I homeschool my two kids. I was worried about the time commitment at first, but it's honestly quite small. At most, I spend two hours in the morning for both kids. Typical mornings are an hour to an hour and a half. Some subjects like social studies we do together (my kids are two years apart). Others, like math or language arts, are per child (I usually have the other one read or practice piano when giving a one-on-one lesson). My wife does a lot of the supplemental activities like taking them to our co-op or to museums.

A lot of time in public schools is either wasted or simply a consequence of classes having ~30 students each. I also find that homeschool kids can be taught the discipline to work on their own after a lesson. I check the work in the evenings or before school starts in the morning.

I can understand why many people might not want to homeschool, but I find it's been a blessing for my kids & our family.

So did you work while you were homeschooling your kids?

Motivated children can easily outpace public-schooled children with 3 or 4 days a week at 3 hours a day. They can be very self-directed, but the trouble with it is they go down rabbit holes and they'll excel at one or two subjects to the detriment of others.

My daughter would want to spend 6-10 hours a day on art, but wouldn't want to do her French or math homework. My son just told me that alef (in the Hebrew alphabet) was the symbol for Graham's number, but balks when I try to get him to memorize his multiplication tables.

> And since they are different ages, I worry that if I taught them all at the same time, the curriculum would average into something too challenging

If there is a subject where that is the case, I do not know what it would be. Once they're past the age of 7 or 8, most or all children are capable of what they would be at older ages. I don't think, for instance, that an 8 yr old learning to read is slower at it than one learning that for the first time at age 14.

For the record though, didn't get to teach my son to read. With his sister, I tried from age three on up... every few months I'd see if she was more agreeable to it, and she wanted nothing to do with it until sevenish. She could sound words out phonetically if I pushed from the start, but with a look on her face like I was pulling teeth with pliers. So I waited with my son until he was almost seven... and he could just read. I have no idea how. My wife claims she didn't, and his sister certainly didn't either.

I think, really, that public schools doing age segregation has more to do with them trying to perfectly homogenize the product they crank off the assembly line, than it does with making sure each student gets enough learning opportunity.

> If there is a subject where that is the case, I do not know what it would be. Once they're past the age of 7 or 8, most or all children are capable of what they would be at older ages. I don't think, for instance, that an 8 yr old learning to read is slower at it than one learning that for the first time at age 14.

From personal experience: I first encountered differential equations in highschool, while preparing for physics Olympiad. I could solve basic equations, but I didn't understand what I was doing and for example the damped oscillator equation was mistifying. Fast forward to university, in the first diffential equation class, everything made perfect sense and I found it super easy. There was probably at least two years between the two stories.

It was the same for me with stochastic processes.

Most likely has nothing to do with age, but simply the fact that it was the second time you’ve encountered it. Your brain spent 2 years subconsciously processing it.

Yes it’s going to be a lot easier for you than the people seeing it for the first time who have to spend a bunch of time cranking equations.

But then in the learning to read example, a 14 year old learning to read has seen a ton more letters around them (on billboards, book covers, phones, etc) so it should be easier for them to learn then for an 8 year old.

> the trouble with it is they go down rabbit holes and they'll excel at one or two subjects to the detriment of others.

In what sense is that a form of "trouble"? How is it different from any other educational system?

It's less than optimal.

> My son just told me that alef (in the Hebrew alphabet) was the symbol for Graham's number, but balks when I try to get him to memorize his multiplication tables.

I, too, learned about Graham's number when the YouTube algorithm decided that I liked math videos.

The issue with learning like this, though, is that it's called "edutainment," and, while it scratches the same itch in our brains as learning, rarely actually produces learnings.

Ask him in a week what he remembers about Graham's number. I'd be impressed if he recalled much.

Also, if he had a good teacher, that teacher would have been able to push back when he was mixing up concepts. Aleph is not the symbol for Graham's number, rather it is the symbol for Cantor's orders of infinity.

> Aleph is not the symbol for Graham's number, rather it is the symbol for Cantor's orders of infinity.

So? We weren't doing math theory. Foreign language instead. He's allowed to entertain himself after his lessons are done, and he'll be familiar with that stuff when he does get there.

> Also, if he had a good teacher,

Sure. If he had one. The implication that there's any such teacher in public schools within 100 miles of us is absurd.

> How much time does homeschooling take for you? Does it roughly equate to one full-time job?

It depends. I quit my job to homeschool my daughter so that she could practice and pursue her violin studies without the encumbrances of mainstream school. I suspect some could have done this and maintained some kind of a job; I couldn't. We spent much of the day either in school work, or practice, and then I'd prep tomorrow's material. Neither time nor energy was left at the end of the day.

The way I’ve seen it is each kid usually has a grade-specific curriculum they are following. There can be cross-pollination on some topics/deep dives and extracurriculars that different ages will get different amounts out of, but the typical model isn’t ‘all the kids are in the same classroom learning the same thing synchronously’. Rather, you are switching between between each as they asynchronously progress in their individual lessons: Johnny needs help on this math lesson while Sally is making independent progress on vocabulary, and vice versa. Even if they are waiting sometimes, the dead weight loss is still way smaller than in 30-person typical classrooms.