Homeschool Checklist: What to Do Before, During, and After You Start

The first thing most parents do when they decide to homeschool is search for a curriculum. This is usually the wrong place to start — and it is one of the most reliable predictors of early burnout.

A more useful framing: homeschooling has three distinct phases, each with its own checklist. The legal and administrative steps happen first. Then the adjustment period — what veteran homeschoolers call deschooling — before any formal academic structure begins. Most families who struggle in their first year either skipped the legal steps (and spent months anxious about compliance) or skipped the deschooling phase (and spent months fighting with a child who was not ready to learn).

This checklist covers all three phases, with country-specific notes for the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Phase 1: Before You Start — Legal and Logistical Steps

Withdraw from school correctly

How you withdraw depends on where you live.

• United States: Withdrawal requirements vary by state. Most states require a written notification to the school or school district. In high-regulation states like New York and Pennsylvania, you typically need a Notice of Intent to Homeschool submitted to the district, sometimes with a curriculum plan attached. In low-regulation states like Texas and Oklahoma, no formal notice is legally required. Check your state's specific law — the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) maintains a free state-by-state overview.
• United Kingdom: Send a written deregistration letter directly to the headteacher. The school is legally required to remove your child from roll. You do not need to wait for permission. Schools occasionally claim a "cooling off period" is required — this is not legally accurate and you can decline.
• Australia: Registration requirements vary significantly by state. In Victoria and New South Wales, you apply for registration with the relevant authority and may need to wait several weeks for approval. In Queensland, you can begin home education while your application is being processed. Use whatever administrative gap exists as your deschooling window.
• Canada: Provincial rules vary from very permissive (Alberta, where home education is provincially supported with funding) to moderately regulated (Ontario, which requires notification). Contact your provincial Ministry of Education for current requirements.
• New Zealand: Apply for a homeschooling exemption through the Ministry of Education. Processing typically takes 4–6 weeks. During this time, many families use a medical certificate for school-related anxiety or stress while the paperwork processes.

Notify the relevant authority in writing

Whatever the requirement in your jurisdiction, do this in writing and keep a copy. Email provides a timestamp. Post with tracking provides a paper trail.

Set up a simple record-keeping system

You do not need elaborate spreadsheets on day one, but you do need somewhere to log what your child does each week. A notebook, a shared document, or even a simple folder of dated observations is enough to begin. High-regulation states and some Australian authorities may eventually ask to see evidence of education — "life learning logs" (cooking, building, nature walks, reading) satisfy this requirement while giving the child genuine recovery time.

Phase 2: The Deschooling Period — What Most Families Skip

Here is what happens when families skip straight from school to curriculum: the child resists. There are power struggles. The parent feels like they are doing it wrong. Within a few months, homeschooling starts to feel harder than school was.

This is almost always the result of skipping deschooling.

A child who has spent years in a conventional school environment has been trained to wait to be told what to learn, to seek external validation, to associate "education" with compliance and performance anxiety. Dropping them into a home curriculum without a recovery period simply replicates the same dynamics in a new setting — with the parent now playing the role of teacher-enforcer.

The veteran homeschool community's guideline is one month of deschooling for every year the child was in school. A child who completed four years of primary school needs roughly four months of unstructured time before formal academics begin. This is not idle time — it is neurological repair.

Your deschooling checklist

Weeks 1–2: Decompression

• [ ] Remove all academic expectations. No worksheets, no lessons, no "what did you learn today?"
• [ ] Allow natural sleep rhythms — no alarm unless essential
• [ ] Let the child choose all activities, including screens, without judgment
• [ ] Resist the urge to turn every activity into a lesson ("That's a great bird — let's look up its Latin name!")
• [ ] Keep a parent journal: write what you observe your child doing, not what they are "supposed to" be doing
• [ ] If your child was in school due to anxiety or burnout, expect exhaustion, irritability, and regression in weeks 1–2 — this is normal decompression, not a problem to fix

Weeks 3–4: Discovery

• [ ] Practice "strewing" — leave interesting items out without directing attention to them: an art book open to a striking image, a box of Lego Technic, a map of the local area, a broken toaster and a screwdriver
• [ ] Go to the library with no agenda. Graphic novels and magazines count.
• [ ] Take nature walks with no nature journaling requirement — just walk
• [ ] Watch how your child plays when left completely alone: do they build, draw, read, move, or talk? This is your first data point about learning style
• [ ] When boredom complaints peak (common in week 3), resist fixing it. Boredom is the precursor to self-directed curiosity.

Weeks 5–6: Transition

• [ ] Introduce a loose daily rhythm — not a timetable, but a sequence (breakfast → outside time → reading together → free time)
• [ ] If your child showed interest in something specific during weeks 3–4, offer one free trial or single unit — not a full year's curriculum
• [ ] Sit with your child to co-create the rhythm, rather than imposing it
• [ ] Look for readiness signals: the child asking questions spontaneously, picking up books voluntarily, showing boredom with idleness (rather than with everything)
• [ ] If resistance continues at week 6, extend. Do not force. Start only with subjects the child already enjoys.

Phase 3: Ongoing Homeschooling Essentials

Once deschooling is complete and some form of routine has emerged, these are the ongoing checklist items that matter.

Curriculum and resources

• [ ] Choose curriculum based on your child's learning style (observed during deschooling) — not on what worked for someone else's child in a Facebook group
• [ ] Start with one subject at a time, not a full academic schedule
• [ ] Consider free options first: Khan Academy, library books, YouTube channels, local museums. You do not need to spend heavily to start.
• [ ] Reassess curriculum every quarter. If it is causing daily conflict, it is the wrong curriculum — not a discipline problem.

Community and socialization

• [ ] Find local homeschool co-ops or park days — most regions have them and they are often free or low-cost
• [ ] Schedule playdates during the deschooling period after school hours so your child maintains connection with former classmates
• [ ] Look into community sports, music lessons, martial arts, or drama groups — these provide peer interaction and structured activity outside the home

Parental wellbeing

• [ ] Connect with other homeschooling parents, particularly those who have been through the deschooling transition — the adjustment period is harder to navigate alone
• [ ] Manage comparison anxiety: your child's deschooling looks different from what someone else posted online, and that is expected
• [ ] Give yourself permission to change course. The curriculum you start with is rarely the one you stay with.

A Note on Timing

The most common mistake — beyond skipping deschooling — is expecting the benefits of homeschooling to be immediately visible. The first weeks are often the hardest, not the easiest. A child who spent years in a stressful school environment does not decompress overnight.

Veteran families consistently report the same arc: the first six weeks are exhausting, then something shifts. The child's spark comes back. They start asking questions again. They seek out books or projects on their own. The parent stops feeling like a truant officer and starts feeling like a facilitator.

Getting through that first six weeks with a clear framework — rather than winging it — makes an enormous difference. The De-schooling Transition Protocol walks through the first six weeks in detail: what to expect from your child at each stage, how to handle the skeptical partner or grandparent who thinks "doing nothing" is wrong, and the specific readiness signals that tell you when formal learning can begin.

The checklist above is a starting point. The transition period is where most of the real work happens — and having a plan for it changes everything about how the first year of homeschooling goes.