Easy Peasy Homeschool in Pennsylvania: Does It Meet Act 169 Requirements?

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool is one of the most widely used free online curricula in the country. For Pennsylvania families operating under Act 169 — one of the most demanding home education statutes in the US — the appeal is obvious: zero cost, organized lesson plans, and coverage across multiple subjects. The question is whether it actually satisfies Pennsylvania's specific legal requirements, and whether it generates the documentation PA evaluators need to see.

The short answer is: Easy Peasy can work for Pennsylvania, but it has real gaps that families need to address deliberately. If you are running or joining a PA microschool that plans to use Easy Peasy as its primary curriculum, understanding those gaps before August 1st is worth your time.

What Easy Peasy Offers

Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool is a complete, free, online curriculum developed by a homeschooling mother and built around Christian principles, though secular-leaning families adapt it routinely. It covers grades K through 8 with structured daily lesson plans, and extends into high school with EP's accompanying programs.

Each grade level provides daily assignments across Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, History, Art, and PE. Lessons are delivered through the website with a mix of reading assignments, videos, and activities. A companion app and printable workbooks are available for purchase, though the core curriculum remains free.

For Pennsylvania families, the multi-subject coverage is the primary draw. Easy Peasy hits most of the Act 169 required subjects in a single organized system, which reduces the curriculum coordination burden substantially.

Pennsylvania's Required Subjects Under Act 169

Pennsylvania's home education law (24 PA C.S. §13-1327.1) requires documented instruction in eleven subject areas at the elementary level:

1. English (spelling, reading, and writing)
2. Arithmetic
3. Science
4. Geography
5. United States and Pennsylvania history
6. Civics
7. Safety education (including fire prevention)
8. Health and physiology
9. Physical education
10. Music
11. Art

How does Easy Peasy stack up against this list?

Where Easy Peasy Covers PA Requirements Well

English and Language Arts — Easy Peasy has structured daily language arts instruction across all grade levels, covering phonics and reading in the early grades, transitioning to literature, composition, grammar, and vocabulary in the upper elementary grades. This is one of its strongest areas.

Math — The math sequence is grade-leveled and comprehensive. It works well for individual instruction but requires attention in a multi-age microschool setting where students work at different levels simultaneously.

Science — Easy Peasy covers science through themed units across grade levels. The content is sufficient for PA compliance, though the lesson format relies heavily on online videos and websites. For a microschool that wants more hands-on science, Easy Peasy may need supplementing.

History and Social Studies — Easy Peasy rotates through major history periods and includes US history and world history content. Coverage of Pennsylvania-specific history varies by grade level and is not always explicit.

Art — Art projects are included at most grade levels, typically as weekly or bi-weekly activities. The coverage satisfies the PA art requirement, though the depth depends on how thoroughly the assignments are followed.

Physical Education — Easy Peasy includes a PE component built around daily movement challenges and fitness activities. This satisfies the PA PE requirement if it is actually implemented and documented.

Where Easy Peasy Has Gaps for Pennsylvania Specifically

Pennsylvania history — Act 169 requires instruction specifically in both US history and Pennsylvania history. Easy Peasy covers US history systematically, but Pennsylvania-specific content — the state's role in the Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania geography, the state's industrial and cultural history, state government — is not explicitly built into the curriculum structure. You will need to supplement with Pennsylvania-specific resources or units to document this requirement credibly.

Music — Easy Peasy is weak on music. Some grade levels include basic music appreciation content, but a formal music component is largely absent. Pennsylvania's required subject list includes music, and evaluators expect to see some evidence of music instruction. This gap needs to be addressed deliberately.

Safety education including fire prevention — Easy Peasy does not have a dedicated fire safety or safety education unit. Pennsylvania's law explicitly calls this out as a required subject. A brief, documented unit on fire safety, home safety, and emergency preparedness — even a single day's lesson with a brief written response — satisfies this requirement. But Easy Peasy will not provide it for you.

Civics — Easy Peasy includes some social studies content that touches on civics, but Pennsylvania's requirement extends to state and local government, not just national civics. Understanding how Pennsylvania's General Assembly works, what a local school board does, and how municipal government operates is part of the PA civics requirement. Easy Peasy covers federal civics more naturally than state and local.

