I’ve read many “Day in the Life” posts over the years as a blogger, but never did one until now, when SimpleHomeschool.net invited readers to share their day and link up to their Friday post. I’m so glad I did this! I learned a lot about myself. I’ll share what I mean tomorrow.

5:13 AM: My stomach, ignoring the protests of the rest of my body, decides sleep time is over. I get up and reheat a bowl of last night’s chili. I contemplate going back to bed for a bit, but since pregnancy nausea has set in, I’ve been sleeping later and I miss my morning routine. So I decide to stay up.

I grab the computer and place our farm order, which hubby will pick up tomorrow. 3 gallons of raw milk, 4 dozen eggs, and a bag of grass fed beef bones for broth. I read an email and learn what baby’s doing now at 14 weeks, officially my second trimester.

I hear Sadie, 6, get up and go to the bathroom. She leaves the bathroom light on, wide open, as usual. Ugh. It shines right into my bedroom and hits my eyes when I’m in bed. Reminding her to turn it off won’t do any good because she probably wants the light on so she can see back to her room easily. I decide to buy her a small flashlight to keep by her bed to solve this problem. She slept badly last night, and woke me up twice. I think it’s because she ate wheat Sunday. Every few months I let her try a bit to see if there’s a reaction, and there always is.

There’s a lot I need to do on the computer, but I shut it down because I’m feeling nauseous. Screens have that effect on me when I’m pregnant, which is really inconvenient when you’re a blogger.

I take a bath, get dressed, start water boiling.

6:45: Julien and Sadie wake up and come sit with me on the sofa. I hear toddler feet padding down the hallway and cries of “Mama” from the youngest, her Daddy just behind her. They’re not usually up for another hour. I must have made too much noise. I nurse Ruby and snuggle with Sadie. I say a prayer and ask for help with patience… not something I usually struggle with, but pregnancy hormones and nausea are making my fuse way too short lately.

I eat another small bowl of chili. I’m hungry all the time now.

Tea time. Julien, our resident tea maker, steeps a cup of Tasha Tudor’s Welsh breakfast tea for me. We drink this tea every day.  I write “Tasha Tudor” in my notebook and decide it would be fun to spend a day with the kids studying her life and works. She was a remarkable woman who lived life squarely on her terms and she’s fascinating to me.

Ruby hands me a Berenstain Bears book and says, “Read it“. I do, but it looks more like her turning pages to the objects she recognizes, so she can point and name them. “Baby, owl, bunny, eggs, puppy”, etc, which is frustrating to Sadie, who actually wants to hear the story.

7:20: I cook *Breakfast in a Bowl for the early risers. The later crew of big kids  can cook some more eggs to eat with the remaining grits when they awake. Ruby seems frantic for the sausages to be done, and eventually grabs my fork from my hand and feeds herself, then asks for “Mo“. I take this as a sign my milk supply is dropping. While we eat breakfast, we see the sunrise out the window.

(* Grits cooked with a ton of butter and cheese heaped in a bowl with fried egg and sausage.)

I get up to get Ruby and myself more food and realize it’s normal to be hungry when your body is nourishing 3 people. “Pee!”. I look behind me and Ruby is standing in a puddle. I had just put a clean diaper on her but the leg elastic is a bit stretched out on her Fuzzi Bunz and her toddler bladder holds a lot. I take off her pants and diaper and clean up the mess. Good thing Ilana will be mopping later. Yes, we will be potty training come Spring.

While I’m away from the table Julien reads this post in progress and laughs. I explain what a “day in the life” post is about. He says that I need to “make a book”. Ruby goes in the sink for a quick bath. Meanwhile I unload the dishwasher.

7:46: Hubby’s up, so I fry more sausages and eggs, then put on a little makeup. I ask Sadie not to play guitar while people are sleeping. A sleepy teenaged boy emerges from his bed and sits down at the piano to practice a new piece. I don’t tell him to be quiet. Now the big girls are up and eating breakfast. Ruby asks me to put her Raffi tape in the CD player. We discuss the origins of the song “Kumbayah”.

8:05: I check the calendar in my notebook that tells me what “monthly” cleaning task I’m working on today. It’s cleaning the outside of the fridge, stove and dishwasher. I decide to enlist Sadie’s help. I feel pukey, so I make myself a Perrier with lemon. I get a package together to ship, something I sold on Amazon.com. I don’t have a large envelope, but thankfully Julien, the eBay entrepreneur, does. My tape isn’t where it’s supposed to be on my desk. I holler to ask if anyone has it, and a child retrieves it for me.

8:20: Hubby kisses me goodbye, in a rush and looking stressed. Zoe is out the door to catch the school bus. I clean breakfast mess off the table then wipe the grits Ruby dropped attempting to feed herself off the floor.

Someone has given Ruby a bowl of shredded cheese. She eats half, the remainder is all over the floor. I attempt to brush my teeth, but before I’m through painful gagging ensues. I make a mental note to floss later. Meanwhile the girls have followed me into the bathroom and begin peppering me with questions. I use a tiny screwdriver to unlock the door to Sadie’s room which has mysteriously gotten locked for the umpteenth time this week. I announce 5 Minutes to Bible Reading.

8:45: Everyone is fed, dressed and has teeth brushed. Our homeschool day begins.

We sit down to read the Bible first. This is probably my favorite time of day, and the kids really enjoy it too. Today we take turns reading Joshua 5-7. We discuss it afterwards. Then we spend a few minutes looking up some of the places mentioned on a detailed map of the Promised Land. The baby runs around the living room playing with her doll, rummaging through books and alternately sitting in my lap.

When we’re done Caleb immediately starts on Math without assistance or prompting from me. He’s in the young Scholar phase for sure. I send Julien and Ilana to do their chores (Julien sweeps the dining/living room and Ilana sweeps and mops the kitchen) while I read two Bible stories to Sadie that correspond to the reading: one is about the fall of Jericho, the other about Achan’s thievery. She is distractable and squirrelly today. I point to words and have her read them. She gets the word right about 25% of the time.

We’re interrupted by a poopy diaper. I get up to clean up Ruby, then pass her off to Julien to put the new diaper on while I finish reading and discussing the stories with Sadie.

I notice that Ilana has begun reading Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace Revisited. She just finished Chapter One. I told her yesterday that for math this week instead of doing our usual thing (Saxon for her), we were going to talk about money and personal finance. It’s interesting that she took it upon herself to pick up this book and read it. Caleb did the same thing several months ago, and completed the book in a few days. It’s very important to me that my children learn sound financial principles (and it’s clear my brainwashing is working) so this makes me very happy!

9: 30: Julien goes outside for a bit for some fresh air and takes Ruby with him. I take the opportunity to clean up the kitchen. I usually have it done up by now, because I find that I enjoy doing school far more when it’s clean.

Ilana brings me a science project she’s working on: she and Julien decided to sprout a bean and chart the progress over a week’s time. Sadie gets excited about this and decides to make one of her own, Ilana helps her set it up.

While I clean, I discuss dinner plans with Caleb. He wants to cook lasagne which wasn’t in my meal plan, so I don’t have the ingredients – but how can I say no to him cooking that? I didn’t want to leave the house today, but decide to swing by the store to pick up the couple of things we need. I can send Caleb in while I stay in the car with everyone else. I look up my favorite slow cooker lasagne recipe. Caleb tells me that Nannie says he needs to start a compost pile for our garden (we had one, but abandoned it because our garden was a colossal flop). He goes downstairs to find a bucket, brings it up to the kitchen and dumps old tea leaves in it. I’m determined to find a local gardener who can mentor us this year. A friend comes to mind.

Sadie wants to write a letter to her friend. I help her spell the words she doesn’t know.

The trip to the store doesn’t take long. When we get home Julien, Caleb and I start on the lasagne. I cook rice and leftover chili for lunch. Sadie decides to eat her rice with chopsticks.

11:40: Ruby has nursed to sleep, so it’s time for Read Aloud with the middle kids. We’re reading The Boxcar Children, which we started yesterday. We’re already halfway through the book because they kept asking for “One more chapter!“. While we read, Caleb does Rosetta Stone Spanish. Then he looks up YouTube videos to learn the fingering for new songs he wants to play on piano.When he’s done, he picks up his current read, a 700+ page Sherlock Holmes collection. He bought the book Sunday night, but it looks like he’ll finish it this week.

12:13: Sadie skips off to play in her room, so I decide to take a 20 minute nap with the baby. I let Ilana play on the computer for a bit. Julien is working on eBay stuff.

1:18: Ok, so maybe my nap was a bit longer than 20 minutes. The nausea has been unrelenting all day, and I’m fighting grumpiness. Besides, I have this sweet snugglebunny.

I get up, and remember the monthly task I need to do. I ask Sadie to come to the kitchen and hand her a cleaning cloth and a spray bottle of vinegar/water. We clean the front of the stove, fridge and dishwasher. It only takes a couple of minutes. The kitchen is a disaster again, but I don’t say a word. I’m happy the kids like to cook, so I’m ok with the “clean as you go” lesson taking a bit longer. Julien is at the sink washing a saucepan so he can hard boil eggs.

1: 50: History. I sit with Ilana and Julien and we read about Charles the Hammer. Caleb is working through the Story of the World: The Middle Ages too, but he’s way ahead of us and uses a different workbook to test himself after his reading. Where is Caleb by the way? I hear the dryer door slam and realize he’s downstairs doing his chore: laundry.

2:13:  “Pee. Poop.” Pick up the baby and change her diaper, then head into the bathroom to wash my hands. I brush my teeth again, remembering to stop when I get that tickle in my throat, before gagging begins. I empty the bathroom trash can, then take two bags of kitchen trash to the curb.

It’s warm out, so Ruby comes with me. She begins climbing into the stroller. “Walk!” This surprises me, since for the last couple of months she has been protesting the stroller and the sling, meaning I’ve had to either let her walk and meander alongside, or hold her. I take advantage of the situation, tell Sadie to get her shoes on, and start walking around the neighborhood. Ruby points out everything she knows. “Bird. Doggie. Choo-choo train. Flower.” Then, “Out.” Ah. There it is. I am already huffing and puffing so I encourage her to stay in until we get home. She goes back to humming and singing. Sadie chatters happily. I give myself permission to feel proud of exercising despite feeling like warmed up dog poop.

3:04: Caleb is back upstairs, updates me on the laundry situation, and sits down at the piano again. Julien plays with LEGO behind me, he is building a safe complete with a combination lock. Sadie is outside digging holes. Ilana is playing a pointless computer game in which she has to do “Chef” tasks like shred cheese. I consider telling her that there is real cheese in the kitchen she can shred, but think better of it. We don’t have TV, cable, or Nintendo, so a little brain candy in the form of computer games isn’t a hill I want to die on.

Note The Shirt. It says, Eat. Sleep. Lego.

I grab Ruby and head back outside to play with Sadie, who is digging up earthworms. She asks me again what they do for the garden, and I explain. I suddenly feel happy with my life, to be here with my children, and say a little prayer expressing gratitude for the mild weather. My body is craving Spring about as much as it’s craving steak. I remember to take my shoes off so my feet can connect with the earth.

 3:35: Caleb brings up a load of clean cloth diapers, then reads a Potty book to Ruby. She Ruby brings me another book and says, “Couch!”. I sit down and we “read”. I try to muster the energy to attack the kitchen mess before Zoe gets home. It’s her chore, but I hate for her to come home from school to such a mess. Caleb is deep into Sherlock Holmes again. Ilana asks me to read another chapter of the Boxcar Children. I read 2. I successfully procrastinate the kitchen cleanup.

I go back outside with Sadie, who is desperate to do something in the garden. I tell her she can put dead leaves on the garden area so she begins picking up armfuls and spreading them around.

4:10: Did somebody mention steak? I’m starving, so I reheat the rice from lunch and stir fry some steak with ginger, soy sauce, vinegar to eat. I begin to smell the lasagne cooking in the slow cooker. It’s bubbling over and dripping all down the counter and drawers underneath. Caleb puts it on top of a large plate to catch the mess.

A fight commences, only the second skirmish of the day, so I feel fortunate. Ilana has taken a necklace from the floor, but it belongs to Julien, who demands it back. She can’t find it. They get animated, and the baby starts screaming at them. I ask Ilana if she wants to be like Achan, who took things that didn’t belong to him. She replies no. I ask her to sweep the living room. Incidentally the exact scenario played out earlier, only the perp was Sadie, who took a toy from Ilana’s room. I was thankful to be able to use that story.

4:50: Caleb walks in the door from the bus stop where he has picked up Zoe, who is finally home from school. I find it disturbing that a child in public school is gone from her family for this many hours a day. I’m glad I got the kitchen cleaned up. I call Julien over and read a couple of chapters of James and the Giant Peach, the current read-aloud I’m sharing with just him (although Ilana joins in). He’s not as much of an avid reader as my other kids, but he loves to be read to, so I single him out for this.

5:15: Hubby walks in. He tells me immediately about a conversation he had with a potential landlord. We were interested in a home with 5 bedrooms in the area, and I contacted the man through Craigslist. He asked how many children we had. When Zeke answered truthfully, he laughed and said, “That’s not going to work.” Large family discrimination is very real folks. Nevermind that in the 2 years we’ve rented from our current landlord, we’ve never been late on rent. Nevermind that we were prepared to pay a security deposit and first month’s rent. 6 kids are the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. It occurs to me that if I were a litigious person, I could contact a lawyer to sue him for discrimination. I think about emailing the jerk, but decide he isn’t worth my time. Besides, I prayed hard about this situation and asked that if it had His blessing, it would be effortless. Obviously it’s not meant to be.

The noise from dinner is getting to me a little, and I’m feeling gross. I send the kids downstairs to play so Zeke and I can have some quiet to talk. He rocks Ruby and sings to her, a song he made up.  He announces to the kids that it’s 5 Minutes to Family Worship.

6:25: Family Worship. We read a few passages from 1 Samuel and discuss how God chose David. That he judges people not based on their appearance, but on their qualities. Caleb answers a question he was assigned to look up in his personal study. Sadie is getting tired so she’s a little wiggly.

7:00: The kids go back downstairs to play. Zeke holds my hand on the sofa and we commence one of our favorite activities, watching Ruby’s antics. She keeps picking up Julien’s foot and wrinkling her nose. I must look terrible, because Zeke keeps asking me if he can get me something to help. “Beer“, I reply. “I don’t have any. Do you want me to pick some non-alcoholic brew up for you?” “No“. I know he’s tired, and I don’t want him to have to leave the house. The only time I crave beer is when I’m pregnant.

7:18: The nausea has been getting progressively stronger and I can’t deal with it anymore. I head to my room to lie in the dark. (I ended up falling asleep and waking up at 12:00 to eat a snack. Meanwhile, hubby put everyone to bed!)

This week’s Green Moms Weekly topic is our last one focused on attachment parenting. It asks:

“How do you think attachment parenting enhances learning?”

It’s funny. As I write this post I’m reflecting back on a couple of conversations I had last week about homeschooling.

These conversations took place at different times. Both at the behest of two moms who are currently homeschooling but who are unhappy and totally stressed with their choices (both have their children enrolled in Georgia’s K12 program).

I mentioned one of the conversations, which took place via email, in my post on advice to a homeschooling friend. The second took place just last night, but my advice was very similar.

You know what I think is at the bottom of these two mother’s concerns?

Trust.

Trust in their abilities to educate their children.
Trust that their children will learn what they need to learn.
Trust that, despite being “experts” with letters after their names, they are enough to be their kid’s teacher.
And trust that their choices will be “right”, even when they’re swimming against the stream.

What does all this have to do with attachment parenting?

Everything.

Because attachment parenting is all about trust.

Trust that your body can give birth, something it was created to do.
Trust that your breasts will nourish your baby.
Trust that when your baby cries, he needs you.
Trust that doing what you know in your heart is right for your child and your family, even when it’s very different from those around you, is right and good.

It pains me when I observe so many parents being apologetic about listening to their children. I hear moms confess, almost with shame, that they bring their babies into bed with them at night… as if this was some kind of mothering failure.

This doubting oneself and one’s ability as a parent that begins in the first days of a baby’s life continue as that child grows up. It becomes a pattern.

And the funny thing is, we often trust people outside our families who have set themselves up as experts, but who in the end aren’t accountable for or responsible to our children.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

The friend I mentioned in my last blog post is quite hung up on choosing the “right” curriculum and the “right” approach. She wants me to come to her home so I can show her everything we do and use in our homeschool day.

This whole thing makes me uncomfortable because it’s not appropriate for ME to be positioned as some sort of authority for her family. She and her husband are more than capable of choosing a curriculum, or none at all, that is right for her and her kids. I have to decline her invitation.

Another way that attachment parenting enhances learning? It minimizes stress on the child. There’s a lot of research around this point, I won’t go into it all here, but there are many great books on the topic. Peaceful Parenting for a Peaceful World comes to mind.

A stressed child can’t learn as well as one who is securely attached.

Going back to the second mom I referred to above, her daughter is completely stressed and burned out on learning at all. She asked me how I got my kids excited about learning. I told her that one way is by not trying to recreate school at home. School is broken. I don’t want to do school at home, I want to create an environment that is conducive to learning.

That also means letting each child tailor their own education. Which goes back to trust.

Attachment parenting teaches babies and children that the world is mostly a good, safe place. That there are people you can trust to help you when you need it, that you will be accepted for who  you are as an individual.

