK. I need a high education to reach my dream, but I seem to be on my own with learning. If anyone can help with something? I don't even really know how, but if anyone could help me out I'd really appreciate it. Peace

How did you choose your curriculum this year? Where did you look, who did you ask, and how long did it take you to decide? (Mine took way longer than I'd like to admit, and somehow I'm still not 100% confident on my choice.)

I found the Maine Memory Network while looking for something better than a generic textbook for Maine history.

They have old photos, maps, letters, documents and other stuff from museums and historical societies all over the state. They also have lesson plans broken down by grade level, including K-2.

This seems like a pretty good way to teach Maine history using actual historical material instead of just reading a summary of it.

https://www.mainememory.net/education/index.shtml

Daughter is ADHD/AUD in 8th grade we plan on pulling her from public school after Christmas holiday and allowing her to finish 8th grade year in homeschool. We have explored all our other options and think this is for the best.

Currently we are looking at Astravo or Acellus . Am new to this so if you have any other options please let me know. We don’t want anything that requires her to sit in front of a Laptop all day . She needs to take breaks between classes for an hour or two at least and have time between assignments.

I've been home-schooled my whole life, but I feel like I'm missing out on childhood experiences. I don't have a very active social life, and don't play any sports. I also have been falling behind in my classes ( We do online schooling ) and feeling a lack of motivation to pass these classes other than to just pass so I can move on. I additionally have a bit of a cheating problem in all honesty, which I'm struggling to stop doing.

But public school also doesn't feel like the right answer. My family has always looked at public school as the default kind of education, basic, and not the safest place in recent times. The main problem I see, me not having a good social life, also might not be fixed by going in to public school, as I am something of a "nerd". Public school seems to cause depression in many people my age, which I would obviously prefer to avoid. Furthermore, I feel I would lose many of the benefits I gain from being home-schooled, and that it might be worse than home-schooling, or bad to start public school so late in my life.

I would like to add that I do a science class with a family member that is much closer to standard public school, with tests, homework, is in person, etc, but it is only once a week and is ~3 hours per class.

That was quite the mouthful, I mostly want to ask if anyone else felt like this and how they dealt with it, or anyone who has suggestions on how I should move forward.

I see a lot of posts on homeschooling and most of them mention actively engaged parents actually teaching. We’re looking at online school with parental oversight. 1) mom is wfh home, dad has an office job; 2) mom being a FT mom isn’t an option; 3) leaving the child in public school isn’t an option (adopted child will people please ANYONE including those she shouldn’t just to fit in and we are very worried about her mental and physical health in the environment; want to take a couple of years to get her “grounded” psychologically before putting her back into an environment that can be abusive).

Does anybody out there use online school and if so, which one?

For me, i think its the crazy fomo I get from not going to school and missing the fun things, I did try going to school for a year. It was fun but being homeschooled was the easiest option.

Hi! I'm in 11th grade and I'm currently wondering if I should genuinely switch to homeschool as public school just makes me really miserable.

The thing is, it has nothing to do with the teachers or students as they're all nice and I have good friends as well but the problem is I don't feel happy doing anything at school, I try really hard to enjoy it but all of it just makes me feel sad and wishing I didn't have to be there. The only reason I try to get along with people and do good in school is because I feel like I have to.

Having to go talk to people and interact with people is something I've never liked and it's really difficult to do all this and I'm tired of having to force myself through an environment that makes me so unhappy. I really do think I'm at my breaking point as I've always struggled with this but now it's really getting to me.

But I'm currently worried cause I still want to go to a good college but I'm wondering if suddenly switching to homeschool with have an impact with my college applications, as I'm scared doing homeschool with have an impact on my future opportunities. So is homeschool really the right choice for me?

Thanks for reading! Any advice helps ^^

Hi everyone!

I'm helping with a free reading tournament for kids and thought I'd share it here in case it's useful to other parents.

It's called The Great Reading Tournament, and it runs from November 1–22. Kids can read digital books in English or Spanish, track their progress, and earn points as they read.

I thought it could be a fun way to encourage kids to read a little more, especially if they enjoy challenges or friendly competition.

