But having more educational choices doesn't automatically produce a better education. What parents do with those choices matters. Instead of beginning with, "What can I buy with my scholarship?" try asking, "What experiences will help my child understand and remember what they are learning?"

Why Hands-On Learning Matters to Me

When I was in high school, I had trouble remembering much of what I learned in history. Too often, history seemed to consist of reading information, memorizing names and dates, taking a test, and moving to the next chapter. I might remember enough to pass the test, but much of that information didn't stay with me.

What I did remember were the activities that brought history to life. When I had opportunities to participate, make decisions, solve problems, discuss what might have happened differently, or actually use what I was learning, history became much more interesting. Those experiences helped inspire my interest in creating educational resources that engage students instead of simply asking them to memorize information. Florida families now have an opportunity to intentionally build more of those experiences into their children's education.

1. Put History Into Their Hands

Don't only read about history—give children something to do with it. If you're studying Ancient Egypt, construct a model pyramid, map the Nile, examine hieroglyphics, or investigate Egyptian engineering. During a unit on colonial America, cook a historical recipe, examine primary sources, or build a model settlement. Studying medieval history? Design a castle and have your child explain where its defenses should be placed and why.

Action item: For every major history unit, choose at least one activity requiring your child to build, create, investigate, demonstrate, or make a decision.

2. Make Maps Part of Everyday Learning

Geography makes history easier to understand because mountains, rivers, oceans, climate, resources, and transportation routes influenced where people settled, traded, fought, and built civilizations. A wall map, globe, atlas, or other visual resource can therefore become much more than decoration.

Action item: Whenever your child encounters a new civilization, battle, explorer, migration, or historical figure, locate it on a map. Then ask, "What does the geography tell us about why this happened?"

3. Turn Family Game Night Into Learning Time

Games can require students to read, calculate, remember information, evaluate risks, develop strategies, communicate, and make decisions. Even better, children may voluntarily repeat the experience. There is a tremendous motivational difference between saying, "Do this worksheet again," and hearing your child ask, "Can we play again?"

Action item: Establish a weekly educational game night. Afterward, ask three quick questions:

• What did you learn?
• What strategy worked?
• What would you do differently next time?

The conversation doesn't need to feel like another test. A few minutes can turn gameplay into an opportunity for reflection and retrieval.

4. Build a Library Around Your Child's Interests

Don't assume history education requires children to march through one enormous textbook. If your child becomes fascinated by Cleopatra, find an age-appropriate biography. If World War II aircraft capture your child's imagination, use that interest to explore aviation, engineering, geography, military history, and the people who designed and flew those aircraft.

Books, including textbooks and workbooks, are among the instructional-material categories addressed by Step Up's current PEP Purchasing Guide. Families should always consult the current rules for their scholarship before purchasing with an expectation of reimbursement.

Action item: Let your child select one educational book this month simply because the subject fascinates them.

5. Take the Classroom Into the Real World

Florida itself is filled with educational opportunities. Studying Spanish Florida? Explore St. Augustine. Studying America's space program? Connect the lesson to the Space Coast. Families can also investigate Indigenous history, forts, museums, archaeological sites, ecosystems, historical homes, and cultural institutions.

Current PEP guidelines recognize qualifying field trips and curriculum-enhancing activities, although eligibility, documentation, limits, and other requirements can vary.

Action item: Turn your next educational trip into a three-part lesson: learn before you go, explore while you're there, and discuss what you discovered afterward.

6. Let Your Child Become the Teacher

One of the simplest hands-on activities costs nothing. After finishing a lesson, close the textbook and say, "Now teach it to me." If your child studied the American Revolution, give them five minutes to explain why it happened. Ask follow-up questions such as "Why?", "What happened next?", and "How do you know?" The student now has to retrieve information, organize it, and communicate it rather than simply recognize the correct answer on a worksheet.

Action item: Once each week, replace an ordinary review assignment with a five-minute Teach the Parent Challenge.

7. Turn Science Into Experiments

Reading about force, electricity, plants, weather, chemistry, or engineering provides important background knowledge, but whenever appropriate, give children opportunities to investigate those concepts. Grow something. Build something. Measure something. Make a prediction and test it. Florida's PEP guidance includes a range of eligible instructional and hands-on materials, but families should verify specific products and requirements before purchasing them with scholarship funds.

Action item: Before an experiment begins, ask your child, "What do you predict will happen, and why?" Record the answer and compare the prediction with the result.

8. Use Technology to Create, Not Just Consume

Screen time doesn't have to mean passively watching videos. Technology can become a research library, laboratory, editing studio, simulation, writing tool, or creative workshop. Students can construct digital timelines, create presentations, research historical mysteries, practice academic skills, or produce their own educational videos. Certain digital materials, software, and subscriptions may qualify under Florida scholarship guidelines when applicable requirements are met.

Action item: Before educational screen time, ask, "What are you going to create, solve, practice, or learn?"

 

9. Use Electives to Discover Hidden Talents

A student struggling with worksheets might come alive while cooking, gardening, programming, woodworking, painting, performing, or making music. These interests can also connect naturally with academic subjects. Cooking involves mathematics and chemistry. Programming develops logic. Gardening involves biology and environmental science. Woodworking incorporates measurement and geometry.

Action item: Ask your child, "If you could learn how to do one new thing this year, what would it be?" Then investigate ways to connect that interest with the subjects you're already teaching.

 

10. Build the Education Around the Child

This is the most important principle. Don't begin with, "I have scholarship money. What should I buy?" Begin with your child.

Before your next major educational purchase, answer these three questions:

• My child learns best when __________.
• My child currently struggles with __________.
• My child is fascinated by __________.

Then look for curriculum, books, activities, games, experiences, and other eligible resources that address those answers. That's where educational choice becomes educational personalization.

 

Before You Spend: Check the Current Rules

Educational doesn't automatically mean reimbursable. Florida scholarship expenses are governed by applicable law, program requirements, purchasing guidelines, and approval procedures, and those requirements can change. Families should check the current Purchasing Guide for their particular scholarship before buying something with the expectation that scholarship funds will cover it. When required—or when eligibility is uncertain—families should follow the applicable pre-authorization process before making the purchase.

For qualifying purchases made out of pocket, families can submit reimbursement requests through EMA with the required documentation. Keep receipts, invoices, proof of payment, product descriptions, and any other documentation required for that expense category.

Step Up For Students PEP Purchasing Guide

 

The Goal Isn't More Stuff—It's More Learning

When I think back on my own education, I don't wish somebody had handed me another stack of worksheets. I wish I had experienced more opportunities to become involved in what I was learning. Those were the experiences I remembered.

That same philosophy eventually became part of Historical Conquest. The purpose of an educational history game isn't to replace good books, teachers, curriculum, museums, field trips, or serious study. It is to give students another opportunity to use what they're learning. A historical person who was once simply a name in a textbook can become someone a student recognizes, discusses, strategically uses during a game, encounters repeatedly, and eventually wants to learn more about.

Florida families have an extraordinary opportunity to personalize education. Use that opportunity intentionally. Read great stories. Build things. Experiment. Travel. Play games. Ask questions. Debate decisions. Let your children teach you.

Because twenty years from now, the real measure of education won't be how many worksheets your child completed. It will be what they still know—and whether they learned to love learning enough to keep going.

What "at capacity" means

PEP is not an entitlement like the private-school scholarships, which have no enrollment cap. It carries a statutory ceiling on how many students can be funded in a year. For 2026–27 that ceiling is 140,000. Once the funded count reached it, Step Up For Students announced it could not award PEP to any additional new students. Families found eligible after that point were placed on an at-capacity list, to be notified only if a funded seat opens because another student leaves the program. The application window itself closed on April 30, 2026, so no one can apply for this year now regardless.

The AAA transfer

Over the summer, families whose PEP applications were still in a pending-review status with Step Up were offered a transfer to AAA Scholarship Foundation, Florida's other scholarship funding organization, and asked to opt in by early August. Eligibility did not change; only the organization managing the account did. Students whose PEP status was already confirmed with Step Up were not part of the transfer. If you opted in, AAA created your new account and sent login instructions; if you were confirmed with Step Up, nothing changed for you. Both organizations follow the same statute and the same expense categories.

If you are on the at-capacity list this year

• Stay registered with your district. A PEP award is not certain, so keep your traditional home education program filed or your umbrella enrollment active. Do not send a termination notice on the strength of a waitlist position.
• Use what is free. Florida Virtual School Flex is free for district-registered home education students, public libraries run robust homeschool programming, and many museums offer homeschool days at low cost.
• If your child has a qualifying diagnosis, look hard at FES-UA. It has no cap, its new-application window runs to November 15, and it works for home education. Remember the one-application rule: withdraw a pending PEP application before filing another.
• Watch your email and EMA. A seat that opens is offered to the list, and acceptance deadlines are short.

Why next February will be different

The cap makes PEP first-come, first-served in a way it never was. Renewing students get processed first, so the number of seats for new families in 2027–28 depends on how many renew and on whether the Legislature raises the cap. Nothing about 2027–28 is official yet, but the lesson of 2026 is simple: apply on the first day the window opens, with documents already scanned. Our day-one playbook walks through exactly that.

Action items

• Check your PEP status in EMA or your AAA account today, and note which organization holds it.
• If pending or listed, keep your district registration current and plan a self-funded year.
• Sign up for program updates from both Step Up and AAA so you hear about the 2027–28 window the day it is announced.
• Set a late-January reminder to be ready on day one.

Current windows for every program are on our scholarships page, and the full program rules are in the Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

Nearly every homeschool parent and educator has experienced it. Maybe you have as well. Your student studies a subject, seems to understand it, answers the questions correctly, and then a week later you ask about the same topic and receive a blank stare. It can feel as though all that work simply disappeared.

Forgetting, however, is a normal part of human memory. More than a century ago, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated what became known as the forgetting curve: newly learned information can become increasingly difficult to retrieve as time passes when it is not revisited. Modern memory research has expanded considerably since Ebbinghaus, but the practical lesson remains valuable. If we want students to remember something for months or years instead of merely until Friday's test, they need opportunities to retrieve, apply, and revisit that information.

That means the answer isn't necessarily more studying. It is often better studying.

I Was the Student Who Studied and Still Forgot

I understand this personally. When I was in high school, I tried to do well, but much of school was simply boring to me. I would read chapters, listen to lectures, study for tests, and then struggle to remember information because I couldn't see how most of it applied to my life. I also dealt with test anxiety. I could study something and believe I understood it, only to sit down for an exam and suddenly struggle to retrieve what I knew.

I wasn't a student who didn't care. I simply hadn't discovered a compelling reason for much of the information to matter to me.

Everything changed in college when an English professor gave us an assignment to write a one-page essay about a product we could create in a dorm-room environment that might change our lives. I came up with the idea for a history-based card game. That one-page assignment eventually became Historical Conquest, a fully functioning educational card game that has been sold around the world.

Something else happened along the way: I went from being an A/B/C student to earning straight As. Suddenly, everything I was learning had somewhere to go. History gave me people and events for the cards. Math helped with game mechanics. English helped with writing. Marketing taught me how to reach customers, and business classes helped me understand how to turn an idea into a company. Instead of asking, "Will this be on the test?" I began asking, "How can I use this?" Learning had become applicable to my life, and that gave me a reason to pay attention, remember, and repeatedly use what I was learning.

