This Week in Homeschooling — September 14, 2026
Week of September 6, 2026
This week's headline pick is a comparison of All About Reading and Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons written by someone who owns both and taught her own son with one of them. The main point is what each program asks of the parent: setup time with letter tiles, or the patience to learn the method behind a script.
Elsewhere this week, a guide to starting homeschooling that puts the legal withdrawal ahead of the curriculum shopping, a periodic table game that runs on chemistry vocabulary instead of the board's colors, and a family's account of a first garden written around everything that failed in it.
The Headline Pick
All About Reading vs. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
Organized Homeschooler
Choosing a first reading program often comes down to a decision between something like $20 and something like $200. The author owns both of these, taught her own son with 100 Easy Lessons, and compares them by what each one asks of the parent rather than by which is better. Both run 15 to 20 minutes a day, but All About Reading needs setup time with letter tiles and flashcards, while 100 Easy Lessons is scripted and asks you instead to put effort into understanding the Direct Instruction method it runs on. The post carries affiliate links; the comparison is specific enough to be worth the click either way.
Practical Corner
How to Start Homeschooling in the US
Homeschool of 1
The ordering is the useful part: check your state's requirements and complete a proper withdrawal before you shop for curriculum, because pulling a child out without following the district's process is what creates problems later. Written by a parent who moved a family from the UK system into the US one, so the steps a US-raised parent would skip over get spelled out.
Periodic Table Guess Who: A Fun Chemistry Game for Kids
Teach Beside Me
A Guess Who variant played on a printed periodic table: each player picks a secret element, then narrows it down with yes or no questions. The rule that makes it work is that questions have to use chemistry vocabulary instead of the board's colors, so a round runs on periods, groups, atomic number, and whether something is a halogen. The board and the instructions are free to print, and it suits a middle or high school student who has met the table but does not yet know their way around it.
Perspectives
The Garden Lab: What Our First Garden Taught Us
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
An account of a family's first garden in a hot, wet summer, written around what failed in it: rabbits and deer took the beans, the zucchini got a fungal disease, the watermelons split, and everything was planted too close together. The value is in treating those as results rather than as a wasted season, and in what the children did with them, including close observation work with an insect viewer that a three year old could take part in alongside an older sibling.
Why Good Kids Still Make Bad Choices: Teaching Kids the Fruit of the Spirit
Not Consumed
Written for families who teach character from Scripture, and its most concrete suggestion is that parents apologize out loud and in full where the children can hear it, on the grounds that a child who has never watched an adult repent has no model for how to do it. The other practical piece is a question swap, from "why did you do that" to "what were you believing when you did it." There is a paid study promoted at the end; the article stands without it.
Quick Links
- History Websites for Homeschoolers (Freedom Homeschooling) — Twenty-six history sites with a line on what each one holds, including Mission US for interactive US history and the Library of Congress's Today in History. Most are free, though a few keep their better material behind a premium tier.
- Melting Chocolate Experiment: Solid to Liquid and Back Again (Mombrite) — A phase-change lesson that ends in a chocolate bar: eight steps, pantry materials, and an explanation that goes past "solids melt" into melting points, tempering, and why the sunflower seeds stirred into it stay solid.