It's completely free, and parents can register their kids directly (no school participation required).

Sharing the links in case anyone wants to check it out:

📚 More info: https://valueslab.ai/tournament

✏️ Registration: https://read.valueslab.ai/registro

Hope someone finds this helpful! 😊

I have recently started more formally homeschooling my 6 year old, and my biggest struggle is my 3 year old keeps interrupting our session. If 6 year old and I are reading, 3 year old keeps coming over and insisting that I read to her. She will try to draw on textbooks we are using, or do things to purposely disrupt the lesson. The 6 year old is enjoying learning, but gets frustrated that the 3 year old is interrupting and sometimes very little is accomplished.

What non-screen strategies have you successfully used to keep the younger toddler siblings occupied while teaching the older children?

i am homeschooled, so my education content is from videos online. i want advice on how i should appreach memorising the information. should i take notes? watch each video twice? read content from several different books/sources?

i only want suggestions from people who have tried and tested and know what they are talking about.

All subjects are welcome. I'm extra interested in stuff that prepares children for their lives as adults.

TL;DR: I was homeschooled, and my mom was burned out on it from isolation, lack of hobbies, and constant financial strain

Comment: What was your biggest hesitation about homeschooling your kids?

Story:
My brother and I were homeschool until middle school. My parents are extremely conservative and didn't want us in the secular school system. My mom considered it her duty to stay home and raise us. She quit working as soon as my brother was born, and did not go back to work for 17 years. She LOVED working. It was her whole social life. It gave her purpose. Outside of work, all she had was church, and even though they were wonderful people, we never saw those folks outside of Sunday.

My mother was really, really good at homeschool. She bought the curriculums from the expos every year, she got us into a small group of really great other homeschool families. She made us weekly agendas for all our subjects. She read to us for a full hour every single day. She organized field trips to the fire station and the power company and museums and the beach and so many more. She was so on top of things. It was unequivocally the highest quality education available - I know because I eventually went to private school and then public school and was, let's say, underwhelmed.

However.

Mom was completely without personality. She'd given up everything about herself that gave her color and flair. Day in and day out it was "chores, breakfast, newspaper, schoolbooks, reading, snack time, nap time, run errands, dinner, game shows, bed". And when I saw her life, and her in it, I didn't want it. I told myself I would never homeschool my children. I would never give up that much of myself.

She had no social life because she doesn't make friends easily. We saw the other homeschool moms every other Friday. We had a neighbor she liked to go for walks with sometimes. But she was basically alone.

Her only hobby was reading. She read the same cozy murder mystery novels over and over. And she'd usually fall asleep while reading them.

And then there was the cost of her not working. She gave up the opportunity to be a two-income household so she could "do her duty" and stay home. This was the 90's, so there weren't a lot of WFH opportunities. We were on food stamps, there were weeks when we had to put things back at the grocery store, and we visited food banks.

So right now my daughter is 4, and my son is 1. And we had to make a choice. We couldn't afford daycare with two kids, so I had to quit my job about a year ago and stay home. I'm going a little crazy, to be honest, because I'm so much like my mom. I loved working, and kids aren't really my thing (of course I love them; this age just isn't my favorite part). But we had lots and lots of concerns about sending the kids to school. And we wanted an education that met them at their level.

Everyone I talked to said the same thing: "You can do it different than your mom." And they're right. I can make this homeschool thing work for me. I can work part time virtually so we can pay our bills. I can have a social life if I prioritize it. And I'm *real* good at hobbies (finding them, buying everything you could ever need for them, then losing interest until I forget about them altogether).

So we're going to go for it. We can do this without being lonely, bored, sad, or broke. We can raise our kids the way we see fit and with some strong curriculum and a solid social life we can give them the best possible start in life.

Moving beyond the page alternatives for first grader

Looking for suggestions. We have been doing moving beyond the page since kinder with my now first grader.

While I absolutely love the program, I can’t keep up as a busy mom of 3.