The Science of Remembering

One of the strongest lessons from modern learning research is that simply rereading material isn't always the best way to create durable memories. Researchers Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke found that retrieval practice—attempting to recall information from memory—can improve long-term retention compared with additional studying alone.

That doesn't mean giving children more stressful tests. Retrieval can happen through conversations, trivia, games, flashcards, challenges, storytelling, or simply closing the book and asking, "Tell me what you remember."

Another important strategy is spaced practice. Instead of spending three hours studying something once, students benefit from returning to material across multiple learning sessions. A major review by John Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing and distributed practice among the most effective learning techniques examined.

Parents can combine these principles quite naturally. Learn something today, retrieve it tomorrow, revisit it several days later, and bring it back again a few weeks afterward. The objective is to prevent learning from becoming a cycle of learn → test → forget.

Mix It Up Instead of Starting Over

Another useful learning strategy is interleaving, which involves mixing different types of material or problems rather than always practicing one type repeatedly before moving to another. Instead of completing 25 nearly identical math problems, for example, a student might encounter multiplication, fractions, percentages, and a few previously learned concepts mixed together. This forces the student to determine which knowledge or strategy applies rather than simply repeating the same procedure.

Parents can use the same principle across subjects. While studying the Civil War, bring back a question from the American Revolution. During geology, ask students to recall something they previously learned in chemistry. While working on percentages, connect the mathematics to a personal-finance problem.

The goal is to help students build connections between knowledge instead of storing every lesson in a separate mental box.

Make Review Something Students Actually Enjoy

Review does not have to mean rereading the same textbook page for the fourth time. In fact, one of the best ways parents can reinforce learning is to make retrieval feel completely different from the original lesson.

Try turning review into activities such as:

• Family Trivia Night: Mix current material with questions from several weeks ago.
• Beat the Parent: Let students compete against Mom or Dad—and write some of the questions themselves.
• Teach Me: Ask the student to explain yesterday's lesson to you without using notes.
• 60-Second Challenge: Give students one minute to write everything they remember about a topic.
• Mystery Mission: Create a puzzle that requires previously learned information to solve.
• Real-World Challenge: Turn percentages into shopping discounts, fractions into cooking, or geography into planning a trip.

These activities aren't merely tricks for making school entertaining. They require students to retrieve information and use it, which is exactly what we ultimately want them to be capable of doing.

Don't Forget Sleep

There is another learning tool that doesn't require a curriculum, computer, worksheet, or game: sleep. Sleep plays an important role in memory consolidation, the processes through which memories become stabilized and integrated. Research reviews continue to find meaningful relationships between sleep and memory across age groups, although effects vary depending on the kind of memory and task being studied.

That is worth remembering when students are tempted to stay up late cramming. A productive learning routine needs both effective practice and adequate rest. Sometimes the appropriate conclusion to a good day of learning really is, "You're done. Go get some sleep."

From Remembering for the Test to Remembering for Life

My own education changed when I stopped learning primarily for the next exam. Historical Conquest gave the information somewhere to go. I was repeatedly retrieving what I had learned, applying it, combining subjects, solving problems, and turning knowledge into something tangible. A one-page college essay ultimately became a game sold around the world, but the project also changed the way I learned.

That is an important lesson for homeschool parents and educators. Whenever possible, give knowledge a purpose. Let students build something, debate something, teach something, investigate something, compete, experiment, solve a mystery, or create a project. Then return to that knowledge later and ask them to use it again.

We shouldn't simply ask, "Did my student learn this?" A much better question is, "Can my student still use this?"

How Xogos Reinforces This Kind of Learning

This philosophy is part of what we are building with Xogos. Games naturally create opportunities for concepts to return through challenges, competition, decisions, exploration, and repeated application. Instead of encountering information once and abandoning it after the test, students can repeatedly use knowledge while trying to accomplish something they care about.

Xogos is designed to reinforce K–12 learning through educational games and digital experiences while complementing what parents and educators are already teaching. The goal isn't to replace books, teachers, homeschool parents, projects, experiments, or real-world experiences. It is to provide another way for students to practice and apply what they're learning.

My educational life changed when information stopped being something I had to remember long enough to pass a test and became something I could use.

That's the opportunity we should give students: learn it, retrieve it, apply it, revisit it, and eventually own it.

Because the real measure of education isn't whether a student remembers the answer tomorrow.

It's whether that knowledge is still there when they need it years from now.

Technology has become part of everyday life. Tablets and iPads can be wonderful learning tools, offering educational games, books, and creative activities. But like anything else, too much of a good thing can have unintended consequences. Childhood is a time when the brain and body are developing rapidly, and children need a wide variety of real-life experiences that a screen simply can't provide.

Little Hands Need Real WorkContinue reading on My Learning Source →

When school becomes required

Florida's compulsory attendance law covers children from age six through sixteen. A child who has turned six by February 1 of a school year is required to be in school that year — public, private, or a home education program. That means a traditional home education family sends its notice of intent when the child reaches compulsory age, not at four. Kindergarten itself is not required in Florida. Many families file early anyway, and districts accept a notice for a five-year-old; the point is that you are choosing to, not obligated to.

VPK: what it is and isn't

Florida offers a free Voluntary Prekindergarten program for four-year-olds, delivered through approved providers such as preschools and some public schools. It is real and free, and a family planning to homeschool can still use it for the pre-K year. What it is not is a homeschool program or a scholarship: there is no VPK money that follows a child home, and VPK does not register a child as home educated.

Which scholarships reach below kindergarten

• FES-UA starts at age three. For a child with a qualifying diagnosis, Florida's largest awards are available from age three, and no private school enrollment is required. Early therapy paid from an education savings account is one of the most valuable things the program does. Proof of age is required for children three to five.
• PEP, FTC and FES-EO are K–12. They begin when a child is eligible to enroll in kindergarten. There is no ESA for a typically developing four-year-old.
• The New Worlds Reading Initiative mails free monthly books through fifth grade, but eligibility requires VPK, public or charter school enrollment, so it does not reach a child educated at home. It is often confused with the now-closed New Worlds Scholarship Accounts, which are unrelated.

What to do with the early years

Formal curriculum for a four-year-old is almost always a mistake and occasionally a harm. Read aloud every day, play with blocks and water and sand, count real things, go outside, and let them help you cook. The child who arrives at compulsory age having been read to for a thousand hours needs very little catching up. If you want a light structure, a gentle phonics program and a math manipulative set are plenty, and they will still be useful in first grade.

Action items

• Work out the school year in which your child turns six by February 1 — that is the year the notice of intent is due.
• If your child has a diagnosis or a developmental concern, look at FES-UA now; the age-three start is the reason it exists.
• Decide whether a free VPK year fits your family, knowing it does not commit you to a school afterward.
• Start the reading log the day you decide to homeschool. It is portfolio material from the first page.
• Find a park day or co-op with other young families; the early years are easier in company.

Early-learning materials and therapy providers who work with the youngest scholarship students are in the vendor directory, and local groups are on the Florida co-ops directory.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

One parent account, one balance per child

Step Up's portal, EMA, is built around the parent: one guardian account, with every student linked underneath it. Do not create a separate account per child. Inside that account each student has their own award, their own quarterly deposits, their own balance and their own reimbursement history. When you file a claim you choose which student it belongs to, and that choice is the whole ballgame.

Which purchases can be shared

A purchase is reimbursed from the account of the student it serves. That is simple for a workbook and less obvious for a microscope.

• Consumables — workbooks, lab kits, art supplies, a course seat — are per child. Buy one per student and file each under that student.
• Non-consumables the whole family will use — a microscope, a globe, a strategy game, a reference set — should be bought from one student's account and filed there. Pick the child it is most clearly for.
• Never split a single receipt across two students' accounts, and never file the same receipt twice. Duplicate submissions are denied and draw attention to the whole account.
• A provider who teaches two of your children should invoice each student separately through direct billing, or give you an itemized receipt per child for reimbursement.

Mixing programs in one household

It is common for one child to be on PEP and a sibling with a qualifying diagnosis to be on FES-UA. Both live in the same parent account, but the rules differ: FES-UA covers therapies, PE and field trips that PEP does not. Both children's parents file the quarterly attestation before each deposit — for 2026–27 it applies to every scholarship student, not only FES-UA. Keep a one-page cheat sheet per child listing that child's program, covered categories and deadlines, so you never file a therapy receipt against the wrong sibling.

Hand-me-down curriculum

Materials bought with one child's funds can absolutely be used by a younger sibling later; nothing requires you to buy a second copy of a non-consumable. What you cannot do is reimburse the same purchase again from the younger child's account. Consumable pieces — the workbook, the tests — get bought fresh for the next child.

Action items

• One receipt folder per student per school year, and photograph each receipt into the right one the day you buy.
• Write the student's name on the receipt before you scan it.
• Keep a running balance sheet with one column per child and the deposit dates for each.
• If your children are on different programs, keep their attestation and renewal dates on one shared calendar with the child's name on each entry.
• Before a large shared purchase, decide which student's account it belongs to and note why.

Quarterly planning across multiple awards is easier with the rhythm explained in our Step Up guide, and family-sized deals from vendors are on the deals page.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

When children are young, they often idolize their parents. Mom and Dad seem to know everything. Children want our attention, approval, help, and time. They follow us around, ask endless questions, and want us to watch what they are doing.

Then they get older.

As parents, we naturally encourage independence. We tell them to take out a chair and reach the top shelf, finish their schoolwork on their own, solve their own problems, and take greater responsibility for themselves. That's part of growing up. But sometimes we push independence so successfully that we unintentionally create distance.

Our children don't stop looking for answers. They simply begin looking somewhere else.

Friends, teachers, coaches, social media, celebrities, online communities, and other influences increasingly become sources of information and ideas, and not good information. That's also a normal part of growing up. The goal isn't to prevent children from encountering other perspectives. The goal is to make sure Mom and Dad remain part of the conversation.

One simple way to do that is to keep doing things together—even as your children get older.

Math Can Become Family Time

Parents, especially those in homeschooling, have an unusual opportunity because learning doesn't have to be separated from family life. Unfortunately, we can still fall into the same routine:

"Here's your math." "Finish these pages." "Come get me if you need help."

That's efficient, but it also turns education into something the child does alone and does not seem to like.

What if one math lesson each week became a family activity instead?

Put away the phones. Grab a snack. Bring everyone to the table and play a game involving mathematics, strategy, numbers, money, measurement, probability, or problem-solving. And parents should play too.

Don't stand over your children correcting them. Sit across from them and become another player. Let your children challenge you.

When Dad gets a problem wrong, everybody can laugh. When Mom loses the game, the kids can celebrate. When a child who has been struggling with multiplication suddenly defeats an adult, that accomplishment means something.

Math becomes something the family experiences together.

You're Teaching More Than Mathematics

I've seen something interesting happen while families and children play educational games: they start talking.

They joke. They compete. They explain strategies. They complain about losing. They celebrate winning. They tell stories.

Sometimes a conversation about a game becomes a conversation about something completely unrelated.

That's valuable.

Research supports the broader importance of regular family interaction. The CDC identifies family connectedness, discussing problems with parents, shared parent-child activities, and consistent parental presence as protective factors for young people. CDC research has also found that higher parental monitoring is associated with lower prevalence of several adolescent risk behaviors and negative experiences. Importantly, the CDC emphasizes that monitoring works best within caring relationships where teenagers feel comfortable talking with their parents. CDC Youth Violence Risk and Protective Factors CDC Research on Parental Monitoring

That doesn't mean a weekly family game guarantees that a teenager won't rebel or make poor decisions. Parenting isn't that simple. But maintaining a strong relationship gives parents more opportunities to listen, guide, understand, and remain involved as their children become increasingly independent.

