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Most people arrive at this already worried they will get it wrong. These are the questions that come first, answered straight.
Check your own state's rules first, before anything else
Homeschool requirements vary enormously from one state to the next. Some states ask for nothing more than teaching your child. Others require a notice of intent, attendance records, a portfolio review, or standardized testing at set grades. Texas sits at the light end: homeschools are treated as private schools and the standard is a bona fide curriculum in a visual form covering reading, spelling, grammar, math and a course in good citizenship. No registration, no testing requirement, no approval. That is Texas, not everywhere. Find your own state department of education's homeschool page and read the actual rule rather than a forum summary of it. We are parents writing about curriculum, not attorneys, and this is not legal advice.
It takes far less time than a school day
This is the fact that calms more new parents than anything else on the site. A kindergartner needs about forty-five minutes of focused work. A first grader, roughly an hour. By fifth grade you are looking at about three hours, and that includes everything. A school day is long because it moves thirty children between rooms, takes attendance, and waits for the slowest hand to finish. One-on-one, none of that exists. If your day is stretching past four hours in the elementary years, something is wrong with the plan, not with your child.
You do not have to buy anything
Not for the elementary years. Openly licensed math programs, public domain readers, federal agency science material and free state archives will carry a child from kindergarten through fifth grade, and each subject guide names the license on every one of them so you can tell what you may legally copy. What free costs you is time. You assemble it, sequence it and print it, and some weeks that is the difference between doing school and not doing school. Buying a program mostly buys somebody else's planning. That is a real thing to buy, and we say in each guide where it is worth the money.
Pick one thing to start, not six
Almost every family that quits in the first year started everything at once. Begin with reading and math and nothing else, for two or three weeks, until they run without drama. Then add one more subject. Science and history at these ages can be read-alouds and documentaries for a long time and lose nothing. A quiet week with two subjects done well is a better foundation than a heroic week with seven done badly, and it is the version you will still be doing in March.
If your child is behind, teach where he is
Behind is a school word, and it only means he is not where a calendar says he should be. At home there is no calendar. Find the actual level, which usually means the last skill he can do accurately without help, and start there even if it is two years back. Reading is the one to fix first and fastest, because it is the tool every other subject runs on, and a fifth grader who cannot decode has an emergency rather than a subject. Also worth saying plainly: persistent trouble with reading, writing or attention after honest, consistent instruction deserves a real evaluation. That is not a failure of homeschooling, it is information.
Socialization is a scheduling problem
It is a fair question and it has a boring answer. Children need regular time with other children in situations you did not fully arrange, and regular time with adults who are not their parents. Co-ops, sports, church, scouts, library programs, a park at four o'clock. Two recurring commitments on the calendar usually settles it. The families where this goes wrong are the ones who stay home for months and count grocery runs as outings, and it is easy to avoid once you name it.
How you know it is working
Watch the child, not the curriculum. Weekly, look for small evidence: a word decoded without help, a fact recalled instead of counted, a paragraph that stayed on one topic. Every couple of months, do something harder on purpose. Have him read a cold page aloud, time a page of math facts, ask him to explain his reasoning out loud. Those three checks tell you more than any workbook completion rate. If they are moving, the plan works even during the weeks that feel like nothing is happening. If they have been flat for two months, change one thing and watch again.
Pick your year
Other things people ask
Do I need to be a certified teacher to do this?
No state requires a teaching certificate to homeschool your own child, and Texas does not require one. What the early grades actually ask of you is patience and consistency, not credentials. You need to be about one lesson ahead, which for K-5 math and phonics is a low bar for most adults. The place parents genuinely get stuck is teaching reading, because most of us were never taught how reading is taught. Fix that by reading up on systematic phonics before you start, not by hiring anyone.
Is the free material actually worse than the paid programs?
For math and phonics in the early grades, no. Open licensed math programs and public domain readers were written by people who knew what they were doing, and several of them are the same material schools pay for. Free gets weaker in two specific places. Composition instruction past third grade is thin, and the paid writing programs earn their price there. The other cost of free is your time: you assemble it, you sequence it, you print it. A boxed program is mostly a purchase of somebody else's planning.
Can I print and copy anything I find for free online?
