The Homeschool Bible™: What's Inside, and Who I Wrote It For

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For a long time, this post was an announcement. The website was live, the book was coming, and I was counting down to April. The book is out now. It has been sitting on kitchen tables for months, and the question I get has changed from “when?” to “is it for me?” So here is the honest version.

As a former principal, I spent years answering the same questions from parents — across a desk, in a parking lot, after church. Can I really do this? Where do I even start? What if I get it wrong? When I left the principal’s office to become a homeschool mom, I carried both the weight of the system and the hope that family-led learning could restore what had been lost. And I started hearing the same questions at my own kitchen table.

Every child can learn. And every parent can homeschool. I believe that with my whole heart, and I also know that believing it and knowing what to do on a Wednesday morning are two different things. The Homeschool Bible™ is the book for the second part.

Every child can learn. And every parent can homeschool.

Why I wrote it

There are wonderful homeschool books about philosophy, and wonderful ones about curriculum. What I couldn’t find was the one that sat in the middle — the practical, start-to-finish guide that treated a mother like the capable adult she is. The legal steps in plain English. What a day can look like. What matters at five and what matters at fifteen. And permission, on nearly every page, to build something that fits your family instead of copying someone else’s.

I wrote it to give direction without prescription and freedom without overwhelm. There is no single formula in it, and no method I’m asking you to adopt. It’s a roadmap for the real questions that show up in every season of homeschooling — the ones I was asked as a principal, and the ones I’ve asked myself since.

The Homeschool Bible: Everything You Need to Build a Thriving Home Education, by Mandy Davis, M.Ed. — book cover

What’s actually inside

The legal steps. What your state requires, how to withdraw a child from school, and what “keeping records” actually means. These are the page-one questions, answered plainly, so you can stop losing sleep over them.

Curriculum, without a verdict. How to read a curriculum, how to choose one, and why it should never run your homeschool — you run your curriculum. I don’t name The One, because there isn’t one.

The shape of a day. Rhythms over schedules, the morning basket, and what to let go of when the plan falls apart in October. Real days, with a real number of children in them.

Every age, littles through high school. The milestones that matter at each stage, and what you can stop worrying about — all the way to a graduate.

Permission. To do things differently. To trust your instincts. To stop performing for systems that weren’t designed with your children in mind. If you take one thing from the book, I’d choose this one.

Who it’s for

Maybe you’re brand new and overwhelmed by where to begin. Maybe you pulled your kids from school midyear and you’re now panicking at the kitchen table. Or maybe you’ve homeschooled for years and you’re worn down, wondering whether you’re still called to do this. I wrote it for all three of you, and I wrote it to be returned to, not read once and shelved.

If you’re only thinking about homeschooling, it will tell you honestly what you’re deciding. If you’re already in it, it will hand you the pieces you’ve been cobbling together from a hundred websites.

What people I trust said about it

A few people whose work I’ve leaned on for years read it early. I’ll let them speak for it.

Clear, comprehensive, and refreshingly honest … with something every homeschooling parent needs — permission.

Ginny Yurich · founder of 1000 Hours Outside

The book I wish I’d had when I started.

Amber O'Neal Johnston · author of Soul School

A steady and grace-filled guide for the journey.

Ainsley Arment · author of The Call of the Wild and Free

Jennifer Pepito, S. D. Smith and Nick Freitas were generous too. Every one of their words is on the book page, alongside the reader reviews — which are unfiltered, and which mean the most to me.

The Homeschool Bible Parent's Planner: an interactive guide to designing your ideal home education — cover

The planner that goes with it

The Homeschool Bible™ Parent’s Planner is the workbook built to sit beside the book: the year, the week, and the child in front of you, planned in one place. It’s where the reading turns into your actual homeschool. You don’t need it to use the book. You’ll want it the first time you sit down to plan a semester.

Where to find it

You can learn more about The Homeschool Bible™ — the short film, every endorsement, a look inside — at TheHomeschoolBible.com. It’s sold at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Christianbook, and you’ll also find it at Target and Books-A-Million.

The Parent’s Planner, A Matter of Principal (the story of why I left the principal’s office) and the next book, The Modern Homeschool Mom, which is for the mother in the middle of all of this, are all together on the books page.

You don’t need a farm, a degree, or a color-coded planner to homeschool well. You need to be shown what’s possible, and then you need to begin. That’s what the book is for.

Here’s to the mother standing in the aisle, deciding. You already have what it takes.

If you’d like company while you read it, the Homebuilt Community is free to join — moms working through the same chapters, and a growing shelf of free resources to go with them. Come find your people.

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The Homeschool Bible™: What’s Inside, and Who I Wrote It For