Independence should not have to mean disconnection.

Don't Wait for Family Time—Schedule It

One of the biggest problems facing families isn't necessarily that parents don't value family time. It's that everybody is busy.

Work. School. Sports. Activities. Phones. Appointments. Errands.

Family time gets whatever is left over.

Instead, schedule it.

Try This This Week: The 30-Minute Family Math Night

You don't need to redesign your homeschool program. Start with 30 minutes.

• Pick one night. Make it a regular part of your week.
• Put away the phones. Parents included.
• Bring snacks. Make the experience feel different from another school lesson.
• Choose a game or challenge. Incorporate arithmetic, fractions, algebra, money, probability, measurement, or whatever your children are learning.
• Match the difficulty to each child. A 9-year-old and a 15-year-old can participate in the same activity without solving the same problems.
• Parents play too. Don't become the teacher or referee for the entire game.
• Let children challenge adults. Give them an opportunity to demonstrate what they know.
• Talk while you play. Don't become so focused on mathematics that you miss the conversation happening around the table.

Most importantly, repeat it next week.

Thirty minutes every week becomes roughly 26 hours together over a year.

That's 26 hours of games, conversation, laughter, competition, mathematics, mistakes, victories, and memories that wouldn't exist if everyone had simply gone to separate rooms.

Your Children Probably Won't Remember the Worksheet

Twenty years from now, your son probably isn't going to call and say, "Dad, remember worksheet 7B? What a great night."

He may remember beating Dad at a game.

He may remember everyone laughing when Mom got an easy problem wrong.

He may remember finally understanding fractions because his older sister showed him another way to think about them.

And he may remember something much more important:

My parents wanted to spend time with me.

That's why educational games can have value beyond the academic skill being practiced. Mathematics provides the challenge, but playing together provides an opportunity for relationships to grow. 

Where Totally Medieval Fits In

This philosophy is one of the ideas behind Totally Medieval.

Students use mathematics while moving across a game board, navigating terrain, developing strategies, and challenging opponents. Different students can play together while working at different mathematical levels, meaning a younger child and an older sibling don't necessarily need identical math skills to participate in the same adventure.

But one of the most important players may be you.

Sit down and play with your children.

Let them challenge you. Let them beat you. Help them when they're struggling. Laugh when somebody makes a ridiculous mistake. Celebrate when a child finally solves something that was difficult last week.

You're reinforcing mathematics, but you're also doing something that becomes increasingly important as children get older.

You're staying involved.

We spend plenty of time worrying about who and what will influence our children. One of the best things parents can do is continue building a relationship strong enough that their children still want Mom and Dad involved in their lives.

So start with something simple.

Thirty minutes. One night a week. Phones away. Family together. Math on the table. Game on.

Rule one: one application at a time

Florida law allows only one active scholarship application per student at any time. You cannot file for PEP and FES-UA simultaneously and take whichever comes first. If your child is denied, or you decline an award, you can then apply to a different program. In a first-come, first-served system, an application you filed to hedge your bets costs you a place in line for the one you actually want. Decide, then apply.

Rule two: programs that cannot overlap

• PEP and FES-EO cannot be held at the same time. One is for home education, the other for private school enrollment.
• PEP and a district home education program cannot coexist. Starting PEP means sending your district a written notice terminating your home education program; leaving PEP for traditional home education means filing a fresh notice of intent within thirty days.
• Hope is forfeited if the student returns to public school, registers a traditional home education program, or receives FTC or FES.
• Full-time public school enrollment ends every program. The scholarships exist for students who are not in public school.

The common moves, in order

Private school to home. A family on FES-EO or FTC who brings the children home in June faces a timing problem: PEP's application window closes in April and does not reopen in the fall. The realistic path is to file a district notice of intent or enroll in an umbrella school for the coming year, then apply for PEP when the window opens in February. Budget for a self-funded year.

PEP to FES-UA. When a child receives a qualifying diagnosis or an IEP, FES-UA is usually the larger award and it works for home education. Because of the one-application rule, you apply for FES-UA when your PEP application is not pending, and you will need the diagnosis or IEP documentation ready. The FES-UA window for new applications runs longer into the year than PEP's.

Home education to PEP. Apply in the spring window, wait for the award, formally accept it, and only then send the district your termination notice. Terminating early leaves your child registered nowhere.

What happens to the balance

This is the question families most often assume the answer to, and they should not. Unspent funds roll over within a program from year to year, but an account belongs to a specific program and a specific award. Before you change programs, ask your scholarship funding organization in writing what happens to the current balance and any pending reimbursements, and get the answer before you file anything with the district. Treat "the money will just move" as unconfirmed until Step Up or AAA says so for your case.

Action items

• Write down the sequence: which application first, which notice second, and which deadline governs each.
• Ask your funding organization about the balance and pending claims before you switch, and keep the reply.
• Spend down or file every pending reimbursement in the outgoing program before the change.
• Do not send a district termination notice until the new award is accepted.
• Calendar the next application window the day you decide to move.

Current windows for every program are kept up to date on our scholarships page, and the program-by-program rules are in the complete Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

But what happens when you find the curriculum, educational game, science kit, book, learning tool, or other resource you want—and it isn't in MyScholarShop?

This is where many parents become confused. They may assume that if something isn't displayed in MyScholarShop, scholarship funds cannot be used for it.

That is not necessarily true.

Step Up For Students' current 2026–27 PEP Family Handbook specifically explains that an item that isn't in MyScholarShop—or even isn't listed in the program Purchasing Guide—may still be an eligible expense. At the same time, being listed in MyScholarShop does not necessarily mean an item qualifies under every scholarship program. Eligibility ultimately depends upon the student's scholarship, Florida law, applicable purchasing rules, and Step Up For Students' policies and approval.

MyScholarShop vs. Buying Outside the Marketplace

Think of MyScholarShop as the convenient first option, rather than necessarily the only place families can obtain educational materials.

Through EMA, families can access MyScholarShop to purchase eligible instructional materials and curriculum. Because the marketplace is integrated with the scholarship system, families generally don't have to pay out of pocket and then wait for reimbursement. Families should still check their available balance and any purchasing restrictions or pre-authorization requirements that apply to the item.

However, families can also purchase eligible educational expenses outside MyScholarShop and submit qualifying purchases for reimbursement. This opens up considerably more possibilities for parents who discover specialized curriculum, educational games, books, supplies, or resources elsewhere.

The key word is eligible.

A product isn't automatically reimbursable simply because it is educational. Likewise, a product isn't automatically ineligible simply because MyScholarShop doesn't carry it.

Before You Buy: Check the Purchasing Guide

Before purchasing something outside MyScholarShop, your first stop should be the current Purchasing Guide for your scholarship program.

Florida requires Scholarship Funding Organizations to establish purchasing guidelines describing authorized uses of scholarship funds. These guidelines can change, so families should check the current version rather than relying on something that was approved in a previous year. Step Up's 2026–27 PEP materials, for example, contain specific rules regarding categories, quantities, frequency limits, supporting documentation, shipping and items requiring pre-authorization.

If the product clearly falls within an eligible category, follow the documentation requirements for that category.

If you're uncertain, don't simply buy it and hope it gets reimbursed.

Step Up specifically advises parents to submit a pre-authorization request when they are unsure whether an item is eligible. Under the current PEP Purchasing Guide, items or services that aren't listed as eligible require approved pre-authorization before purchase. Pre-authorization requests may require an explanation of how the item benefits the individual student's education along with supporting documentation and an approximate cost.

That can save families from paying for something personally and later discovering that reimbursement will not be approved.

Keep Your Receipt—and Make Sure It Has the Right Information

Documentation is extremely important when purchasing outside the marketplace.

For current PEP reimbursements, Step Up identifies acceptable proof of payment such as a receipt showing the complete transaction date and amount paid, or an invoice showing the transaction date and demonstrating that it was paid in full. Receipts and invoices should provide a clear breakdown of costs, including the base price, taxes, fees and total paid. Some expense categories require additional documentation.

Don't throw away receipts, invoices, order confirmations or other supporting documentation.

For online purchases, also pay attention to shipping requirements. Under the current PEP rules, purchases submitted for reimbursement generally must be shipped to a Florida address or Florida P.O. Box, with an exception for qualifying active-duty military families.

Submitting Your Reimbursement Through EMA

EMA—Education Market Assistant—is the portal families use to manage their scholarship account. Parents can use it to monitor scholarship funds, upload required documents, submit reimbursement requests and access marketplace options.

After making an eligible purchase outside MyScholarShop, families can submit the appropriate reimbursement request through EMA and provide the required proof of payment and supporting documents.

Don't wait until the last minute. For PEP, reimbursement requests are school-year specific. For 2026–27 funds, the current handbook states that eligible purchases generally fall within the July 1, 2026–June 30, 2027 purchase window, with reimbursement requests due by July 31, 2027. There are special rules and exceptions for certain categories, so always check the current handbook for your particular purchase.

Step Up says families should allow up to 60 days for a reimbursement request to be reviewed and processed after all required documentation has been received, although its MyScholarShop FAQ states that its operational goal is seven business days or less. Missing documentation or requests placed on hold can extend the process.

A Simple Rule Before Making a Purchase

When you find an educational product outside MyScholarShop, use this quick checklist:

1. Check your scholarship program. Different scholarship programs can have different eligible expenses and rules.
2. Check the current Purchasing Guide. Determine whether the product fits an authorized category and whether there are quantity, frequency, price or other restrictions.
3. Check whether pre-authorization is required. If you're unsure about eligibility, seek approval before spending your own money.
4. Save detailed documentation. Keep the receipt or paid invoice, proof of payment, product information and any additional documents required for that expense category.
5. Submit the reimbursement through EMA. Make sure the request matches the purchase and any approved pre-authorization.

Most importantly, remember this distinction: Not in MyScholarShop does not automatically mean not eligible—but "educational" does not automatically mean reimbursable either. Step Up reviews reimbursement requests under Florida law, Department of Education rules, and its applicable policies and procedures.

More Choices Can Mean More Personalized Learning

One of the greatest advantages of Florida's education scholarship programs is the ability for families to personalize a child's education. One student may thrive with traditional textbooks, while another learns better through educational games, manipulatives, experiments, historical simulations, hands-on projects, specialized curriculum, or digital resources.

That's why families shouldn't necessarily stop searching simply because the resource they want isn't displayed in MyScholarShop.

MyLearningSource can help families discover educational products from a broader range of educational companies, including resources such as Historical Conquest. However, families should always verify that a particular purchase qualifies under their student's scholarship and the current purchasing rules before purchasing it with the expectation of reimbursement.

The goal isn't simply to spend scholarship dollars. It is to use the educational choices available to build an education that works for your child.

Protect the records the law and the scholarship depend on

A traditional home education program must keep its portfolio for two years, and the district may ask to inspect it with fifteen days' notice. A scholarship family must be able to produce itemized receipts for every reimbursement. Both are paper by habit and both are lost in a single wet weekend.

