Reading · The Narrative Nest

I keep dropping hints about a Mystery Curriculum, and it’s coming. I’ve gotten behind as I try to figure out how to make and post my curriculum on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Before I could produce fully formed curricula, I first had to research the market, get better at using Canva, and understand TPT’s backend.

Whew! That’s on top of continuing my writing on Substack.

So instead of creating my elaborate mystery curriculum, I made a homeschool attendance tracker. Simple, sure. But it took a lot of work. It’s editable and digital, so it may help you stay organized this year if you need to track your children’s attendance against specific required state hours or days.

It’s also free!

Get Your Free Attendance Tracker

One area of life that has been easy lately is homeschooling.

If you’re new to homeschooling, hear me out:

4 years ago, I would never have believed this about my homeschool days.

I was pulling my hair out.

But this year has been straightforward.

It still requires work, but compared to how overwhelmed I was when I first started this journey, things are truly uncomplicated right now.

Back then, I was:

Figuring out the Science of Reading
Using phonics when I had never been taught phonics
Learning how to manage advanced math as a self-proclaimed mathaphobe (okay, there’s probably a better word for that)
Determining what to keep track of legally.

We are now operating on a whole new level.

If you’re a parent who is homeschooling and you feel like you’re drowning, just know it gets easier.

And you don’t have to have it all figured out yet.

I thought I’d give you a peek behind the curtain and let you in on how we’re running our 4th grade homeschool—our 6th year of homeschool—in 2026.

Here’s what my first week looked like:

Last year, my daughter unexpectedly fell into a chess competition and competed with much older boys at the Homeschool Expo. It inspired me to write my first-ever Substack post right before school started.

This year, the weekend before we started school, we took a short weekend trip over to Athens, GA for a concert. Ya’ll probably know Athens is home to the B-52s and R.E.M, right?

I went to college there at the University of Georgia for a couple of years and used to see Michael Stipe roaming around downtown. I even lived off the Atlanta Highway, made famous in the song “Love Shack.”

What you might not know is it’s also where another well-known singer/songwriter went to college. If you’ve watched Season 2 of True Detective, then maybe you’ve seen and heard Lera Lynn, the musician playing during the brokedown bar scenes when Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn met for their shady business dealings. Lera Lynn has become my daughter’s favorite singer-songwriter—and no, my daughter hasn’t seen True Detective. We’re not crazy parents.

But she has been begging us to go to her first concert.

I just wasn’t thrilled with the summer’s choices:

Florence + the Machine—an arena show, too big for a 9-year-old

Sting—would love to see him, but too expensive for this time of year

Echo and the Bunnymen—too goth; I know the venue because I hung out there post-college, no thanks

When we heard Lera Lynn was coming to Athens to play an all-ages show at a small venue, we jumped at the chance to see her.

We drove the two hours to Athens, discovered our hotel was in a sketchy part of town—it didn’t look like that 30 years ago—and found ourselves quickly trying to make new accommodations on the road.

Luckily, there was this lovely couple who were renting their Airbnb for the night, and we got a tiny house in their backyard that looked like a fairy garden. Perfection.

At the concert, my daughter was the only child in attendance, but the audience members were kind, and so was Lera Lynn herself and her musician husband. Both mentioned my daughter a few times during the show since the venue was so tiny we had an up-close and personal seat before my daughter got to chat with the musical couple after the concert.

You wouldn’t believe the confidence boost this gave to my daughter:

“They say never meet your heroes, Mom, but this was the exception to the rule,” she told me.

My daughter’s been in several plays, but she’s never sung on stage solo.

When she discovered the restaurant across the street from the concert was holding karaoke night, she was determined to sing after the show. I could tell as we walked over and she saw all the adults in the dining area (again, she was the only kid) that she was getting cold feet.

“You have a baby. In a bar,” —Reese Witherspoon’s Sweet Home Alabama comment rang out in my head.

Bad mom vibes were starting to well up in me.

But they were fighting with the memories of all those years I had wanted to sing but never had the guts. It wasn’t until I was in college majoring in theatre that I started overcoming my anxiety to get on stage.

