Margaret Hollis

I’m Margaret — I taught third grade in a public school for nine years before our oldest hit kindergarten and we decided to bring learning home. That was 2012, and we’ve been homeschooling since, through three very different kids: one who reads anything that stands still, one who needs to build everything before he can talk about it, and one who turns every car ride into a science argument.

My teaching background is a Bachelor of Education with a specialization in elementary literacy (no, I won’t bore you with reading-program acronyms unless asked). What that means in practice is that I write the way I used to plan a Monday morning: short, useful, and with an actual answer at the end.

I’m not affiliated with any homeschool curriculum publisher, online school, or co-op. I have never accepted a sponsored placement on Checin and don’t use affiliate links here. When I review a method or a curriculum, I’ve either used it for at least one full school year with my own kids, or I’ve interviewed two or more families who did. When I don’t have enough hands-on basis, I say so.

The French-speaking section of Checin came out of a year we spent in Lyon (2018-2019) where I learned just how different the legal world of Instruction En Famille is from US homeschooling — and how few practical guides existed in French. I write those articles in French and have them reviewed by a francophone homeschool friend before publication.

You can reach me at contact@checin.org. If a guide here saves you an hour, that’s the goal.