One of the great opportunities in homeschooling is the amazing access that now exists to classes online. Whether it is EdX, Coursera or Skillshare, there is a wealth of classes and it is growing seemingly by the hour.

One advantage of this emerging system that I had not considered before is that they are largely age agnostic. Two of our children are taking courses right now where I suspect that they are on the younger end of the range of participants. But nobody knows that and as a result they are treated no differently than other participants. That is pretty much the opposite of the traditional school system in which almost everything is based on age.

The risk of trying something out at an early age is also much reduced. If you succeed then you are pulling way ahead. But if you fail, the downside is much more limited than with an in person class especially of kids you know and will see every day. Taking only online classes might be isolating, so we are balancing this with some in person tutoring and homeschooler classes in New York (more on those in a separate post).