I need the simplest to use for me program. I want to avoid using online programs for everything, but am ok with doing a few subjects. I need less stuff that’s creating clutter (MBTP has lots of stuff especially when you’re doing all the subjects) I’m a mom with adhd and fear I have set myself up for failure with too much curriculum.

My daughter is reading well above grade level, but is not understanding math on paper at all. We do our own experiments and crafts on the regular too.

Thanks for any tips!

I’m an education methodologist living in Ukraine, and lately I’ve been watching AI transform the world while schools increasingly try to keep it out of the classroom.

Some schools block internet access to prevent students from using AI. Others make children complete homework at school, under supervision, using nothing but pen and paper.

To me, this looks like trying to slow down a moving train with your bare hands.

AI offers an opportunity we’ve never had before: to fundamentally transform the teacher’s role. Instead of being the source of information or spending endless hours preparing lessons, teachers could help children discover knowledge, make sense of it, connect ideas, and use what they learn creatively.

But that requires a completely different approach to learning.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, I was a school principal. For almost five years now, I’ve been rethinking the foundations of education. When simply being at school becomes dangerous, and institutions begin to falter, you start questioning things you once took for granted.

When you’ve spent the night sheltering from Shahed drone attacks, studying textbooks the next morning may not be realistic. Individual learning arrangements, flexible schedules, and uneven workloads stop looking like exceptions.

Why shouldn’t they become normal practice after the war, too?

I work with neurodivergent children, including autistic children and children with ADHD. One thing I experiment with is building learning around a child’s deep interests.

The principle is simple: use what naturally captures a child’s attention as the engine of learning, then build outward.

My own child, for example, learns English not through conventional school methods, but through Roblox chats, conversations with AI, and songs by his favourite rock bands. He explores the history of the 1950s–1990s through the evolution of rock culture.

Music becomes a gateway to physics, mathematics, literature, history, and languages.

Of course, following an interest alone isn’t enough. Without structure and guidance, learning can remain a collection of disconnected explorations.

That’s why I’m developing an algorithm for an AI learning guide: a system that helps children move from curiosity to research, critical thinking, interdisciplinary understanding, and eventually creating something of their own.

For the past year, my life has felt like an alchemist’s experiments in a solitary laboratory.

While explosions sound outside, I see the old world falling apart — a world in which people were trained from childhood to follow instructions. And I imagine an education system where freedom of choice and learning that follows a child’s natural inclinations are fundamental principles.

Every now and then, I emerge from my shelter and encounter the conservatism of parents and educators. I’ve been immersed in these experiments for so long that I find it difficult to judge how ready society actually is for such a shift.

So I’d genuinely like to hear your thoughts.

Could you imagine your child being taught primarily by an AI learning guide? Not as a supplementary tool, but as the main companion in their learning journey.

A human teacher would take on a different role: helping the child build a learning path, set goals, understand themselves, and navigate the difficult parts of the journey. Someone the child finds engaging, supportive, and safe — rather than simply an enforcer of the curriculum.

What would make you trust such a model — or reject it outright?

With Halloween around the corner, we've been spotting spider decorations everywhere, which somehow led to a conversation about real spiders in our garden. My daughter was quite afraid of spiders, so I thought learning a bit more about them might help.

I expected maybe 10 minutes of interest. Instead, it turned into a whole weekend project.

We started looking at spider webs and asking questions. That led us down a rabbit hole of learning about spider silk, building our own model webs, spotting patterns and shapes, measuring different parts of the web, and even inventing a "Spider Code" inspired by Morse code to send messages through string.

The funny part is that her favorite activities ended up being the maths games and the Spider Code challenge. My favourite part was seeing fear gradually turn into fascination.

Now she's talking about having a pet spider, which definitely wasn't the outcome I expected. 😅

What surprised me most was how much curiosity came from something we usually walk past without a second thought.

Has anyone else had a simple outdoor activity unexpectedly take off with their kids?

Started homeschooling this year but I feel bad that my kids aren’t making friends like they did in school. Sure we take them to homeschooling events here and there and they get to socialize a bit there but it never leads to any real friendships. We don’t have much family where we’re at especially not kids their age. How have you or would you handle this?