• Photograph everything into the cloud as you go. A phone picture of each work sample and each receipt, uploaded to a synced folder per student per year, is the whole backup system. Do it the day the work is done, not the week before the storm.
• Keep the physical binder in a sealed bin on a high shelf. A lidded plastic tub beats a bookshelf.
• Screenshot your EMA account — the balance, pending reimbursements and any accepted award — so you have proof of state if you need to call after an outage.

Evaluations, applications and deadlines during a storm

Hurricane season overlaps the summer deposit, the first weeks of school and, in a late storm, the November 15 close for new private-school-track applications. Step Up and the districts have historically extended deadlines for declared disasters, but never assume it. If a storm is bearing down and a submission is due, submit early, even incomplete, and follow up. Your annual evaluation is filed on the anniversary of your notice of intent, so if your homeschool year began in late summer, that filing may fall in the middle of the season; do it before the first named storm rather than after.

Build a fall that bends

• Front-load the lighter subjects in August and September and save the sequence-dependent ones — a math unit, a lab series — for October onward when disruption is less likely to land mid-chapter.
• Keep a no-power week ready: a box of read-alouds, a math game, a deck of history or vocabulary cards, a nature journal. Some of the best homeschool days happen by lantern.
• Plan the school year in weeks completed, not calendar dates. A homeschool that needs 36 weeks of work can lose two in September and finish in June without anyone noticing.
• Download, don't stream. Save the next unit of any online curriculum before a storm so a week without internet is not a week without school.

After the storm

Log the days you missed and what you did instead; a storm week of shelter volunteering, cleanup and weather-watching is legitimately science, civics and PE, and a dated portfolio note makes it count. If a scholarship purchase was damaged or lost, photograph it and contact Step Up before you replace it with account funds. And if your evaluator or a provider was affected, give them grace; everyone is rebuilding.

Action items

• Set up one cloud folder per student this week and photograph the portfolio to date.
• Move receipts into the same folder and keep doing it the day each purchase happens.
• Note the date your annual evaluation is due and file it before the season peaks.
• Pack a no-power learning box and a charged battery bank beside the storm supplies.

Game-based and hands-on materials that work without a screen are all over our vendor directory, and Florida family events to rebook once the skies clear are on the events calendar.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

For many homeschool parents and educators, screen time can feel like a constant battle. We tell students to put down the phone, turn off the game, close YouTube, and get back to learning. Yet technology is also where students write papers, research history, learn coding, create artwork, communicate, design projects, watch scientific demonstrations, and explore places they may never be able to visit in person. The same device that can waste three hours can also help a student discover a future career.

That means the better question may not be, “How much screen time does my student have?” but, “What is my student doing with that screen time?”

There is an enormous difference between endlessly scrolling through short videos and spending an hour programming a game. Watching random videos is different from researching volcanoes and then building one. Mindlessly playing an entertainment game is different from using a simulation that requires mathematics, strategy, science, or financial decision-making. Screens are tools, and like most tools, their value depends heavily on how they are used.

Passive Consumption vs. Productive Technology

Parents don't need to treat every minute in front of a screen equally. A helpful first step is separating primarily passive consumption from more active, creative, or educational experiences.

Passive technology often asks very little from the student. The next video plays, the next post appears, and entertainment continues with almost no effort. Productive technology requires the student to think, decide, investigate, solve, create, communicate, or practice.

Ask yourself what your student is doing:

• Consuming: scrolling, watching, clicking, or being entertained.
• Learning: researching, practicing, reading, experimenting, or exploring.
• Creating: coding, writing, designing, drawing, editing, building, or producing.
• Applying: using knowledge to solve problems, run simulations, make decisions, or complete projects.
• Connecting: appropriately collaborating with teachers, classmates, friends, or family.

Not every entertainment experience is bad. Children need recreation too. The goal is balance. If three hours of technology consisted of creating a short documentary, researching the American Revolution, programming a simple game, and playing an educational adventure, that is very different from three hours of endless scrolling.

Turn Students From Consumers Into Creators

One of the best changes parents can make is moving children from digital consumption to digital creation. Instead of only watching videos, have them create one. Instead of only playing games, let them learn how games are designed. Instead of looking at websites, introduce them to coding or web design. Instead of simply using artificial intelligence to produce an answer, teach them to question it, verify information, improve their own work, and understand how these tools function.

A student interested in history could research a historical figure and create a podcast. A child interested in science could record an experiment and explain the results. A student fascinated by games could learn basic programming and design a simple game. An artistic child could learn digital illustration or animation. A teenager interested in entrepreneurship could create a fictional company, design its logo, develop a budget, build a website, and write a marketing plan.

Suddenly, screen time isn't merely occupying the student.

The student is producing something.

Games Can Become Learning Laboratories

Games can be particularly useful because well-designed games naturally encourage experimentation. Players make decisions, experience consequences, adjust strategies, and try again. That cycle can reinforce learning when the educational content is genuinely connected to the gameplay.

Imagine an adventure where progressing requires mathematics. Instead of solving equations merely because a worksheet says to, students need mathematical reasoning to accomplish a goal. A geology game could let students dig through layers of the Earth, identify rocks and minerals, and explore geological processes. A financial simulation could give students income and require them to manage housing, transportation, taxes, savings, debt, and unexpected expenses.

Students may be having fun, but underneath that experience they can be practicing problem-solving, retrieval, decision-making, persistence, and application.

The important distinction is that simply calling something an "educational game" doesn't automatically make it effective. Parents should ask: What is my student actually practicing? What decisions are they making? What knowledge are they retrieving? What will they know or be able to do afterward that they couldn't do before?

Use Technology to Launch Real-World Learning

Some of the best screen-based lessons should eventually lead students away from the screen.

A student watches a chemistry demonstration and then conducts a safe experiment. They research vegetable gardening and then plant a garden. They learn about local geology and then go rock hunting. They study percentages online and then calculate discounts at a store. They research a historical battlefield and then visit it. They watch instructions for building a birdhouse and then walk into the garage and build one.

Homeschool families are particularly well positioned to do this because education doesn't have to end when the computer closes.

Try this three-step approach:

1. Discover it on the screen. Research, watch, simulate, play, or investigate.
2. Do it in the real world. Build, visit, experiment, interview, volunteer, cook, calculate, explore, or create.
3. Teach it afterward. Have the student explain what happened, write about it, make a presentation, or teach another family member.

Now technology isn't replacing real life. It is launching students into it.

Teach Students to Control Technology

Our children are growing up in a world of artificial intelligence, online communication, video, digital entertainment, remote work, and rapidly changing technology. Completely avoiding screens won't necessarily prepare them for that world. They need opportunities to develop judgment and self-control around technology.

Parents can gradually teach students to ask, “Why am I opening this device?” If the answer is to complete an assignment, create something, communicate with someone, research a question, or intentionally enjoy some recreation, there is a purpose. If they opened the device out of habit and suddenly discover that 45 minutes disappeared, that's an opportunity to discuss how technology can compete for their attention.

Families can also create practical boundaries: device-free meals, outdoor time, exercise, chores, reading, family activities, sleep routines, and periods when technology is intentionally put away. These boundaries don't teach children that technology is evil. They teach something much more valuable:

Technology has a place, but it doesn't get every place.

A Simple Screen-Time Test for Parents

Instead of counting every screen minute the same way, periodically ask four questions:

1. What is my child doing? Are they consuming, learning, creating, or solving?
2. What are they gaining? Knowledge, skills, creativity, relationships—or simply more entertainment?
3. What is the screen replacing? Sleep, exercise, chores, outdoor activity, family time, reading, or nothing particularly important?
4. Can this digital experience lead to something in the real world? A project, experiment, conversation, activity, skill, business idea, or new interest?

Those questions create a much richer picture than simply saying, "You have already had two hours of screens today."

Why This Matters to Xogos

This philosophy is one of the reasons we are building Xogos Gaming. We know students want to play games and use technology. As parents and educators, we can spend all of our energy fighting that reality—or we can work to create better choices within it.

Xogos is designed to bring K–12 subjects into experiences students can enjoy. An adventure can reinforce mathematics. Exploration can introduce geology and Earth science. Games can introduce history, science, geography, personal finance, and other subjects. Online elective courses can expose students to interests and potential careers they may want to pursue further.

But the ultimate goal shouldn't be keeping children on Xogos—or any other screen—all day. I want students learning on the computer and then going out and doing something with what they learned. Build something. Read a book. Start a project. Volunteer. Exercise. Explore nature. Create a business. Help someone. Talk with their family.

The future doesn't belong to children who simply know how to stare at screens. It will increasingly belong to young people who know how to use technology as a tool—and also know when to put it down.

So perhaps we don't need to fight every screen.

We need to teach our children to make their screen time worth something.

How FLVS Flex works

Flex is course-by-course. You keep your home education program with the district and add FLVS courses on top of it. Each course has an assigned teacher who calls, grades, holds live sessions and monitors pace. Courses run on a flexible calendar, so a student can start most weeks of the year and move faster or slower than a classroom would. Elementary courses are also available and work well for a family that wants one subject taught by someone else.

Enrolling as a home education student

You create a parent account, add the student, and select courses. FLVS will ask for confirmation that your child is registered as a home education student, which your district home education office provides. Courses are approved for the coming term in order, and popular ones fill, so request them early. Grades and a transcript are available from FLVS, which is helpful in high school.

Why PEP families pay for FLVS

Here is the twist that catches families. Flex is free for students registered as home education with their district. PEP replaces that district registration, so a PEP student is not a home education student in the statute's eyes and cannot use Flex for free. Instead, PEP's covered list includes Florida Virtual School as a private-pay student, meaning the ESA pays FLVS's tuition for the course. It is the same teachers and the same courses; the difference is who pays. Weigh that when choosing between PEP and a traditional home education program, especially if online courses are central to your plan.

Using it well

• Start with one or two courses. FLVS pace requirements are real, and a student new to online learning needs to find a rhythm.
• Keep the FLVS grade report in your portfolio — it is excellent evaluation evidence.
• Pair it with hands-on work at home. An online course delivers content; the projects, field trips and conversations are still yours.
• For high schoolers, FLVS courses and AP exams are a straightforward way to build a transcript colleges recognize.

Action items

• Check that your district home education registration is current, then create the FLVS parent account.
• Request next term's courses as soon as the enrollment window opens.
• PEP families: budget FLVS tuition from the ESA and confirm the private-pay enrollment path on FLVS's site.
• Set a weekly check-in on pace so a course never quietly falls behind.

For the subjects you would rather teach hands-on, browse curriculum and enrichment providers in the directory, and see the PEP covered list in the Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

As a pediatric occupational therapist who has worked with children for more than 38 years, I’ve always believed that there is something very special about putting a pencil in a child’s hand and actually writing. Now, research has again proven me right!!  Research is giving us even more evidence that handwriting is doing much more than putting letters on paper.

With technology becoming such a huge part of our everyday lives, children are spending more and more time typing, tapping, and swiping. Of course, technology has an important place in education. But this research makes me ask:   What are we giving up when handwriting is replaced by typing?

In “Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom” (van der Weel & van der Meer, 2024), researchers studied 36 university students while they wrote words by hand using a digital pen and typed the same types of words on a keyboard.   While the students were doi

Continue reading on My Learning Source →

Where testing fits in Florida law

A traditional home education program must file an annual evaluation with the district, and one of the accepted methods is a nationally normed student achievement test administered by a Florida-certified teacher. Another is a state student assessment taken at a participating school. Neither is required — a portfolio review by a certified teacher is the most common choice — but families who like an objective yardstick use testing on purpose. PEP is different: PEP students are not under district evaluation, and instead must submit annual norm-referenced test results to their scholarship funding organization. For a PEP family testing is not optional.

