The question you can’t stop asking
“Is she actually where she should be?”
Nobody hands you that question. You ask it yourself, usually at night, usually after a day that went fine.
There’s no report card coming. No conference where someone tells you. You decide what gets taught tomorrow, and you’re the one wondering whether it’s the right thing.
You already know your child. What you don’t have is the hour it takes to build the thing you’re going to teach.
Meet them right where they are
Pick the grade. Pick the subject. Pick the exact skill you’re aiming at.
Not the grade on the paperwork — the grade where the skill actually lives. A fifth grader who never got place value gets a lesson built at the second-grade level where place value is taught. A second grader who’s flying gets the fourth-grade one.
Ahead, behind, or right on. You choose the target. The lesson gets built toward it.
Tick one box
One checkbox on the build form:
Write this lesson for one student
Tick it, and the lesson comes out written for one child.
No group work. No partner talk. No “turn to your neighbor.” No line about circulating the room while the other students work.
Everything that assumes a class is gone. What the child is supposed to learn stays.
Use what’s already in your Supply Closet
Your Supply Closet is the list of what you actually have. Index cards, a whiteboard, the counters in the kitchen drawer, nothing at all.
Fill it in once. Every lesson gets built around those materials.
You’re not driving out at eight at night for something the lesson assumed you had.
See it both ways
Same grade. Same subject. Same skills. One box ticked.
Left: built for a class. Right: built for one student.
| Built for a class | Built for one student | |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Tell the class a story while glancing away, shuffling papers, looking at the ceiling. Take 3–4 responses. | “I’m going to talk to you for about 30 seconds. Your only job is to listen.” Then: “Did that feel like I really got it?” |
| Modeling | Ask a confident volunteer to read one of the Conversation Prompt Cards to you. | Round 1 — Teacher Talks, Student Listens. Round 2 — Student Talks, Teacher Listens. |
| Practice | Pair students up. Partner A talks 30–45 seconds, Partner B listens. Circulate actively. | Hand the student the dry-erase marker and ask them to score you on each step: 1 = missed it, 2 = sort of, 3 = nailed it. |
| Closing | Lead the class in saying the steps together — normal volume, then a whisper, then as if teaching someone new. | Cover the anchor chart with your hand. Ask the student to say all three steps from memory. |
| What you need | Chart paper, whiteboard, pencils — plus prompt cards, printed and cut apart before class | Chart paper, whiteboard, pencils — plus a timer |
Read the practice row again.
On the left, the partner is another third grader who may or may not show up that day.
On the right, the partner is you — and the lesson hands the child the marker and asks them to score you. One to three, on each step, out loud.
There is no version of that with twenty-four kids in the room.
That’s not a classroom lesson with the group parts deleted. It’s a lesson built for a table with two people at it.
Your year has a record
In New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, North Carolina and Virginia, you don’t only teach the year. You have to show it.
Every lesson comes out with the grade level on it, the skills it targets, and the order they come in. Print it, file it, hand it over.
That’s a scope and sequence assembled from the lessons you actually taught — not the plan you wrote in August and stopped following in October.
For families who need the formal version: the lessons are standards-aligned to the national frameworks your state’s expectations are built from.
For everyone else it’s simpler than that. It’s a straight answer to the question at the top of this page.
See 384 lessons free, before you pay
384 finished lessons in the library. Open, readable, no card, no trial clock.
Read them before you decide anything.
One honest note: those 384 were written for classrooms. You’ll see “turn to a partner” in them, because that’s what they are. They’re there so you can judge the quality and the structure — a full year of it.
The library shows you the year. The builder writes for your child.
$15 a month
Homeschool families spend around $600 a year per child. This is $180.
$180 a year. It isn’t your curriculum — it’s the thing that builds the lesson when the curriculum doesn’t cover it, or covers it in a way that didn’t land, or stops exactly where your child got stuck.
Every grade, every subject, 10 subjects K-5. 35 new lessons a month.
No sales call. No demo. No annual contract.
Start a free trial
30 days free. 5 lesson plans. No credit card.
Build one lesson for the thing your child got stuck on this week. Use it tomorrow morning. Start your free trial.