Wyoming Homeschool Curriculum Requirements: The Seven Subjects Explained

Wyoming is one of the least restrictive homeschool states in the country — no required instructional hours, no mandatory testing, no teacher credentials, no district approval of your methods. What Wyoming does require is specific: your child must receive a "basic academic educational program" as defined by state statute, and that program must cover seven named subjects. If you cannot clearly articulate what those seven subjects are and what "sequentially progressive" instruction actually means in practice, you are operating on assumptions rather than law.

The Legal Definition of a Basic Academic Educational Program

The foundation of Wyoming homeschool law is W.S. § 21-4-101(a)(vi), which defines a basic academic educational program as one that provides:

"a sequentially progressive curriculum of fundamental instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, civics, history, literature, and science."

That is the entire statutory curriculum standard. Seven subjects, a progression requirement, and nothing else mandated at the subject level. The law does not specify how many hours per week each subject must receive, which curriculum resources must be used, how assessments must be conducted, or how the instruction must be documented.

There is also an explicit protection for religious and ideological freedom embedded in the same section: the curriculum requirements do not compel any home-based program to include any concept, topic, or practice that conflicts with the family's religious doctrines, and they do not prohibit including content that is consistent with those doctrines. Secular, religious, classical, eclectic, or unstructured approaches all fall within legal compliance as long as the seven subjects are covered and the program advances over time.

What Each of the Seven Subjects Actually Covers

The statute names the subjects but does not define their scope. Here is how they are practically understood in the context of a home-based program:

Reading. Phonics and decoding at early ages; fluency, comprehension, and analysis of increasingly complex texts as children advance. By high school, this includes the ability to read and analyze nonfiction, primary source documents, and literary fiction critically.

Writing. Handwriting and composition fundamentals at the elementary level, advancing through paragraph structure, essay writing, research papers, and argumentative writing. Mechanics (grammar, spelling, punctuation) are typically embedded within writing instruction.

Mathematics. Arithmetic through algebra, geometry, and higher math as the student progresses. The state does not mandate which courses must be completed by which grade, though families planning to pursue the Hathaway Scholarship for college funding have additional requirements to meet (4 years of math including Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry).

Civics. Government structure, rights and responsibilities, and civic participation. This can include study of local, state, and federal government; the Constitution; voting; and current events analysis at an age-appropriate level.

History. American and world history are both reasonable inclusions. Wyoming law also requires public schools to include Native American history — while there is no explicit mandate for homeschoolers to follow public school content standards, families in the state often find that incorporating Wyoming's own history, including the Wind River Reservation and frontier era, creates substantive, locally relevant content.

Literature. This is sometimes conflated with reading, but the statute distinguishes them. Literature covers exposure to and analysis of literary works — fiction, poetry, drama, classic texts. At higher grade levels, this typically means analyzing themes, structure, narrative voice, and cultural context within written works.

Science. Life science, earth science, and physical science across the K-12 span. At the high school level, this typically means individual lab sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, or earth systems science. As with math, Hathaway Scholarship eligibility requires 4 years of science for high school students.

What "Sequentially Progressive" Actually Means

This phrase appears in W.S. § 21-4-101(a)(vi) and is the operational anchor of Wyoming's curriculum standard. It causes more parent confusion than any other element of the law.

"Sequentially progressive" does not mean:

• You must use a structured, graded curriculum
• You must follow the Wyoming Content and Performance Standards used in public schools
• Your child must advance grade-by-grade in lockstep with public school peers
• You must demonstrate progression by submitting standardized test scores

What it does mean is that instruction must advance over time. The program cannot be static. A six-year-old doing phonics and single-digit addition is different from a ten-year-old doing the same thing with no measurable advancement. The law requires that the educational program build knowledge and skills progressively — each year, the student should be engaging with more complex material in each subject than the year before.

This standard is intentionally broad. It accommodates classical education models where students revisit subjects cyclically at increasing levels of sophistication. It accommodates project-based learning where a single project may integrate science, history, writing, and civics simultaneously. It accommodates unschooling approaches where learning is interest-led, as long as the parent can demonstrate (if ever asked) that advancement is occurring across all seven subjects over time.

The state has no standardized test requirement, but many families use informal assessments — portfolios of student work, semester reviews, end-of-year tests from their curriculum provider — to document advancement for their own records and for the unlikely event they ever need to demonstrate compliance.

If you are in the process of withdrawing from a public school and need to understand how to structure your initial curriculum plan, what documentation to keep, and how to handle the mandatory in-person withdrawal meeting, the Wyoming Legal Withdrawal Blueprint lays it all out in one document designed specifically for Wyoming law.

Does Wyoming Require a Curriculum Outline to Be Submitted?

As of July 1, 2025 — when House Bill 46, the Homeschool Freedom Act, took effect — most Wyoming homeschooling families are no longer required to submit a curriculum outline to the local board of trustees. The old submission mandate has been removed from W.S. § 21-4-102(b).

There are narrow exceptions: families whose children participate in public school sports, extracurricular activities, or special education services through the district may still be required to provide curriculum documentation to maintain that access.

For families operating a fully independent homeschool with no district resource access, the board of trustees has no statutory basis to demand curriculum documentation. The seven-subject requirement still exists — you are responsible for ensuring your program meets it — but you are no longer required to prove that to the district proactively.

Creating a Curriculum Outline (If You Need One or Want One)

Whether you are submitting voluntarily, meeting the sports eligibility requirement, or simply want a working plan for your own reference, a curriculum outline for a Wyoming homeschool does not need to be elaborate. The board is not in the business of approving your choices — their function, if they receive a document at all, is acknowledgment.

A functional outline might look like this:

Grade-level subjects listed by curriculum resource:

• Reading/Literature: Sonlight Core E; Great Books of the Western World selections
• Writing: Institute for Excellence in Writing, Student Writing Intensive Level B
• Mathematics: Saxon Math 8/7
• Civics: "Whatever It Takes" constitution course + local government participation unit
• History: Story of the World Vol. 4
• Science: Apologia General Science

That level of specificity demonstrates coverage of all seven subjects and implies sequential progression (by noting the specific level or volume being used). It does not require detailed lesson plans, scope and sequence calendars, or alignment documentation.

If you are building your curriculum outline with Hathaway Scholarship eligibility in mind for a high school student, the requirements become more specific: four years each of Language Arts, Mathematics (including Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and one additional math course in grades 9-12), and Science; three years of Social Studies; and specific sequenced coursework in Fine/Performing Arts, Career and Technical Education, or World Languages. Track this on the state-provided Hathaway Success Curriculum Plan forms from the Wyoming Department of Education, which parents submit directly to the scholarship program rather than to the local district.

What the District Cannot Require

Because confusion on this point leads to unnecessary conflict, it is worth being explicit. Wyoming school districts cannot:

• Approve or reject your curriculum based on their own evaluation
• Require your curriculum to align with Wyoming Content and Performance Standards
• Mandate standardized testing as a condition of homeschool compliance
• Require a specific number of daily or weekly instructional hours
• Demand teacher credentials from the parent

If a district administrator makes any of these demands, they are acting outside their statutory authority. Politely declining while referencing W.S. § 21-4-101(a)(vi) is the correct response. Document the interaction.

The Wyoming Legal Withdrawal Blueprint includes specific language for pushing back against district overreach in writing, as well as a step-by-step guide to the in-person withdrawal meeting required by W.S. § 21-4-102(c) — the part of Wyoming law that did not change with HB 46.

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