All of this means that children can free up more energy to do what kids do… which is learn about the world and the people in it.

What do you think? How does attachment parenting enhance learning?

Read what Rachel and Tiffany have to say on this topic.

I have a friend whose 2 young children (ages 8 and 5) have been enrolled in the Georgia K12 online public school for some time.

She sent me an email asking for help. To paraphrase:

“I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but K12 is getting out of hand. They have added too many things, and it’s getting very stressful to try to keep up with it. So I wanted to ask you if possible could you can give me a list of the books you use, because my husband and I have decided to drop it.

HELP!! I know I am always bothering you with all these homeschool questions, sorry.”

My response went something like this:

I don’t blame you. I don’t like the K12 program because it seemed overwhelming, and since the children are technically public schooled, just at home.

So I applaud you in wanting to create your own curriculum. It’s so nice to tailor your kid’s education towards their needs and yours!

I then gave her a list of the books that we use in our school day. Some of those can be found here: Five in a Row and here: How We Do Homeschool History and here: Organize your Homeschool Day with Kanban.

I also shared some tips on how to homeschool cheaply. But that wasn’t really what I wanted to answer. I really wanted to tell her this:

It’s not about the curriculum.

So I did. I went on to say:

We keep it simple and the kids can get all their school work completed in a couple of hours if they hustle.

That leaves the rest of the day for other kinds of learning.

Chores, time outside, reading together, etc… there’s so much learning that takes place in these ordinary activities.

Since we’re not tied to a curriculum we can make adjustments where needed and be flexible. Some days we might check out a few dozen books and just read all day long. Sometimes we watch an educational documentary or movie and discuss it together.

For me homeschooling this way feels like life.

There isn’t a big divide between “school time” and “not school time.”

And it isn’t stressful. Things just blend together.

I think the most important consideration when you’re figuring out “where to start” is to think about the future.

What do you and your husband really want your kids to learn?

It may look very different from what the state requires or what K12 or some other education “expert” says. And that’s ok!

We know our kids best. We know how they learn best, what they’re most interested in, etc. I often think about how people educated their kids before public school was invented. They taught them practical things, and how to read and write well. They taught them a trade, and the rest the kid learned on his own.

The state requires that we spend 4 1/2 hours a day in school, and include: reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science. Don’t discount all that your children learn when you simply talk and worship together.

For example, when the kids and I read a few chapters in Leviticus yesterday we discussed and researched: quarantining, germs/bacteria, rabbits as chewers of the cud, etc. All that is science! The reading and research itself is language arts.

I have the benefit of a little more hindsight because my kids are a little older than yours, and I’ve seen how much they learn and grow with my relaxed homeschooling style.

Caleb has only spent a total of 6 weeks in public school, he’s in 8th grade and all of his schooling has taken place at home with me.

So take a deep breath and relax. Decide what’s really important to you and what you guys want to impart to your kids and work around that.

As for me, I wanted to instill a love of reading and learning with my kids. I always have my nose stuck in a book They’ve definitely picked that up.

I also want to teach them about entrepreneurship and good money management, so that’s part of the curriculum too from time to time. Julien is only 10 but he has a part time business selling on eBay, and he’s learning all sorts of valuable skills that way!

What advice would you add for this mom who is leaving the structure of the K12 program to venture out onto her own homeschool journey?

You might also like:

• Great homeschool books for your library
• First day back to homeschool 2011
• Homeschooling: Letting go of should

In my first 52 Bites post I briefly mentioned that I created a Homeschool Binder.

There it sits on our homeschool bookshelf, next to Story of the World.

Previously I kept homeschool paperwork in separate places. The kid’s books and workbooks are in the same place on a shelf in the living room – our “school” room.

Things like answer keys, homeschool attendance reports, copies of our local homeschool law, cool ideas and articles I’d clipped from magazines and the like were filed in my small portable file box.

That sounds ok.

Trouble is, I rarely looked at that file so a lot of the neat stuff in there was lost in oblivion.

I picked up a nice looking 3 ring binder at Barnes and Noble on the clearance table. (Don’t you love the clearance table at B&N? I also picked up two Wordly Wise workbooks at half price. Nice!)

It took me all of 5 minutes to place the following inside it:

• answer keys
• worksheets that I had printed
• lists of sight words for the upcoming reader
• Spanish vocabulary lists
• fun projects and ideas
• and other odds and ends that were floating in different places

Now it’s all in ONE spot. I grab it when I need it and put it back at the end of the school day.

Um, Why did I not do this earlier?

How do you organize your miscellaneous homeschool papers?

My 10 year old son is an eBay business magnate.

Well, maybe magnate is a bit… ambitious.

It’s more like he’s an eBay business… beginner.

But even Trump had to start somewhere, eh?

One of the things I love about homeschooling?

That it leaves enough time for a child to pursue their interests.

Sometimes this requires a bit of trust. As in, if my son spends 4 hours a day doing LEGO, will that actually serve him later on in life?

But other things that kids choose to pursue have clear, measurable (and immediate!) value.

For instance, my son has completed approximately 50 auctions on eBay. He’s got a full fledged part time business now, and he loves it. I had to move a desk into his room, help him secure some storage room for his inventory, and open a Paypal and eBay account just for him. I also had to help him set “eBay hours” so he didn’t get too sidetracked from chores and school work.

In this process, he’s learning:

• Spelling. Noone is going to buy stuff from someone who can’t spell. Professional looking descriptions are important.
• Grammar/Punctuation. Ditto.
• Copywriting and Salesmanship. Boring or sparse auction descriptions don’t bring in as much cash either.
• Details Matter.  If you are lazy and don’t weigh your item with the packing material first (and charge enough shipping), it’s your own dang fault if you lose money on the auction.
• Profits Are Everything. If you lose money, you lose. (No government bailouts here!)
• Profit Margin. Higher profits don’t always mean a higher profit MARGIN. To increase his profit margin, he gets his inventory for free and recycles packaging material.
• The Customer Isn’t Always Right. In business you gotta be smart. Never ship an item when the customer hasn’t paid you yet. (How many times you think he did this before he learned this lesson? Exactly.)
• Geography. I can’t count how many times little man looked on the map to find a state, trying to calculate how long it would take a package to arrive. (This is from his buying activities, but still…)
• The Value of Mentors. He wisely listens to Mom’s advice since she’s more experienced than he is. But he’s not afraid to blaze his own trail a little bit, either.
• Managing Money. He’s not making a killing, but he is earning extra pocket money, which leads to lots of conversations with Mom about what to do with that money.
• And last but not least… Mom will get mad at you if you accidentally print shipping labels and pay for postage with HER Paypal account, when the buyer’s payment went to YOUR Paypal account. 

I don’t know if Julien will end up doing eBay full time when he’s an adult, but wouldn’t it be cool if he did? He comes from a long line of entrepreneurs. (His paternal great-Grandfather was a famous inventor, his maternal Grandparents are self- employed, his Dad, StepDad and Mom are all self- employed!)

Personally I think it would be uber cool to do eBay for a living. I hope he never has a “job”.

But even if he doesn’t, he’s learning all kinds of valuable stuff NOW.

And that’s enough for me.

I did something today that, for me, was a little bit scary.

I sold my “What Your _ Grader Should Know” books.

No offense to the author and publisher. Because truly, these are awesome books. In fact, if you were homeschooling on a tight budget, you could buy one and easily create your child’s entire curriculum for the year using it.

And this was more than an exercise in minimalism/decluttering.

Far more.

You see, by getting rid of these books I am finally untethering myself from Should.

I really should use those books, I would think each time I walked past them sitting on my bookshelf.

And yet I never did.

I really should take a look at what those books say, to make sure my kids are learning what they “should”.

These books sitting on your shelf may not have this effect on you.

But in my house, they had to go.

Every year I find myself less and less concerned about what “they” say my kids should be learning. Getting rid of these books once and for all released a huge burden from my mind.

I am untethering from the idea that children “should” learn a particular “something” by a “certain” age because “they” said so. 

Because you know what?

I don’t care about someone else’s should.

Here is what I think my children should learn:

• They should learn to read well, so they can learn… everything else.
• They should learn math, so they can build things, balance their checkbook, figure out how much to charge, where to invest, and how to save.
• They should learn history, so they can see the truth that “man has dominated man to his injury”, and why every system of man made government is inferior to the Kingdom.
• They should learn to be people of character: kind, respectful, and honest so they can live peaceably among other people.
• They should learn how to live: how to cook, clean, do laundry so they can be independent.

And they’re already learning these things.

With just their mom as the educational expert.

I had to get rid of these books so I could quit shoulding on myself and my kids.

What Shoulds have you let go of?

Today was our first day back to home school.

Last night I decided to rearrange the living room – our school room – a little bit. We moved a bookcase from the boy’s room so I could put all the school books together on a higher shelf. The baby can reach the bottom shelves and, true toddler style, loves to pull all the books down several times a day.

I was so excited and ready to get back to our school schedule. The kids must have been excited too because they were up early! I had oatmeal cooking in the slow cooker so breakfast was a no brainer.

Things went well, but – typically – a tiny bit chaotic at times. Sometimes, there are literally 4 people asking me at once for help. I had to call a quick time out to develop a system so the kids will know when I’ll get to them.

We decided on a “youngest to oldest” queue. If they’re all clamoring for help at once, I help the youngest first. The reason I did it this way is because 1) the younger the child, the less patience and 2) the younger the child, the more apt they are to get sidetracked and move away from the task at hand when mom is busy.

Not surprising was the struggle one of my children had with math. This particular kid will quietly be in tears before asking for help. It breaks my heart. After a few hugs and a pep talk about “this is why we’re homeschooling, we can take all the time we need, there are a lot of steps in long division and everyone forgets what’s next at first, etc” the little one was back at work.

I can’t imagine the struggle this child would have in a classroom. This is also the wiggler, the distracted one, the kinesthetic learner. (IS there a math manipulative for long division?!)

It’s now 1:52 and we’re done with school except for History. The baby is napping so I decided to take a coffee/blogging break to rest a bit. We do Story of the World for history, so it requires my full participation. The kids are working on their Science lessons which don’t require much input from me.

It’s only one day in, but the Kanban board for organizing our homeschool day has proven to be a real gift! It keeps me on track so I know at a glance how we’re doing and what’s next.

I’m really pleased with how things are going. I can tell already that my favorite time of day is our Bible reading. We are reading the Bible through together for the first time this year. Already, in our first reading (Genesis 1-3), I’m humbled. Oldest, who is a deep thinker about such things (“Mom, who paid the ransom – did God, or did Jesus?”)  had a question about the Tree of Life that stumped me! That discussion led to more research, and him adding two questions to his personal Bible study notebook for further study.

How did your first day of “Back to School” (any kind of school!) go? Any changes this year in how you’re doing things?

I can hardly believe that our homeschool year begins in just one week! I actually started my planning very early this year. Last year I had a tiny newborn when the school year began, but I was determined not to let things sneak up on me this year.

The school books have been sitting here on a shelf for weeks, and my closet has several bags of shiny new school supplies.

But of course the biggest, most important component is: scheduling and organizing our day.

After creating a kanban board to organize the kid’s chores, it seemed perfectly logical to make one for our homeschool day.

I’m very much a visual learner, and seeing it all laid out like this had several advantages for me:

• I can see possible technology and teacher scheduling conflicts. For instance, only two kids can do Rosetta Spanish at a time because we only have it installed on two computers. And some kids and subjects need my direct involvement, such as Sadie with phonics, and Julien and Ilana with Five in a Row. These “classes” cannot happen at the same time because they require my full attention. Other things, like Sustained Silent Reading, can be done independently.
• The kids can see what they’re supposed to be doing, when – without my input. This is priceless. Nothing is more tiring as a homeschooling mom than to have to round up kids and remind them over and over of what they’re supposed to be doing. Just because I leave the room to change baby’s diaper or what have you, doesn’t mean students get to stray from their work.
• I can stay organized. The alternative is overwhelm, and I’m not interested in that

You can’t really tell from the picture, but things like “Breakfast” and “Recess” and “Chore Time” are written on the right hand side in pencil. We do those things too during the day.

I’m excited about using this system to stay on track. The lovely thing is I can easily move the Post-Its around without re-creating the Kanban board, if adjustments need to be made.

How do you organize your homeschool day?

After a friend urged me to use Rosetta Stone for our home school Spanish, I went ahead and ordered the program.

Today was our first day using it, and everyone loved it!

I found the program quite easy to use and intuitive, and each of the kids scored high on their very first lesson.

My oldest did a second lesson on his own, and my 8 year old daughter seemed especially taken with it.

She worked for about 2 hours on her Spanish lessons.

And this afternoon she rattled off various phrases she had learned. She especially took great joy in calling her brother “la nina” … and laughing hysterically about it. (Because when you’re a 12/13 year old boy, the worst insult is to be called a GIRL!)

The program is easy enough to use that I believe even my youngest school aged kid, Sadie (5) could use it. She will probably progress more slowly through the program, but learning will likely be easier for her due to her age.

I’m pretty proud of myself.

I got 99% on my first lesson, and 100% on most of the subsequent ones.

For us, this won’t just be a home school curriculum thing.

It’s my goal to become fluent in Spanish. So I’ll probably be working on this for years!

And I want the children to be comfortably conversational.

One of my reasons for having a big, sexy goal like learning a new language is due to my Happiness Project.

I realize that I’ve been a bit stagnant for awhile. There really wasn’t any big, life-changing goal that I was tackling. And happiness isn’t about being “comfortable” all the time. There is a nice balance between being stressed and being relaxed. It’s called being challenged. And that’s where the most happiness is found.

Learning a new language will open me up to new experiences, new ways of communicating and becoming closer to people I already know who speak Spanish, and change my thinking in ways I won’t be able to anticipate. Exciting!

Our family has decided that this is the year we will learn a second language.

My stepdaughter is in public school, but she doesn’t have foreign language classes. (Budget cuts maybe?) And my homeschooled kids haven’t had any foreign language instruction yet, despite the fact that their father speaks French (due to his Canadian citizenship) – something I’ll never quite forgive him for!

We decided on Spanish for several reasons.

For one, my husband speaks a little. Second, his father and step mother are fluent (Julia is Costa Rican, and my FIL, though he’s as gringo as they come, speaks fluent Spanish to the point that his English is now sketchy. They reside in Costa, and visiting them is definitely on the to-do list! Not to mention we would be able to communicate with Julia, who speaks no English, and would have built in cheerleaders and coaches).We also have several good friends who are either native Spanish speakers or who speak it conversationally, so we would be able to use our skills on a regular enough basis to keep most of it.

Third, the United States is the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world after Mexico. Also, Spanish is easier to learn than many other languages, and far more practical.

I have been teaching the kids colors and a few vocabulary words in Spanish, but we’re mostly in the research phase of the best way to go about learning Spanish as a family.

I will likely invest in some adult classes. My knowledge of Spanish is muy poquito, so it would probably take me months of daily study to catch up with hubby. I’ve heard great things about Rosetta Stone, but it’s quite expensive, and I think I would do better with the built in accountability of a weekly class and teacher.

Hiring a tutor to come to the house and tutor the kids is prohibitively expensive, unless I’m able to convince a friend to help me out inexpensively (H.G. you know who you are!).

Have you learned Spanish or another second language as a family? How did you go about it?

With all this in mind, I was pretty excited to get this CD in the mail.

Olé & Play! The Songs of Isabella & Ferdinand Spanish Language Adventures

It was put together by the Isabella and Ferdinand folks, who started a Spanish language learning program for kids.

The CD contains original songs used by the Isabella and Ferdinand teachers in their classes for children.

There are several things I really like about the CD.

First of all, the songs are catchy and vibrant, and the kids really enjoy them (I was worried about this at first. I feared the older kids wouldn’t think the music was “cool” enough, but I was wrong!).

My oldest son immediately loved Track 2 (The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria). It sounds a little like it belongs on the soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean. A little regal, and dark. And Pirate-y. That’s because the song is about Christopher Colombus, el capitan, a la conquista de America. He has been studying the liner notes (with lyrics in English and Spanish side by side) several times a day. My favorite song is Track 5, about the Aztec Market. (Is it funny that my favorite song is basically about grocery shopping? LOL) It’s beautiful.

That’s another thing. All the songs have to do with Spanish and Latin heritage and history, which has led to some great discussions about these cultural icons. Some examples: Frida Kahlo (we had a great time reading about her life and viewing some of her art online, which led to a discussion about communism, etc), Diego Rivera, Don Quijote, and more.

Teaching something with song is obviously very effective. I’ve often wished I could remember scripture chapter and verse the way I can remember old Beatles songs! Putting rhyming words to a catchy beat makes memorization almost effortless.

I’ve also been surprised at how much my 5 year old hears in the songs. Several times a day she asks me a question like,

“Mommy what’s that word for girl again?”

“Nina“.

“Nina. Ok.”

“Mommy what does ‘oh-tra vays’ mean?”

“Otra vez, it means again.”

We’re picking up vocabulary without even trying.

Anyway, it’s been a fun jumpstart to our adventure in learning Spanish as a family.

Please leave suggestions in the comments area or link to a great post from your own site if you have any recommendations! Thanks!

It does.

But I’m referring to the book.

Unschooling Rules: 55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education

This book doesn’t start the way many pro home and unschooling books do.

It doesn’t start with the premise that School Is Broke.

It makes no attempt to convince you that what many view as a normal education (public or even private school) is best.

This book begins with Why We Don’t Want To Fix Them.

