I’ll tell you what, guys. The past several months have been quite disturbing, to say the least. People have been coming out of the woodwork to attack homeschooling…and they’ve been coming from every angle: Continue reading “Another Attack on Homeschooling”
When I was growing up, I hated history. I hated everything about it: the boring textbooks, the required memorization of dates and other (what I thought was) useless trivia, the multiple choice tests that were easy to ace but served no purpose when it came to retention, and the boring documentaries accompanied by worksheets designed to make sure we were paying attention.
Yup. It was awful. Continue reading “Bring Ancient History to Life with Beautiful Feet Books”
Today’s post is going to be brief.
A few days ago, Fox News published an article which pretty much insinuated that all homeschool parents are abusive and need to be monitored. (This was spurred on by the Turpin sentencing.)
As inflammatory as that accusation was, I was even more disturbed by the fact that this news organization interviewed the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a leftist, anti-homeschooling organization that misleads people into believing they’re a legitimate homeschool non-profit, to back up their claims.
But wait. There’s more. Continue reading “The Homeschool Community Has Been Infiltrated”
Today’s post is going to be a little different than the norm. While I’m usually addressing homeschool parents (or at least, parents, in general) here on my blog or on my YouTube channel, I’m searching for a different audience just this once, an audience you won’t find much content for:
And it’s long overdue.
Continue reading “Grandparents of Homeschoolers…Let’s Have a Chat”
Hi, my name is Shelly, and I homeschool eight kids.
Do I have your attention now? I’m going to admit, as a mom of eleven, eight isn’t really all that difficult to handle. I mean it! After graduating my three oldest, I finally feel like I’ve got the hang of this homeschooling thing. You see, if I had to choose one word to describe my home education philosophy it would be this:
Relaxed.
Believe me, it didn’t start out that way. We ended up here by sheer necessity, and praise God we did.
Continue reading “CTCMath Is a MUST for Your Relaxed Homeschool”
Have you ever thought about what the word “curriculum” means? For years, the first thing that came to mind for me were books – textbooks, to be precise.
While books can – and usually do – fill that role, that’s not what curriculum specifically means. Curriculum simply means having a plan in place for an approach to education.
That’s it.
Continue reading “Lifeschooling: Using the World as Your Classroom”
It’s that time of year again…. curriculum time! Admit it, you feel just a little giddy planning for your next homeschool year, too. 😉
Like this year, next year I’ll be homeschooling eight kids – 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 12th. At one point I was homeschooling ten, so I’m getting there! One thing I’ve learned over these ten years of homeschooling is that our curriculum choices aren’t set in stone.
They just aren’t.
I refuse to allow myself and my children to get caught up in trying to make our homeschool fit our curriculum, rather than the other way around.
With that being said, I’m going to share with you the resources we’ve chosen for next year. Before I start, though, I’m going to make one thing clear:
Continue reading “2019/2020 Homeschool Curriculum for 8 Kids”
Imagine a homeschool day with no textbooks, no worksheets, and no busy work. Imagine a homeschool day quietly spent reading aloud to your children, all the while feeling perfectly confident that this was enough. Imagine a homeschool day devoid of disconnected subjects and seemingly impractical lessons but instead filled with quiet conversations and sometimes passionate debate.
Sound impossible?
This, my friends, is a homeschool that is centered on read-alouds.
Continue reading “Using Read-Alouds as the Spine of Your Homeschool”
We’re living in a world today of mass censorship. Whether it’s blocking dissenting opinions on mainstream social media platforms, removing information that goes against the status quo from websites like Amazon and Etsy, or discriminating against “conspiracy theory” videos on YouTube, one thing is clear:
Continue reading “Homeschooling, Censorship, and How They’re Connected”
I remember a time when I could never get my kids to write without dealing with complaints, insecurity, and tears. Since we began notebooking a couple years ago, I’ve found that not only are my children much more receptive to writing, but they often do it in their spare time, as well – voluntarily.
I’ll admit that if I had just approached notebooking as yet another way to incorporate writing, it would have backfired. The key to our notebooking success has been less about using it as a method and more about using it to provide my kids with choices.