I’ve still never sung in front of an audience.

Despite the terrible parent alarm going off in my head, we walked her over and grabbed the giant white binder, anyway.

She had no idea where to start her search. But I did.

Blondie. One Way or Another.

It has practically been her theme song.

She was terrified, but she got up there and sang, not hitting every note, but giving it her all. The crowd cheered, and at the very end she let out the cutest little squeak that said: “I did it. I feel relief, and I’m proud of myself.”

She had become a force. A 9-year-old who had met her idol and performed her first karaoke song all in one night.

There was no stopping her now.

Next up: The Police. Every Little Thing You Do is Magic.

And she got another roaring crowd clapping and cheering her on.

A little later, when we decided it was probably time to head out and let the bar patrons have their fun sans children, the DJ brought over two Post-Its. These yellow notes were where my daughter wrote down the songs she wanted to sing before handing them to the DJ.

“I just thought you might want to keep these as mementos for her first karaoke experience,” he said to me.

And with that, we began her 4th grade year.

Not sure how we’ll top that experirence for 5th grade, but we’ll save that for next year.

Want the same kind of self-confidence boost?

Why not find something your kid has always wanted to do and might be a little reluctant to try and dive in?

You’ll be surprised at how it makes beginning the school year feel thrilling.

The next day, we got home, and I was on a high.

I scurried around organizing the downstairs. If you’re a crafter, you’ll know Joann went out of business last year, and I spent many a paycheck buying up as much yarn as I could, even though I had nowhere to put it all.

Space matters.

We don’t stick to one room as homeschoolers.

It’s not just my upstairs office/classroom I have to keep organized; we often read our novels and complete online math downstairs. Moving from room to room keeps the novelty up and the energy flowing as we work.

So, if you haven’t organized your school space, start there.

Don’t overthink it. Just start.

Take one corner, set a timer for 30 minutes, and make it as neat as you can.

Now, here’s how our first week went:

I decided not to overload our first few days.

We discussed expectations. I explained what I wanted us to accomplish this year. I also reread my homeschool philosophy and asked my daughter if there was anything she thought we should add or change.

She was still happy with it.

Next, we added in memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance to kick off each day. (Other people might use a prayer or a memorized poem, just something that says we’re getting started)

Then I found a short overview of the Science of Learning. It’s all about how the brain takes in information, and it’s a great way to teach a kid how their working memory can get overloaded quickly before information moves to their long-term memory.

We read a small chunk of it on the first day and continued for the week. We’re not doing a deep dive into some in-depth field of study. I just want my daughter to have a basic understanding of how her brain learns, so it’s just for the first week.

We then started Fix-It Grammar. Each level uses one story that’s printed in the back of the book, so we read the book’s story, Nose Tree. The daily grammar is fairly easy to incorporate in 10-15 minute chunks, using one sentence from that story. Students read the one sentence, mark up the parts of speech, add editing marks for mistakes, and rewrite the sentence.

It’s quick, and my daughter loves the editing portion.

We moved downstairs and dove back into Level 3 Beast Academy—for many people this might look like we’re behind, but Beast Academy runs ahead of the standard math curriculum. It’s Level 3, not necessarily Grade 3. I spent months last year helping her to memorize math facts, which meant we didn’t finish the entire Level.

But it’s not a race; we take math at her pace.

BTW, I just purchased an electronic device called Math Shark to help keep these math facts fresh in my daughter’s mind after watching Karen Rodriguez’s video on How to Master Math Fact Fluency. I love that we stumbled onto a Substack favorite author by accident! Thanks, Karen! 😊

We rounded out our first school day reading Emily of New Moon.

We’ve just finished Anne of Green Gables, and I love reading a series of novels by the same author—in this case, Lucy Maud Montgomery. I also read The Blue Castle—to get a true sense of this author’s voice. I could never get through that many novels if I were still teaching in a classroom.

We will be taking notes daily on our novels, but for now I just wanted my daughter to enjoy a new story as it unfolds from the beginning.

She finished the day at her piano/keyboard class.

Small bites. That was my goal, and I made it happen.