I loved it.

And it’s one of those books whose brevity is misleading. The short chapters are easy to consume in a few minutes each, but to digest? It may take weeks, months even.

I’ve put off reviewing this book for weeks because I wasn’t sure I would do it justice. Let me quote something from the Afterword:

“The paradigm that children are widgets, little more than raw material for a conveyor-belt education designed to shape and for them, is misguided…

It is a system that is as morally flawed as it is ineffective.”

School is a relatively new experiment, but it’s already outdated. The school model simply won’t work for the kids in our time. Clark Aldrich gives parents and others 55 guidelines on how we need to think about education now.

In my own homeschooling journey, I have habitually leaned more towards the unschooling side of things. It makes little sense to me to reject an idea for my children but then to recreate that same idea in the home.

The implications of some of these 55 guidelines, I think, will take months and maybe even years for me to fully “get”. And unschooling isn’t always “easy”. It’s sometimes hard as a busy parent to ignore the siren song of the worksheet and prepackaged curriculum.

But, our kids are worth it.

A few things you’ll get from the book:

• Why animals are better than books about animals
• What a person in a classroom learns (Ok I’ll tell you: they learn how to be a person in a classroom)
• The 25 critical skills not taught in school
• Anything you “learn” but don’t need or love is lost within weeks

If you’re a homeschooling parent (or if you’re not, and sense that something is terribly wrong with school) I highly recommend this book. (You would also enjoy Clark Aldrich’s blog.)

This afternoon I took a moment to look around the house.

There are hundreds of thin strips of colored paper in various locations around the living room. The remains of an art project that the girls have been picking up and discarding for the last two hours.

Legos and half completed Lego structures take up residence on nearly every flat surface (and some not so flat surfaces, like the sofa).

There are library books, books we own, picture books, novels, homeschool workbooks, nonfiction books, a dictionary, notebook paper, pens, pencils, a glue stick, Sharpies, markers and water glasses littering the coffee table and floor.

There is egg and rice all over the floor, curiously around the high chair, courtesy of a certain 9 month old who shall remain nameless.

The dishes are overflowing the kitchen sink and counters. And dishwasher.

The kid’s rooms look like a tornado came through.

Did I mention it’s 10 AM?

Yes folks, homeschooling is a mess.

I hear homeschooling moms say, “You can either do school, or you can do housework.”

It’s true isn’t it!

How do you deal with the need for order and the need to create a rich learning environment for your kids?

I’ll tell you what we do.

At 4:30 every day it’s officially Chore Time. My phone alarm goes off, even.

(Of course oldest, who does Laundry, does his chore several times a day.)

I used to be one of those “clean as you go” type of people, but I found this was too distracting for the kids.

It’s easier for them when schooltime can have a clear cut “done” time. If there are numerous periods during the day when I or they have to stop schoolwork in order to tidy up, they get too off course, and then I’m back to corralling them back into the living room.

Which is rather like herding cats. Or using spaghetti for bookends.

Some days it’s just fine with me, but other days the Beautiful Disaster really gets on my nerves. Today was one of those days where I was having to talk myself out of a panic attack at it all. I did my best to ignore it while doing read alouds, math, history, geography, etc. I did ok. But I wish I could be more relaxed about the mounting piles. Instead, my face contorts into this kind of nervous twitch.

How do you handle the mess of homeschooling?

This week I started using a new curriculum with my 8 year old Ilana. Something about Five In a Row has always appealed to me but I didn’t feel very motivated to change what I was doing, curriculum wise, until recently.

One of the many wonderful things about homeschooling is that nothing is ever set in stone. You can change things on a dime if they’re not working for your family, for you or for your child.

Ilana has been unhappy for a few months now. I thought it would pass, but it became a daily struggle to get her to do her schoolwork. I don’t run a super strict homeschool so I felt that she was going through a bit of a lazy phase, and tried to ride it out.

She spent some time in public school, and enjoyed the experience at first, but then began begging for me to take her out and homeschool her again. Since the public school experience was only ever meant to be temporary, it didn’t take much for me to do just that. Things were fine for about a year.

For several weeks recently, however, she started asking me to put her back into school. Something I really don’t want to do! She kept complaining that 2nd grade math was “too easy”, but 3rd grade was “too hard”. She “didn’t like Science”. She does well in History, perhaps because we use Story of the World and have a storytelling kind of approach. I searched around for a curriculum that would excite her a little more and be more her style.

Ilana is a huge bookworm.

She easily consumes a chapter book every day, often more. She’s read classics like A Little Princess and the Anne of Green Gables books a few times.. She devours stacks of picture books. She reads in her bed for at least 30 minutes every night until we flip off her light switch (to many protests!).

I thought a literature based curriculum would be just the ticket, and I remembered Five In a Row.

What is Five in a Row?

Five In a Row is a bit difficult to describe with a pithy little statement. Basically it consists of a Five in a Row volume (lesson plan/teacher guide) and a list of books, all of them the best of the best of children’s literature. One book is read to the child aloud each day for 5 days (your school week). And then the book is used as a springboard for discussion and work in other subjects that come out of the content of the book. You can use one day each week to “do” Social Studies/Geography, Language, Art, Applied Math, and Science.

As an example, our first week we are doing Three Names by Patricia MacLachlan (she also wrote the Sarah, Plain and Tall books which later became movies). (This book is on the list for Five In a Row Volume 2, which is the one I started with.)

Three Names is about a young boy who lived on the prairie about 150 years ago. He has a canine best friend who accompanies him to school every day, an experience they both love. The book chronicles a school year and ends with graduation and summer. There are a host of topics that could be considered for further study: Pioneer life (outhouses and one room schoolhouses), the Prairie, animals such as Prairie Dogs and horses, weather phenomenon such as tornadoes, the relationship between people and their pets, and more.

Using Five in a Row

After reading the book (how each school day begins), the first day I had Ilana write down vocabulary words from the book (aggie, tethered, graduation, etc) and their definitions (covering language arts).We discussed the meanings of hyperbole and simile, and she wrote examples of each in a notebook.

The second day she looked up information on the prairie online and also read a brief bio of Patricia MacLachlan (social studies). She wrote a descriptive paragraph (how it felt, smelled, etc) about a familiar place (language arts). She found the prairie states on a map (geography).

The third day she read about prairie dogs in an animal encyclopedia (science), colored pages about the prairie, cut and pasted them into a notebook (art), and wrote a book report (her idea) (language arts). She made a chart with “past” things (schoolhouses, outhouses, horse and buggy, etc) and their modern counterparts (large schools, indoor plumbing, cars and buses).

Tomorrow and Friday we will discuss the artwork in the book (for duh, art) and delve into learning about tornadoes (science).

The Five in a Row volumes have all of the lesson plans for the parent. Contrary to what some of the websites suggest, however, I found that it takes me much longer than “5 minutes” to gather the materials I need each day. Since this is my first week, I don’t have a system yet for gathering the materials I need but once I do, I’ll try to have that done only once a week or perhaps even once a month.

I also have Ilana doing a little math each day, separate from the Five in a Row book. Although a younger child could probably learn math by doing various book centered activities, those seem a little simplistic for her. There IS a “Beyond Five in a Row” volume for the 8-12 year old set, but I felt that would be a little too advanced for her. She just turned 8 and is finishing up the 2nd grade.

The only downside I see so far is that (and perhaps this is because she’s older, FIAR is recommended for ages 4-8 so she’s at the upper range of that), she has asked me a few times “Why we’re reading the same book over and over“. I found this surprising, since most kids love hearing the same book repeatedly. Maybe this is because she’s such an avid reader, her attention span requires fresh material. Not sure. Anyway, I assure her that she can read whatever she wants after we’re done, and that we can learn something new from each reading. I also make sure I read other books aloud to her in addition.

Also, sometimes at the end of the day I worry that Ilana didn’t do “enough” schoolwork. It makes me a little nervous, but I’m sure that feeling will pass as we get more into the groove of it, and I get more organized with gathering supplemental material. (Because, um, how many 2nd graders could tell you what simile and hyperbole are?!) Homeschooling several children means that I can’t spent a lot of time focusing on one, and a curriculum like FIAR could take up a lot of time if you let it.

Other than that one complaint, Ilana seems to be really enjoying FIAR so far. Another thing she really enjoys is doing lots of art. I think unit study/lapbooking is a good fit for her, because she loves drawing, coloring, cutting, pasting and making little books.

I bought the second Five in a Row volume and most of the books on the book list as a lot from one eBay seller, so this curriculum ended up being very inexpensive. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an item from eBay in which the seller took time to rave about the product *after* I had made Paypal payment! That told me something about Five in a Row. From what I’ve read online, it seems parents who use it really come to love it. You can also get the FIAR volumes on Amazon. I have most of the books already that make up the book list, and the few I don’t own I was able to obtain through inter-library loan at my library.

There are few things I enjoy better than cuddling up on the couch with a kid and a great book, so this has been fun for me so far too. Since the curriculum is so flexible, it really suits my homeschooling style. I can see it being a great thing for Sadie (5) once I start doing more formal schooling with her. (There is a “Before Five In a Row” for the pre-K set, I’m still looking into that, but I don’t usually do much formal stuff until my kids are around 7.)

Five in A Row has lots of great resources online, both from the publishers and homeschooling parents who love it. A Google search turned up plenty of links to printables, more recommended reading, topics for discussion, and a lot more.

Homeschooling moms can’t call in a sub.

But sometimes we have those days.

This morning I just don’t have the energy to teach anyone.

I also don’t have the energy to fight with my 8 year old daughter who is going through one of those temporary phases homeschooled kids go through, where they become resistant to doing any schoolwork. (She would be quite happy to read for several hours, which makes me think perhaps I should change to a reading based curriculum for her? Advice is most welcome!)

I know she’ll grow out of it. In the past she was one of my easier kids to teach, but now she and her 10 year old brother have switched places (I think they meet together late at night and plot out how to make mom nuts). Now she is the hard one, and he is the diligent one.

Or maybe it’s because the baby has just recovered from Roseola but is still fussy and doesn’t want me to do anything but pay attention to her. And she’s been waking me up all night for a week.

Maybe it’s because I’m on day 23 of my cycle which means my energy is turned inward anyway.

Not sure.

So I announced to the children that today was Unschooling Day.

I expected them to jump up and down and shout, “Hooray!”.

Curiously, I got no reaction other than, “Why?” from the 10 year old. See below.

What were they doing when I made this particular announcement?

The oldest is finishing up the last book in the Lord of the Rings series. (He devoured the first two last week.)

The 10 year old is creating soda machines out of Legos that actually work. (You have to insert “money” to make the mechanism work, and a little Lego Coke can spits out. He’s also making videos showing how he does it and uploading them to YouTube.)

The 8 year old is reading the Sunday comics, then cutting them out and pasting them onto paper bags that say “Ilana’s money”, etc. Maybe it’s her version of the Envelope System of budgeting?

The 5 year old is working in her garden.

She planted wildflowers in pots on our back deck.

Every day she dutifully tends to them.

As homeschooling moms, sometimes we feel a lot of pressure to be perfect, to be “on” all the time so that we present a good image to people. But we’re human, and sometimes we have bad days. That’s ok.

I guess the kids’ll be alright. You think?

I told Sadie, 5, that I was working on a curriculum for character development for our homeschool.

She said:

“I want my character to be Dora!”

“No sweetie I don’t mean a cartoon character. Character development means the kind of person you are.”

“I know what kind of person I am!”

“I know honey. I mean being an even better person, the best person you can be.“

If you’re like most homeschoolers, your children’s character development is every bit as important to you (perhaps more important) as their academic success.

photo credit: jimmiehomeschoolmom

I decided that this year we were going to spend one week delving into one character trait. Initially I wrote down a whole list of character traits that I wanted to study. But then, I stumbled upon this site:  Character Counts. I realized that the characteristics I had listed all fell under the 6 pillars.

So I created a curriculum for us. It’s really quite simple, and I am sharing the character development worksheet I typed out. (It’s a Google doc.)

Our character development curriculum will look something like this:

1. I introduce the character trait of the week by reading a definition of it.
2. We discuss and fill out the worksheet together.
3. Through the week we read stories and books (aloud as a group and separately) about people who demonstrated this trait – whether that be Bible stories, fictional characters, or biographies of real people in history. (Even animals demonstrate character in a sense – ants are diligent, lions courageous, etc.) Since we go to the library once a week, I’m going to reserve books ahead of time so they’ll be waiting for us when we go.
4. Sadie (who is too young to fill out the worksheet) will draw a picture of someone demonstrating the characteristic. (A kid cleaning their room would demonstrate Responsibility, a sister sharing is demonstrating Caring, etc). The other kids can do this in addition to the worksheet if they like.
5. During the week we look for examples of how we can demonstrate the character trait and of how we may have failed to do so (that part is mostly my job. I’m hoping that this repetition will help the kids internalize the meaning of good character as well as help them with vocabulary.

I got a file folder for each of the kids and inside it put 6 copies of the worksheet (one for each character trait) and the printout of the definition of the 6 pillars.  They can also put notes, booklists, journal pages, drawings etc in there.The kids will keep these all year for review as needed. ( Read: when they’re being naughty and need a reminder!)

Please feel free to share the worksheet with anyone you wish, you can also edit it if you like (not via Google docs, you’ll have to copy and paste it to create a new one).

Here’s the link again: Free printable character development worksheet for homeschoolers. (If you aren’t Christian, you could easily remove the references to God and scripture and replace them with something appropriate for your family.)

How do you do character development in your homeschool? Do you have any resources to recommend?

1:35 pm. It’s quiet time.

The kids are in their beds writing in their journals and reading books.

photo credit: jimmiehomeschoolmom

The 12 year old has done vocabulary (he’s studying Latin and Greek root words) and sign language.

The 9 year old did math, language arts and reading. He helped his little sister with regrouping.

The 7 year old has completed her science, math and reading work.

The almost 5 year old practiced her letters and recited from memory “read” two books to me (ahem).

We haven’t done history yet (which we do altogether as a group), because I’m waiting for our history curriculum to arrive in the mail.

We read a chapter of the Bible together and discussed it.

We even managed to squeeze in grocery shopping.

Did I mention how much I love homeschooling?

A couple of things we’re doing differently this year:

I’ve been reading about Charlotte Mason and her educational philosophies, and I like what I’m learning. I’m adapting a few of her methods to our homeschool day. We’ll try it on for size and see how it works for us. I like the idea of short, ultra focused lessons that last 20 minutes. I like the idea of dictation, something we haven’t done before.

Are you doing anything new this year?

photo credit: whgrad

A reader had this question so I am publishing it here to get the wisdom and advice of other homeschooling moms:

“Hi. My son 8 year old son is recently homeschooled – he’s currently finishing up the 2nd grade. He was a good student in public school and his teachers loved him. We have an “eclectic” and relaxed homeschool style so I am no hardnose, but even still I have trouble getting him to do any schoolwork. He says he doesn’t like to read.

Math is “sort of” ok with him, and he likes to do hands on things like take apart gadgets, draw diagrams, work with electronics, color, draw and write stories. He is very intelligent but not especially gifted verbally. He seems to have a real knack for building and fixing things (working with wood, playing Lego). He also loves computers.

I realize that he may never be a big reader and don’t want to push him, but some reading is of course necessary. I need some suggestions on how to engage him in a way that works with his learning style. (By the way I am divorced so I can’t fully embrace unschooling, his father is critical of that and I have to be accountable to him as part of our parenting plan.)

Would you publish this on your blog so I can see how other homeschoolers have handled this?

Thanks!”

Do you have any advice for this mom? I’m curious if there is a homeschool curriculum available that caters to kids like this…?

Please leave them in the comments.

And how do homeschooled kids “turn out” as adults?

These are two questions that people often wonder about homeschooling. And even those of us who have experienced it often wonder the latter question.

Will my kids learn “everything they need to know” if I have an eclectic homeschooling style?

Natalie Wickham is a homeschooling “graduate” whose book, Pajama School – Stories From The Life of a Homeschool Graduate, gives you a peek inside the daily life of a large homeschooling family.

As I read this book I found myself thinking, “Yep, that’s exactly what it’s like!” over and over.

As Natalie describes new babies being added to the family, the homeschooling “routine” being shot to heck when major life events occur (and how that hardly matters in the end), how the daily grind of home educating changes over time.

If, as a homeschooling parent, you have concerns about specific areas of your child’s education (how will they learn higher math if I don’t remember how to do it!?, etc) you will find this book reassuring.

Natalie’s experience ( if there is such a thing as a “typical” homeschooler…) seems typical of so many homeschool graduates I’ve talked to and read about. She forged her own path. It may not have looked exactly like someone else’s, but her homeschool experience helped make her who she is. At one point, Natalie was working inside the public school system offering classes to help teach children  character qualities. In her words:

“… I realized how much the environment in a public school setting pressures teachers to focus on maintaining structure and measuring results, while at the same time squelching opportunities for sincere academic inquiry and intellectual discussion.

… students were forced to conform to the mold that required them to  be passive learners rather than creative thinkers.“

Natalie has graciously offered a copy of her book to one NaturalMomsTalkRadio reader.

If you would like to have a copy, please leave a comment below. Be sure to include a valid email address so I can get in touch with you.

The winner will randomly be chosen on Tuesday, July 21 at NOON Eastern time.

Thanks for playing!

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

There have been a few things that have surprised me about public school. As you know, I enrolled my 3 older kids into the local elementary school a few weeks ago.