Which tests families use

Any nationally normed achievement test qualifies. In Florida homeschool circles the common ones are the Stanford Achievement Test, the Iowa Assessments, the California Achievement Test and the TerraNova as group tests, and the Woodcock-Johnson as an individually administered test. High schoolers often add the PSAT, SAT, ACT or CLT, which double as college admission and Bright Futures scores. A test's publisher will say plainly whether it is norm-referenced; if the description does not use those words, ask before you book.

Group test or individual test

Group tests are given by a certified teacher to a room of students, often through a co-op, a homeschool support group or a testing service, at a modest cost. Individual tests like the Woodcock-Johnson are one child and one evaluator, cost more, and produce a detailed profile that is especially useful for a child with learning differences or a family considering FES-UA. Either satisfies the evaluation as long as a certified teacher administers it.

Who pays

Standardized testing is on the covered list for PEP, FTC and FES-EO, and FES-UA covers it as well. PEP's list specifically includes norm-referenced tests, AP exams and industry certification exams. Testing is usually paid by reimbursement: keep an itemized receipt showing the full date, the test name, the student and proof of payment, and file it the same month. A testing provider who is set up for direct billing can invoice the account instead — ask when you register.

Action items

• Decide by winter which evaluation method you will use, and if it is a test, book a spring seat — group testing dates fill up.
• Confirm the administrator holds a current Florida teaching certificate; the evaluation depends on it.
• PEP families: put the test-results submission on the same calendar as your renewal.
• Keep the score report with your portfolio. Even a district evaluation done by portfolio review benefits from a test score in the binder.
• Photograph the receipt the day you pay and file the reimbursement before the season gets busy.

Testing services and certified evaluators are listed in the vendor directory, and the evaluation rules in full are in our Florida guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

Who is eligible

Dual enrollment is open to students in grades six through twelve, though most colleges take homeschoolers beginning in ninth or tenth. Each college sets its own entry requirements — usually a qualifying score on a placement test, the SAT, the ACT or the CLT, since a home-educated student has no school-verified GPA. Check the specific college's dual enrollment page; requirements differ from campus to campus.

The home education articulation agreement

Public school students dual enroll through their school. Home education students sign a home education articulation agreement directly with the college. It spells out the courses available, how many credits your student may take per term, the college's expectations, and who does what. You will typically need proof that your child is registered as a home education student with your district, plus test scores and the college's application. Book the advising appointment early; agreements are signed on the college's calendar, not yours.

What it costs

Tuition and fees are covered for dual enrollment students. Florida's Dual Enrollment Scholarship Program, created in 2021, reimburses colleges for the tuition, fees and instructional materials of private school and home education students, so ask the college's dual enrollment office how it handles textbooks for home-educated students before you buy anything. Practice varies by campus and term. If you are on PEP, dual enrollment and eligible postsecondary tuition are on PEP's covered list, so any cost the college does not absorb may be payable from the education savings account.

What the credits are worth

Courses appear on a real college transcript and, for public colleges in Florida, transfer under the state's common course numbering. A student can arrive at a Florida university with a semester or more complete. Grades are permanent, though: a dual enrollment course is a college course, and a weak grade in tenth grade follows the student to every future application.

Action items

• Read the dual enrollment page of your nearest Florida College System campus and note its home education requirements.
• Get a qualifying test score on the calendar — most colleges accept several, and some offer their placement test free.
• Make sure your district home education registration is current; the college will ask for proof.
• Start with one course, ideally something your student is strong in, and treat it as a college course from day one.
• Record every course on the high school transcript as well, with the college credit value noted.

Test prep and tutoring providers who work with scholarship families are in the directory, and PEP's full covered list is in our Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

The diploma comes from you

Florida issues no state homeschool diploma. In a traditional home education program the parent is the school, and the parent issues the diploma. Colleges, the military and employers accept a parent-issued diploma alongside a transcript, and federal financial aid recognizes home education completion. If you are enrolled in an umbrella school, the school issues the diploma under its own name instead.

Counting credits

Florida public schools award one credit for roughly 120 to 150 hours of instruction in a subject, and most homeschoolers borrow that yardstick. A completed textbook, a full-year online course, or a documented year of work in a subject is one credit; a semester course is a half. Public school graduation requires 24 credits in a set mix of English, math, science, social studies, electives and more. You are not bound by that list, but mirroring it is the simplest way to build a transcript any admissions office reads without questions.

What a transcript needs

• Student name, birthdate, address, and the name of your home education program.
• Courses grouped by year, each with a credit value and a grade.
• A GPA, and a sentence explaining your grading scale.
• Graduation date and a parent signature — some colleges want it notarized.
• Test scores on a separate page: SAT, ACT, AP, CLT, dual enrollment.

Bright Futures for home-educated students

Florida's Bright Futures program is open to home education students, but the paperwork is different from a public school senior's. Home-educated students must be registered as home education with their school district for the eleventh and twelfth grade years, and because there is no school-verified GPA the award rests on the qualifying test score and the required service or work hours. Those hours must be logged and approved through the district, so start the log early. The scores and hour counts are set by the Legislature and change, so read the current year's chart on the Florida Department of Education's Office of Student Financial Assistance site rather than trusting a number from a forum. PEP families should note that Florida law preserves Bright Futures eligibility for PEP students; confirm with the district how a PEP student documents those two years.

What Florida lets homeschoolers do that other states don't

Home education students may try out for interscholastic sports and activities at public schools — as of July 1, 2026, at any public school in their district, not only the zoned one — may dual enroll at Florida colleges with tuition and fees covered, and may sit for AP and industry certification exams — all of which strengthen a transcript and, with a scholarship, can be paid from the education savings account.

Action items

• Open a transcript file in ninth grade and add each course as it finishes. Backfilling four years in twelfth grade is where mistakes happen.
• Keep a course description for every class: the materials used, what was covered, how it was graded.
• Start the community service or work-hours log in ninth grade and get the district's approval process in writing.
• Schedule the PSAT in tenth or eleventh grade and the SAT or ACT with time for a retake.
• Book a Florida college's dual enrollment advising appointment in tenth grade.

Test prep, tutoring and dual enrollment support providers are in our vendor directory, and how those services get paid is explained in the Step Up guide.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

For generations, education has often treated fun and serious learning as if they were opposites. If students are laughing, competing, experimenting, building, or playing a game, it can look like they are taking a break from school. Yet learning science suggests something much more interesting: when enjoyment creates curiosity, attention, meaningful challenge, feedback, and repeated practice, fun can become a vehicle for rigorous learning rather than an escape from it.

Parents see this phenomenon all the time. A student may struggle to remember ten vocabulary words but somehow memorize dozens of characters, locations, strategies, and rules from a favorite game. Another child may resist reading three textbook pages but spend an hour researching how to build something they desperately want to create. The important question isn't simply, "How can I make school entertaining?" It is, "What happens when my student becomes interested enough to want to keep learning?"

The Brain Has to Pay Attention Before It Can Remember

Memory begins with attention. Students are surrounded by enormous amounts of information, but only some of it receives enough attention to be processed deeply. Curiosity, surprise, questions, goals, and personal relevance can help direct attention toward what matters.

This gives homeschool parents and educators a powerful strategy: start with the mystery or problem instead of immediately giving the information. Rather than beginning geology by saying, "Today we're studying igneous rocks," place several rocks on the table and ask, "Which one do you think came from a volcano, and how could we figure it out?" Instead of introducing percentages with twenty equations, give the student $500 in imaginary money and challenge them to operate a pretend business.

The academic material hasn't become easier. You have simply given the student a reason to want it.

Curiosity can also help memory. When students genuinely want an answer, they are no longer passively receiving information. They are searching for it. That difference can transform a lesson.

Challenge Is Part of the Fun

Making education fun doesn't mean making education easy. In fact, many of the games children enjoy are difficult. Players lose, try again, change strategies, develop skills, and eventually overcome challenges that seemed impossible when they started.

Education can work the same way. Students need challenges that stretch them without completely overwhelming them. A math problem can be fun when it solves a mystery. Engineering can be fun when a bridge keeps collapsing and the student desperately wants to figure out why. History can become exciting when students must decide what they would have done in the position of a historical leader.

Sometimes the greatest educational word is "yet." The student can't solve the problem yet. They don't understand fractions yet. Their bridge can't hold the weight yet. That creates a reason to try again.

Fun doesn't require removing difficulty. Sometimes overcoming the difficulty is what makes the experience fun.

Why Games Can Make Repetition Powerful

Repetition is necessary for mastering many academic skills, but traditional repetition can become boring. A student may complain about solving twenty similar multiplication problems but willingly attempt the same difficult game level twenty times.

Why? Each attempt feels like progress toward a goal.

This is where games, challenges, simulations, and projects can become valuable educational tools. Students can repeatedly practice mathematics while operating a simulated business, retrieve historical knowledge while playing a strategy game, use geography while planning an expedition, or identify minerals while exploring a geological environment.

The student experiences an adventure or challenge while the educator sees something equally important: repeated practice and retrieval.

Games also provide another valuable element—feedback. A useful learning cycle looks something like this:

1. Try — The student attempts the problem or challenge.
2. See the result — Something works or doesn't.
3. Receive feedback — The student discovers why.
4. Adjust — They change their strategy.
5. Try again — They immediately apply what they learned.

Failure stops being merely a bad grade. Failure becomes information.

Emotion Gives Knowledge Something to Attach To

Students are also more likely to care about information when it has meaning. Stories, suspense, humor, competition, discovery, accomplishment, and personal relevance can help transform disconnected facts into experiences.

History provides a perfect example. A student can memorize that the Battle of Yorktown occurred in 1781, or the student can examine a map and imagine being George Washington trying to trap Cornwallis while French and American forces close in. Now geography, strategy, personalities, dates, and military decisions become connected.

The student still learns the facts, but now the facts belong to a story.

The same principle works across subjects. Instead of merely teaching buoyancy, challenge students to build an aluminum-foil boat capable of carrying as many pennies as possible. Instead of simply teaching budgeting, give them an imaginary salary and a list of real-world expenses. Instead of assigning a report about Mars, challenge them to design a colony capable of keeping 100 people alive.

Fun doesn't eliminate rigor. Done properly, fun can actually increase the amount of rigor students are willing to tackle.

Five Ways to Make Tomorrow's Lesson More Engaging

Parents and educators don't need elaborate technology or expensive materials to use these principles. Before teaching tomorrow's lesson, try asking:

• Can I turn it into a mystery? Give students something they genuinely want to figure out.
• Can I turn it into a challenge? Give them a goal instead of simply an assignment.
• Can they build or create something? Models, stories, experiments, games, businesses, maps, and presentations can make information useful.
• Can they make meaningful choices? Let students choose between several ways of demonstrating mastery.
• Can they teach it back to me? After the activity, ask the student to explain what they learned without immediately checking the textbook.

These strategies can work in nearly every subject. Mathematics can become running a pretend restaurant. Geography can become planning a cross-country trip on a budget. Science can become an experiment. History can become a debate between historical figures. Writing can become creating a podcast script. Personal finance can become a simulation where financial choices have consequences.

