Kitchen Table Homeschool

"Today, we are going to talk about logistics. What do you need to buy for a complete English Language Arts homeschool course? We’ll go through a bunch of grade levels and the choices you have. Today--early elementary."

"Today, we are going to talk about logistics. What do you need to buy for a complete English Language Arts homeschool course? We’ll go through a bunch of grade levels and the choices you have. Not every year has to look the same; believe me, I was the Queen of the Curriculum Swap. I want to begin by talking to Drew about Exploring the World Through Story , which I wish had been around for my...

"Today, let’s discuss how memory works, why it matters, and how to commit information to long-term memory. It’s hard work. This process doesn't always make your kid happy, and it may come packaged in a form that looks excruciatingly boring to you."

Jenn: "Today, we are returning to ELA with composition. Finally! Composition is a different beast than creative writing. While your students will apply the skills they learned in composition to creative writing, you can’t count that incredible story that your kid wrote and call it composition. Our recommendations for composition are going to seem familiar as it’s the same thing we always say:...

Listener Questions in this episode: 1) How did you stay the course when you felt unmotivated? 2) What curricula would you recommend for a severely delayed child?

Listener Questions in this episode: 1) "How do you think homeschoolers are perceived in college admissions?" 2) "accommodations for testing, how to go about applying and receiving them" 3) "What do you think are important reasons / circumstances when a child should Not be homeschooled?" 4) "How do I get my homeschooled tween to start working hard, now that I’ve l...

Feeling like a little retail therapy? We share our favorite non-curriculum items and purchases, including vendors. As always, we get zero kickbacks or freebies. We buy everything we recommend with our own money.

Books speak directly to us as readers, inviting us to talk back, which can change our lives. Literature, as the name of an academic subject, refers to the study of stories, novels, poems, plays, and creative nonfiction like essays or memoirs. Literature study involves reading, analyzing, discussing, and (importantly!) writing about the works students have read.

Today: How did you get started in your respective homeschool-related careers (Bookish, homeschool evaluation)? Someone asks: What homeschool products do you, in hindsight, cringe at having used? What products do you wish you had used that you never got around to using or they weren’t available at the time? What do you think is the future of homeschooling 5, 10, 20 years from now? What is one thing...

(This pod was recorded in October of 2023) Today, we’re going to talk about how our own homeschooling is going this year, as well as homeschooling, in the news. We’ll swing back around to finish the ELA series later.

When new home educators contact us, it’s usually about handwriting or math. Today, we’ll try to take the mystery out of teaching writing. Print first or cursive first? Then what brand of cursive is best? And finally, should we bother teaching it at all?

Today we’re talking about teaching grammar. You wouldn't think this is a controversial subject, but many homeschooling families do not, in fact, teach English grammar. Learning about English grammar in isolation does not appear to result in better student writing. We still teach it and we think you should too. It's all about sentence fluency.

Today, we’re going to talk about spelling and vocabulary. It’s important to note that although there is overlap, they are not the same thing. Spelling is when a child hears, or thinks of, a word and is able to write, or know, the letters in the word--in their correct order. I know, I know, you say that some people are just naturally better at this. Well, some people are just naturally better at ic...

(After a month of embargo for our Patreon subscribers, we'll post them here.) In this episode, we’re going to be talking about English language arts. English language arts is a complex area with multiple interlocking parts. We will take the whole thing apart and talk about each bit separately. The seven major parts of English language arts are reading, spelling, handwriting, composition, vocab...

(After a month of embargo for our Patreon subscribers we'll release episodes here.) Today’s podcast is the first in a series about English Language Arts. This is probably the most complex subject to teach in the homeschool (or anywhere, for that matter) because it’s not really a single subject at all, but rather seven interlocking parts that make up a major academic domain. In this episode, we...

(After a month of embargo time for our Patreon subscribers we'll release episodes here.) Relationships are at the heart of successful homeschooling. But how do we leverage that on a practical level? How do we make sure that our kids understand our (hopefully reasonable) expectations and work to live up to them? The answer is routines. Routine sounds so…boring, doesn’t it? But we believe it’s o...

(After a month of embargo time for our Patreon subscribers, we'll release episodes here.) Pros and cons. What to be wary of, the importance of a strong support team, and some tips.

(After a month of embargo time for our Patreon subscribers, we'll release all episodes here.) As the school year starts for many people in the USA, we are often disheartened and surprised to learn just how much our children forgot over their long summer break. We talk about identifying when our children need academic remediation, how to do that remediation, and dealing with the emotional conse...

We're changing it up around here. Learn why and how we're doing it.

In this episode, Jenn, Courtney, and Drew draw on past experiences to come up with 20 guidelines for homeschooling. Everything from times tables to instruction types is on the table! 

This one goes out to Noelani Perry, the Inclusive Academic Homeschoolers, and all the homeschoolers who've helped share their wisdom over the years. In this episode, we talk about some clues that your child may have atypical development, give an overview of how to find testing, and then review the usual steps of the testing process. Finally, we give a quick sketch of how we used that testing for C...

In this episode we discuss three homeschooling books we love: Minimalist Homeschooling by Zara Fagen, A Literary Education by Emily Cook, and The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. Then, we talk about why we still felt it necessary to write our own book, including experiences we wanted to share, applying the science of learning to homeschooling, and neurodiversity in the homesc...

We review the core subjects for grades K-8, as well as some pitfalls for instruction at those ages. We begin with Academics, Arts, and Athletics, and then divide Academics into English Language Arts; Mathematics; Social Studies; Science; and World Languages. We divide English into the skills of reading, handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and composition, as well as the content of literatu...

Jenn, Courtney, and Drew review a classic in pedagogy. This 2014 book is chock full of advice about how to, well, make it stick. In the episode, we review this book from a homeschooling perspective. We also share some advantages that homeschoolers have over classroom teachers, especially specialist teachers. 

We talk about where this idea came from, how we've developed it, and what it means for our philosophy of education: rigorous academics, adult-directed, inclusive, mostly secular, and evidence-based.