As a new homeschooling mom, I am always looking for information to help me be a successful teacher. I received the opportunity to review The Simple Homeschool by Christy Rucker. This book is all about simplifying your homeschool to create a peaceful environment. The book is an easy read at ninety-five pages and ten chapters long. It is available for purchase on Amazon for $8.95 for a paperback or $7.95 for the Kindle version.

My oldest son will be six in September, and we plan to start Kindergarten at that time. When we began to think about homeschooling, I was worried about my ability to homeschool; however, that worry has changed over the years. His personality is quite different from mine, and I have worried about our relationship through homeschooling. This book came to me at the perfect time to give me some perspective on how we can make our homeschool simple, relaxing, and enjoyable for both my son and me.

A central theme of the book is minimalism. When I think about minimalism, my mind goes toward decluttering and minimizing the objects in my home. The author discusses how to take this idea further to minimalizing our daily routines and homeschool to create a less stressful environment. In chapter two, there are quick fixes that are practical ideas to simplify your homeschool. One of the suggestions is to ‘Bind Your Time.' The author suggests that you set a specific boundary for your homeschool time. You can do this either by establishing a set number of hours or a specific cut-off time for your day. In the same chapter, the author discusses loop scheduling. I had heard of this before but was not sure how it works. The idea is to complete subjects on a loop instead of doing all of them every day. If you do not get to a subject one day, it can just be the first thing you do the next day. These suggestions were helpful to me as I think about our homeschool days to come.

The other chapters in the book cover how the author got started, information for new homeschool moms, commitment, consistency and defining an education, being present over distracted, simplicity for the teacher, consuming homeschool content, necessities for education, and a chapter on a day in the life of the author. I found helpful information in each of these chapters. I would recommend this book to anyone currently homeschooling, or that plans to in the future. I will keep this book and reread it as we begin our homeschool journey this fall.

Product review by Heather Wise, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, May 2021