The Essential Homeschool Curriculum

I often hear parents asking, “What is the essential homeschool curriculum to give my child?” Homeschoolers question the traditional curriculum and busywork of a mainstream school – public, private, and even Waldorf – and ask, what is really necessary here? It’s a fair question. After all, when I was a middle schooler playing drum set and learning to fly airplanes, I would’ve rather not spent 7.5 – 8 hours a day in school and more time on my passions. It behooves us, therefore, to distinguish the essential from the inessential. In short, the answer goes something like this: it’s about cultivating capacities, not ticking boxes. Yet, the boxes may have something to offer, too. I’ll explain.

Determining the essential homeschool curriculum relates to what capacities each subject builds in them. Between Kindergarten – 8th grade, we are not preparing students for their careers. While they will pursue passions and subjects that may later evolve into careers, that’s not the goal at this age. Career prep belongs to high school and college. Our task during the grade school years is rather to build capacities. That’s the reason they need a variety of subjects.

Many of us choose to homeschool because we think we can do it better than the mainstream, and we can. Yet, understanding why we teach what we teach matters. That will provide us insight into what constitutes the essential homeschool curriculum.

The Goal of Homeschooling

After all, our goal is to raise free human beings, capable of giving meaning and direction to their own lives. I spoke to my Teen Empowerment Class this week about balancing the freedom of homeschooling with the responsibility of time management. Homeschooling gives them an opportunity many of their peers lack, but freedom is not in every sense free. If they do nothing productive with their time, this freedom will not serve them. Just the same, if we think we’re freeing them by leaving out essential parts of the curriculum, we may in the process neglect developing important capacities they’ll need later in life.

As a side note, our weekly Teen Empowerment Class cultivates the skills and attitudes that will lead youth to knowing themselves and living free, empowered lives as adults. Check our website for more info on that: https://enkindleacademy.com/live-teen-empowerment-class.

What Subjects Comprise the Essential Homeschool Curriculum

So, here’s an overview of why we teach what we teach:

1. Math: Teaches them the rigorous search for truth. This is so they become good, disciplined thinkers and not lazy, emotional, or dogmatic thinkers. A good math education can solve many problems later in life.
2. Science: Teaches them how to live into the phenomena of the world objectively. How many adults do we know who form one opinion or another about the world without really knowing what they’re talking about? There’s a reason for that: lazy observation and thinking. A good science curriculum invites students phenomenologically into the world. It teaches them to listen for what the world, and not their own opinion, is saying.
3. Geography: This is in some ways the most important subject. Geography teaches how human life – economic, religious/cultural, agricultural, medical, etc. – arises in relationship to time and place. In a world where we’ve become so disconnected from the planet, nothing could be more important. It also cultivates in them a sense of space and distance by teaching them to look at space from a bird’s eye view.
4. History: This one goes without saying – to help us understand how we got here. The study of history conveys a sense of how one cultural development gives rise to another. This is especially true when you look at history backwards in time. One example is the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism. Students start to develop a sense for causality which helps them understand their own life as adults. They learn to feel time through history.
5. Language Arts: Similar to math, the study of language teaches them how to think clearly because we think in language. Practicing clear, articulative writing and analysis of others’ writing gives students the capacity to organize their inner world, an essential skill.

Additional Subjects in the Essential Homeschool Curriculum

The essential homeschool curriculum includes, but is not limited to, academics. I think that’s obvious to most homeschool parents. In fact, many of us walk this path with our children exactly because an overemphasis is placed on academics in mainstream education, and they’re right. Of course, if you teach academic content in ways that engage the heart and the hands as we do with our Steiner-based approach at Enkindle Academy, it’s already a different experience for them and you.

That being said, they also need the following:

1. Hand Work: In other words, working skillfully with their hands. These activities include knitting, crocheting, sewing, woodwork, sculpture, weaving/basketry, etc. This is important because what they do with their hands in the younger years becomes their thinking later on in life.
2. Movement: Make sure they get plenty of time to move and play, especially outside. I would also recommend Brain Gym-type exercises to build connections in their nervous system. We do those in all of our live classes and most of our pre-recorded classes as well at Enkindle Academy. This oft-neglected piece of education is vitally important.
3. The Arts: Music, drawing, painting, dancing, poetry, speech recitation, theater, etc. work in similar ways to the above two while intentionally adding the aesthetic element. As Shakespeare wisely said in The Merchant of Venice, “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.” In other words, he or she who cannot appreciate the aesthetic element in life often likewise neglects the moral element. There is a connection between what is artistically and morally beautiful. Don’t neglect the arts.

It’s also ideal if students have some sort of foreign language experience. That develops an inner flexibility of soul to be able to move between ways of thinking. It’s also a plus if they can practice some eurythmy with a qualified teacher. This art brings numerous health and soul benefits.

Final Considerations When Planning Your Essential Homeschool Curriculum

I have outlined a universal stream of education that benefits all children. The beauty of homeschooling is much can be accomplished in less time than in a brick-and-mortar school. Many homeschoolers do all the academics they need in 3-4 mornings/week of no more than 2-3 hours each. The rest of the time, they get to work on other, more hands-on subjects and play. Time to play is the real gold of homeschooling. I should include that in one of the essentials.

Now, some parents say, “Yes, but my child is unique, so do they REALLY need all this?” I would say they do. The “boxes” indicate what’s important, but ticking them is less important. I don’t believe in the canned, standardized curriculum and testing model of mainstream education. No Child Left Behind for me is more like Most Children Left Behind. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t inspire. So, even though our children need this well rounding of subjects, how we bring those depends on our child.

Meeting government-determined benchmarks is not the point. What matters are the capacities we develop in them. For example, the effort they make to learn and master the math they’re doing is more important than the volume they complete. What matters more than having done algebra, trigonometry, projective geometry, conic sections, etc. is that they’ve dedicated themselves to mastering what was challenging mathematically. Most of what they learn they will forget, anyway; the capacity they have developed in the process will remain with them for life, however. If you understand this principle, you can bring the essential homeschool curriculum in a way that best meets your child.

How to Connect

Enkindle Academy inspires young minds using a regenerative, Steiner-based approach to homeschooling. We offer prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9, encouraging students to deepen their reverence for nature and the living reality that permeates it. We teach all academic subjects plus creative writing and language arts, empowerment groups for teens, and soon to add fine arts.

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