We started with the Pledge again, read another piece of the Science of Learning, but today I received two new cursive books in the mail.

The last two years we’d attempted to use Handwriting Without Tears, but neither she nor I could get the hang of vertical cursive. We just don’t like it. It’s cursive that doesn’t slant and doesn’t require many loops. Personally, I find it more challenging to learn than the standard slant cursive, because trying to keep your letters straight and to write over the same line for, say, a lowercase “h” rather than just making a loop takes far more control.

I opted instead for an assortment of cursive materials this year:

IEW’s Cursive Knowledge
a random book I found on Amazon called Spooky Cursive
some fancy printable butterfly cursive tracing sheets from Etsy

Sometimes you have to ditch curriculum that’s considered “the best” and use what works for your children.

I took the first page of IEW’s Cursive Knowledge, the first page of Spooky Cursive, and stapled them to the next page of Fix-It Grammar. Now I have an introductory handwriting and grammar packet to kick off each day.

After the grammar, we landed downstairs for our Beast Academy lessons and another chapter of Emily of New Moon.

Our week was evolving slowly and steadily for the new school year with my daughter attending Ninja class late in the afternoon.

By midweek, I felt like we were on a roll:

The Pledge of Allegiance
The Science of Learning
1 page Cursive Knowledge
1 page Spooky Cursive
1 page Fix-It Grammar
A few chapters of Beast Academy
1 Chapter of Emily of New Moon

Just like we did the day before, but I made one small change.

We started using my version of Cornell Notes—a useful notetaking system made famous in the 1950s by Cornell University professor Walter Pauk. Rather than having her section out her own paper and take notes nonstop during our reading time, I simplified the process.

I created a worksheet and told my daughter she’d need to write down:

3 facts about what we’ve read
Pose 1 question
Draw one symbol or image
Write 2 complete sentences to summarize the story

No extracurricular today meant we were able to take our time implementing this new skill.

If you’d like to read more about the importance of note-taking as a bridge from reading to writing, you can access that at Introducing Note-Taking.

And if you’d like to access the new 3-1-2 note-taking sheets I made on the spot while typing up this Substack post, you can get those at Teachers Pay Teachers for just $1!

GET NOTE-TAKING FOR $1

By Thursday, the days were coming together with a nice cadence.

Unfortunately, on this day, I hit a snag.

For K-3, I focused mainly on foundational learning—number sense, math facts, and all the components of language and reading. Unfortunately, that meant we had to cram in science, history, and civics last year right before standardized testing.

I didn’t love that.

Science and Social Studies are becoming more important. And I have to finally admit it.

How could I include more of these subjects in our day without overwhelming us both?

She does love Horrible Histories and Nutty History, but would a few weird videos be enough?

I set out to find a way we could review each historical time period we’ve previously studied. Core Knowledge does a solid job of presenting history alongside language arts. And Core Knowledge is free. But I needed a way to review all previous historical periods before moving on.

I did find the Stone Age videos from Horrible Histories, so we watched them. During the videos, I noticed my daughter was drawing and creating a series of symbols, words, and pictures on a whiteboard.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Adams Chart of History, it is a 23-ft-long timeline of all the events and time periods from pre-history to today.

My daughter gave me an idea.

What if we did something similar, but created a kids’ version?

We could create panels for each historical period using titles, names, interesting fonts, pictures, dates, and symbols.

We’re working on our model now.

As for American history and civics, my daughter loves watching the game shows at PragerU Kids. I keep seeing information saying this site is extremely conservative, but all the content I’ve seen seems pretty moderate.

Beginning next Thursday, my daughter starts an all-day program on a farm with a theme of the American Revolution. I have no idea how that’s going to shape up, and it’s a long drive to get her there, but sharing pick-up and drop-off with my husband means we’ll both have full days to work.

I’m excited that she’ll get a full day to run around outside, get dirty, and learn new things from different teachers. Something I’ll gladly delegate to another teacher/mom who wants to be outside while I stay inside with the A/C on, creating curriculum.

By Friday, we had our schedule down and nearly our first week of 4th grade in the books.

My daughter woke up, did the dishes, completed typing, reviewed math facts, and played her keyboard all on her own.

