
Ask HN: Any ideas for children education at home? - plafl
I will give some context: I&#x27;m the father of two 6 and 9 children in Madrid, Spain. The recent school lockdown, since March and until September, has made me notice even more that children education could be vastly improved, at least in the fields I know about: math and science. I&#x27;m talking about quality more than quantity, I want to show the beauty of it and motivate them to learn more. For example, we have been doing experiments with electromagnetism lately and they love them. I don&#x27;t want to just concentrate on science though so ideas for history, social sciences, etc... are welcome. If you have experience about long term plans for children education that would be great also.
======
xnyan
Homeschooled for my entire life (I can count the number of times I've been
inside a K12 building without taking off my socks) and know 100s of former HS
kids. To be honest, I did not love my homeschool experience and would have
preferred not to do it, but I got into a decent college and now working my
dream job as a software developer so I guess it worked out fine.

A piece of advice: it sounds so obvious, but every child learns differently
and has different features that will fit will with some styles and not others.
Be nimble and adaptable. Don't immediately invest in an expensive set of math
instruction manuals (classic rookie HS parent mistake) or commit to an
opinionated learning plan without evaluating it in practice w/ your kids
first.

For content, the consistent thing that has set well prepared homeschooled
students (or any kind of student in my experience) apart from their less
prepared peers is outstanding reading and math skills. There are lots of other
things that are really important, but if you have great reading and math
skills then you have the fundamental tools to learn and do well in pretty much
any career. Don't worry too much about the book you use to teach math. I
mostly used Saxon - it was good for some things, not others. The most
important thing for a kid is spending time doing math, practicing math,
getting math problems wrong and working through why they were wrong.

For reading, read. Encourage and praise any reading. Have lots of books of all
kinds available. Most importantly, READ YOURSELF. Your kids need to see you
read.

~~~
plafl
Thank you, very interesting point of view. I don't plan to homeschool full-
time my children, they love to meet their friends at school! I actually read a
lot but nowadays mostly on my phone or eink tablet which is not very visible
for them.

~~~
xnyan
In my experience there are two kinds of parents that homeschool: ones with
exceptional circumstances and ones with exceptional political views. The
children of the former group seem to like homeschool just fine, the latter not
so much. Where I lived, most people were homeschooling because they thought
the government was going to indoctrinate their children.

If you don’t have exceptional circumstances, my opinion is the best choice for
kids is a more traditional school environment.

------
abnry
For math, I recommend looking into Cuisenaire Rods. It will help the kids
physically understand number reasoning.

I also recommend looking into the math ed twittersphere. A few people to start
with:

Matt Enlow, high school math teacher who knows how to have fun with math.
Don't know if it is too advanced for your kid's age.
[https://twitter.com/CmonMattTHINK](https://twitter.com/CmonMattTHINK)

James Stanton:

[https://twitter.com/jamestanton](https://twitter.com/jamestanton)

Mike Lawler, former math prof who homeschools his kids:
[https://twitter.com/mikeandallie](https://twitter.com/mikeandallie)

~~~
plafl
It seems not all in Twitter is evil after all. I will have to create an
account.

------
duckkg5
I was doing simple experiments with my 3-year-old for a while when the
lockdowns started happening. She was really interested in going through the
whole process of getting materials, coming up with a hypothesis, testing it
out, etc.

Then she wanted to start experimenting with stuff within other activities,
like taking what she learned from our experiments and trying to apply them to
her toys and outdoor activities. So I realized it's fun for her to learn about
science and experiments but I was running out of ideas for other ways to spend
time with her and the experiments were beginning to get almost too formal.

So I made a simple app that picks out a list of activities to do with kids,
which still includes some science experiments in addition to other things like
games, scavenger hunts, etc. Note: the activities content could use some
improvement and there's a form for people to submit their own activities.

[http://activitiesforkids.netlify.app](http://activitiesforkids.netlify.app)

If anyone has had any particular success entertaining kids, you can submit
your activity ideas to the app here:
[https://activitiesforkids.netlify.app/submit](https://activitiesforkids.netlify.app/submit)

~~~
drcongo
This sounds super useful, but I get `TypeError: null is not an object
(evaluating 'e.parentNode')` in the console when I hit the Get Activities
button. Is there a non-JS reliant version?

~~~
duckkg5
Good catch. If you refresh the page and click the button, it should show the
activities. If not, try the Library page to see the whole list of activities.
I'll fix that bug ASAP.

------
tmaly
I would highly recommend trying Scratch programming with your kids. It is a
super creative way to learn programming. The kids have a ton of fun recording
sounds and drawing their own characters.

I have been teaching it to my daughter and I also taught some lessons at her
school.

I put up my intro lessons, link in my profile.