Don't Stop When the Game Ends

Having fun does not automatically mean a student learned something. This distinction is extremely important. The activity should lead somewhere educational.

After an experiment, game, field trip, project, or simulation, ask students questions such as:

• What are three things you remember?
• Why did your first strategy work or fail?
• What surprised you?
• What would you do differently next time?
• Can you teach me how this works?
• How could you use what you learned in real life?

Then revisit some of those ideas several days later. Asking students to retrieve information from memory and returning to it after time has passed are powerful ways to strengthen learning.

The fun gets their attention. Practice, retrieval, application, and review help turn that experience into education.

Why We Are Building Xogos This Way

These ideas are part of the philosophy behind Xogos Gaming. Students already enjoy adventures, exploration, games, technology, competition, creation, and achievement. Instead of constantly fighting those interests, we can ask how they might become gateways into K–12 education.

An adventure game can require mathematics to progress. A geology experience can use the exploration students enjoy in sandbox-style games while introducing rocks, minerals, and Earth science. Historical games can turn people and civilizations into characters students want to understand. Personal-finance simulations can allow students to experience financial decisions before real money is at stake. Online electives can introduce students to interests and potential careers they may never have considered.

Xogos isn't intended to replace parents, educators, books, experiments, outdoor experiences, field trips, or traditional curriculum. It is another tool parents and teachers can use to help students make connections between what they enjoy and what they need to learn.

The principle behind it is surprisingly simple:

When students care, they pay attention. When they're curious, they investigate. When they're appropriately challenged, they keep trying. When practice has a purpose, they are more willing to repeat it. And when education connects with something they already love, learning can become something they pursue rather than something adults constantly have to push.

That is why fun and rigorous education don't have to compete.

The fun can become the reason students are willing to do the hard work.

Families and educators can explore Xogos' educational games and learning experiences at Xogos Gaming

Wh

at an umbrella school is

An umbrella school — sometimes called a cover school — is a private school registered with the state that enrolls students who learn at home. Legally your child is a private school student; practically you are still the teacher. Because the school handles state reporting, you do not send a notice of intent to your district, you do not keep a district portfolio, and you do not file an annual evaluation with the county. Instead you follow the school's own rules, which usually means periodic attendance reports and sometimes grades or work samples.

What it does for you

• Privacy from the district. Your relationship is with the school, not the county home education office.
• Transcripts and diplomas with a school's name on them. Some families, especially in the high school years, want that for college or employer paperwork.
• Structure without a classroom. Many umbrella schools offer record-keeping tools, curriculum advice, testing days and graduation ceremonies.

What it does not do

An umbrella school does not teach your child, does not make you exempt from Florida's compulsory attendance law, and does not protect you if the school itself is not properly registered. Enrolling in one means you have chosen a private school, so you are held to whatever that school requires, and a school that asks for little today can change its rules next year.

Questions to ask before you enroll

• Is the school registered with the Florida Department of Education, and can they show you the listing?
• What exactly do they require each year — attendance only, or grades, samples and testing too?
• What do they charge, and what happens to your records if the school closes or you leave?
• Will they issue transcripts, and in what format?
• How do they handle a student who wants to play a public school sport or take dual enrollment courses?

The scholarship question

This is where families get tangled. PEP, the scholarship built for home education, cannot be combined with enrollment in a private school — a student is either a PEP student or a private school student, not both. An umbrella school is a private school. So an umbrella family who wants scholarship money is usually looking at FES-EO or FTC through a school that is an approved scholarship participant, and not every umbrella school is one. Ask the school directly, then confirm on the official program pages. And remember the rule that governs every Florida program: one pending application per student at a time.

Action items

• Decide what you want from the arrangement — privacy, records, or structure — and choose a school that actually provides it.
• Get the school's yearly requirements in writing before you pay.
• If you plan to use a scholarship, settle the program question first: PEP means no umbrella; FES-EO or FTC means the umbrella must be a participating school.
• Keep your own portfolio anyway. A reading log and dated work samples cost nothing and travel with you if you ever change routes.

Compare the three legal routes in our guide to Florida scholarships and home education, and find co-ops and support groups on the Florida co-ops directory.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

Physical education that counts

For FES-UA families, PE is an eligible category in its own right: dance classes, gymnastics, swim instruction, sports lessons. For everyone, part-time enrichment through eligible providers can cover movement-based learning. A child who spends Tuesday mornings at swim lessons is doing school.

Field trips are a category, not a treat

FES-UA explicitly covers educational outings — museums, zoos, aquariums, state parks and ticketed educational events. Florida may be the best-equipped state in the country for this: world-class science centers, historic St. Augustine, the Everglades, working space launches. Document the educational purpose and keep the itemized receipts, and note that big-ticket admission passes have specific payment-plan rules — check before buying on installments.

Games are curriculum when they teach

Game-based learning isn't a guilty pleasure; a well-designed strategy, math or history game is instructional material doing its job. When a game is sold as an educational product through an approved route, it can be a legitimate materials purchase — and it's often the piece of "curriculum" your kids beg to repeat. Several vendors in our directory specialize in exactly this.

Life skills, character, and the education between subjects

Cooking classes that are really chemistry and fractions, first-aid courses, financial-literacy programs, speech and debate, manners and leadership programs — providers offering structured instruction in these areas may be payable through direct billing or reimbursement when they qualify as educational services. The test is always documentation: a real provider, structured instruction, an itemized receipt.

Action items

• Audit your week: which activities you already pay for are genuinely instructional, and which program category would they fall under?
• Confirm the category rules for your scholarship before booking — FES-UA's list is the broadest, and what it covers is not automatically covered elsewhere.
• For every outing or class, keep the receipt plus a one-line note of what was taught — future-you filing reimbursements will be grateful.
• Check our live webinars and workshops for vendors teaching in these categories, and the deals page before you pay full price.

My Learning Source is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with Step Up For Students or the Florida Department of Education. Program rules and amounts change every cycle — confirm details on the official program pages before making financial decisions.

www.blackbackhandwriting.com

Times may have changed, but some skills are always needed. Children will hopefully grow in to adults who are productive. These children will be the decision makers and caretakers of the future- making decisions and possibly taking care of us!! Who do you want in those roles???

Group Work

Group work and projects are an important place for children to communicate and collaborate. Children will need to express their ideas and listen to others’ ideas. This also develops language skills; expressive, receptive and pragmatic.  Listening to others and processing them, then problem-solving with others to get a final outcome is needed for every relationship.

How do you help children learn these skills?  As parents, chores can be assigned to 2 children. They can work together on one chore or both have the same chore and have to figure out a schedule or a role each will have to get the chore accomplished. At school, the teacher can rotate to each group and give each child a role and even create questions for students to ask each other to develop teamwork. When children do run into problems, and they will, help them critically think through the problem. Ask them: What is the specific problem, what they tried and why they think problem happened and how they think the problem can be fixed. Always help get them started, and HELP them problem solve.  Don’t solve the problem for them.

Evaluating Information

Many people take what they are told or read as true information. But we know that is not the case, especially in this age of AI. Teaching children to evaluate information and determine if it is accurate is critical and part of critical thinking. Have you ever bought a cream for ten dollars online that promised great skin only to end throwing it in the garbage? The information you were provided with online influenced you decision to buy that product. Buying the cream for ten dollars and tossing it out, is a very small consequence for the decision you made. But what if it was a bigger decision? For example; buying a house out of state only to find out that the house did not exist after you spent the money, sold your house, packed up and moved the family. I hope no one does that as they have the ability to think critically about the information provided.

How do you help children develop these skills? Start by giving them questions to tease apart the information.  What is the source of the information? Does the source of information have an agenda? Did they look at other sources to verify the information? Did they break the information down and look at each piece of the information? What do you think would happen if… ?  Look historically, and it could be recent history, at good and bad decisions that were made and the outcomes of that decision. Give children guidance to analyze a situation that led to a decision. What are the facts of the situation? What was the decision. What happened when the choice was made. What would have happened if another decision was made?

Creativity

Being a creative thinker means being able to look at challenges with an open mindset and find original solutions. It is not about creating a beautiful picture or an original poem.  Those are great skills as well, but when children create their own solutions to problems, confidence builds.

Making a choice is another way to promote creativity.  Of course, the curriculum needs to be taught, but how can it be taught is something the children can help decide. Ask the children “what if” questions regarding topics they need to know and have them answer based on other facts they know. i.e. “What if no bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?” There can be no wrong answers, just creative thinking. Have student’s act out, narrate or do something creative and have them teach a lesson.

Transferring Skills

Transfer skills is the ability to take what you have learned it and apply that information to a new situation. This may not be a direct transfer of skills; it is based on what is known and being able to use context of the new situation to figure out the problem. You can ask the students if a new situation reminds them of anything else to get them to compare and contrast.  Sometimes two different situations/ problems require the same solution. When you begin teaching counting, you count everything. It is best to start with small changes. If someone can write an essay with correct grammar, they should be able to write an email with correct grammar. If the student can do percentage math on a test in school, they should be able to calculate a tip or how much they will pay for an item on sale.  

So please take some time as parents, caregivers, teachers and friends to help children grow into adults that can do more than spit back information.  Help them use the information learned to make good decisions and be good citizens. 

Have you ever watched a student struggle to concentrate on a lesson for twenty minutes, only to spend hours completely focused on a video game, sport, art project, animal, or building project?

Maybe the problem isn't motivation. Maybe we haven't connected education to what already motivates them.

Students still need to learn subjects they don't particularly enjoy, but parents and educators can make that process much easier by discovering what captures a child's imagination and using it as a doorway into education. That is what I mean by meeting students where they are.

The Science of Motivation

Psychologists distinguish between intrinsic motivation—doing something because we find it interesting or satisfying—and extrinsic motivation, which comes from rewards such as grades, prizes, recognition, or privileges.

Research into motivation also points toward the importance of autonomy, competence, and relationships. Students are often more motivated when they have some ownership over what they're doing, can see themselves improving, and feel connected to others.

Games naturally use many of these principles. Players make choices, overcome challenges, receive immediate feedback, improve their abilities, and see progress. Education can borrow these principles without turning every lesson into a video game.

The first step is simply asking: What does my student already love?

Sports? Video games? Art? Animals? Building? Music? Competition? Stories? Technology? Cooking?

Then ask why. A child who loves sports may really love competition and statistics. A Minecraft fan may enjoy building, engineering, exploration, and creativity. A child fascinated by animals has a natural doorway into biology and environmental science.

The interest doesn't have to become the curriculum. It becomes the doorway into the curriculum.

A Card Game Changed How I Learned

I know this because it happened to me.

I've always been project-oriented. When I entered college, I was earning Bs, some As, and, if I remember correctly, one C. I could do the work, but I wasn't the best student.

Then an English professor asked us to write a one-page essay describing a product we could create in a dorm-room setting that might change our lives.

Years earlier, I had loved playing Magic: The Gathering. My mother disliked some of the gruesome imagery on the cards, and when I was 16, she negotiated with me to get rid of my collection before receiving my Eagle Scout and gaining the driving freedom I desperately wanted. I wanted to pick up my own dates instead of having Mom drive us, so the cards went.

Years later, sitting in that college English class, card games came back into my life in a completely different way.

I loved games, adventure, entrepreneurship, and inventions. Ironically, I hated history. So I asked: What if I created a history-based card game?