Not all of the things are bad.

For instance, I’m surprised at how much they like school.

Even though my oldest is having problems tolerating many of the kids in his class, he likes school overall and is liked by his teachers. He did awesome on the CRCTs (standardized tests) and has impressed his teachers and the “good” kids (read: girls).

My 8 year old son was Student of the Month last week.

He was presented with a special award and commended for his exemplary conduct and effort. I was very proud for him. (He has also fallen madly in love with a hot little Mamacita in his class named Jasmin, but that’s another blog post!).

Schools are very good at positive reinforcement.

My oldest was taken by his music teacher to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the historic Fox  Theater. They have something called “Eagle Bucks”that the kids earn for good conduct and hard work and they can spend these dollars at the end of the week. My 8 year old came home with a love note from his teacher, commending him on his hard work the first week. I cried.

I also really like the school administrators and staff.

I think they’re awesome people who are doing really well to do their jobs with integrity and care.

One thing I don’t like is the abundance of candy offered. It seems my 6 year old comes home with a lollipop almost every day. Um, not pleased. What happened to stickers or pencils or other non cavity inducing stuff like that?

And does this contribute to my daughter being so darn moody after school?

I’ve noticed the kids fight with each other more.

I’m sure it’s because they’re a bit overwhelmed and tired at the end of the day. My 6 year old has picked up an accent from her peers, as well as a very fierce way of talking. I don’t like it.

I had lunch with my oldest last week and was shocked at the behavior of the 5th graders. When I was in school, we had to have a bit of decorum in the lunchroom. We could talk and have fun of course, but the volume had to be kept at an acceptable level. This lunchroom was deafening and overwhelming for me – an adult.

Not to mention, some of these kids are huge. Some of them were bigger than me. In comparison my son looked so small and vulnerable. It really made me nervous.

He is the only blue eyed, blonde, caucasian child in his class and in one of only a handful in the entire school. He gets a bit of discrimination targeted at him.

I’ve made it my aim to raise children who see no color, and I think I’ve succeeded in that. My children do not classify people as “black” and “white”.  In fact they call anyone with a shade of skin different from their own “brown”. And usually people with lighter skin are called “beige” or “light” or whatever.

My youngest is the only caucasian in her class and couldn’t care less, and the aforementioned girl crush of my son? She is Latina.

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks the way I do about race.

My oldest child is referred to as a racist by one of the little punks in his class. Interestingly, several of the girl students came to his defense, and they even asked him to sit with them at lunch (the boys and girls sit separately, by choice). They knew it wasn’t true, and the accuser was basically an idiot.

I told him the boys were probably just jealous and using the racist thing to try to get to him. Thing is, it is getting to him a little bit. The other day he stomped a kid on the foot for being verbally abusive to  him. I think he had taken all he could take. The teacher wasn’t overly concerned about it, because it was out of character.

I’ve decided not to send him to middle school next year.

Everyone I speak to says that middle school is worse than high school in terms of the behavior of the kids. He’ll be back home with me. He’s such an independent learner, he requires very little from me by way of instruction anyway.

Caleb has a very difficult time with the language his peers use, the jokes they tell – in short he has been raised to think about pleasing God in his daily life. He is literally offended by much of the behavior he sees, and it wears on him. His teacher has told me that he is free to leave the classroom at any time to take a 5 minute breather, grab some quiet if he needs to.

I’m ok with the middles going back to public school next year.

Ilana will be in 1st grade and Julien in 3rd. Julien still struggles a LOT with his reading, but I think that Jasmin and the positive peer pressure of the other kids has done some good in helping him to work harder. His teachers are understandably impressed with his good conduct.

School lunch isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

The meals are actually quite well balanced and the bread is whole grain, there are no desserts served and there are veggies and fruit with each meal. But the milk is low fat, which bothers me. Doesn’t everyone know that children should NOT be on a low fat diet?

I don’t pack their lunches anymore because they don’t want me to, and they were not eating half of what I packed in there. They kept begging me to let them eat lunch like the rest of their class mates, and so I relented.

But the WASTE… oh my goodness.

There are no longer real silverware and reusable plastic cups and lunch trays. Each child is served a disposable tray, a plastic wrapped disposable fork and knife combo, and EACH bit of food is in a disposable plastic dish. It’s sickening to think about how much waste ONE school creates each day from school lunches.

Another thing that surprises me?

I actually like getting up at 6:30 every day to drive the kids to school.

Once an unthinkable idea, more and more families are pulling their children with special needs out of the public school system and are homeschooling them. Their diagnoses can range from ADD, ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, and dyslexia to medically fragile.

Many families spend a lot of time and energy “fighting the system” to get an inclusive education for their children. Homeschooling is the most naturally inclusive way to educate a child there is. Instead of being segregated in a room with similar functioning peers, they have the opportunity to interact and learn from their families and in the community.

Your child will have the freedom to learn at his/her own pace without the potential stigma of being in a special education class, or being warehoused in a resource room. You can tailor the curriculum around what motivates and inspires him or her.

Does teaching a child with special needs require specific training or a master’s degree? No. As a parent, you are your child’s first and best teacher. With the amazing amount of information at our fingertips in the Information Age, parents can easily find the help and information they need to homeschool.

You will need support. HSLDA.org is a great place to start. It answers frequently asked questions and has a great list of resources. They have two special needs coordinators who will be more than happy to spend time on the phone with you and help point you in the right direction. (You do need to be a member, the fee is a very nominal $8 per month.) A local teacher or consultant who is supportive of homeschooling will also be beneficial.

Here are a few additional helpful resources to check out:

The Home School Starter Kit (includes copy of Home Schooling Children with Special Needs, a CD-ROM entitled Understanding and Teaching Struggling Learners, a DVD of Program Planning for the Special Needs Child Workshop and an accompanying Curriculum Planning Guide from Almaden Valley Christian school. They also offer nationwide consulting services.

Christine Field has written several good homeschooling titles including Homeschooling the Challenging Child and Help for the Harried Homeschooler.

Sue Patrick has developed a workbox system inspired by her experiences teaching her child with autism and also offers consulting services. This is a great system to help you get organized and increase your child’s self control and independence. It has been the talk of my homeschool community the last few weeks.

Homeschooling your child with special needs can be tough, but may also be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done.

Marya Mesa is living the chaotic suburban life in the Tampa Bay area with her husband, four children (two of whom have learning disabilities and one has Down Syndrome) and assorted pets. You can read her blog at http://www.suncoastmom.com

I didn’t enjoy history at all when I was in school. But I love history with my homeschool kids.

The way we do history is really simple, and easy for a homeschooling mom. Instead of each individual kid doing their own history curriculum, we all sit down together and learn history – including me! One reason I do this is because when you’re homeschooling multiple children, you don’t have time for everyone to do their own thing all the time. Math they obviously have to do alone because they are at very different skill levels, but some subjects (like science and history) lend themselves well to group study.

We use Susan Wise Bauer‘s Story of the World books. Susan Wise Bauer has written several excellent books about education and even has a couple of books on history for adults. She is a proponent of the Classical homeschool. While I’m not following a Classical style curriculum, I still like these books for a number of reasons.

One, they teach history chronologically.

That is the only way to do history that makes any sense at all to me. Why do kids in public school learn about United States history first? As if the U.S.A. is the center of the universe? How do they understand the people and the situations that led to the “founding” of this country if they don’t understand all the stuff that came before?

Second, the books are written from a Christian perspective which I consider a plus, but doesn’t teach doctrine. Teaching doctrine is my job.

Third, I find the books are written in simple, clear language so that I can teach history to the 6 year old, 8 year old and 10 year old without anyone getting bored or it being too difficult.

I figure that traditionally, history was taught orally, passed down from one generation to the other. So when we sit down to do history, we read a section of the book together, then discuss it.

I highlight any vocabulary words and ask the kids what the meaning is, which they’re almost always able to tell me, from the context of the story.

The Story of the World series also has activity books available that you can use if you wish. These would be great for older kids who might want more challenge. I think it would be very easy to supplement the books with extra activities of your own design.

For example when doing the chapter on the First Nomads from Volume One, you could check out books from the library and read more about nomads. You could eat a paleo diet for a week, relying on foods that are in season or that you can kill locally. (Hey why not?!)

My oldest has already completed the first book: The Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor and has started on Volume Two: The Middle Ages. But he sits in on the lessons in Volume 1 with his siblings for a review.

He really enjoys these books and will sit and read them for bedtime stories without any prompting from me. That is a good sign, no?

How do you do homeschool history?

::Updated August 2011::

We still use Story of the World and love it. My oldest doesn’t do history with us, however, as his comprehension level is so far ahead of the two middle kids.

After reading the lesson by himself, I give him the test out of the Text and Answer Key. The younger kids go through the activities and questions from the Activity Book with me after we read the lesson aloud together.

One of the concern that people have about home schooling is the socialization aspect. Will the children get to interact with other kids? This topic has been blown way out of proportion.I’m going to share my thoughts on the socialization issue and tell you how my kids are being socialized.

First of all, What is socialization?

Warning: Unsocialized Homeschoolers Ahead

(For fun, you can download this Free Unsocialized Homeschoolers danger sign)

Kids interacting and learning to work with others (“plays nicely with others” “shares”, etc) on a daily basis is one part. Learning to take turns, learning how to not interrupt – these are the social skills we want our kids to learn.

Let’s be honest. In schools, there are bullies, unstable people, teachers with issues of their own, and a lot of other behavior problems that children will be subject to. Socialization in the public school can become a nightmare because of discipline issues. My VERY brief stint as a substitute teacher provided plenty of evidence of this.

Putting 30+ kids of the same age in a room together doesn’t seem the ideal way to teach them socially appropriate behaviors. It seems to me that kids will learn this stuff by observing the people who (hopefully) have mastered these skills – their parents.

Kids are naturally social creatures – we all are. Unless we teach them to be otherwise, they will gravitate towards other kids they don’t know simply out of curiosity. School is not the only place to find new friends.

Home schooled children can participate in the same after school and weekend programs as public and private school children. Programs like 4-H, Boy and Girl Scouts, YMCA, and church groups offer chances to interact with other people. There is no shortage of opportunities to see other kids their age. My kids play with the neighbors, play with other kids at the gym, have friends over, etc. They interact with kids on homeschool field trips and spend time with other kids that we worship with. Just yesterday, they had friends over to play for most of the morning and afternoon. Then they played with some kids at the park, then at the gym.

When I was a teen and homeschooled, it was great because my best friend was also homeschooled, so we could do sleepovers in the middle of the week and do our work together. It was great! I also had many friends all over the state who were also homeschooled – some I got together with on the weekends, some were penpals I saw infrequently, but I certainly never lacked for a social life.

Homeschooling parents fiind that there are many opportunities to teach their kids social skills in the course of the week. I almost always have them with me when I am shopping, banking, running errands, etc. This provides an opportunity for me to teach them appropriate behaviors, such as looking at an adult when they’re spoken to and answering politely. (I don’t require my children to answer personal questions addressed to them by adults who don’t have any business knowing the answer, that’s just rude and I will point that out to my kids later.)

Typically, they get compliments on their behavior when we go out. When I remember to do so, it helps when I remind them of what kind of behavior I expect from them before we go into the situation.

Home schooled kids don’t spend all day, every day in the house. Finding friends is not any more of a concern for them than it is for any other kids, regardless of how they’re educated.

The more I think about it, the sillier the entire unsocialized homeschooler myth seems. Since school as we do it today is such a modern invention, and people seem to get ruder and less well mannered as time goes on… hmm, maybe there’s a connection?

Oh, man.

I could get lost on this site for hours. I mentioned TED.com on this other blog post about an unlikely unschooling advocate.

Here is another awesome video by a big thinker. Even if you don’t agree, watch anyway and I promise you’ll enjoy it. This guy is hilarious!

The topic of the talk is how our education system kills creativity. How it overvalues certain skills and intelligences and completely ignores and devalues others, to our society’s detriment.

Great quotes from the talk:

“We are educating people out of their creativity.”

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

– Picasso

One of the questions people ask when they come across homeschooling parents is how they manage to teach their kids when they have more than one. Since so many homeschooling families seem to have larger families, it can certainly be done and it’s not as difficult as some might think. In fact, there are certain advantages to homeschooling when you have several kids.

For parents making the decision to homeschool, the fact that they have more than one child may concern them. They might fear that they won’t have enough time to focus on each child’s education enough.

Here are some tips to help you juggle your various children’s needs while you teach your kids at home.

Homeschooling Multiple Children: When You Have Babies and Toddlers

Homeschooling the older kids when you have babies and toddlers in the house is probably the most challenging time. With a baby or tot small enough to be held a lot, you can use a sling to keep your youngest close and happy and meet his needs while you read to or work with older children.

Use feeding times for study periods and read aloud time.

Since you’ll likely be sitting down to feed your baby anyway, have your other child(ren) read to you or sit them on your other side and read aloud to them. Your baby will benefit too from hearing words read aloud. They will learn that reading is a pleasurable activity, and hearing all those words spoken will improve their own vocabulary and reading skills later on.

For preschool and Kindergarteners, a literature based curriculum like Five In a Row may be just the thing if you have lots of little kids.

Create and enforce quiet time/nap time.

When your baby or toddler is napping is an ideal time for more focused attention on the schoolwork, but what if nobody is still napping? Create and enforce quiet time. This is a good time for you to regroup and rest or catch up a struggling reader or child who needs some extra attention with school.

Keep little ones busy.

Toddlers and preschoolers can “do school” in the same area when older children are doing seatwork. Keep them stocked with appropriate arts and crafts activities to do. Likely they’ll pick up on much of the discussion going on during school time.

If this doesn’t work well for your kids and you need to separate them, try moving around the house a little. Perhaps the older child(ren) can sit at the dining room table for a bit and the younger ones use the floor or coffee table in the living room. Or an older child can do schoolwork at a desk in their room or a parent’s office.

If you have older children, let them take turns taking care of the baby/toddler in the house for short periods. This allows you to spend some one on one time with each child during the day.

Homeschooling Multiple Children: Your Older Kids

If your children are older (and certainly once they’re all reading well!), things are a little easier. They no longer need much supervision. Most older homeschooled kids are pretty accustomed to figuring things out on their own and coming to you when they get stuck and need some help or to get more information. And for trips to the library!

With older kids, you can definitely use their size and maturity to help you get things done around the house, increasing the time you have available for homeschooling projects and field trips.

Get your kids involved in chores and meal preparation.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Learning how to clean up, complete simple handy projects around the house, do laundry and cook is very important real life preparation. In the old days, they called this stuff home economics!

If you have a child who is old enough, teach them how to prepare simple meals on their own without your assistance. A child as young as 7 can be taught how to make toast, eggs, oatmeal, sandwiches, cut vegetables and fruits, etc. After my youngest was born, my oldest son was a huge help to me because he could make snacks and easy meals for me. He was only 7 but he could do a lot around the kitchen. Now at ten, he loves to bake snacks and desserts, bake bread from scratch (no bread machine, he kneads the dough by hand), and help with dinner.

Meal prep isn’t just about eating and helping mom, but also reinforces reading, math and science skills.

A child as young as 3 can take their folded laundry to be put away in their dresser. Older kids can bring you dirty laundry, help fold and put things away when they’re done. Children can operate a vacuum properly from the time they’re around 6. A 5 year old can sweep small messes (like crumbs under the table) with a hand held broom and dustpan.

The reason I mention this is because as a homeschooling family, your house will likely get messier simply due to the fact that the kids are in it more hours of the day!

Forego summer and other lengthy vacations and do school year round.

Teaching through the summer can make up for lost time you experience during the year due to having a baby or illness or other family challenges that come up. Some parents even do a little schoolwork on the weekends. Why should learning be limited to 5 days a week?

One of the best things about homeschooling is the fact that learning can take place anytime, anywhere. Sometimes I even have to urge my kids to stop reading or building or creating and Go.To.Bed. My oldest can often be found reading his Science book at 10 PM (past his bedtime!).

Use your support network.

Can your husband, grandparents, or babysitters help the kids with schoolwork in the evenings and on weekends? Or are their other experiences your family and friends can expose your child to? Does your local homeschool support group offer a co-op? You don’t have to go it alone. Your children will benefit from different people’s perspective.

Avoid the “school at home” mentality.

Contrary to popular belief, homeschooling doesn’t involve sitting across the table from your child for several hours a day doing schoolwork. Most homeschoolers do not follow this model and the ones that do, burn out really quickly and either quit entirely or change their methods. Usually everyone is much happier!

Use curriculum that isn’t instructor intensive.

This means that you won’t have to spend a lot of time in prep work each day/week. The kids will be able to dig right in to their work, saving time. If the curriculum you’ve chosen requires you to spend a lot of time preparing lesson plans, it might not work for your family situation. That’s ok. Choose another!

On the other hand, unit studies, which do require more advance planning on the part of the parent, can allow children of different ages to learn together since everyone can do activities on their skill level. Try it out and see what works best for your situation. You don’t have to find the “perfect” solution right away.

Encourage working together.

Older kids can help younger kids with their schoolwork when you can’t be available. This reinforces the older child’s skills – the best way to learn something is to teach it! It can also increase goodwill among children.

You might want to forgo a traditional preschool curriculum for 3 to 5 year olds and let the younger kids learn alongside the older ones.

Encourage independence.

Allow older kids leeway in their school schedule. You may even want to let them choose their own curriculum or how they learn various subjects.

