Hi! I'm Dana Parker and I've been teaching my three kids at home since the fall of 1994. That's five years now, which apparently makes me a "veteran," which is a word I'd never use for somebody who still can't find the glue sticks. This page is for the families who e-mail me after church or corner me at the library to ask, "But what do you actually do all day?" Here it is. Every bit of it. Use whatever helps and ignore the rest.

The students, for the 1999-2000 school year:

• Caleb, 13, eighth grade. Reads everything, argues about everything, would rather be building something. Currently taking apart a lawnmower engine for "science."
• Hannah, 10, fifth grade. Our organizer. Keeps the best nature journal in the family, including mine. Wants a horse. Is not getting a horse.
• Sam, 7, second grade. Learned to read last winter and has not stopped talking since. Math is his favorite because "you get to be done."

My husband works days, so the teaching is mine Monday through Thursday. He takes Friday science at the co-op (more on that below) and all of the things that involve a soldering iron.

I want to say right away that this is the plan. About three days out of four we hit it within half an hour. The fourth day, well, see the bottom of the page.

Fridays are co-op day. Saturdays are Saturdays.

People assume homeschooling costs a fortune in boxed curriculum. It can. Ours doesn't, mostly because of the public library and a certain stubbornness on my part.

Literature. Instead of a reading textbook, each kid has a literature list I put together over the summer, about twenty-five books apiece, nearly all of them available from our county library (I check first, then reserve them a month ahead). The lists are mostly older books: the kind with real sentences in them. Caleb's this year runs from Treasure Island through To Kill a Mockingbird; Hannah's has The Secret Garden, Little House, and a stack of biographies; Sam's is a mix of easy chapter books he reads to me and harder ones I read to him. They narrate back what they read, out loud or on paper. That's the whole literature program. It works. E-mail me if you'd like the lists; I'll happily send them.

Math. We use a workbook series that goes one small step at a time, one lesson a day, with a lot of review built in. I'm deliberately not naming it, because every time I do somebody buys it on my say-so and it doesn't fit their kid. What I'll say is: pick something that spirals (keeps circling back to old material), do it every single day, and don't skip the review pages even when your thirteen-year-old rolls his eyes. Sam also has a big tub of wooden blocks and a kitchen scale, which is most of second-grade math anyway.

Nature journals. Each kid has a hardbound sketchbook. On Tuesdays, and on any walk, they draw something they actually saw (not from a book), label it, write the date and the weather, and one or two sentences. Hannah's is a wonder: five years of the same maple in the front yard, every season. We keep a bird list on the fridge, too. Sam's contribution to it this month was "a big brown one."

History & geography. Library books, a timeline on butcher paper in the hallway (it's getting long), a good atlas, and a globe. That's it.

Science. Nature study at home; the real experiments happen at co-op on Fridays, where we have six parents and a lot more equipment than I do.

What we don't use: a computer, much. We have one, and Caleb is teaching himself to type on it and has done a couple of reports on it, but it's in the family room and it's not part of school. I know this is unfashionable. I also know what happens to the morning when a seven-year-old finds the CD-ROM with the dinosaur game.

Six families, seventeen kids between four and fifteen, every Friday from 9 to 1 in the fellowship hall of a church that lets us use it in exchange for cleaning up after ourselves and running the nursery for their Tuesday morning group. We've been meeting since the winter of 1997 and it's the best thing we've done.

The morning goes like this: the little ones (Sam's group) have a story-and-craft hour with two moms, the middle kids (Hannah's) do a science lab, and the older ones (Caleb's) do a science lab that's a step harder. Then they switch and the middle and older kids get an hour of something that changes each semester: last spring it was a play (they did A Midsummer Night's Dream, heavily abridged, in the parking lot); this fall it's a debate club run by a dad who's a lawyer. Then everybody eats lunch together, loudly.

Science day is the heart of it. My husband and another dad plan the labs. This September so far: the older kids built an electric motor from a battery, a nail, some wire and a magnet; the middle kids grew crystals and then, this past Friday, dissected owl pellets (Hannah found a whole vole skull and it is now on our kitchen windowsill). Next month is chemistry, which the church has agreed to as long as nothing involves fire. We're keeping our word.

If you homeschool near us and want to join, we are full, but two of our families are planning to start a second Friday group after Christmas. E-mail me and I'll pass your name along.

A homeschool field trip is any Wednesday you want it to be, and museums on a Wednesday morning in October are empty. Some of ours from the past year:

• The county historical society's one-room schoolhouse (the kids were unimpressed by the slates and very impressed by the outhouse).
• A dairy farm belonging to a co-op family's cousin. Sam has not had milk since. He'll come around.
• The state capitol, with the co-op. Our state representative gave us twenty minutes. Caleb asked him a question about the budget that he could not answer.
• A planetarium two hours away, which we combined with the big library there and a picnic.
• The sewage treatment plant. Do not laugh. Best tour we've had. Ask for the tour; they're proud of it.
• The apple orchard every October, which is coming up. We count it as science, math (bushels, prices), and P.E.

Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states, but every state has its own rules, and they range from "send a letter" to a good deal more. Please look up your own state's rules and do not rely on anything you read on somebody's home page, including this one. Your state homeschool association will have the current requirements, and the law changes.

In general terms, here is what our state asks of us each year, so you have an idea of what it can look like: we send a notice of intent to our local school district before the school year starts, listing the kids' names and ages; we keep attendance (180 days) and a record of the subjects covered; and we keep samples of the kids' work in a portfolio for each of them. Our district has never asked to see the portfolios, but they're in a box in the hall closet just the same, and honestly I like having them. Some states also require testing or an evaluation by a certified teacher; ours doesn't at the moment.

The letter takes ten minutes. The attendance chart is on the fridge. It is not the hard part.

I promised honesty, so here it is.

There are days when Caleb is thirteen in every possible way at 8:45 in the morning, and Sam has lost his pencil for the fourth time, and Hannah is in tears because her narration "sounds stupid," and I am standing at the sink thinking about the yellow bus that goes by at 7:40 and how quiet the house would be. There are days I lose my temper. There was a Tuesday last February when I sent everybody to their rooms, sat on the stairs, and cried, and then we watched a nature video and called it school. I am not proud of it. I'm telling you so you know it happens to the people whose pages look organized.

Things that have actually helped, as opposed to things people tell you will help:

• Doing math first, before anybody's tired, including me.
• A real break at 9:45, outside, every day, no matter what.
• Letting a bad day be a short day. The lesson is still there tomorrow. The kid is only seven once.
• One other homeschooling mom I can call at 10 in the morning without explaining anything. Get one of these. She is worth more than any curriculum.
• Remembering that I picked this, and I can pick it again tomorrow, and I keep picking it. Five years in, I still would.

If you're just starting out and you're scared: you should be a little scared. That's the right amount. Then go to the library.