~~~
danielrpa
I tried scratch with my 10yr old and he didn't like it. He felt it didn't look
like real programming (or his idea of "real programming" from Netflix).

I then tried using Usborne basic books from the 80s, running on a BBC Micro
emulator. I know, sounds like an odd next step... But boy, it DID work - he
has been very interested in consuming computer knowledge for 2 months now.

The old Usborne books are amazing. 20 minutes of typing and you have a new
simple game. I'd ask him to make changes (faster, easier, more lives etc) to
the game and he learned a ton.

I held his hand in the beginning, also teaching him the problems with GOTO and
some of the old school Basic choices, but he eventually became quite
independent.

Now he wants to switch to Python after learning about its power so we'll do it
next. But he has a much better understanding of basic constructs like loops,
subroutines, variables etc.

Usborne books (bottom of the page): [https://usborne.com/browse-
books/features/computer-and-codin...](https://usborne.com/browse-
books/features/computer-and-coding-books/)

~~~
papa
I've had a great experience making use of the Unity 3D free premium learning
courses (free until June during the pandemic) with my youngest child.

Like your child, mine didn't care for Scratch. He's loving Unity though.
Actually, who am I kidding, I'm enjoying immensely too. We've laughed our
heads off together tweaking and adding small features to the rudimentary games
that their basic course guides you through.

This is the basic course if you're interested:
[https://learn.unity.com/course/create-with-code-
live](https://learn.unity.com/course/create-with-code-live)

The Usborne books you linked to sound interesting too. I'll be sure to check
those out.

------
jmocambique
Another commentator mentioned Charlotte Mason. One of her ideas is to use
'living books'. Instead of a textbox find a book written by someone who is
passionate and knowledge on a particular subject. It could be the biography of
a scientist. Or how a particular part of math is used to solve real world
problems.

------
tenpoundhammer
We have homeschooled our kids for the past 7 years and have tried a lot of
different things here's what works for us.

Math U See [https://mathusee.com/](https://mathusee.com/)

Comes with DVD's or Online video where a teacher teaches the lessons in front
of real students. It's a great curriculum my kids are learning math much
faster and easier than any other curriculum we've tried. Also, the videos take
the pressure off as we don't have to learn everything our kids are learning.
Although we do sometimes go and watch the videos with our kids if they get
stuck.

Explode the Code [https://eps.schoolspecialty.com/products/literacy/phonics-
wo...](https://eps.schoolspecialty.com/products/literacy/phonics-word-
study/explode-the-code)

Very similar to the previous recommendation but no video lessons. It breaks
down the process of learning to read in easy to follow chunks and doesn't
overwhelm the kids. It makes teaching kids reading easy and fairly fast.

A few minor tips:

1\. Children are human beings some days they won't be prepared to learn, take
advantage of home school, and do something else. Nature walks, read a book,
educational movie, etc.

2\. Parents are human beings see above

3\. Learning to read involves a lot of time spent reading. When our kids have
the basics we incentivize them by allowing them to stay up late but only for
reading. At first, they just stare at the pictures or pretend to read but
after a while, they get bored enough to force themselves to learn the words.

4\. Kids like other people, take them to see other people often. We are part
of a co-op and the kids love it. My kids aren't even interested in going to a
public school as their public school friends spend way more time at school and
doing homework and get similar results.

let me know if you have any other questions

------
celdavid
Check Out

[https://literatea.com](https://literatea.com)

This is a creative writing site with a free basic tier. The free tier has a
curated library of short stories as well as moderated forums. Plus, there is a
bookshelf to keep track of your reading in general.

For middle school and high school students, I would recommend the writer
level. Subscribing offers a safe space for self expression through writing,
including monitored social interaction / collaboration. This level also comes
with self-paced courses with live office hours and workshops. The courses
consist of video lessons, exercises and story templates integrated into one
builder.

(There is an advanced level, geared more toward adults, with live writing
groups, one-on-one coaching and a scaffolded author website.)

------
wallflower
For your young inventors and scientists:

> Dyson engineers have designed these challenges specifically for children.
> Ideal for home or in the classroom, they encourage inquisitive young minds
> to get excited about engineering.

[https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/content/dam/pdf/US%20ch...](https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/content/dam/pdf/US%20challenge%20cards%20with%20cover.pdf)?

[https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/resources/challenge-
car...](https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/resources/challenge-cards.html)

------
nickpeterson
My wife and I have been discussing this recently as well. A big part of our
concern is that I feel kids are going to be forced back to school prematurely
(we live in Ohio) simply because it’s too complicated to resolve the economic
issues otherwise. My wife stays at home and I work remote, so keeping the kids
out for awhile seems like a good idea.

One piece of advice, is to help your kids research problems and find answers
and check them. The world doesn’t result in something as simple as a story
problem, or get summarized as easily as a history textbook. Let them use
critical thinking.

------
spking
[https://mysteryscience.com/](https://mysteryscience.com/) is excellent.