That idea became Historical Conquest.

Suddenly every class mattered. Math helped develop game mechanics. English improved my writing. Marketing helped me understand customers. Business helped me develop the company. And history provided the people, civilizations, inventions, and events for the game.

After that assignment, I ended up earning straight As. I didn't suddenly receive a different brain. I finally had a reason to listen.

Research into curiosity and memory helps explain why this can happen. When we genuinely want an answer, our attention changes, and curiosity can improve subsequent learning and memory. Instead of merely receiving information, we are searching for it.

Then I Became a Father

Years later, this became much more personal.

Like many parents, I watched my children spend more and more time on screens—YouTube, Pinterest, which was one of the few social-media-style platforms we allowed, and especially Roblox.

I became increasingly concerned as I learned more about the risks children can encounter in large online environments, including inappropriate contact, scams, bullying, and exploitation. Then my own son became the target of online trolling.

Suddenly this wasn't an abstract debate about screen time.

These were my children.

I knew something had to change.

But I didn't believe the answer was simply taking technology away forever. My children would grow up in a world of computers, artificial intelligence, digital communication, and technology-driven careers. They needed to learn how to use technology responsibly.

Instead, I began asking a different question:

What if I could give them somewhere better to go?

That question became part of the development of Xogos Gaming.

What If the Game Was Also the Lesson?

Instead of constantly telling children to stop playing and start learning, what if sometimes we could say, "Keep playing—you are learning"?

Imagine an adventure game where mathematics is part of progressing through the adventure. Or a geology game with the exploration and discovery of a 2D sandbox game, where students dig through the Earth and learn about rocks, minerals, and geological processes as they play.

The same idea can extend into history, biology, environmental science, geography, personal finance, medical science, literature, and many other K–12 subjects.

The game shouldn't merely be a worksheet with points attached to it. The learning should become part of the gameplay.

Turn Their Interests Into Educational Doorways

Parents can use this philosophy without technology, too. If your student loves sports, use statistics, physics, anatomy, geography, and sports history. If they love animals, explore biology, ecosystems, genetics, and environmental science. If they love art, illustrate historical events, anatomy, architecture, or scientific concepts.

If they love building, give them something to engineer. Build a bridge and test its strength. Construct an aqueduct. Design a castle. Build a model ecosystem.

Then, when it doesn't work, ask: "Why did it fail?"

Now the student wants the science because science might solve their problem.

Parents can also give students some ownership. Instead of always saying, "Write a report about the American Revolution," you might say, "Show me that you understand the American Revolution. You can write a report, create a newspaper from 1776, make a presentation, design a game, or teach the family."

The educational objective remains the same, but the student has some control over how they reach it.

Xogos Was Built for My Kids, Too

This is one of the most important things I want parents to understand about Xogos.

I didn't build this only for somebody else's children. I built it for mine.

I'm a father who watched his children gravitate toward screens. I'm a father who became concerned about what they could encounter in massive online gaming environments. I'm a father whose son experienced online trolling. But I'm also a father who knows technology will be an important part of my children's future.

I wanted a better alternative.

Xogos is being developed as a youth-focused educational environment where students can play, explore, compete, learn, and have adventures without designing the experience around open interaction with the wider internet. I want my children—and other students—to have fun, but I also want them to walk away knowing more than they did when they logged in.

Historical Conquest began because someone finally connected education with something I already loved. A card game became my doorway into history, and a project changed the way I approached college.

Your student's doorway might be sports, horses, robotics, music, art, Minecraft, business, coding, space, nature, storytelling, or games.

Don't dismiss their interests because they don't immediately look educational.

Ask instead: "What could we teach through this?"

You might discover your child was never unmotivated. You simply hadn't found the right doorway.

And for students motivated by games, adventure, technology, engaging courses, achievement, or opportunities to work toward scholarships, that is the kind of doorway we are building through Xogos Gaming.

Meet students where they are—and use what they already love to show them how far learning can take them.

For many students, history becomes a frustrating cycle. Read the chapter. Memorize the names. Memorize the dates. Take the test. Forget most of it. Move on to the next chapter.

A student might successfully memorize that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, the Battle of Yorktown occurred in 1781, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783. But if you ask that same student six months later why the American Revolution happened, why France became involved, or why Yorktown mattered, you may receive a blank stare.

The problem isn't that dates and names are unimportant. They provide the structure that allows us to understand chronology, cause and effect, life, societal change and much more. The problem is when remembering those facts becomes the goal rather than a consequence of understanding the larger story.

For homeschool parents and educators, there is a much better question to ask: How can we teach history so students still understand it years from now?

The answer begins with changing history from something students merely receive into something they actively experience.

I Hated History in High School

I understand the student who says, "I hate history," because when I was in high school, I hated history too. It wasn't because history itself was boring. I didn't know that yet. It was the way history was being taught to me.

History seemed to be an endless collection of names and dates I was expected to memorize long enough to pass a test. There was very little reason for me to care about these people. They were names in a book. The battles were paragraphs. The dates were numbers.

Then one of my teachers did something completely different. We held a mock trial. And, suddenly, I wasn't sitting there trying to memorize information. I was in the middle of it.

We had to understand the people involved. We had to think about their motivations. We had to examine what happened, defend positions, listen to arguments, and make choices. Depending upon the decisions we made, we could see how one different choice might have changed what happened next.

That activity stayed with me. I don't remember every worksheet I completed in high school. I certainly don't remember every question from my history tests. But I remember being involved.

And that experience planted an idea that would eventually become incredibly important to me:

What if we could teach history by getting students involved in it?

What if children could have fun while learning about historical people and events?

What if they could make decisions, develop strategies, encounter historical figures repeatedly, and actually use the information they were learning?

Perhaps they would have an easier time remembering names and dates. More importantly, perhaps they would remember the concepts, decisions, consequences, and lessons that come from history.

Memorizing History Is Not the Same as Understanding History

Imagine two students studying the American Revolution. The first student memorizes:

1775 — Lexington and Concord

1776 — Declaration of Independence

1777 — Saratoga

1781 — Yorktown

1783 — Treaty of Paris

The second student learns the story. Tensions between Britain and its American colonies had been growing for years. Fighting finally erupted. Independence transformed the nature of the conflict. The Americans desperately needed international assistance. The victory at Saratoga helped convince France that supporting the Americans was worthwhile. French troops, supplies, financing, and naval power became extremely important. Eventually American and French forces trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown. Major fighting wound down, and negotiations eventually produced the Treaty of Paris.

Both children might know the dates. But only one has constructed a mental framework. That's what we want.

The dates are now hooks hanging on a larger structure.

What Happens in the Brain When Children Learn?

Human memory isn't a recording device. Simply exposing a child to information doesn't guarantee that the information will remain accessible indefinitely.

Cognitive scientists distinguish between information being temporarily accessible and knowledge becoming durable enough to retrieve later. Several well-established findings from learning research are particularly useful for homeschool parents: retrieval practice, spacing, elaboration, prior knowledge, and active engagement. These principles give us a remarkably practical roadmap for teaching history.

Retrieval Practice: Close the Book

Here's one of the easiest changes parents can make.

After yesterday's history lesson, don't immediately ask your child to reread it. Close the book. Then ask: "Tell me everything you remember." This is called retrieval practice.

The student must search memory and retrieve the information rather than simply recognize words while looking at a page.

Ask questions such as:

"Who were the important people?"

"What was the problem?"

"What happened first?"

"Why did they make that decision?"

"What happened because of it?"

"What do you remember that surprised you?"

Retrieval practice has a substantial research base. Psychologists Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke demonstrated that retrieving previously studied material can produce better delayed retention than repeatedly studying the same material.

This gives homeschool parents an extraordinarily powerful educational tool that costs absolutely nothing.

Close the textbook and talk.

Spaced Repetition: Don't Let the Chapter Disappear

Another important principle is spacing.

Imagine studying George Washington for three hours on Monday and never discussing him again. Now compare that with encountering Washington for 30 minutes Monday, briefly discussing him Wednesday, answering a question about him Friday, encountering him again the following week, and revisiting him several months later.

Those repeated encounters help strengthen access to the knowledge. This is called spaced practice.

For parents, this doesn't mean continually assigning additional lessons. It can happen naturally.

While driving:

"Remember when we studied Washington crossing the Delaware? Why was he willing to attempt something so dangerous?"

At dinner:

"Who remembers why France helped the Americans?"

During another history lesson:

"Wait a minute. Haven't we seen this person before?"

That last question is especially powerful.

Because eventually you'll hear: "I know who that is!"

That's when you know connections are forming.

Storytelling Gives Facts Somewhere to Live

Humans have passed knowledge from one generation to another through stories for thousands of years.

History provides extraordinary stories. There are heroes and villains, victories and defeats, brilliant decisions and terrible mistakes, betrayals, alliances, discoveries, inventions, disasters, mysteries, sacrifices, and unexpected consequences. Use them.

Don't begin every lesson with: "Today we're learning about the Battle of Trenton, which occurred on December 26, 1776."

Try: "George Washington had a serious problem." His army was struggling. Enlistments were expiring. Morale was low. Then stop.

Ask: "What would you do?"

Let your child think. Now history has become a problem instead of an answer.

After they offer ideas, continue the story. Washington decided to take an enormous risk. He would cross the icy Delaware River and launch a surprise attack. Suddenly December 26, 1776 has context.

Students aren't memorizing a random date. They're remembering the night Washington crossed the Delaware.

Ask "Why?" More Than "When?"

Dates tell us when something happened. Historical understanding tells us why it happened. Both matter, but the second requires much deeper thinking.

Try changing some of your questions.

Instead of: "When did the Civil War begin?"

Also ask: "Why did the Civil War happen?"

Instead of: "When did Rome fall?"

Ask: "Why did the Western Roman Empire become increasingly vulnerable?"

Instead of: "When did World War I begin?"

Ask: "Why could the assassination of one man contribute to a much larger European war?"

Then continue: "What happened because of it?"

That creates one of the most important habits students can develop when studying history:

Cause → Decision → Consequence

Something creates a problem. People make decisions. Those decisions produce consequences. Those consequences create new circumstances. Those circumstances lead to new decisions. That's history.

Connect New Knowledge to Something They Already Know

Imagine trying to hang hundreds of Christmas ornaments without a Christmas tree.

That's similar to giving students hundreds of historical facts without providing an intellectual structure connecting them.

Prior knowledge gives new knowledge somewhere to attach.

When studying Napoleon, don't start from zero.

Ask: "What happened during the French Revolution?"

When studying the Louisiana Purchase: "Who was ruling France?"

When studying World War II: "What happened to Germany after World War I?"

When studying the Cold War: "What happened between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies during and immediately after World War II?"

Students begin discovering that history isn't divided into textbook chapters.

Everything connects.

Eventually something wonderful happens. Students begin making the connections before you do.

"Wait! Is this the same person we learned about before?"

"Didn't that country fight them?"

"Isn't that what caused the other war?"

Those questions are signs that students are developing a mental model of history.

Discussion Turns Students into Thinkers

Parents sometimes worry that they don't know enough history to have meaningful conversations with their children.

You don't need to know every answer. In fact, one of the best things you can occasionally say is:

"I don't know. Let's find out."

Ask your children:

"Do you think that was the right decision?"

"What other choices did they have?"

"Why do you think that person did this?"

"Who benefited?"

"Who suffered?"

"What information did they have at the time?"