And finally, don’t set yourself up for failure with a rigid schedule. Adding pregnancy, a new baby, toddlers, and preschoolers to the mix can be challenging for any parent, and if you’re homeschooling, you especially need to be realistic about what you can accomplish. You might want to adopt an eclectic homeschooling style or even unschool for a period (or permanently).

If you ever doubt that your children are getting a good education because of homeschooling during their various ages and stages, think about what school was like for many people in this country a hundred years ago. Schoolkids of all ages were put in one room together with one teacher and this system produced a generation of Americans that were far more literate than modern generations!

Create a flexible, visual Schedule

When it comes to organizing your homeschool day, creating a visual schedule may work best for you. If you can SEE everything at a glance, you can see where there may be “bottlenecks” in your day and shuffle things around for a better fit. Also, if the kids can SEE the schedule prominently, they’re more likely to stay on task.

Finally here is a book recommendation. Homeschooling More Than One Child: A Practical Guide for Families is a wonderful book that has hundreds of tips and bits of advice for families. The author is a homeschooling mom of 4 who also founded a homeschool support group in her state.

Every homeschooling parent knows that a well stocked library is one of their most important investments. In addition to great works of literature, reference books like dictionaries and encyclopedias, however, there are also wonderful books on the topic of homeschooling itself that I consider must reads.

Here are a few of my favorites.

photo credit: The University of Adelaide

100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing The Right Curriculum And Approach For Your Child’s Learning Style

One of the most important (and first) decisions you’ll make is finding the best home school curriculum. You want one that matches your educational philosophy and that also works with your child’s learning style. This book makes this process of picking one among the many available choices so much easier. It’s a must read for parents at the start of their homeschool journey or for any homeschooling parent who wants to make a change in their home education.

The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child by Susan Wise Bauer
Susan Wise Bauer is the author of several books on classical homeschooling. Her Story of the World series are well loved by home educators. They help parents create a living history experience for children and I enjoy them too, which is no small thing considering history was my least favorite subject in school! I think I enjoyed going through the first volume more than my son did. The Story of the World books also have companion workbooks for those who wish to use them alongside the volumes, especially for older children.

Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling
John Holt has been called the “father of unschooling”. His name is frequently mentioned among homeschooling advocates and pops up on message forums and websites for home educators frequently. As a former public school teacher turned unschooling advocate, Holt has penned several wonderful books on the topic of how children learn and why the public school system is failing.

What I truly love about Holt is how he encourages parents to trust their child’s learning process. Reading Holt gives you confidence that as a homeschooling parent you’re capable of educating your child and preparing them for adult life better than anyone else can.

The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities for Kids Ages 3-12 by Linda Dobson

This one is another favorite among homeschooling parents. One of the ongoing challenges homeschoolers face is how we can teach our kids the most important subjects: reading, writing and math every day without boring ourselves and our children. This book offers hundreds of ideas that will keep things fresh and interesting for you as you teach your kids at home. It will also assist you in meeting your individual children’s needs since they differ in ability and learning style.

The Kingfisher First Books
The Kingfisher First Animal Book and The Kingfisher First Human Body Book are wonderful for preschoolers and young children and could form the basis of early science curriculum. The other titles in the Kingfisher lineup are also excellent resource materials for homeschooling families.

photo credit: wmshc_kiwi

The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom by Mary Griffiths
Unschooling, or child directed learning, is practiced by an estimated 10 – 15% of American parents. This book teaches you how to use the “whole world as your child’s curriculum” and is a breath of fresh air to parents who trust their children to learn naturally with minimal outside interference.

There are many other awesome books for homeschooling parents, but these are a few of my personal favorites. Please share some of your favorites in the comments.

This is fascinating, but not terribly surprising to homeschooling parents!

(And by the way, if you haven’t discovered Ted, you must check out the site. The videos are interesting and wonderful to share with your kids to stimulate thinking and discussion on a lot of meaningful topics.

This particular video I had to tell you about because it beautifully illustrates how children are capable of teaching themselves without any adult assistance.

According to the site:

“Sugata Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest.”

Sugata repeated the experiment over and over, and found similarly remarkable results each time. In one, a 13 year old boy spent 8 minutes browsing the internet and using the computer (he had never used a computer in his life), yet by the end of the day, 60 kids had been taught by him to do the same.

In another city, a group of kids taught themselves not only how to use the computer and programs, but had learned 200 English words! None of them spoke English previously. They had to learn in order to understand the computer. Amazing.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

The concluding message?

“Education does not have to be imposed.”

From Ted.com: “Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own — and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?”

photo credit: mia3mom

If you’re a homeschooling veteran, you could meet the new year with either excitement or a sense of dread.

How can you make sure that homeschooling keeps on meeting your child’s needs and brings you joy too?

Maybe you need to make some changes in how you do things.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, and your children will feed off of your emotions. If you’re bored and frustrated, they will be too.

What can you do about this situation? Any suggestions?

What will you do differently this year with your homeschoolers?

Homeschooling has cost me very little. In fact I bet I’ve spent less to homeschool my kids than I would have if they were in public school.

Making lunch at home is cheap. I drive less because of homeschooling, saving gas money. I don’t have to buy lists of school supplies. There is no junky overpriced stuff to buy in the name of a “school fundraiser”, and no kids to schlep around town to sell said junk.

I’ll admit – when I crack open some of those homeschooling or educational supply catalogs, my mouth waters! I have intentionally stayed away from the homeschool conferences for this reason too. No need to tempt myself with things that I probably don’t even need, or could acquire cheaply with a little creativity.

My overall philosophy on learning is that it doesn’t take money to get a good education. Forget what the politicians tell you, they’re trying to buy your vote with propaganda. Research has shown that more money thrown at the education system in this country doesn’t mean a darn thing in terms of the results. (Neither does class size, but that’s another blog post!)

Most of the well educated people we think of throughout history spent almost nothing on their education. For example, legend has it that Abraham Lincoln taught himself math with ONE piece of chalk and a slate. Great thinkers like Mark Twain learned from the people and events going on around them, not from fancy and colorful things sold in catalogs.

I have heard people say that homeschooling is expensive – not homeschoolers themselves, but people thinking about doing it.

They start pricing curriculum that costs hundreds (or more!) out of the box and wonder how they’re going to afford it – they’re also likely thinking of the cost of keeping one parent at home to oversee the child’s schooling.

The following ideas are some of the ways I’ve been able to homeschool on the cheap, and a couple of awesome book recommendations for hundreds more ideas.

Decide On Your Budget
Just like anything else that involves your finances, it’s wise to set a homeschooling budget for the year before you begin purchasing supplies. Just doing this one thing might keep you from buying a lot of unnecessary stuff that will end up in the storage closet or listed on eBay.

Know Thyself
Decide on your educational philosophy and be honest about your homeschooling style. This will rule out purchases that won’t work for your child or your family.

If possible, test-drive curriculum and other tools before you start buying. (Ask other homeschooling parents if you can peek at their stuff, or attend one of the homeschooling conferences.)

One of the reasons buying curriculum can be so expensive is because most of the time you’re buying it sight unseen. It may not be right for your child so you end up selling it at a fraction of retail on eBay.

To avoid this problem, get with the other homeschooling parents in your support group. Ask them what they like and dislike about curriculum they’ve purchased and used. Read messages on homeschooling support forums online and do the same. Deciding in advance what your style will be means you can adapt the tools to the method, not the other way around.

If you don’t want to design your own curriculum or go with an eclectic style however, curriculum in a box type programs may be cheaper than obtaining everything piecemeal. Look around at online auctions or other places where homeschoolers are selling their used stuff. You can pick up barely used supplies this way. The Five in a Row books cost less than $20 used, and you can borrow the required books for free at the library.

Buy Used
You can find great deals at swap meets organized by homeschooling support groups. Hooking up with your local group also means group discounts on field trips. To find one, check with your local homeschool association – a simple internet search will likely turn up several in your area. In the small rural town I used to live in, there were half a dozen I could choose from!

Yard sales, thrift stores, eBay, Craigslist, Freecycle, “for sale or trade” message forums for homeschoolers online are some more places to find cheap supplies. Public library sales is another place to find inexpensive books to fill out your family’s bookshelves. A homeschooler’s dollars are probably best spent on a solid home library.

Be Creative
When I was a kid, every child I knew who was homeschooling did Calvert. Calvert is a wonderful homeschooling program but it’s also quite pricey. Nowadays, many parents are getting creative and opt to design a curriculum. I’ve done this from the start. I don’t want to get stuck in a curriculum that I don’t like or that doesn’t mesh with my child’s learning style.

There are so many options for homeschoolers. You can create unit studies, you can go for a “living books” curriculum by making lists of reading material and getting the books from the library. You can print an almost infinite number of free online worksheets (just search for what you need, for example “free third grade math worksheets” etc).

Math manipulatives can be super cheap. Instead of buying fancy manipulatives from the educational catalogs, use stuff you have around your home to teach the kids math – dried beans, dried macaroni, Lego toys, wooden blocks, measuring spoons and cups can teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and basic geometry.

Be a Freebie Seeker
Did you know that many office supply stores host teacher appreciation days once a year around August? These are a source of free and discounted items and giveaways.

This month I attended one at Staples and got a free thumb drive for my trouble. (Last year they gave away a free tote bag filled with stuff.) So far I’ve spent less than $10 and have all the paper, pens, pencils, erasers and colored pencils I’ll need for the year.

Drugstores and large retail stores offer free, penny and nickel school supplies every year. They offer these as loss leaders to get people in the store and it’s a goldmine for us homeschoolers. I’m able to stock up on glue sticks, notebooks, pencils and tons more for just a few dollars. I buy enough for the entire year.

Many larger bookstores such as Barnes and Noble also offer discounts to teachers throughout the year, including homeschooling parents. You just ask customer service for a discount card. They’ll put you on their email list and invite you to special educator days throughout the year with awesome speakers, giveaways, freebies, even free coffee and refreshments from the Cafe!

I got to meet Ron Clark, an award winning educator and author of The Essential 55 at one of these events. (He signed my book for me then when he found out I was a homeschool mom, got out of his chair and bowed to me. ) Barnes and Noble also gives away free books in the summer.

Public libraries are a neverending source of free homeschooling materials. From the obvious – unlimited free books – to educational DVDs, great music on CD, music instruction on DVD and CD, arts and crafts activities open to the public, symphony days, storytime, even continuing education for older teens and adults.

These are the things I’ve always done to save money, but lately I’ve read a couple of awesome books that have given me tons more ideas.

Homeschooling on a Shoestring

This book was written by two homeschool moms whose families couldn’t have been more different. The thing they had in common was an intense love of homeschooling and their kids, and a desire not to let small budgets stop them.

What was interesting about this book is that it spends the first few chapters talking not about homeschooling per se, but about making more room in the budget, period. From saving money on groceries and other budget line items to launching home based businesses, it encourages making wiggle room in the family finances, which is helpful information all by itself.

Then the latter chapters focus on specific ways to educate kids for pennies. It covers everything from the basics of designing curriculum cheaply to enrichment activities like the arts, musical training and sports. It also spends a few chapters on teens and college bound homeschool kids.

The sections on teaching math using everyday items and also the information on teaching a second language were especially useful for me.

This book was written in the 90′s so the information on using computers and the Internet are a bit outdated but overall the book is chock full of useful tips and ideas.

One great idea I got from this book is to think more about bartering. I want my kids to have piano lessons but it’s not in the budget at this time. So, I’m looking around for a local piano teacher who needs a website and offer to build her one in exchange for a few lessons for the kids for me.

Ditto with Spanish “class”. I want to learn Spanish and I want the kids to learn too. I have a few Spanish speaking friends who are not teachers or tutors and have offered to barter or pay them a small fee for weekly lessons. Still working out the details on that. The ideas in this book have really stimulated my creativity.

Homeschool Your Child for Free

This hefty volume, also written by two homeschooling moms, is another awesome resource. Because it was published in 2000, it has many online tools and websites listed in its pages.

This book claims to have 1,200 resources listed for home educators, and I believe it. While the first book deals mostly in principles, this book has more specific recommendations.

It’s organized into the following sections: Curriculum Scope and Sequence; Education Essentials; Language; Mathematics; Art; History; Music; Social Studies; Humanities; Science; Health and then finally Graduation. This makes it easy to find the specific information you’re looking for.

Homeschool Your Child For Free would be a wonderful addition to any homeschooling parent’s library, a reference to pull off the shelf whenever you’re scratching your head wondering where you can find free information for your child on any particular topic.

Frequently when other parents find out I’m homeschooling (because I don’t advertise it) and the topic comes up in conversation (because they ask me questions, not because I’m a homeschooling evangelist), they say things like:

“Oh, I could never do that.”

To which I reply,

“It’s really not as hard as you think.”

You see, I really don’t like sparking people’s defensiveness, and homeschooling, along with homebirthing, is one of those topics that seems to bring out an emotional reactiveness in people. That’s why I don’t tell people either item unless they ask.

But they usually keep talking, again – to defend themselves. And they say things like:

“Little Johnny would just fight me. I tried to teach him once and he just fought with me. He does much better with the teacher.”

I’m not denying what these parents experience. It’s pretty typical kid behavior – they behave better for strangers or other people than they do for us. But the fact that they do kind of tells you that inside, they are afraid. The reason they behave better for strangers is because they don’t know exactly where they stand. With us parents, they are sure of our love for them and therefore they know which boundaries to push and how far to push.

So they push.

But I’m getting off the point here. What I wanted to say is that, in my heart of hearts, what I really want to say to these parents, but I don’t say because again, I don’t want them to get defensive, is this:

When you back off, your kids will stop fighting you about learning. Kids do not have to be coerced to learn.

In fact you cannot STOP them from learning.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

This morning I was resting in bed at about 9:30. I had been awake since 6:30 and had cleaned up after breakfast, had a workout and a shower and was a little sore from yesterday’s workout, and so was sitting on my bed for a bit.

I’m usually a bit tired on Mondays after the busy weekend, and had not begun on any schoolwork with the kids yet. I was thinking of the errands I had to run later, and a coaching client who needed my attention, and how I was going to orchestrate my day .

Sadie joined me for a little snuggling. And I picked up my Crackberry to check messages. During this time I was suddenly struck by what my kids were doing. I even told my Twitter friends about it.

My 7 year old had come to me with a Lego structure he had created. He spends a few hours a day playing Legos. It’s probably his favorite activity. He will quietly come up with complicated Lego structures (not the kind with instructions, stuff he’s envisioned in his mind), usually rockets, airplanes, helicopters… he’s into aircraft and space.

I have no idea how this child makes these creations. I couldn’t recreate them for all the tea in China. And all this “child’s play” (really hate how that expression has come to mean a worthless activity, when we know that play is so very important!) has taught him principles of math – things like percentages and fractions, stuff we have barely begin to cover yet in 2nd grade. But he already understands it.

He came to me to show off his latest thing, a space shuttle complete with rocket boosters that fall away to earth after it takes off, a compartment (with windows all around) for the astronauts, fuel tank, a tether that attaches to the astronauts for their moon walks, etc. He couldn’t get the design quite right and expressed a little frustration (he might spend hours getting it just right), which led into a discussion about Thomas Edison, the biggest fail-er and also holder of 1,638 patents. (That put a smile on his face.)

My oldest had been outside for a nature walk or whatever he was doing, and found a large feather. He came inside and showed me, convinced it belonged to an Archaeopteryx or just maybe, a hawk.

So he grabbed a big book on dinosaurs we had on the bookshelf and started reading it. Dissatisfied with that, he got online and started searching for pictures of Archaeopteryx features to compare his find to.

After he was satisfied, he headed for the couch and picked up his current read, a chapter book about Electricity and Magnetism.

No worries about homeschool science for the day.

And my 5 year old had been “reading” American Girl books to her baby dolls. She kept asking me over and over what the girl’s name was. “Felicity“, I said. She will sit and tell me, her Grandmother, her baby dolls, whoever will listen stories she has made up and “written” in her book. (Looks like a lot of I’s, O’s, S’s and other letters she knows how to write well. Ask her to read her story to you and she will – hope you have the next 20 minutes free!)

Children love to learn and crave to learn. Just as they learn how to breathe after exiting the womb, learn how to breastfeed, learn how to crawl, learn how to walk, learn how to talk, etc.

The longer I go in this homeschooling journey the more convinced I become that my primary job is to create an environment conducive to learning, limit time sucks like Television and video games, be available to answer questions, point them to resources and helpers, set an example of lifelong learning, and then…

Get the Heck Out of the Way

The longer I go in this homeschooling journey, the less I concern myself with someone else’s timetables. I couldn’t care less whether my kids are “keeping up” with their peers in school.

The other day someone sent me a message asking me if I was worried that my kids were keeping up with their schooled peers. He was an older gentleman, and I couldn’t help but ask myself, “I wonder if he’s worried about keeping up with other 60 year olds?”

I don’t mean to sound mean, but there was a misspelling in his message and I chuckled to myself that he wasn’t “keeping up” with me in the spelling department and I’m half his age.

My kids are probably “behind” their peers in some things, and “ahead” of them in others. That doesn’t concern me. Their education is not a race. Besides, how they are educated is almost irrelevant in that conversation because the same phenomenon exists in school.

There is another problem behind this idea that children have to be forced to learn. I think that behind some of that fear is the belief that children are lazy.

