This Week in Homeschooling — September 23, 2026
Week of September 13, 2026
Leaves are starting to turn. Our Journey Westward's chromatography lesson shows how the pigments behind the change can be pulled apart at the kitchen table with rubbing alcohol, a coffee filter, and a jar of hot tap water.
Also this week: what reading progress with dyslexia looks like before the reading level moves, an Australian mother's case for not treating university as the default, and a free word-maze generator.
The Headline Pick
Chromatography with Leaves: A Colorful Fall Science Experiment
Ourjourneywestward
A complete fall experiment with a marker warm-up before the leaves go in: crush torn leaves in rubbing alcohol, warm the jar in hot tap water for half an hour, then let the extract climb a coffee-filter strip. Expected pigment bands, troubleshooting for pale strips, and journal prompts for older kids are all on the page.
Practical Corner
Teaching Kids With Dyslexia to Read: What Progress Really Looks Like
Homeschooling with Dyslexia
Why reading progress with dyslexia shows up as fewer guesses and steadier decoding before it shows up as a higher reading level, and six ways to track it: a fresh passage every week or two with errors and prompts logged, a dated 60-second recording each month, and a shelf of too-hard books to retry later.
Volcano Labeling Activity: Parts of a Volcano Foldable | Free PDF
Monkey and Mom
A three-page volcano printable for grades 3 to 5, sequenced as reference diagram, lift-the-flap foldable, then a word-bank labeling page done later as recall. The PDF arrives by email signup, but the lesson order, the vocabulary, and free follow-ups from the National Park Service and the Smithsonian are on the page.
Perspectives
Why I’m Not Raising My Kids to Go to College
Homeschoolcurriculum101
A second-generation homeschooler in Australia, with six years of university and a nursing degree behind her, on why she is not steering her children toward a degree by default. Three questions to ask before paying for one, and the alternatives she names. Christian framing throughout, and one family's reasoning rather than a verdict.
How to know if you’re doing enough
Simple Homeschool
Four things to keep in mind when the question of whether you are doing enough will not settle, drawn from a survey of hundreds of readers. The practical one is a bare-minimum plan: one language arts page, one handwriting page, and one math page a day from a grade-level workbook, with the rest of the day free.
Quick Links
- Word Maze Generator (Homeschool of 1) — A free in-browser tool that hides a vocabulary word, a book title, or a secret message inside a printable letter maze, with easy, medium, and hard settings, an escape-room mode, and a separate answer key. No signup required; we tested it.
- When Everyone Has a 4.0: The Hidden Problem in College GPA Data (Collegetransitions) — For families building a high school transcript: an analysis of 345 Common Data Set filings showing that college GPA figures are not comparable across schools, since some report on scales above 4.0 and seven of twelve Ivy-Plus schools publish no distribution at all. Not written for homeschoolers, but useful for reading admissions claims.