Not automatically, and this is the part that trips people up. Free to use on a website is not the same as free to copy and hand out. Public domain material, like the old McGuffey readers or a federal agency document, you can print, edit, remix and republish. Openly licensed material is usually free to adapt if you credit it and honor the license terms. A great many free worksheets sit in a third bucket: the publisher lets you use them with your own children and nothing more. Before you copy something for a co-op or a group, read that program's own terms page. When it is unclear, ask them.
What if I only have an hour a day?
In kindergarten and first grade, an hour is enough for the academic core if you spend it on the right things. Twenty minutes of phonics, twenty of math, and a read-aloud will carry a five or six year old further than a full school day of worksheets. From about third grade the arithmetic and the reading load both grow and an hour starts leaving things out. If an hour is the honest ceiling, protect math and reading first and let science and history ride on read-alouds and documentaries for a season. That trade is survivable. Skipping phonics is not.
Do we have to follow the TEKS?
Texas does not require a homeschool to teach the TEKS. What Texas courts established is a much simpler standard: a bona fide curriculum in a visual form covering reading, spelling, grammar, math and a course in good citizenship. We use the TEKS anyway because it is a free, public, grade-by-grade description of what a Texas child is expected to know, which makes it a useful checklist and a useful way to spot gaps. Use it as a map, not a mandate. Other states set their own rules, some of which are far more specific, so check yours.
How do I know if my child is behind?
Pick the two things that predict everything else and check those. Can he decode an unfamiliar word at his grade level accurately, without guessing from the picture? Are his math facts quick, not merely correct? Those two carry the whole elementary load. If reading is the weak one, that outranks every other subject in the house and gets fixed first, at whatever level he actually needs rather than the level his age suggests. Behind is a schedule word. At home there is no schedule, so the only real question is whether he is moving forward.
What about socialization?
The honest answer is that it takes deliberate effort and it is not hard. A child needs regular time with other children in situations you did not fully engineer, plus regular time with adults who are not his parents. Co-ops, sports, church, scouts, library programs, a neighborhood full of kids after three o'clock. The failure mode is real but it is not automatic: it happens to families who stay home for months and tell themselves errands count. Put two recurring commitments on the calendar and the question mostly answers itself.
Should I run a four-year world history cycle?
It depends on your state, and in Texas it collides with two years. Fourth grade in Texas is Texas history and fifth is United States history. A classical world history cycle running ancients through moderns will not touch either one. Neither will hurt a child, and world history at these ages is largely story time anyway. Just decide on purpose. If you plan to move into a Texas school later, or you want the state's own free fourth grade material, run the state and national years where the TEKS put them and do world history as read-alouds alongside.
Are the game rooms on this site enough to teach math?
No, and we would rather say so. The rooms drill and reinforce. They are good at facts, place value, fractions and number sense, and a child will happily do fifteen minutes of them. They do not teach a concept from scratch, they do not cover every strand of a grade, and each subject guide lists what they miss. Use them as practice next to real instruction, whether that instruction comes from a free program or one you bought. Screen time that replaces the teaching is a trade you will pay for later.
How long before I know it is working?
Give it a full semester before you judge the plan, and check the child weekly rather than the curriculum. Weekly you are looking for small evidence: a word he decoded without help, a fact that came back faster, a paragraph that held one topic. Every few months, do something harder. Have him read a page aloud cold, time a page of facts, ask him to explain how he solved something. If those are moving, the plan is working even on the weeks it feels like chaos. If they have been flat for two months, change one thing, not everything.
How do I teach two or three children at once?
Combine everything you can and separate only what you must. Science, history, art, music and read-alouds work fine with a five year old and a ten year old in the same room doing different amounts of the same work. Math and reading are individual and stay individual, because they depend on where each child actually is. Practically that means each child gets a short one-on-one block for those two subjects while the others work on something they can do alone. Older children reading to younger ones buys you time and is not a cheat.
What do I do if my child hates writing?
Separate the two things you are calling writing, because they are different problems. Handwriting resistance in a young child is usually a hand that tires, and the fix is short sessions, better pencil grip and often more cutting, building and playing rather than more practice pages. Composition resistance is usually a blank page with no instruction behind it. Most children who hate writing were asked to produce something nobody taught them to build. Let him dictate while you write it down, teach one structure at a time, and keep the physical act and the thinking act apart until both are stronger.