I don’t believe that. Just because they don’t always want to do what we want them to do does not make them lazy.

It makes them people with minds of their own.

I’ve seen my kids work very hard, to the point of exhaustion, on something that is important to them.

Right after the dinosaur feather research was done, oldest decided of his own volition that the backyard needed tidying up. So, he rallied the troops (his brother and sister) and with trash bags in hand, headed outside to pick up paper and other trash.

(Am I lazy because I saw no need to clean up the backyard? When I will often stay up until 2 am to work so I can take care of my kids?)

I’ll give you an example of what I mean by backing off and trusting kids to learn.

I’ve mentioned before that my 7 year old struggles with reading. It tires him out completely to read, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy it very much. Unlike my other kids, he never brought me a book and asked me to read it to him.

I can tell this makes other people a bit nervous, but I am not worried about it. I was at one point, though. I have to admit. I’m a big reader and reading is so important to me.

But after seeing his anxiety and stress about it, I realized I was going to make him hate reading if I pushed him. So I backed off.

The last time we went to the library, I showed him where the books were about space, astronomy, astronauts, planes, etc. He picked out several and we took them home. In the past few days, for the first time he has been asking me to read these books to him, and when I finish one, he complains that it was too short.

Today I had him do a little reading and phonics work, and he was not at all resistant about it – probably because I decided to relax. He’ll learn to read well alright, when it’s important to him, and when he realizes that he needs to be able to read well in order to learn the cool stuff he wants to learn (like how to build solar panels, something he’s fascinated by).

And it will happen on his timetable, not mine.

Can you tell I’m reading John Holt again?

Who exactly is Dr. Daisy? I will try to keep this brief so as not to bore you. Well, as you gathered my name is Daisy and I am a retired Chiropractor. I retired in order to home school my children. I have 5 children ages 5 to 17 and have been home schooling for over 10 years. I enjoy home schooling and want to be able to share some tips that have worked for me throughout the years. I will be sharing some of my tips here and you can also visit my site at Dr. Mommy Home School Tips for more. If there are any subjects you need suggestions for, feel free to leave a comment here and I will address them for you. My goal is to make teaching and learning fun and hope that my tips will simply the mysteries of home schooling.

Since it’s almost “back to school” or “back to homeschool” (whatever the case may be) time for many of you, I thought I would share a report on learning style with you.

It’s pasted below, or if you prefer you can download the pdf file here: Learning Styles Report

Feel free to share it

A Guide to Recognizing And Honoring Your Child’s Learning Style

Not All Children Learn The Same Way

Every parent knows that no two children are exactly alike, even if they’re twins. They may have some similarities, but these siblings may be totally different. One will like music while another likes sports. One will be content to sit and work word puzzles while the other will like to make things with their hands. These differences occur in the way they learn, as well.

Not all children learn the same way either, and teaching them equally might be doing a grave disservice to each child.

Some children will learn more efficiently by a hands-on approach, still others will learn best by verbal instruction, some might learn best by reading. If we, as parents, can learn how our children learn best, we will greatly enhance not only the quality of their education, but possibly the enjoyment they derive from learning.

Determining which learning style your child falls under may help you understand why they have problems with scientific equations but excel in the arts. It might also help you to know best how to encourage your child in learning tasks that don’t come easy for them. Most of all, discovering your child’s learning style will help you reinforce skills that will be important for success in life.

What exactly is a learning style?

Defining “learning style” isn’t as difficult as determining how many learning styles there are. In fact, depending on whom you ask or which report you read there is any number of learning styles. For the purpose of this report, however, a learning style will be defined as the sum total of individual skills and preferences that make up the way a person perceives, gathers, and processes information.

Learning styles affect every area of a person’s life – how they learn, whether or not they participate well in group activities, how they relate to others, how they solve problems, and the manner in which they work. Since children are different, they have their own bent in the way they learn. A learning style can also explain the different approach a person uses in order to learn effectively.

Learning styles are thought to be determined by three major pathways to learning: visual (sight), kinesthetic (movement, use of body, sensory), and auditory (sounds). Learning is also based on connecting perceptual pathways or three states of consciousness: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious.

Knowing your child’s learning style could help them in more than one aspect of life.

Not only could it make a difference in their actually learning a difficult subject easier, it may be that knowing their learning style could help them to enjoy the learning process much more than forcing them to learn to a style that is not their own.

Experts agree that learning styles are established in a child by the time they are seven years old. While it is possible for a child to strengthen one learning style over time, it is highly unlikely that their learning style will ever change entirely.

Children’s Learning Styles

There are two different models to be used for the purpose of this report. Both models base learning styles on visual, kinesthetic, and verbal.

Ms. June Griswold’s model also includes logic as a learning style where the Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic Learning (VAK) model does not list logic as a style at all.

If you would like to learn about other models for “learning styles,” you may want to Google it to learn more.

Ms. June Griswold, who taught in the classroom setting for 16 years, believed that identifying children’s learning styles could greatly improve a child’s learning experience. She felt that a teacher could adapt lessons in such a way that they could be taught to reach children in each style. If she was were able to teach to each learning style, she could help eliminate labels that some children are given.

She could also help people realize that just because a student learns differently it does not mean that the student is learning disabled.

Ms. Griswold studied two books by Thomas Armstrong and broke learning styles into four categories: visual (spatially oriented), kinesthetic (movement oriented), verbal (language oriented), and logical (analytically oriented).

She said children will generally have one dominant learning style, but could use a mixture of the four. If they could use each learning style, she felt they were more flexible in their learning, and would probably be successful in school. The following descriptions are based on Ms. Griswold’s research.

Visual (spatial) learner – This type of learner needs a chance to visualize things and learns well through images. They will be artistic, reading maps, and creating charts and diagrams. They will often be very interested in machines or inventions and trying to figure out how something works. They will be happy to sit and play with building toys such as Lego’s, and will also enjoy mazes or puzzles. They may come across as being a daydreamer. This definitely fits the learning style of my 7 year old!

To help a visual (spatial) learner, use games and memory aids to create a visual pattern. While they are reading, offer picture books, or if they’re reading chapter books, allow them an opportunity to visualize what is happening in a story. Encourage them to use arts and crafts to illustrate a story. Use colored pens, drawing, and computer work to help them excel at writing.

When it comes to math, you might want to emphasize manipulatives more than worksheets. With my 7 year old, I often use small Lego toys to illustrate math problems he’s challenged by.

Kinesthetic (movement) learner – This type of child will learn effectively if given the opportunity to move and be active. They are not able to sit still for long periods of time, and will use body language and hand gestures when talking. If forced to sit on their hands, a kinesthetic learner would shut down.

They need to show you how to do something rather than explain it. They love to touch things and are often natural-born actors. They may be labeled as having attention deficit disorder, but most of the time it is not the case. Quite often a kinesthetic learner will excel in sports.

Help a kinesthetic learner by giving them a chance to move about. Physical action, even if it is limited, will stimulate this student and help them do their best.

Allow the child to get up and move around some during class, particularly while reading. It might be a little bit disruptive, but the child will do much better than if being forced to sit still.

Give them an opportunity to do hands-on activities, arts and crafts projects, or acting out a story. Then sit back and watch the child bloom before your eyes.

Verbal (language) learner – This child thinks in words rather than being able to visualize something. They are naturally gifted at story telling and will have little trouble in spelling. They generally love to read and have an excellent memory of names, dates, and trivia. Quite often they are musically talented and enjoy word games.

The best way to encourage a verbal learner is to allow them to create word problems. Allow the child to dictate stories while you write or type them out. Tape record stories they tell and listen to them at a later date, or allow them to read stories aloud during class time.

Logical learner – A logical learner will enjoy patterns and relationships, seeing how things work, and may drive you to distraction with all of their questions. They are often capable of abstract thinking at an early age and will understand mathematics easily. They enjoy strategy games, computers, and loves to build.

Motivating a logical learner isn’t difficult. Allow them to play computer games, do word puzzles, and help with scientific experiments. Non-fiction and rhyming books will be appreciated. When reading fiction, explain to them the relationships between the people in the stories, and how the story can relate to real-life.

Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic Learning (VAK) model

The Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic Learning (VAK) model says there are only three types of learning styles that all people are going to fall into. This model says that everyone will fall into one of these models and that all three models can be used in a classroom to meet the needs of each style.

Visual Learner – The visual learner learns everything through seeing. They prefer to sit at the front of the classroom so they can easily see without obstruction. The visual student may think in pictures and will enjoy diagrams, illustrated books, videos, and hand-outs. They will generally take detailed notes during class, illustrate stories that they write, and use pictures to help them memorize facts.

Auditory Learner – The auditory learner will learn more easily through verbal lessons and anything that allows them to talk out what they are learning. They learn best by reading text aloud. Quite often the auditory learner will enjoy debates and discussions in class. They don’t mind making presentations and may use musical jingles or mnemonics to help them memorize facts. They enjoy dictating their ideas to others and may not enjoy writing.

Kinesthetic Learner – The kinesthetic learner will enjoy a hands-on approach or being able to move while learning. They have a hard time sitting still for long periods of time and may become disruptive if they aren’t allowed to get up quite often during the day. Boys are generally more kinesthetic in their learning style, but there are also girls in this style. They would need to take frequent breaks, will learn best by handling objects, and like to listen to music while they learn. They might also learn better if allowed to stand up rather than sit down during long lectures.

Why does a parent need to understand a child’s learning style?

Why is it important for a parent to understand the learning style their child falls into? The implications are rather obvious if you’re a homeschooling parent. In order to teach each child effectively, with minimal frustration, you need to understand how they learn best.

If you’re not a homeschooling parent, this information is still very useful. Understanding your child’s learning style allows you to help them when they have homework.

If your child’s teacher doesn’t work with them in their learning style, they may have problems in school. Being armed with this information can help you work out solutions with your child’s school and teachers. Knowing their learning style may help your child become interested in a new subject. You may be able to present information to your child in a way they will understand, and you will be able to help your child strengthen the learning styles that is not their own.

40% of all students fall into the visual learning style. 50% of children fall into the kinesthetic learning style and this is why they have difficulty learning in traditional school settings. The remaining 10% are auditory learners. The breakdown in learning styles is part of the reason most elementary schools combine the different learning styles in which to teach children. As students progress in grades, however, teachers will use auditory learning style in which to teach. Since only 10 percent of students are auditory learners that means the remaining 90% of students may have difficulty learning in the higher grades.

How do you determine your child’s learning style?

Reading through the descriptions, your child may jump out at you! But if you aren’t sure, try these tips:

Ask your child what they think of when someone says the word “dog.” If they are a visual learner, they will most likely develop a picture in their mind of a familiar dog, such as a pet or they will spell out the letters d-o-g. If you child is an auditory learner, they may describe a bark. If they describe the feel of the dog’s fur, they are most likely kinesthetic learners.

When learning a group of new spelling words, this is how you might help each type of learner: Visual learners will not be able to visualize the spoken word, so you might need to write the word out onto a white board while it is being spelled aloud. This tactic might help a visual learner learn more easily.

The kinesthetic learner might remember the new spelling word by spelling them out with blocks or being given a crossword puzzle with the new words in it. Auditory learners are most likely going to learn new spelling words phonetically or by creating a poem or song they could sing to learn to spell.

Is your child is having problems learning at school?

There are a number of options you may have to pursue. First, talk with your student’s teacher to see what method of teaching they use. If they teach using strictly lectures, rarely using overhead projections or worksheets, your visual learner may have problems as well as any student who learns kinesthetically. Try to find ways that you can present the information at home so your child may more easily understand and learn the subject matter.

If your child is failing in a number of subjects, it might be time to consider whether you should continue to work with your child at home and hope that your help will ensure success, you can pay to have your child tutored, or you can take your child out of the public school system and home school them.

Public schools are not set up to deal with each learning style all at the same time, therefore some children may suffer.

One benefit to home schooling, if you are able to do so, is that you can cater more to your child’s learning style, which might give them the educational success they may not have had so far.

Of course, home schooling isn’t for every family, just like teaching entirely by lecture isn’t for every child. The options for home schooling are varied, however, and will give your child many opportunities they will not get in traditional schools.

Through home schooling, you may be able to tap into your child’s learning style and see an entirely different student emerge.

Just the other week, a friend of mine was asking my 7 year old how he was doing. She was a schoolteacher for many years and has worked in the education system for a couple of decades. The reason she asked him this question was because she saw that he was having a hard time and getting exhausted with reading. When my son replied that he was tired, she gave him a hug.

I told her he was a kinesthetic learner and was having trouble with reading.

“He has to move things around with his hands. We use a lot of manipulatives for math,” I said.

Then she looked at me and said:

“Good thing he’s homeschooled!”

This surprised me because as someone who had worked in the system so long, my first thought was that she would be critical of the fact that at 7, he is barely reading. But instead she was happy.

“Schools do NOT cater to kinesthetic learners”, she replied.

Instead of using a traditional curriculum, you can use lapbooks and art projects which will cater more to the kinesthetic learner because they’ll be using manipulatives in the learning process.

If your child is an auditory learner, you can download audio history stories off the internet to help them learn.

If your child is a visual learner, traditional books and workbooks might be best. My oldest is like this. Reading and doing workbooks are easy peasy for him. In fact I often find him doing schoolwork late at night and on weekends with absolutely NO encouragement or input from me. That’s just his style.

Of course, with homeschooling you can allow them to learn at their own pace instead of having to remain at the pace the teacher sets. If your child is a quick learner, and has been frustrated by how slow public school classes are taught, home schooling may be the answer. If they have had problems because the teacher has covered a subject too quickly, home schooling will give you the opportunity to teach them at a pace in which they can learn the subject matter.

More ideas for determining which learning style your child has

One of the best resources for discovering your child’s learning style is a book most home school parents are aware of. The book, The Way They Learn by Cynthia Tobias, has helped countless home school families find their children’s learning styles and then build success upon success by encouraging their children to learn in the way that suits them best.

If you would prefer to work entirely online, there are a number of assessments and tests that you can give to determine which learning style your child has. Running an online search for “learning style tests” may turn up some of the following:

• Multiple-Intelligences Test

This is a series of short tests that breaks down the way your child acts or reacts on a number of different levels. These “intelligences” show your child’s giftings or where their talents lie.

They may help you to see where your child has strengths and weaknesses you’re unaware of, and help you to work with your child to improve those areas where they may be weak while giving you the opportunity to encourage those areas where they are strong.

• The Index of Learning Styles

This is a free, online test that is used to determine if your child is active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, or sequential/global. It was developed by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman. Access it here: http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

• Learning Styles Online

This website has a free Memletics learning style inventory online that will test your child to determine their learning style based on seven components – visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, social, and solitary. Visit it here: http://www.learning-styles-online.com/

You may also find additional information about both Ms. June Griswold and the VAK model through online searches.

While these inventories and tests are not exhaustive, it will give you an idea of what types of tests are available to help you understand your child better. Discovering their learning style, whether they remain in the public school system or you decide to home school them, may make all the difference in the way they learn and their enjoyment of the subjects they learn.

Should a parent try to encourage a child’s learning style?

If you would like your child to succeed at school, the obvious answer is “yes” you should try to encourage a child’s learning style and even cater to it if at all possible. Not only will you enable your child to learn in a way that they are most comfortable, but fostering their unique learning style will also help them to retain the information they do learn.

How would a parent go about fostering a child’s learning style, though? And if it were so important, why don’t schools do this to ensure successful students?

The best way to foster a child’s learning style is first determine how your child learns best. Then you can create ways to help your child learn based on the style they learn most effectively with.

For example, if your child is a kinesthetic, spit-fire, always-on-the-go type of child, having them sit at a desk with a math text book will be torture. However, if you incorporate movement into their learning, they are going to learn the subject quicker and probably retain things much better. Perhaps you can have them clap out a rhythm when you teach them their multiplication tables. At the very least, letting them get up and walk around, clap or bounce a ball while doing their work will help.

Using the kinesthetic learner, here’s how you might be able to incorporate movement into mathematics. If you’re learning to multiply 2′s, you can toss a ball back and forth, starting with 1×2, the child would say 2 and toss the ball back to you. You would say another multiplication problem and then toss the ball to the child. They’d answer and toss it back to you. In this way, they are moving and learning to multiply at the same time. This method might also work with spelling, where you take turns spelling a word, one letter at a time.

The major benefit of teaching to a learning style is that the child is actually the one who wins. Instead of your child being forced to sit still, or possibly be subjected to taking attention deficit disorder drugs to calm them down during school hours, home schooling would enable a kinesthetic child to learn and thrive.

Home schooling can also be of benefit to children in the other learning styles. A verbal learner may prefer to read and learn for themselves instead of listen to someone else tell them what they should learn. This child may prefer to learn to spell by playing Scrabble or Boggle, which is highly unlikely to happen in the public school setting.

An auditory learner may retain what they learn better if they are allowed to watch a television program or listen to an audio book about a certain time in history. They can then create a report about what they’ve learned. Instead of having an auditory learner write out spelling words, why not allow them to spell them out loud to you? To teach multiplication, try having an auditory learner memorize “School House Rock” songs.

How often is a child permitted to listen to music while in school? Research has proven in the last 10 years that children retain more mathematics if there is classical music playing softly in the background. Teachers rarely use this method to help their students learn, though. Instead, teachers prefer the room to be quiet except for their own voices. How much more would children learn if they were given the choice of having music playing while they learn?