~~~
plafl
I have registered a free account and the lessons look great. Thanks!

------
bfieidhbrjr
Make sure to relax on this journey. There is a convincing case that education
doesn't impact life outcomes much at all (e.g. The Case Against Education by
Bryan Caplan for a recent book).

Therefore I'd advise to let your kids have fun and educate them around
whatever that fun thing is, like how Montessori does it.

~~~
SamPatt
I second this.

I was homeschooled and am homeschooling our children. The best part is the
flexibility and adaptability. Embrace it.

Learn through living. Having your kids alongside you is probably a more
representative sample of what living their lives will be like than age
seperated peer groups forced to congregate in the same building each day.

------
cczizou
This is such a moving target but right now my eldest son is having a great
time making explainer videos and posting to YouTube. He’s learning to shoot
better footage, edit video, and about his subject matter. My younger kids are
playing with LEGO nonstop right now and have been looking for ways to
repurpose LEGO kits they’ve put together over the years using hack
instructions they find on the web and Snap Circuits.

At those ages, you are still laying so much foundation and cultivating
curiosity. Keep it fun, keep it widely integrated: science is history is art
is math is science.

------
softwaredoug
My 8 year old has really enjoyed the Khan Academy coding classes.

What’s great about them is they’re built around a browser based JavaScript
sandbox. There’s tons of games and things people have coded. It reminds me of
when I had an Apple IIe and you could inspect a lot of games AppleBASIC code.
I remember being baffled by what “FOR” did in that code for the longest time!

He does the lessons and builds all kinds of goofy animations with some help.
But he also explores other people’s code/work trying to understand how/why
things work.

------
chriselles
We use Khan Academy(Full spectrum), DuoLingo(language), and Fender
Play(guitar).

We also allow targeted education interest YouTube.

Finally, we use www.amy.app

It’s an AI math tutor(disclosure, our kids get so much out of it we invested
in it).

~~~
skilesare
How do you actually use this? Looks like you need to plug it into something? I
signed up for the demo, but it didn't ask me what level I was or anything like
that.

------
rubidium
There are lots of homeschooling curriculums of various quality levels, if
that’s what you mean.

Saxon math seems to be good from homeschooling parents reviews.

Montessori, Charlotte Mason, great books, etc have all stood the test of time
when it comes to educational approaches.

Many homeschooling parents pick and choose what they find helpful for their
kids.

Pretty much everything has been tried in the field of education. It’s a matter
of execution and attention not innovation.

------
jacknews
Yes I agree, I have 4. It's been a real eye-opener to see, first hand, the
poor quality of some lessons and curriculum, and in some cases even teachers.

OTOH many teachers have been exceptional despite the difficult circumstances,
and have earned renewed/increased respect.

I can't offer a ideas at the moment, but I am also looking to perhaps take
more control next year, as I'm sure are many others.

------
math12345
The Museum of Math is having some online sessions, even for very young kids.
The sessions might be of interest.

[https://momath.org/home/transformations/momath-online-
studen...](https://momath.org/home/transformations/momath-online-student-
sessions-week-of-april-13/)

------
raviisoccupied
I'm not sure if this unwarranted self promotion, but my company, 7billionideas
has been working on this problem. We've created an online cross-curriculum
facilitated course called HomeHack which helps kids aged 9-15 learn an
entrepreneurial skillset.

