Homeschool Questions and Answers: Curriculum Kids Can Do Without Help

Question: I Work from home and my kids are middle school age. I need a curriculum they can do without me for the most part. What should I use? Answer: I have worked from home to some capacity the entire time I have been homeschooling, which is a decade at this point. I have found that when taught how to research and and when using software and curriculum, that children can learn with very little imput from the parent. Here are some things you can use. Time4learning is the first online program we have used. It can be used from preschool through middle school. Because it was an online interactive site, the children were able to sign on each morning and get right to work. At the time we have one large counter with three computers on it. There was a child on each computer and I was on the third. We all happily went about our work and occasionally a child would call my name. I could address their question and get back to work with little fanfare. To keep the kids learning independently I also insisted that they read every afternoon. After lunch, when their online assignments were done, they were required to read for two to three hours. This gave me a block of uninterrupted time to do my work. If they got tired of reading and wanted to watch TV it was allowed if and only if they wanted to watch educational TV programs. As children reach middle school and highschool age, they should be able to follow a textbook relatively independantly. All they need is a post it note on the front each day telling them what pages to read and what assignments to complete. So at this point, almost any homeschool curriculum will do. Beyond that, there will be subjects where kids have hard questions. If they are taught to research along the way whenever they want to learn something, they will actually learn more than if you taught them. (You will want to make sure you have child safety programs on your computer for this.) Also, for the tougher subjects like math beyond Pre-Algebra and some science, I like to use websites and curriculum that have a video component. This will be very helpful in allowing your childre to learn without your help, for the most part.