Teachers are now beginning to modify their teaching to allow for the different learning styles, but quite often they don’t succeed. Instead, children that learn differently are labeled as learning disabled, which is an injustice to the student. If a parent knows their child’s learning style, they may be able to help them learn to their learning style, and remove the stigma of that label.

Parents need to support their school’s efforts at incorporating more methods of teaching than just lectures. However, where the school may still fail, the parent can pick up the pieces and help their child to learn, especially if they understand their child’s learning style.

It’s true that children are all individuals and that they don’t all learn alike. If not all children learn equally it would seem the best tactic would be to discover how they learn and then teach them to their learning style. Give them the skills to excel, not only in school, but in life as well.

More Resources:

The Way They Learn by Cynthia Tobias

Making Math Fun – a collection of math board games, card games and more to teach your child math. This one would be great for visual, audio and kinesthetic learners.

Robot Reader Reading and Phonics Games – full color reading and phonics games to print directly from your computer – board games, card games, bingo games, and more.

Your Child’s Strengths – Review of this book on finding and maximizing your child’s unique gifts

What are your thoughts? How have you been able to discover your child’s learning style and how has doing so helped your child?

School Zone Publishing Company got in touch with me recently about reviewing some of their workbooks, I was pretty stoked. Anything that can help a single homeschooling mom save money on stuff is good for me.

So now I get to tell you my honest opinions of these products. The 3 I got were the Math Readiness for P-K, Big Second Grade Workbook and 4th Grade Math Basics.

Interestingly, I already had the 4th grade math workbook. My oldest is doing it this summer and has a goal of finishing it up before September when he’ll be in 5th grade. (We don’t really “do” grades since I’m an eclectic homeschooler, but it seems important to him so more power to him!)

I like this workbook. Caleb has had no trouble with it. The examples and explanations have been easy for him to follow in order to learn the concepts and the problems are challenging enough to keep him engaged.

Ilana, my 5 year old, is doing the Math Readiness workbook. She’s enjoying it, although it’s a touch too easy for her so I’ll probably save it for her baby sister to use in a year.

Second Grade Big Workbook is my favorite of this package. My 7 year old has been doing it and he is really enjoying this book. I’m pretty impressed with how the lessons are designed. They’re very engaging to him, which is a bit of a challenge for a workbook because he is a kinesthetic learner and it’s been a bit of a challenge to get him interested in other worksheets.

This workbook has 320 pages so it could actually be the basic for an entire 2nd grade curriculum.

Two more School Zone workbooks I had purchased recently were the Counting 1 – 10 and Manuscript Writing for K – 2.

My 5 year old started working on some of the counting pages but I found they were too easy for her (the book says it’s for ages 4 – 6), so I’ll save that one for the youngest next year.

I do like the workbook, I just think it’s more appropriate for a 4 year old. The Math Readiness Sticker workbook is more her speed. It’s a little more challenging, and the stickers add an element of fun and interactivity.

Ilana is loving the K – 2 Manuscript Writing workbook.

This girl is my little artist and she loves sitting down to write her letters. These pages are proving to be good practice for my 2nd grader too.

One thing I like about them is there is not a lot of space for practice. I know that may sound counterintuitive to some, but I think it’s far better for a child to write a FEW letters WELL than to get fatigued and write the same letter badly, over and over.

It seems a better reinforcer for them to trace the letter then only have space to write it 3 or 4 times – when they’re more likely to write it neatly.

My 7 year old especially gets very frustrated when his writing isn’t perfectly neat, and he also fatigues easily so this workbook has proven to be better for him than the other one I had from Abeka.

So have you gotten a head start on your homeschool shopping yet?

One of the questions people ask me all the time is, how do you homeschool as a single parent? Obviously I have to work to earn a living too so it’s understandable that I would get this question.

For one thing, I started my business several years ago – and even though it was only part time income for me for much of that time, I still had a foundation laid that made it possible for me to earn a living from home with my business.

Another thing that helps is flexibility. Because we don’t take summers off, we’re able to keep a flexible homeschool schedule. My parents also help. My Dad spends a lot of time with the kids, and my Mom is helping with the 7 and 5 year old’s schooling when she is with them. That is a huge blessing!

I came across this excellent article from a homeschool advocate who has some suggestions for parents who think they can’t homeschool for one reason or another.

photo credit: angela7dreams

Busy, Working Parents — 22 Ways To Homeschool Your Kids

Most home-schooling parents teach their children about two to four hours a day and turn out well-educated kids. So the problem is how to squeeze in about ten to twenty hours a week for home-schooling. Here are some suggestions:

1. Can you change your work schedule so that you can work in the afternoon or at night and teach your children in the morning?

2. Can you work part time, leaving yourself time for home-schooling?

3. Can you find a job in your local neighborhood so that you don’t waste one to three hours commuting every day?

4. Can you work from home? Computers, the Internet, fax machines, and e-mail all make working from home relatively easy. Thousands of companies now offer this option to their workers. You could of-fer to work for slightly less money if your boss resists this arrangement.

5. Can you start a simple-to-run home business that would give you more free time.

6. Can you do all your home-schooling on weekends? If you can arrange concentrated six-to-ten-hour sessions on Saturday and Sunday, you’ll be free to work at your job during the rest of the week. Or you might try a combination of weekday and weekend home-schooling sessions.

7. If you have no other alternatives, home-schooling could be done in the evening, say from 7 to 10 P.M., or a combination of weekday nights and weekend sessions. 8. If you’re married, get your husband or wife to help with the workload. Both parents should be in-volved in home-schooling if possible.

In my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” I describe 22 ways that parents can homeschool their children, even if both parents work. Almost a million parents now homeschool their kids, and most of these parents work. You can do the same.

About The Author: Joel Turtel of My Kids Deserve Better is an education policy analyst. He is also the author of “The Welfare State: No Mercy For The Middle Class.”

Any single parents out there who are also homeschooling? Want to share your success tips?

My 9 year old son came to me the other day and said he wanted to write an article on the ten best things about homeschooling. I thought what he wrote was so interesting because it showed me what he values the most about the experience. Some of the things made me laugh too!

Other than assisting with opening up Microsoft Word and showing him how to use spell check, he did this on his own.

The Ten Benefits of Home Schooling 

1: Kids can get their chores done faster.

2: Some schools have a dress code but you can wear what you want when you are home schooled.

3: At school you have to sit down for SEVEN HOURS! Moreover, you can spend more time with your family. And that is the important thing.

4: You can save money because, you don’t have to drive your kids to school and you don’t have to spend money on school clothes or lunches.

5: There is not as much schoolwork to do. You can learn faster.

6: You can do your work at just about any time of the day.

7: Kids can learn at their own pace.

8: Kids don’t miss their favorite PBS show.

9: Kids can have more fun with mom and dad.

10: Kids don’t have to worry about bullies, mean teachers and not being able to go to the bathroom when they want to.

My favorite was the “moreover”. Oh and the part about not missing CyberChase (his favorite PBS show). LOL!

Over at the Moms Talk Forum, we are discussing the homeschooling – why? question. I’ve written before about my reasons for homeschooling before, and this is always a pet topic so I’ll dig a little deeper into just part of it: the fact that compulsory schooling is, in my opinion, a modern idea that has failed.

Here is a brilliantly written article on the subject that I read recently: http://www.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=878

As the article mentions, the evidence points to the fact that compulsory (meaning government controlled and mandated) schooling did not improve the intelligence or productivity of Americans. In fact, the evidence shows that the opposite has happened. Especially among minority groups, minority is much lower ethan it was one hundred years ago in this country. American males who enlisted in the military in the 60′s were already far less literate than their Dads who enlisted in the 40′s. But it goes back much farther than that. In Colonial times, the average person was highly literate. The “bestselling” books back then were on a college reading level. Letters sent home to family from soldiers, children and other common folks showed a very high degree of eloquence and intelligence. Almost everyone could read and write and do sums well, even if they didn’t go to school at all.

A quote:

“Thus, the rise of public, or government, schools was not a response to an inability on the part of society to provide for the education of its children but rather a manifestation of what later came to be called the “Progressive” mindset, the belief that life increasingly needed to be subject to control by experts and central government planning”

The idea that my parents could be prevented from educating their own offspring using the police power of government is deeply disturbing. This is a right even the animals enjoy.

“Compulsory-attendance laws can be criticized on many grounds. To start with the most basic, forced attendance cannot be squared with the notion of liberty on which the United States was founded. The late John Holt, a former school teacher and education writer, wrote,

“The requirement that a child go to school, for about six hours a day, 180 days a year, for about ten years, whether or not he learns anything there, whether or not he already knows it or could learn it faster or better somewhere else, is such a gross violation of civil liberties that few adults would stand for it. But the child who resists is treated as a criminal.⁽¹⁹⁾

That we do not regard the forced day-time internment as a violation of the child’s or parents’ rights only shows how thoroughly people have been propagandized by the advocates of the present system. The government says it has a “compelling interest” in the education of children. Too few people have been willing to reply in the manner of the Jimmy Stewart character in the movie Shenandoah: “These aren’t the state’s children; they’re mine.“

Amen, Mister Stewart. I would go a little farther than that and say that don’t actually belong to me at all but to someone much higher than me, whom I have to answer to for how I treat them and raise them. They’re simply on loan to me for twenty years or so. ;) And that notion puts much more fear in my heart than anything Big Gubmint might do.

The article goes on to talk about Irresponsible Parents which is something that I know from talking with homeschooling opponents is part of their thought process. The argument is that “since some parents won’t be as responsible as you (talking about me personally), we need to have compulsory schooling.”

The article has a lot of great points to adress this. As I stated to someone the other day, I have strong opinions about how parents should feed their kids, but it sure isn’t my right to go into another’s home and remove their children or fine or jail the parents because they feed their kids hot dogs.

I highly recommend John Taylor Gatto’s books to anyone who wants to know the truth about the modern system of schooling and where it really came from. Among other things, the principle folks who influenced what we think of as school today were very unambiguous about what they were trying to accomplish. Strange as it may seem, they were vocal about wanting to produce a generation of good government and factory employees. Influenced by the Prussian system of educational philosophy, they started modeling schools after it.

That’s unnerving, idn’t it?

On Wonder Years Radio recently they discussed organizing arts and crafts and the kid’s schoolwork.

I thought I would share a tip that has worked well for me when it comes to organizing games. The cardboard boxes board games come in are notorious for falling apart and getting squashed, but they take up a lot of space too.

I took all my kid’s board games out of their boxes and stacked the folded up game board into ONE large flat Rubbermaid storage container. Then I took the pieces that go with each game and placed them in quart (or gallon if needed) size resealable plastic bags.

This system takes up far less space and the pieces stay together better too.

My kids are homeschooled so we have a LOT of paper, workbooks, school books around here. I have one of those 10 Drawer Chrome Rolling Cart Storage Room Organizer things. The colored drawers make it easy for the kids to find their stuff when it’s time for school seatwork. Each kid has two drawers – his or her favorite color so they can remember. They keep their workbooks and pencils in there. The casters make it easy to move around but they lock so it doesn’t move at the wrong time.

Next to that on a shelf there is a two drawer storage container. The top drawer has crayons, stickers, paints, colored pencils, etc. The bottom drawer has paper (usually it has print on the back of it that has come from my printer. LOL!)

When it comes to art work, it’s mostly my 4 year old that produces TONS of drawings and stuff. I have an agreement with her that the day’s masterpiece goes on the fridge. Extra stuff she wants to keep goes in a princess folder. What doesn’t fit in the folder goes in the trash. She is ok with this system. I couldn’t possibly keep every piece of artwork she creates. The girl is prolific. LOL

Works for us!

Moms Talk Radio

This post is actually about what I did *last* Friday, but I’m just now getting around to publishing this. My digital camera has decided to officially freak out and DIE, and I really wanted to post pictures of all the goodies I got, but alas, it’s not meant to be right now. Maybe later I’ll be able to update this post.

What do you get when you cross $36 with $0.25 Day at the Thrift Store?

5 HUGE, kitchen trash bag size bags FULL of kid’s and mama clothes, books, a child’s desk and a gorgeous loveseat, and One very happy Frugal Mama.

Note: If you are new to thrift store shopping, read more of my tips below after I describe my finds. If you’re a seasoned thrift store shopper, beware. Uncontrollable jealousy may ensue after reading this post!

Let me start by telling you why I love thrift stores. Firstly, I am cheap and I love the savings they offer (repeat after me: stick it to da man).

Secondly, I like buying secondhand stuff that somebody decided to go to the trouble of donating instead of chucking it into a landfill.

And third, (and this is a little known truth about buying kid’s clothes secondhand) I actually get better quality stuff at the thrift store. Before I lose some of you let me explain what I mean.

Have you ever bought a clothing item for your kids at a discount or department store, only to have it tear up in the wash the first time your kid wore it? I have too. The thing is, if the item in question has made it through one kid and many washes and still looks good when you pick it up at the T-store, it’s a quality garment that isn’t going to fall apart on you.

So there are my reasons. Here’s a brief summary of my thrift store history.

My Mom has always been a big thrift store shopper. When I was a kid, thrift stores were NOT the “in” thing to do. Mom was always ahead of her time, and she tried to sell her friends on the concept, but they just weren’t hip to it. When people would complement my mother on something she had on, she would say “Oh, I got it at a little boutique.” LOL!

When I was a kid she would drag me to the thrift store but I wasn’t that keen on the experience. I always had to pee the moment I walked in the door, no matter how recently I had just gone to the bathroom. Now I know that was due to a cat allergy, but at the time, it drove my mom a bit nuts. I did LOVE books however, and would immediately head to the book section, only to be dragged out an hour later by my mother.

When I was a teenager, thrift stores had become Cool. All the punk/mod/skater kids shopped at thrift stores in East Atlanta so they could find Ben Shermans, Fred Perry tennis shirts, old Doc Marten boots, trench coats, etc. All the rich suburbanite North Atlanta kids shopped at thrift stores so noone knew they were rich suburbanite kids. LOL! By that time I was old hat at thrift store shopping thanks to my mother, so my girlfriend and I would head to the thrift stores intown to seek out old vintage Nikes, those cute girly cut 70′s style t-shirts, and vintage dresses and coats. Back when I was a size 2/4 and didn’t have mom boobs and could actually fit into vintage dresses and coats. LOL!

Then when I became a mom, I shopped at thrift stores so I could find those snazzy cloth diapers that cost $10 or more a pop on eBay. Now with 4 kids, thrift store shopping is a bit of a necessity. I simply cannot imagine why anyone would NOT shop at thrift stores occasionally.

So. Here’s what I got last week when a nearby thrift store had $.25 day. Ready?

For 2 year old Sadie:

• 2 summer dresses
• 1 summer skirt
• 6 short sleeved casual shirts

For 4 year old Ilana:

• 2 summer dresses
• 9 skorts
• 11 short sleeved casual shirts
• 4 pairs of shorts
• 1 pair of pants
• 1 cardigan sweater
• 1 dressy wool overcoat for next winter with dry cleaning tags still in it

For 6 year old Julien:

• 4 short sleeved shirts (Polo style, ringer tees)
• 1 long sleeved t shirt
• 4 pairs of pants

For 9 year old Caleb:

• 4 short sleeved shirts (Polo, ringer tees)
• 1 long sleeved dress shirt
• 1 pair of jeans

For 32 year old Mama:

• 1 black leather Liz Claiborne bag in like new condition
• 1 black leather handbag also looks like new
• 8 short sleeved shirts, some casual, some dressy for Summer
• 1 long sleeved dressy sweater
• 1 pair of blue corduroy jeans that fit like a glove

I also got 18 books (some of them for homeschooling: Science, planets, weather, a few fiction works like Sounder, a couple rare Dr. Seuss books, a nice DK book about Space Travel, a book about the Amish, etc.), an Art set with paint that hardens so you can make sculptures with it which J and I immediately dug into, a kid size white antique writing desk for Ilana for her to sit and do art at, an the piece de resistance, a gorgeous loveseat that complements the other one I have that sits opposite in the living room. It was $10 and in perfect condition, not a spot anywhere on it.

Can you believe I got all this stuff for $36? If you haven’t figured it out already, every item of clothing was .25 each. (The desk and loveseat were half off regular price.) Almost everything I bought for the kids was Gap, Old Navy and The Children’s Place. Some of the items I got looked like they had been worn once, washed and tossed aside. It just amazes me that people will spend top dollar for new kid’s clothing then discard it before it has a chance to get a stain on it! Everything I got was spotless with no missing zippers, buttons, or flaws.

Ok, so now that I’ve regaled you with my finds, here are my tips for navigating the thrift store shopping scene.

Thrift Store Shopping Tips

1) Get to know your local T stores

If you don’t know what thrift stores are in your area, just look in the phone book or Google it. A lot of T stores have websites these days, and those are great to visit because they often have coupons you can print out.

For example, here in Atlanta we have Last Chance and America’s Thrift. We also have several Goodwill and Salvation Army and other smaller, independent stores. There are advantages to both. The larger stores are cleaner and more organized, but the smaller stores often have lower prices and better deals. The scenario I described above happened at a small Thrift store a few miles away from me that gives its profits to a local children’s home. I like supporting it because it’s for a good cause too. Keep in mind that some of the thrift stores may be donating to causes that don’t jive with your personal beliefs, so it’s good to check them out first.

Goodwill stores are among the cleanest and most organized. The clothing in the store is laid out by color which is nice if you’re looking for something in particular, but their prices are higher so you pay for that convenience.

