This Week in Homeschooling — October 12, 2026
Week of October 4, 2026
Parents discuss curricula versus checklists on Reddit based on a post about a daughter with ADHD and possible dyslexia who shuts down at ten math problems on a worksheet and will do fifty as a game. Also, what a child's resistance to schoolwork is usually telling you, a thread for parents worried they need a degree to homeschool, and a brain model made from a cauliflower.
The Headline Pick
Curriculum rabbit hole
r/homeschool
A parent whose daughter has ADHD and possible dyslexia, and who shuts down at a ten-problem worksheet but will do fifty problems as a game, asks whether a checklist of the year's skills can replace a curriculum. Thirty-three replies split usefully. Those against name what games skip (place value, word problems, writing math down) and recommend Math with Confidence, Logic of English, or Saxon taught with movement. Those for it take their list from Home Learning Year by Year, just out in a new edition. One parent works on two skills: the math, done any way the child will do it, and a few minutes of paper practice a day set one grade level below.
Practical Corner
Cauliflower Brain Model With Labels + Free Brain Diagram
Teach Beside Me
Halve a cauliflower, paint the lobes on the outer half, and label the corpus callosum, thalamus, and medulla on the cut side with toothpick flags. The page says plainly that cauliflower sections do not match real brain regions. The labeled diagram pack needs an email signup; the project does not.
How to Create a 4-Year Homeschool High School Plan
Blessed Homeschool
Nine steps for mapping high school before ninth grade starts: state law and college requirements first, then credits by subject spread across four years, course sequences, electives, and dual enrollment, with a sample math and science grid. Written by a parent planning for her own first high schooler. The planner it links to is the author's product, with a free tier.
Perspectives
Resistance to Learning: What It May Be Telling You About Your Child
Homeschooling with Dyslexia
Treats resistance to schoolwork as information and gives the questions to ask: does it start right away or only after a while, and with every subject or one? Likely causes include material above the child's level, too much writing, working memory, and lessons that run long; the adjustments are shorter assignments, audiobooks and text-to-speech, and oral answers. The closing pitch is for a paid course that began October 12.
Questioning homeschooling
r/homeschool
A mother of a toddler and a baby, with a high school diploma, read that most homeschooling parents have degrees and asks whether she is setting her children up to fail. Twenty-eight replies answer with families where it worked, including one commenter's mother-in-law, without a degree, whose four children all finished college, and with reading for the preschool years: The Brave Learner, The Read-Aloud Handbook, Einstein Never Used Flashcards. One reply expects to hire a tutor for math and science around sixth or seventh grade.
Quick Links
- The Truth About “Open-and-Go” Christian Curriculum (Homeschoolcurriculum101) — Separates having lessons planned from having the work removed, then rates ten Christian curricula, from BJU Press to Simply Charlotte Mason, on how much grading, printing, and supply gathering still falls on the parent. Her picks for independent work are BJU Press video lessons and CLE. Nearly every curriculum named is an affiliate link.
- The Scream Art Project for Kids + Free Printable (Teach Beside Me) — An art lesson on Munch's The Scream with discussion questions about line and color, then a six-step version in contact paper and tissue paper. The template is behind an email signup.