[https://7billionideas.com/homehack](https://7billionideas.com/homehack)

Feedback welcomed!

~~~
plafl
Certainly not unwarranted! Very cool idea, I will send the link also to my
workplace chat. I will have a look but at first sight I'm missing some
indication about the expected age of the students.

------
fiftyacorn
My wife is a primary school teacher in Scotland and she has simply been doing
maths and english each day with my kids during lockdown. She thinks focus on
the basics - and not worry about the other stuff

------
ransom1538
Epic! has read along books for kids
[https://www.getepic.com/](https://www.getepic.com/) and is free during
Covid19. Tons of content!

------
kixiQu
I would think that the people who'd be great to consult would be a.
homeschooling parents, the homeschooling community, academics who study
homeschooling, or b. education professionals, particularly those doing studies
of effectiveness of educational techniques (as opposed to the impact of social
factors that are probably fixed for a given child).

I would think that the hacker news community would not have particular
expertise in this field, and indeed, be desperately afflicted by whatever one
calls the specific variety of Dunning-Kruger where a person believes that
their own subject-matter is complicated and worthy of intense study, but
subjects outside of it may be adequately understood with surface-level effort.

~~~
kixiQu
Now, that said? I was homeschooled and so based on that experience:

Follow what your kids are excited about and learn to nudge that into the
learning experiences they need. When I was young, we did a lot of research
projects about "kitties" because that's what I cared about. The book excerpt
in here models that well:
[https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-
the-...](https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/23/achievement-gap-the-
knowledge-gap-natalie-wexler) and there's this as well...
[https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-
knowledge-i...](https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54470/why-content-knowledge-is-
crucial-to-effective-critical-thinking)

What this really means, I think, is that we tend to view the actual topics of
material that an elementary/middle schooler is dealing with as, well,
immaterial--that there are fungible skills they need to learn. And that's kind
of true--but what's _certainly_ true is that bouncing around pretending that
you can synthesize information about baseball without learning about baseball
(example in one of the links) and then tomorrow it's off to practice diagram
reading with Mayan agriculture--that isn't effective. At homeschooling scale,
you can afford to let your kids' passions drive, and work in the skills-based
aspects as it fits.

------
damla
We have been part-time home-schooling for a while, because we think the school
curriculum is not fulfilling our children's (8 and 13) education needs, since
it is not individualized.

You can make a schedule for our children's day, including study, exercise and
free times. For the study time, you may choose some subjects in these three
areas:

1\. A couple of (or maybe just one if obvious) subjects, that your child is
good at, or really likes. Find resources and make a program to ensure your
child progresses in this subject. If there are contests, or certifications in
this subject you may aim them. If your child gets a chance to experience the
rewards of their work, this will motivate them. He/she will also meet with
tutors/peers this way, further resulting in more progress and also joy.

2\. Determine the subjects that your child is weak, or not especially
interested, but has to develop because they are very basic, like math or
writing.

3\. Find some enrichment areas, like a subject that you or a family member
knows well, or find resources easily. This may actually not need to be a
certain subject/area. This may include watching a certain YouTube channel
everyday.

When it comes to resources, there are tons of. But it may take some time to
spot one that your child needs at that specific progress/interest level. They
may get bored at times, but you may always find a new book/web site/videos/etc
that work. We re-schedule, try easier/more difficult resources, make a
rewarding system for a true bottle-neck. As long as you don't get bored and
completely give-up, there will be progress.

We do many things to help them study more efficiently, but we always vary when
it comes to changing subjects for the first two areas, of course it is
sometimes the right thing to do, but not easy to determine.

I'm adding some of the resources that I can't end my comment without
mentioning:

\- Duolingo for learning many languages

\- Khan Academy

\- Scholastic books for English (not for ESL, but for fine tuning academical
English)

\- [https://www.ixl.com/](https://www.ixl.com/) for American curriculum
practice

\- Youtube channels: TED Ed, Crash Course, CGP Grey

\- Anton for German (1-10th grade)
[https://anton.app/de/](https://anton.app/de/) (a recent find via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596290))

\- Math Olympiads for a really advanced math learner. There are lots of books,
contests. You can begin with
[https://artofproblemsolving.com/community](https://artofproblemsolving.com/community)

------
JohnDeHope
Well since you asked, this idea has been banging in my head since I started be
Mr. Teacher for my kids who're home from public school. I'll resist the urge
to describe all the background a-ha moments, experiences, observations, etc.
I'll just cut to the minimum viable product that's rolling around my head.

