Homeschoolers of young children will not want to miss Linda Dobson’s Homeschooling the Early Years: Your Complete guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 3- to 8- Year Old Child. The book is an absolutely wonderful resource, whether you are an unschooler or traditional homeschooler, and supplies homeschooling families with a plethora of resources, ideas, and activities.

Worried about hitting educational milestones and benchmarks for success? Homeschooling the Early Years covers many of these and includes fun activities—rather than boring lesson plans—in order to achieve them. Even if you’re an unschooler and you don’t want to set rigid standards for your child, you can still find some really enjoyable, meaningful activities in the guide.

One thing that did bother me off and on throughout the book was the inclusion of faith based studies. It’s absolutely wrong to assume that homeschoolers do so just because they want to provide a religious education (although some do), and when writers include a bunch of religious jargon—especially centered only on the Christian paradigm—it gets really annoying, really fast. Thankfully this book isn’t one of those “shove it down your throat” types and doesn’t include that much religious testimony. I also found a lot of other stuff I wouldn’t like to see in a homeschooling book—like advice to eat fast food multiple times a week or to watch hours of television.

The majority of the book, however, contains everything from getting kids and their parents ready to homeschool to using practical arts in education—such as cooking for math, writing Grandma a letter for language arts—and tons of really fun, cheap or free tips in boxes labeled “Money Saver.” My daughter loves tracing alphabet letters on my back with her fingers and getting me to guess what they are (and vice versa). It’s creative and inexpensive ideas like this that make homeschooling all the more fun.

For the traditional homeschoolers, there are lots of curriculum resources, phonics programs, and other resources listed—and for the more eclectic families there are still lots of great book, periodical, and activity recommendations. Simple reading and organization, family testimonies, and interesting quotes also make the book more enjoyable—though it’s the testimonies themselves that are often the passages that turn me off. In all, I would highly recommend Dobson’s book for families—especially those just getting started—although I wouldn’t call it an end-all, be-all resource in and of itself.