Portfolio documentation trail — This is the most significant structural challenge for PA families using Easy Peasy. Because the curriculum is delivered primarily online with reading assignments and videos, it does not automatically generate the kind of physical work samples that PA portfolios require. A contemporaneous log and student work samples are mandatory. Families relying solely on Easy Peasy's online format need to be intentional about printing work, saving writing samples, and maintaining a written log — because the online lesson completion history alone does not constitute a PA-compliant portfolio.

Using Easy Peasy in a Pennsylvania Microschool

For a learning pod or microschool, Easy Peasy's strengths and weaknesses look slightly different. The curriculum is organized for individual use, not designed for a facilitator teaching a mixed-age group simultaneously. In a microschool setting, Easy Peasy works best as a supplementary structure — particularly for the individualized components like language arts and math — while the pod's collective instruction covers history, science, Pennsylvania-specific content, music, and project-based subjects.

Some PA microschools assign Easy Peasy as the at-home or asynchronous component of the student's education. Students complete Easy Peasy lessons independently before or after pod days, while pod time is used for group discussions, projects, hands-on learning, and the subjects that benefit from the group dynamic. This hybrid model can work, but it requires clear documentation from both the at-home Easy Peasy work and the pod instruction to ensure both components appear in the individual student's portfolio.

Documentation Strategies for PA Families Using Easy Peasy

If Easy Peasy is your primary curriculum, build these habits into your routine from the start of the school year:

Print the daily assignment sheets — Easy Peasy's printable activity pages and workbooks serve as physical documentation. Having printed copies filed by week or month gives you a ready-made paper trail for the portfolio log.

Keep a written reading log — The PA portfolio requires a log of reading materials used. Easy Peasy assigns a significant amount of reading. Log the books and online texts as they are assigned, not at the end of the year.

Save written output — Narrations, written responses to history or science content, and composition assignments should be saved. Date everything. The evaluator wants to see samples from the beginning, middle, and end of the year to confirm progress over time.

Add a music supplement — A weekly music appreciation lesson, an instrument practice log, or participation in a community music program are all sufficient. Document it in the portfolio log by date and activity.

Write a Pennsylvania history unit — A four to six week dedicated unit on Pennsylvania history, scheduled at a logical point in the year and documented explicitly in the log, covers this requirement cleanly. Pennsylvania's official state history resources, local historical society programs, and field trips to PA historic sites all contribute.

Document safety education explicitly — Schedule a fire safety and home safety unit at the beginning of the year, note it in the log, and save any student work from the unit. This is a quick requirement to satisfy, but it needs to appear in the record.

The Evaluator's Perspective

Pennsylvania's annual evaluator review is conducted by a certified teacher or other qualified professional who reviews the portfolio and certifies whether the student made appropriate academic progress. Evaluators see many portfolios built around Easy Peasy, and reactions vary.

Evaluators who are familiar with Easy Peasy understand its structure and generally accept it as a valid curriculum. What they look for is that the portfolio contains actual documentation — a reading log, work samples, and evidence that all required subjects were covered. An online lesson completion screen is not a substitute for a paper trail.

Some evaluators in Pennsylvania prefer to see physical workbooks or written assignments rather than printouts of online activities. If you are using Easy Peasy in a primarily digital format, it is worth asking your evaluator upfront what documentation formats they accept. Switching evaluators is always an option, but finding a "pod-friendly" evaluator who is comfortable with alternative documentation formats is worth the effort before the June 30th deadline.

The Bottom Line

Easy Peasy All-in-One can be a strong foundation for Pennsylvania homeschoolers, but it is not a complete plug-and-play solution for Act 169 compliance. The five gaps — Pennsylvania-specific history, music, safety education, civics depth, and portfolio documentation — are all addressable with deliberate supplementing and documentation habits. For families who invest in building those supplementary pieces, Easy Peasy's zero-cost, all-in-one structure makes it a genuinely useful starting point.

For microschool operators, Easy Peasy works best as a component of a larger curriculum structure rather than as the sole instructional resource for the pod. Combining it with group instruction in history, Pennsylvania-specific content, science, and the arts gives you a complete compliance picture and a richer educational experience than Easy Peasy alone provides.

If you are building or joining a Pennsylvania learning pod and want to understand how to structure curriculum compliance across the full Act 169 subject list, the Pennsylvania Micro-School & Pod Kit includes a curriculum integration guide that maps common programs — including online options like Easy Peasy — against the required subjects and shows how to fill the gaps.

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