Look, You Don't Need a Curriculum to Start Homeschooling
I can be found in a variety of online homeschool spaces. Maybe you're one of the people who's posts I've read and who've inspired this blog post.

I've seen many people the past few weeks looking into homeschooling *now*, mid-year, or considering it for the fall, but they don't think they can or they're overwhelmed for a very specific reason: they don't know which curriculum to choose.

Look, you don't need a curriculum to start homeschooling.

You don't even need a curriculum at all. But that's a whole other topic.

A curriculum is a tool. It's there to serve you in terms of achieving some goals. If you haven't even started homeschooling yet, you may not have a clear idea of the goals you have, or will have, for your children. And this is part of the reason it makes it so hard to pick a curriculum: you don't know what will actually serve your needs because you don't know what your needs are yet.

"I need something to guide me!"

There are lots of free things to guide you out there. Chances are you'll struggle with figuring out which guide to use, too. "Which guide is best?" "Which guide will make sure my kids will learn what they need to learn?"

It's all misguided. (Pun truly not intended...) Why do I say that? Because I know that your kids learned to walk and talk and likely recognize some colours and do all kinds of things because of your presence in their lives. You didn't need a curriculum. Your goal was to be with them and show them things. You just made yourself present and lived life with them, teaching them where appropriate--and them simply absorbing a whole bunch of stuff whether you wanted them to or not.

You can start homeschooling the same way. Live life with your kids. Read to and with them from all kinds of reading materials--fiction books, nonfiction books, magazines, craft instructions... Prepare snacks and cook and bake with them (involves reading, math and home economics/life skills). Build sofa forts and explore different ways to make them bigger and still stay in spot or a different shape (engineering!). Get out to field trip spots--or just get out and walk around your neighbourhood, maybe noticing the changes in the snow, trees, position of the sun at the same time of day. If you still want a curriculum, you've got time to think about what you would want to add into your day and why, all while your kids are learning tons with you because you're all just living life. Having a curriculum for the sake of having a curriculum isn't really the way to go (I've seen them often convince homeschool moms that they can't homeschool!).

The main driver for not starting until you have a curriculum figured out is fear, right? Fear of failing. Fear of kids being behind. Fear of kids not learning what they "need" to know. Fear of being inadequate. Fear of what your friends, family or neighbours might say. "Feel the fear and do it anyway." Both in terms of getting started without a curriculum and taking a chance and getting that curriculum that keeps catching your eye. Homeschooling's a big science experiment, not a building construction project where you have to have it all figured out ahead of time, so don't let fear hold you back from embarking on a learning journey with your kids. There's no curriculum required for that.
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Meet Daisy Witherell Déry

 
When my kids were babies, so much stuff aimed at moms had to do with protecting the kids from poisonous, even deadly, cleaning products in the home: the kitchen sprays, the bathroom cleaners, the windows cleaners... You had to keep them in out-of-reach spaces or put baby locks on everything. This didn’t make sense to me. Why would I want dangerous, even deadly, products in my home? Why would I even want to clean with dangerous products?

So, I embarked on a journey to try to use safe-for-my-kids products. This led me to environmentally friendly cleaning approaches. Well, of course! If it’s safe for the environment, it’s safe for inside my home and vice versa! I bought a book with tons of ideas and recipes and did use some of them. When I first started using essential oils, I thought, “What a great idea! I can mix the two!”

But, you know, motherhood, and then homeschooling, take up time, so those ideas didn’t get followed through on and those safe products didn’t get made. Aaaand… certain cleaning products stayed in the home, although I did make sure that there was no skull and crossbones symbols on any of them.

Things changed when I finally found a safe cleaner that was not only safe for our home and the environment, but could also basically replace ALL of the other cleaners in the home. Safe + saves space + saves time? Win! I didn’t realize at the time how much of a win it was. Walking down the cleaning aisle at the grocery store these days, maybe looking for sponges or what have you, I find it shocking that there are so many different possible cleaners being sold when a good all-purpose cleaner can do the bulk of it (and without the heavy, synthetic scents—that’s another thing that I find shocking walking down that aisle! cough cough cough)

I’m so glad I no longer have all the different bottles of cleaners and certainly don’t have all the harmful ingredients in my home. My kids may be adults now, but it’s still important that our home be safe for me and my husband—and our little fur balls, too.

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