What to do on your first day of home education
Checked 16 September 2026
Do far less than you are planning to. The single most common mistake on day one is a full timetable, and the families who start that way are the ones most likely to have stopped by Christmas.
A first day that works is short, finishes early, and ends with a child who is willing to do it again tomorrow. That is the entire goal. Everything else can wait a fortnight.
What the first morning should contain
- Something they are good at. Not something they need. The point of the first hour is to establish that this works, and a child who succeeds in it believes that.
- Reading together. You read some, they read some. Twenty minutes. This is the one thing that will still be in your week in a year.
- One piece of maths, at a level that is slightly too easy. You are measuring the water, not the child.
- Stop before they want to. Finish while it is still going well. This is counter-intuitive and it is the most useful sentence on this page.
What to leave until week three
- A timetable. You do not yet know how long anything takes in your house. Writing one now means writing a wrong one and then feeling bad about it.
- Buying things. Every resource you buy in week one is bought by somebody who does not yet know what they need.
- Every subject. Science, history and geography can start once maths and English have a rhythm.
- Comparing. With school, with other home educators, with a version of your child from last year. None of it tells you anything useful yet.
If your child has just left school
Then day one might reasonably contain no formal work at all, and that is not a failure of nerve.
A child who has spent years being told what to think about needs a while to start wanting to think about anything. The usual rule of thumb is a month of settling for each year they were at school, which sounds alarming and is meant less literally than it reads. What matters is that a child who is still angry or flat is not learning anything, whatever is on the table in front of them.
Cook, walk, go to the library, watch documentaries, be bored. It counts, and the formal work lands better afterwards.
Before the day ends, do this one thing
Write down what you did. Three lines is enough: what you covered, what went well, what did not.
Not for any authority, and not yet. For you in three weeks, when it feels like nothing is happening and the notebook says otherwise. It also happens to be the beginning of the record that answers a letter from the council in an afternoon rather than a weekend.
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Start your 7-day free trialCommon questions
- What should I do on the first day of home education?
- Something the child is already good at, twenty minutes of reading together, one easy piece of maths, and then stop. An hour and a half is plenty for a primary child.
- How long should the first home education day be?
- Around an hour and a half of formal work for a primary child. Finish while it is still going well rather than pushing to fill a morning.
- What is deschooling?
- The settling period after a child leaves school, before formal work restarts. A common rule of thumb is a month for each year they were at school, though it varies a great deal by child.
- Do I need a timetable to start home educating?
- No, and writing one on day one usually means writing the wrong one. Wait until you know how long things actually take in your house.