"What would you have done?"

"Would your decision have created another problem?"

Now your student isn't merely learning history. They're practicing historical thinking.

Games Change the Student's Role

A textbook primarily asks a student to receive informa

Continue reading on My Learning Source →

"I'm just not good at math."

At first, it may sound like ordinary frustration. But when children repeat that statement often enough, it can become something much bigger than frustration over fractions, multiplication, or algebra. It can become part of how they see themselves.

"I'm struggling with this" slowly becomes "I'm not good at this."

Then it can become:

"I can't do this."

And eventually:

"Why should I even try?"

For homeschooling parents and educators, one of our most important responsibilities isn't simply helping students arrive at the correct answer. It is helping them understand that struggling with a mathematical concept today does not determine what they will be capable of tomorrow.

I learned that lesson personally—not when math was easy for me, but when it suddenly wasn't.

When the Kid Who Is "Good at Math" Suddenly Isn't

Growing up, I was always pretty good at math.

Then I reached the higher levels.

Eventually I found myself sitting at home struggling with calculus. The problems weren't coming easily anymore. What had once been an academic strength was becoming a source of enormous frustration.

There was something else happening in my life at the same time.

My father had served in the military and was gone a lot while I was growing up. He had recently retired, so for one of the first times in my life, he was actually home while I was wrestling with my schoolwork.

One evening, he saw me struggling with calculus and asked if he could help.

Instead of accepting his help, I exploded.

I was a young kid with a hot temper, frustrated with calculus and carrying emotions that had very little to do with the math problem sitting in front of me.

I yelled at him:

"You're never home, and now you want to help."

He didn't yell back.

He simply walked upstairs.

And I remained there with my math.

Looking back, there is an important lesson in that moment for parents. Sometimes the emotional reaction happening over a math book isn't entirely about mathematics.

Math Anxiety Is Real

When a child becomes frustrated, freezes when presented with a problem, avoids math, or repeatedly announces that they are "bad at math," parents should not automatically interpret it as laziness.

There can be genuine anxiety behind those words.

The OECD's PISA 2022 research provides a striking picture. Across OECD countries, 65% of 15-year-old students reported worrying about receiving poor marks in mathematics, 55% worried about failing math, and around 40% reported feeling nervous, helpless, or anxious while solving math problems or doing math homework.

That's a lot of children experiencing math as an emotional challenge as well as an academic one.

Even more importantly, PISA found that mathematics anxiety has increased since 2012 in most participating countries and economies. Higher mathematics anxiety was also associated with lower mathematics performance.

So when your child says, "I can't do math," don't hear only the words.

Ask yourself:

What is happening underneath them?

Sometimes the Problem Isn't the Problem

My calculus book wasn't the only thing sitting at that table with me that night.

There was frustration.

There was anger.

There were years of having a father whose military responsibilities meant that he couldn't always be there.

There was probably some pride as well. I had always considered myself good at math. Suddenly, I needed help.

That can be difficult for a young person.

My mother eventually confronted me about how I had treated my father. She reminded me that I didn't understand everything he had been required to do in the military to provide the roof over our heads and food on our table.

She was right.

I felt terrible.

So I went upstairs and apologized to my father. I explained what I was feeling and why I had reacted the way I did.

And then something important happened.

I let him help me again.

That lesson has stayed with me.

Sometimes a child doesn't need someone standing over them saying, "You should know this already."

They need someone sitting beside them saying:

"Let's figure this out."

Separate Ability From Identity

There is a tremendous difference between saying:

"You don't understand fractions yet."

and:

"You're bad at math."

One describes a temporary academic situation.

The other describes the child.

Parents and educators should be very careful about allowing temporary struggles to become permanent identities.

Even statements that sound positive can sometimes put unnecessary pressure on children. If we constantly tell a child, "You're the smart one," what happens when that child encounters something difficult?

That was part of what happened to me.

Math had been something I was good at.

Then came calculus.

If my identity was tied to being "good at math," what did struggling with calculus say about me?

Nothing, actually.

It simply meant I had reached mathematics that required more effort, different strategies, and some help.

That's what we want children to understand.

Change the Words You Use

Parents can begin changing this mindset immediately.

Instead of focusing primarily on natural ability, draw attention to what the student actually did.

Instead of:

"You're so smart!"

Try:

"I noticed you didn't give up when that got difficult."

"You tried another strategy when the first one didn't work."

"You couldn't solve that yesterday. Look what you can do today."

"Show me how you figured that out."

"That mistake helped us discover what you didn't understand."

"You've improved."

This doesn't mean praising children for everything they do. Children recognize empty praise.

Be specific.

The goal is to help children connect improvement with actions they can control: practicing, thinking, asking questions, trying another method, checking their work, and persisting.

Give Them Victories They Have to Earn

Confidence doesn't come from repeatedly telling a child that they are amazing.

One of the strongest ways to develop confidence is accomplishment.

Give students opportunities to succeed at something that initially feels slightly difficult.

Not impossibly difficult.

Not embarrassingly easy.

Just beyond their current comfort zone.

Imagine a student who can consistently complete Level 3 problems. Instead of immediately jumping to Level 7, give them Level 4.

Let them wrestle with it.

Offer a hint if necessary.

Give them another attempt.

And when they finally solve it, don't immediately say, "See? That was easy!"

It wasn't easy.

That's the entire point.

Say: "You couldn't do that ten minutes ago."

That is evidence.

The student has just demonstrated to themselves that ability can change.

PISA 2022 data provide an interesting connection here. Students with lower math anxiety performed better when they reported a growth mindset than when they reported a fixed mindset. The same pattern appeared among highly math-anxious students: those reporting a growth mindset averaged higher mathematics scores than similarly anxious students with a fixed mindset. These results are associations rather than proof that mindset alone causes higher scores, but they reinforce the importance of how students view their ability to improve.

Five Things You Can Do Today

You don't need to change your entire homeschool curriculum. Start small.

1. Ban the phrase "I'm bad at [fill in the blank] (…math)."

Don't punish children for saying it. Help them rephrase it.

"I'm struggling with this kind of math."

"I don't understand this yet."

"I need more practice with this."

Those statements leave room for tomorrow to be different.

2. Create one achievable challenge.

Give your child something slightly beyond what they can comfortably accomplish.

Then help just enough.

Allow them to experience the satisfaction of breaking through.

3. Stop making speed the definition of mathematical ability.

Some children solve quickly. Others need time to process. Unless speed itself is the skill being practiced, focus on reasoning and accuracy before speed.

Ask:

"How did you get that answer?"

4. Celebrate corrections.

When students discover their own mistakes, acknowledge it.

"You caught it!"

That changes an incorrect answer from evidence of failure into evidence that the student can evaluate and improve their own thinking.

5. Sit beside them occasionally.

Don't always teach from across the table.

Sit beside your child and solve something together.

Say:

"Show me where you're getting stuck."

You might discover that what looks like a mathematics problem is actually a confidence problem, a misunderstanding from three chapters ago, fear of being wrong—or simply a child who needs to know that Mom or Dad is on their team.

Relationships Matter More Than We Realize

The lesson I remember from that night with my father isn't the calculus equation.

I don't remember what problem I was solving.

I remember my father walking upstairs.

I remember my mother's words.

I remember apologizing.

And I remember allowing my dad back into the struggle.

Research offers a meaningful parallel. PISA 2022 found that better student-teacher relationships were associated with lower mathematics anxiety across nearly all participating education systems. OECD findings also show that students reporting stronger family support tended to report greater confidence in self-directed learning and, in most participating systems, less mathematics anxiety.

For homeschool families, that's especially important.

You aren't simply teaching mathematics.

You're building a relationship around learning.

Someday your child may not remember the worksheet you assigned on Tuesday afternoon.

But they may remember that when they were frustrated and convinced they couldn't do something, Mom or Dad sat down beside them and said:

"Okay. Let's figure it out together."

Where Totally Medieval Can Help

This is one reason I believe games can have an important place in mathematics education.

With Totally Medieval, math isn't meant to feel like a judgment about whether a child is "smart" or "bad at math." Mathematics becomes part of an adventure.

Players move across the b

Continue reading on My Learning Source →

The first release demonstrated just how powerful the program could become. Dozens of students participated, with four students receiving more than $100 in scholarship funds and one student receiving more than $400 from this first release alone.

And this is only the beginning.

Play. Learn. Serve. Earn. Prepare for the Future.

The scholarship program was made possible through a partnership between Xogos Gaming and Innovate the Future, which provides the scholarship funds students earn through the program.

The idea behind the program is simple: reward young people for doing positive things today while encouraging them to prepare financially for tomorrow.

Students can earn Xogos Coins through eligible activities within the Xogos ecosystem, including playing educational games and participating in community service opportunities. Rather than thinking of those coins as simply another virtual currency, students can save them and submit eligible coins during quarterly scholarship releases.

Those coins can then help determine the student's scholarship award.

Even more importantly, these are not scholarships students have to wait until their senior year of high school to begin pursuing. Students as young as eight years old are already beginning to build scholarship savings for their futures.

That means an elementary or middle-school student can begin thinking about college, trade school, or an accredited certificate program years before graduation.

Small Awards Today Could Become Thousands Tomorrow

One of the most exciting aspects of starting young is the amount of time students have to accumulate scholarship awards.

Imagine a student earning between $100 and $500 during each quarterly scholarship release. If similar awards continued consistently over ten years, the student's cumulative awards could total roughly $4,000 to $20,000 before considering any potential growth in the scholarship funds over time.

The actual amount any student ultimately receives will vary based on participation, available scholarship funding, program rules, donations, and future awards. But the first release demonstrates something important: students don't necessarily have to wait until graduation to begin building resources for their education.

They can start now.

And as additional donations and scholarship funding become available through Innovate the Future, the goal is to make future scholarship releases larger, creating even greater opportunities for participating students.

Scholarship Funds Designed to Grow Over Time

The program is especially powerful for younger students because scholarship funds awarded today can have years before they are needed.

Students can continue accumulating qualifying scholarship awards as they progress through school, with funds ultimately intended to support eligible post-secondary education—including college, accredited trade schools, and accredited certificate programs.

Instead of asking a 17-year-old, "How are you going to pay for school next year?" Xogos wants families to begin asking an eight-, ten-, or twelve-year-old:

"What can we start doing today to prepare for your future?"

That changes the conversation.

A $150 Lifetime Student Membership in 2026

In 2026, families can purchase a $150 lifetime Xogos Gaming student membership, providing access until the student ages out of the platform at 19. Xogos Gaming is designed specifically for students ages 6–19.

During those years, students aren't simply playing games. They can learn, develop skills, participate in service, earn Xogos Coins, and potentially convert eligible coins into scholarship opportunities during scheduled releases.

The objective is to make education something students want to participate in while connecting today's accomplishments with tomorrow's possibilities.

Next Scholarship Release: November 2026

To every student who participated in our first scholarship release: Congratulations!

We are especially excited for the students who crossed the $100 mark and for our recipient who earned more than $400 in this first round. But whether a student's first scholarship award was large or small, they have accomplished something significant: they have started investing in their educational future.

Now it's time to start building toward the next release.

The next Xogos scholarship release is planned for November 2026, giving students another opportunity to save their Xogos Coins, learn, play, serve their communities, and prepare for what comes next.

Start saving your coins today. Your future education may still be years away—but preparing for it doesn't have to be.