This Week in Homeschooling — August 30, 2026
Week of August 23, 2026
A literature lesson can take a book apart faster than a student can get into it. Writing to teachers who are fine-tuning their fall syllabi, Redeemed Reader borrows C.S. Lewis's distinction between using a book and receiving it. Using it means treating the story as a vehicle for literary devices, historical context, or worldview discussion. Receiving it means letting it work first. Give students time to get lost in a story before asking them to map it, or they learn the mapping and never learn the reading.
Also this week: a start-of-year checklist with almost no curriculum in it, a parent and a four-year-old stuck on lesson 5 of 100 Easy Lessons, and a path to dual enrollment.
The Headline Pick
A Letter to Literature Teachers: Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees
Redeemedreader
The distinction it borrows is C.S. Lewis's, from An Experiment in Criticism: you can use a book, as a vehicle for literary devices or historical context or worldview discussion, or you can receive it and let it work on its own terms. The argument is not against analysis but about order. Give students time to get lost in a story before asking them to map it.
Practical Corner
12 Practical Ways to Prepare for a New Homeschool Year (Beyond Curriculum Planning)
Proverbial Homemaker
Twelve items with almost no curriculum in them: meals prepped before the start date, one shared family calendar for co-op and appointments, a weekly admin block for grading and filing, busy bags reserved for the toddler who interrupts one-on-one time. The framing is faith-centered and the logistics carry over regardless. Useful if your year starts after Labor Day and the planning so far has all been books.
11 Ideas To Do Nature Study During Morning Time
Ourjourneywestward
Eleven ways to keep nature study going in 10 to 15 minutes at the table when the weekly walk is not happening: five-minute sketches of a single leaf or stone, field guide practice before you need it outdoors, logging a bird sighting in eBird or iNaturalist. Most of them work across a wide age spread, which is what morning time is for.
How My Daughter Graduated High School and College at the Same Time (Dual Enrollment)
Not Consumed
A sequence rather than a case for the idea: one or two classes sophomore year in subjects the student already feels confident in, a half load junior year, full time as a senior, with the community college's associate degree requirements mapped against the state's diploma requirements so each course counts twice. The caveat the post names is worth weighing first. Those grades sit on a permanent college transcript at 16.
Perspectives
I’m about to lose my mind 😵💫
r/homeschool
A parent and their four-year-old have been stuck on lesson 5 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for days. He says 'at' where the lesson wants 'mmmat', and forgets the sound of m between attempts, though he asks to do the lessons and moved through the earlier ones easily. The post is specific enough to be useful to anyone weighing the same question, which is whether the program does not fit or the reader is not ready yet.
The Homeschool Comparison Trap: When Your Child Learns Differently
Homeschooling with Dyslexia
The trigger this names is grade level, which is an average rather than a standard, and which for a dyslexic reader measures decoding against a benchmark built for a different brain while the child's actual reasoning goes unmeasured. Four responses follow, including defining success as growth over a year rather than position in a book, and unfollowing the accounts that set off the comparison.
Quick Links
- You Only Live Twice by Autumn Allen (Redeemedreader) — A middle-grade novel, recommended for ages 10 and up: in 1968 a twelve-year-old from Connecticut spends the summer in Oakland with a father she barely knows who is a member of the Black Panther Party. Worth a look if a Civil Rights unit otherwise stops at 1965. The review flags period-accurate language and depictions of police raids.