This is the lightest I’ve ever felt at the beginning of a homeschool year.

In the afternoon, we moved on to her list of assignments from above, then watched a historical video and worked more on her visual timeline.

But science—it was mocking me. I had no idea what curriculum I was using.

I struggle with getting science in every year.

My husband helps out by doing some activities when he can, but he also gets busy, and then we have breaks in our science learning.

I attempted to use Khan Academy but soon learned the standards are based on the Philippines, and their 4th-grade science doesn’t seem to be fully aligned with what we require locally.

I defaulted to Brain Pop, which my daughter loves, but it’s a series of topics for 3rd-8th grade. There’s no way to know what topics are specifically for 4th grade. Many homeschoolers might not care about this mix of different grade levels, but for me, I like to keep up with the standards by grade.

Just as I was beginning to feel like I failed in the science arena again, two magical options revealed themselves—ahhhhhhhhhh!

I saw an ad for a free year of Mystery Science. Bingo. They offer a specific number of free online passes for their video program.

We’ve attempted to use Mystery Science before, but it didn’t stick. I think she was just too young. But now my daughter can manage the videos on her own.

And then I discovered Mark Rober of CrunchLabs fame is offering free STEM curriculum this year. My daughter loves his TV and has been begging for his—quite expensive—STEM boxes. But while I consider the Christmas List you can rest easily knowing that Class CrunchLabs is offering free curriculum.

Whew! I packed a lot into our first week and a lot into this post, but I see it as a win-win!

Review.

While our weekends can vary, I try to get in enough time to gather materials and review for the upcoming week. (BTW, I copy all pages of any curriculum we use so I can sell back clean books at a reasonable price. Cha-ching. Both our first two levels of Spellography sold within hours of adding them to eBay)

On the weekends we might have a family event—my daughter was nominated for a few awards at the local theatre Awards Ceremony this weekend.

Or we might hike.

Or my husband may take my daughter to a park or splash pad.

But each weekend, I do these two things:

I consider what worked and how I can keep doing it by varying it a bit for variety and novelty.
I honestly reflect on what didn’t work, and I consider how I can either do it better or do something completely different. Sometimes that even means taking a curriculum I thought we would love and selling it to free up time for the stuff that works better.

I plan ahead just enough, so I don’t feel rushed during the week.

So ask yourself on the weekends:

What went better than you expected this week?

What needs some more work? Science. It’s always science for us—but maybe not this year since I found some great options last minute.

When you kick off the new school year, it’s also a great time to think about what curriculum, classes, or skills are absolutely essential.

For us this year, it’s writing.

Writing is no longer something we casually get to when we feel like it.

I’m taking writing by the horns.

We are using the second book in the series, Writing & Rhetoric, but I’m also ensuring my daughter takes regular notes and uses skills from The Writing Revolution to crystallize her sentence structure.

When we read a chapter in a novel, we’re taking notes. When we watch a science or history video, we’re taking notes. When we listen to an audiobook, we’re taking notes. At least certain days of the week.

Now that we’re done learning phonics and math facts, writing absolutely must be front and center in nearly every subject.

So take stock of what you identify as essential for your homeschool. It may be different for every family and each kid in that family.

What’s essential for your child to focus on this year?

Now consider what you did last year that may not work this year.

For us, it’s letting go of Handwriting Without Tears and also no longer cramming in material before standardized testing.

This year, we’re going to be more committed to taking small bites each day, using retrieval practice to remember what we’ve learned, and writing it all down using notes and full sentences.

After two years of seeing my daughter score high on standardized tests, I’m also letting go of the mom guilt that I’m not providing the best education at all times. She’s doing great, and clearly she’s learning what she needs to know.

Whether that means boosting her self-confidence at a random karaoke bar the weekend before school starts or writing an essay on an L M Montgomery novel, I’m learning to trust my educational instincts as we further our homeschool experience.

What about you?

What’s working in your homeschool? What do you need to let go of?

Tell me about it in the comments.

I’d love to hear, and I respond to every post.

We Started 4th Grade With Karaoke, Not Cursive

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