The system is a database of "topics". A topic is a very bite sized element of
training. If you're teaching kindergartners math, it'd be something like
"adding 0 to a number just gives back the same number". It's almost just a
sentence's worth of definition.

Each topic has a handful of prerequisites. This is not some kind of taxonomy a
la the Dewey Decimal System. The prerequisites are just a rough curriculum
outline. For example you can't learn about adding zero to a number, unless you
have already learned single digit counting up to 10 or 20. I am not an
educator so exactly what is a prerequisite for what is not my forte. And this
doesn't have to be super complicated. Just a nice smooth progression from
simpler lower level concepts, up through more complicated higher level
concepts.

Each topic is accompanied by videos. These videos are very short, because the
topics are very short. Think 5min or less. For K and 1st grade they might even
be just 1min or 2min. Each topic has many of them. They could be crowd sourced
or produced like something you'd get from an education company, whatever. The
point is: there is a back log of videos that teach each topic. So if you're
topic is "adding 0 to a number just gives that same number" there would be at
least 1 but maybe multiple videos in the system that teach that topic.

Each topic has a series of questions, each question has correct answers, and
incorrect answers. As much as humanly possible we have a catalog of multiple
choice questions for each topic. The questions can be written in a variety of
ways, the correct and incorrect answers can be written in a variety of ways.
For example one question might have a few ways it can be written such as
"1+0=?" or "one plus zero is what?" or "one + zero" etc. The point is you can
randomly select a series of questions, and you can randomly select one of the
correct answers, and a few of the incorrect answers, or construct "all of the
above" or "none of the above" and even if two people have the same questions
in the same order, their experience and what they see might be totally
different.

Finally, each student account has a list of the topics they have "mastered".
So your account is like a tree of the topics you've mastered, which adjacent
or peer topics you haven't mastered yet, and which topics you have mastered
all the prerequisites for. I could randomly select a topic, and by walking the
tree of prerequisites a little bit, find a topic quickly that is appropriate
for you.

Okay those are all the nouns. Now for the verbs. How does this work? Basically
the experience is a loop. A student comes in to the system. The tool randomly
selects a topic that the student has mastered all the prerequisites for. They
are presented with one of the videos for that topic randomly. Then they're
presented with a short quiz randomly built from the questions for that topic.
If they get a 100% correct on all the questions, they've mastered that topic.
Wash rinse repeat until they've graduated from college.

If you get a quiz wrong, all the prerequisites for that topic are no longer
mastered. In essence we "back up" one node in the prerequisite tree. Over time
a student will repeat some topics more than once, as they push the outer
boundary of the leaf nodes of the topic tree they've mastered. This is to be
expected.

Since we are randomly selecting topics, randomly selecting videos on those
topics, randomly building quizzes, and each topic is only a few minutes long,
we should be able to keep this up for a hour without getting too bogged down
in any one topic or any one quiz or any one subject. It should flow smoothly,
quickly, without friction, without complication. I'd estimate my 1st grader
could plow through 3 or 4 topics in an hour. My 4th grader should be able to
easily handle 5 or 6 no problem.

The system has hardly any user interface at all. There might be a single
button to say "I'm ready for the next topic". While the video plays there
might be a single button to back up 30 seconds. Then the quiz begins and there
is only 1 button for each of the 4 multiple choice answers, and then back to
the beginning. The fidelity of the user interface is comically minimal.

The system does not have any obvious grades, percentage completion, progress
reports, awards, kudos, etc. The loop of video, quiz, repeat, is all there is.
If you wanted to do reporting on student's progress you could do so, outside
of the system, but within it the experience is on rails. The student is not
alerted to wrong answers, correct answers, whether or not they've "mastered" a
topic, what the upcoming topics are, etc. None of that is presented to them.

Okay that's enough of a description. Each of these design elements is backed
up by my experience being Mr. Teacher and has specific reasons for being
there. I'm avoid giving all my back story because this was probably boring
enough as it is. I thank the OP "plafl" because this thing has been in my head
for weeks, and writing it all out has helped me get it out of my system.