2) Finding Great Deals

As I mentioned, you can search for websites where you can print coupons to use inside the store. Also, most thrift stores have discount days. Call them up and ask what the schedule is like. Last Chance has Half Price Mondays where… you guessed it, everything in the store is half price. They open at 8:30 am here and if I get there at 8:15, a line has started at the door, rain or shine, even in the dead of winter. They even print up T shirts that say “I Survived Half Price Day at Last Chance”!

Some of them have loyalty cards, where you get a hole punch when you spend a certain amount, then when the card is full you get a few bucks off. Other stores have a color coded system where the color of the tag indicates the price reduction. So some days you’ll walk in and all pink and yellow tags, for instance, are half off.

Keep in mind that just because you’re at a thrift store doesn’t mean you’re getting the best price! Especially a few years ago when a lot of people got hip to thrift, they started raising prices like crazy. It wasn’t unusual to go in and see a pair of Gap jeans marked over $10. Get real! I can get jeans brand new at Old Navy right now for $8, why would I spend more for used? But $0.25? Oh, yeah. That’s definitely my style.

3) Be Organized

Thrift stores can be a little overwhelming. Or maybe it’s the dust that goes to your head, I don’t know. But if I walk in with no idea of what my kids need I get totally lost. I find it helpful to write down what I’m looking for before I go in. So I’ll have a list that says:

Sz 6 Boy – Pants
Sz 4 Girl – Shirts
Sz 2 Boy – Dressy shoes
Me – Black skirt

… or something like that so I can be focused. Oh, and leave the kids at home! I don’t like mine pawing all over dirty toys.

Another thing to keep in mind that unlike a regular retail store, you’re not going to walk in and find clothing in the season you need, always. Often you will, but those items get picked up first. So I find that I do best when I try to think ahead and buy what the kids need for the next season. That makes that little list I mentioned even more important.

Just give it a shot! You can find some incredible deals. My kid’s homeschool curriculum has been almost entirely designed from stuff I’ve gotten at thrift stores. For example, two weeks ago I bought 4 BRAND NEW, untouched Abeka books. One on cursive handwriting, one math and two vocabulary/language arts. I have gotten clothing with the store tags still hanging on the item, and dress clothes with dry cleaning tags still inside. I’ve found brand new shoes and other really nice stuff. You never know what you’re going to find, you just have to be willing to do a little digging.

So there you have it!

Got any awesome thrift store deals or tips to share? Post them in the comments below.

Alyssa of LifeFromMyLaptop (which, by the way Alyssa is one of my favorite domain picks, ever) invited me to do a little cross blog conversing with her. She asked me this question on her blog to kick things off:

My first question for you is about natural parenting. Carrie is the host of Natural Moms Talk Radio so I know she practices this, but frankly I have never really understood all the ins and outs so I know that Carrie can clear this up.

What is it like to be a “natural mom”?

When I first read this, I thought you were asking what a natural mom IS… which is also a great question! So I’ll answer that first. There probably isn’t any real definition of that term, and it means different things to different people, but for me, being a natural mom means tuning in to your (and I believe they are God-given) instincts first and when you’re in doubt.

It doesn’t mean I’m the expert of everything or that I don’t look for expert opinions. It does mean that I’m the one who loves my children the most and it’s also my responsibility to care for them, and since I also spend the most time with them, I’m the expert of them.

One thing that I used to tell moms all the time when I was a breastfeeding counselor is to trust your instincts – you are the expert of your baby. Anthropologists will tell you that “breastfeeding difficulties” are a purely Western, modern phenomenon. We think breastfeeding will be hard and so it is, but it’s not true for native women who do what comes naturally and don’t have anyone telling them they don’t know what they’re doing!

Women doubt themselves so much, and it’s true we’re not animals that are guided solely by instinct… but I believe women have a special sixth sense that alerts them to danger, and we should use that to protect our little ones. Have you ever read The Gift of Fear? It has nothing to do with parenting, but it illustrates this instinct that mothers have beautifully. I think that gift should be used. I believe that mothers go against that inner voice and they and their children sometimes suffer as a result.

So there are some behaviors that come out of that philosophy. As an example, cosleeping. While the experts debate whether it’s “safe” to do so, my strong feelings, and the behavior of my child, tell me it’s a good choice for us. I don’t need someone else’s opinion to make that decision.

You know at one time in this country and all over the world, women were told that formula feeding was “better”, “cleaner”, more “scientific”, more “advanced”, the thing that wealthy women did (and in some countries, the way WHITE woman did things which was obviously insulting to mothers) and the way of the future. Obviously those experts were wrong! One of the reasons I don’t go with the status quo automatically but question the way things are done is because I have seen how that “sheeple” mentality so often turns out.

Being a natural parent also means doing things in a natural way as much as you can. When I was pregnant with my oldest, my Mom talked to me about how much she enjoyed using cloth diapers with me. I thought it would be a great way to save money, so I started looking around at diaper services and cloth diaper systems. People laughed at me, but 4 kids later I still love cloth diapers.

A lot of natural parents reject circumcision because it’s a painful, unnecessary (for health anyway) surgery and vaccination because they’re unconvinced that the shots are effective or safe, and they prefer to build their child’s immune system naturally. Most natural parents reject spanking. They often prefer a gentler discipline style. Many of them are homeschooling. Most of them are interested in nutrition.

But we’re not all the same. I know moms who are far more crunchy than me who vaccinated their kids – I didn’t. I know other moms who had their babies at home but who wouldn’t use a cloth diaper if they were paid to. And I know moms who are NOT natural in any way but who I admire for some of their mothering skills.

You know as I type this I realize that natural parents do what they do for slightly different reasons. Some are motivated by environmental concerns, some by politics, some by findings in the field of psychology and some by philosophy.

For me, it’s largely from my belief that when God made moms and babies, he didn’t make a mistake. I trust that a woman’s body is capable of birth and of feeding her baby. I trust that a baby’s cry is supposed to be uncomfortable so it will motivate the adults listening to do something instead of it being ignored. I believe that people are more important than things and that things can’t replace human contact. So that belief is reflected in my parenting choices.

I’m sure that after I write this I’ll think of a hundred more things to say. I hope that makes sense for now

Ack! Sorry Alyssa, I forgot to post your question. I was trying to get this published while getting the kids ready to walk out the door. So here goes:

You’ve recently launched a ghostwriting business. Have you always enjoyed writing and what sparked that interest?

This is a first. If you haven’t seen one (I had not until just last week), a cross blog conversation is when two bloggers speak to each other, answering questions and whatnot, and you get to be a fly on the wall and read what they have to say. It’s fun and you can join in the conversation by leaving comments on either blog, or by asking a new question of your own.

Nell Taliercio of Casual Friday Everyday invited me to participate in a cross blog conversation with her. You can read her entire blog post here, and I’ve also pasted her question to me below.  

After the many years I’ve known you online, and known of your passion for your parenting style and decisions, the one thing I don’t know quite as much about is why you decided to homeschool.

So, can you tell me why you decided to homeschool? Did you always know you’d homeschool?

Talk to you soon,
Nell

Firstly Nell, thank you so much for the nice things you had to say. I’m pretty bad at receiving compliments, but I really appreciate your kind words.

So, why did I decide to homeschool?

Interestingly, I’ve had a survey on my site for a long time asking parents why they homeschool, but this question still required some thinking because I don’t really recall making a conscious decision when my oldest was a baby to homeschool him. Nevertheless, homeschooling is definitely not a stretch for me because I did homeschool for a couple of years in my grade school days, and I also left the public school system after 7th grade and completed 8th through high school at home. Also, my sister has homeschooled her boys their entire lives except for one brief period after she had her fourth baby.

Because of those experiences, I didn’t buy into many of the anti-homeschooling arguments. I knew that socialization wasn’t an issue and in fact I think I benefitted by not having to go through the high school experience. I’m certainly not socially inept, and in fact some of my best friends were homeschooling also, as were a lot of the young people in my religious faith, so I was never at a loss for friendships.

I was also able to spend more time doing something that was important to me (at the time I devoted a LOT of time to volunteer work), and was able to start earning income at a younger age, gaining valuable experience. I paid cash for my first car, and it was no beater.

I do recall the uneasiness I felt at the thought of leaving Caleb all day in someone else’s charge. After Julien was born (baby number two), I enrolled Caleb in a two morning a week play date thing organized by the local county parks and recreation department. He loved it! He got to play with new kids and do all kinds of activities. I liked having some time to enjoy my new baby.

But then after about the fourth time, he would NOT let me leave him. He clung to me and had an absolute look of terror in his eyes. I didn’t question that, I just took him home, and I never took him back. That night I talked to him about why he didn’t want to go back, and it never was clear to me whether something happened to him, or whether he witnessed something disturbing. I’ve pieced together bits and pieces, and I *think* what happened was that another parent who was picking up their child began to yell at and spank the kid, and it bothered Caleb greatly. He had not seen that kind of behavior before.

So you could say that scared me a bit to the potential stuff that can happen when someone has access to your child.

Another thing that was emblazoned on my heart and mind was the fact that my sister was bulled terribly in school. She was teased because she looked like she belonged to another ethnicity, and the majority of students in the school in this urban area of Atlanta that we lived in happened to not get along with this other minority group. She was beat up and harassed daily. To add insult to injury, she was actually beaten by the teacher!

Back then (late 70′s), it was still common for school teachers to physically discipline students. Because of our religious convictions, we don’t salute the flag (a right that is guaranteed by the Supreme Court so it’s not like she was breaking the law). Her Teacher would beat her palms every day because of this. My parents didn’t figure out what was going on right away but when they did you can only imagine the conversation that took place between my mother and that teacher!

Fast forward to my school experience. I wasn’t picked on, but my mother was always having a (legitimate) problem with the way things were done. She hated that we were given 2-3 hours of homework to do after school. She always said that if they couldn’t teach me in the 8 hours they had me, they weren’t doing their job. She would keep me home from school all the time, sometimes just to go shopping with her or to a movie, and never felt that she should have to tell the teachers why. My excuse notes were hilarious! She would never give them a reason why I was absent, because she said it was none of their business. I agree totally. ;)

The homework would sometimes create a conflict with our worship services. My Dad used to write notes to the teachers saying all the things I learned at Bible Study and that I couldn’t finish my homework. God took priority over State in my home, lol! They were never ones to abdicate their parental authority and were eager to point out to the school who was in charge of me.

Also, I suffered with severe low blood sugar in school and one year had PE right before lunch. I would be so hungry I would pass out sometimes or at least be in an eyes-glazed-over daze, so my Mom had to fight again with the school to allow me to eat a mid morning snack, and at least not be required to run laps for 30 minutes when I was ravenously hungry and shaking!

I also had a teacher who would threaten to put students in a box that was (she said) filled with snakes. Of course, it wasn’t, but it WAS located over a heating register, so it would get very hot inside, which was scary and a health hazard, not to mention emotionally abusive. My mom was pretty instrumental in having that teacher fired.

So you could say that my parents had a bit of the educational heretic in them. LOL!

I don’t believe public schools are doing a good job of educating kids (and Georgia schools consistently score among the lowest when you compare us with other states) , but I’m primarily concerned about safety. During the brief time that my nephews were in school, in their tiny little one stop sign town in rural North Carolina, there was a child shot in front of the school. I have a friend whose 4 year old son was sexually assaulted by a fellow Pre-K classmate. And no, I don’t mean a little preteen butt slapping. I mean molestation.

The young teens I know who are in public school say that you can get any drug you want, for free, and that every day they are solicited sexually. The phrase “it’s a jungle out there” comes to mind. You have to worry about the students and the teachers these days, as anyone who watches the news can testify. How many sexual predators are attracted to the teaching profession because they have such easy access to kids?

Another reason I chose to homeschool is because I want to control what my children learn. I’m not a control freak when it comes to my kids, and I like for them to have relationships and learn from a lot of people, not just me. But I don’t want them receiving a biased message from teachers, school administrators, and writers of the curriculum. I want them learning creation rather than evolution (and yes, I want them to be able to give an intelligent explanation of both beliefs, but if they’re going to be taught a bias it is surely going to be mine!), and I don’t want someone’s political agenda being subtly woven into their education.

I also don’t believe kids are being given an accurate view of history. Ask a black American if that unpleasant part of early American history isn’t conveniently glossed over, or a Jew if they got the real picture as a child in school of how ugly Nazism was. How many of us learned the truth about how early American settlers treated the natives who were here with their own civilizations? I want my kids to see how man has dominated man to his injury since the beginning of time – the good, bad, and the ugly. If we don’t tell the whole truth, how can we not repeat our mistakes?

I also know my kids best and know how they learn. My oldest loves to read and is a real bookworm and he absorbs an incredible amount of information that way. At the same time, he exhibits many of the characteristics of an ADD child (which I think doesn’t really exist, at least not in the way we think of it). There is no doubt in my mind that if he were in school, teachers would be pushing me to drug him. But since he’s at home, I can work around those behaviors. If he does his math sitting on the sofa, big deal. If he has to break up schoolwork with running outside and hopping on his skateboard, big deal.

On the other hand, 6 year old is NOT the book learning type. But he is very, very intelligent when it comes to working with his hands. He’s already talking about building solar panels and other sources of alternative power, that’s an interest he has. He says he wants to earn “a thousand dollars a day”. I say more power to him.

Not sure about the girls yet, they’re too young. But I can tailor their learning to their unique strengths. Everyone doesn’t have to excel at everything. We do better if we focus on our strengths instead of trying to have a “well rounded” education.

When I hear people talking about some of the nonsense that goes on in schools, it just makes me cringe! For example, the fact that at the beginning of the year, the teacher has to take away all the school supplies their parents have bought them. That is so wrong to me on several levels. I also don’t want to train my kids to be good little employees, and I think that’s what the school system does best. I have heard Rhea Perry speak about her thoughts on education, and she puts it so well. I know you’re familiar with her Nell, but for my readers that aren’t, Rhea is a homeschooling mom of 7 who teaches parents how to train their kids to become entrepreneurs.

That’s a huge goal of mine too, and I think it’s easier when they’re with me all day. Quite a lot of their ”schooling” consists of (at least with the oldest, but Julien will get there too) learning about money and business. Caleb worked for a time at his Grandmother’s Tea Room, and he was everyone’s favorite server. My Mom told me many times that he could figure out customer’s change without the cash register and was better at it than some of the teenagers who worked for me. He got huge tips and really learned a lot. He would never have been able to have that experience if he was in school. My goal is for my kids never to have a job, especially not when they’re teens, and I’ll write about why another time.

The more I read about the faults of the modern day public school system, the less impressed I am. If I absolutely was forced to enroll my kids in school, I would probably opt for a private Montessori school, but I enjoy having them with me, even with the challenges.

I also believe that the school experience makes many people hate learning. I find reading and study to be pure pleasure and wish I had more time to do those things, but most adults I know feel the opposite. I think (and have been told this by some individuals) that’s because they have associated learning and study with school stress. I also think testing is not helpful and not indicative of true learning. You know, last week I read an article written by Marilyn vos Savant, who has the highest recorded IQ. She stated that in her opinion, testing means little. It doesn’t indicate intelligence or even aptitude, except at the very highest scores and very lowest scores.

School also creates an unnatural learning environment. People say it prepares you for the “real world”, but when in your entire life are you going to be in a situation where you’re surrounded all day long by people who are the exact same age as you? I think we all learn better when we’re with different kinds of people. It really touches me to see my oldest reading a story to his little sibs, or teaching his younger brother some math concept. It’s kind of Little House on the Prairie, y’know?

You probably weren’t expecting such a lengthy reply were you Nell? LOL!

Edited to add: If you want to learn more about the history of education in America and the real forces behind the modern school system, you must read the writings of John Taylor Gatto. Formerly a public school teacher whose career spanned over 3 decades, he was an educational heretic. His books will shock you and keep you up at night but mostly they’ll remove the scales from your eyes so you can really see the cultural brainwashing that we have accepted about education and “school” – they are NOT the same thing!

So, let me ask you:

I know you were homeschooled as a child, tell me: Was it primarily because of your parent’s religious beliefs, or some other reason, and how do you think you benefited as a homeschooled kid?

Most of the homeschooling families I know take a break in the summer like traditional schools do, but I don’t. I’m a big advocate of year round school, so we do homeschool in the summer. This allows me to keep a more flexible and relaxed schedule all year long. I’m mostly an unschooler anyway, and we don’t do a lot of “seat work” so this works for my family.

If you do take a break in the summer though, here are some tips for keeping the kid’s minds active and make them think they’re playing.

• Word games like Scrabble, Boggle, even Mad Libs. You can buy these in travel sizes, which are great for road trips.  My kids love these games. What they don’t know is that they stimulate their vocabulary, English and spelling skills. They have to use math skills to add up the points every round.  Games are an important part of my “curriculum” year round.
• Board games such as Monopoly (the math again) and checkers. Monopoly also teaches concepts around handling money and investing. In playing these games, kids can also be taught to accept defeat gracefully and be a good sport.
• Suduko involves math and numbers.  You can find kid’s version of these.
• There are some wonderful websites for computer savvy kids with fun games and printable materials. Some examples are funbrain.com, math.com, and abcteach.com.
• In the summer, there are often free or reduced rates available at museums, botanical gardens, IMAX theatres and the like. These are very educational experiences.
• Check out your local Barnes and Noble if you have a reader. They give away a free book to kids who participate in their summer reading program.

Have fun