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Your first homeschool year checklist
Everything that matters in the first three months, in the order it matters. Press print — choose Save as PDF if you would rather keep a copy. This bar does not print.
Vanguard Parents
Your first homeschool year
Started
Week one — the legal step
- Look up what my state or country actually requires (notice, assessment, subjects)
- If my child is enrolled in a school, withdraw them in writing and keep a dated copy
- File whatever notice is required — and diary next year’s renewal date
- Start a records folder: attendance, reading log, work samples
Weeks one to four — deschool
- Read aloud every day, above their reading level
- Two or three outings a week — library, museum, forest, anywhere
- Cook together most days
- Buy no curriculum yet
- Notice: when is my child actually alert? How long do they concentrate?
Before I spend money
- Read the free scope and sequence for anything I am considering
- Take the publisher’s placement test — place by the test, not by age
- Buy two spines only: math and literacy
- Check the local homeschool buy-and-sell group before buying new
Find people — the step most families skip
- Ask the children’s librarian what home-ed groups exist locally
- Join the closed local home-education group online
- Commit to one regular thing — a park day, a co-op, a club
- Introduce ourselves in the forum and find our region
Set the rhythm
- Fix the order of the day, not the clock
- Put the hardest subject where my child is genuinely alert
- Decide the minimum viable day — the three things that still count when it all goes wrong
- Keep one day (or afternoon) free as slack
The six-week review — diary it now
- What is genuinely working? Keep it.
- What are we dreading? Change or drop one thing.
- Is anyone unhappy in a way that is not just a hard week?
- One thing we will do differently for the next six weeks