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Raymond and Dorothy Moore are probably the best-known advocates of the later-is-better approach. The Moores’ 1975 book, Better Late Than Early, summarizes research supporting their contention that children are not physiologically ready for formal learning until age eight to ten. They suggest that waiting allows children to gain the maturity and logical skills necessary for formal work and prevents them from becoming frustrated and discouraged by attempts to handle material they are simply not yet ready to understand.

It is quite common for homeschooled children, especially in the more flexible approaches, to learn to read as young as age two or three or to delay to age eight or nine, or even as late as age twelve. Because of the individualized nature of homeschooling, whatever style the family uses, late reading is far less of a handicap to further learning than it would be in a conventional school setting. Because schools rely so heavily on text-based instruction, we tend to forget that there are plenty of other ways to acquire knowledge. A not-yet-reading homeschooled child can watch TV and videos, be read to by family members, ask questions of friends and family, and acutely observe everything surrounding her. The late reader frequently blossoms suddenly into a capable and independent reader, moving quickly into fluent reading beyond the level normally expected at her age. Because the lack of independent reading skill does not hamper other learning to the severe degree that it might in a conventional classroom or damage the child’s self-confidence, the late-reading homeschooler remains an eager and interested learner.

The Formal Approach: School-at-Home

Alisanne and Todd live in New Jersey with their daughter, Kassy. Todd, formerly employed in the corporate headquarters of a large research company, is now on permanent medical disability. Alisanne ran a business at home before Kassy’s birth and plans eventually to do so again. Kassy spent a year in nursery school three times a week before beginning homeschooling.

We have a room that we’ve set up as our “schoolroom.” We do daily lessons that take about two to three hours. Our daughter, an only child, is six. We homeschool year-round and generally six days a week.

I try to have fairly set hours, or Kassy would take all day to do her lessons. I have recently been aiming for starting by nine o’clock and finishing by noon. If we finish by lunch time, much more of the day is left to do other things.

I have a freeware lesson planning program that I keep on the computer and use to plan our week. I wrote a curriculum that I use to keep track of our overall objectives. I do an assessment approximately every six weeks to determine whether our learning objectives are on track. Currently Kassy is mostly doing second-grade work, but she has first-grade handwriting skills that slow her down. But she is only just six.

We use Saxon math. Kassy will be finishing Saxon Math 2 in late May, and we’ll start Saxon Math 3 in June. We used Sing, Spell, Read & Write for an overall phonics approach to reading but have finished it. We are now using various beginning readers because Kassy did not like the readers that came with the phonics program. This year we purchased a copy of Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills—Second Grade, and Kassy has been working through that to cover English, spelling, and such. We haven’t decided yet whether to use one for third grade.

Beverly, her husband Michael, and their five children (fourteen, eleven, ten, six, and four) live in a Nebraska suburb. Michael is in the military and is the only member of the family employed outside the home. They’ve been homeschooling the four younger children since the fall of 1993; before then, the three oldest children attended a private Christian school.

Our homeschooling day begins in the morning. After taking my oldest daughter to school, I get the next two oldest children up out of bed. They spend the next hour eating,