Homeschooling and raising children is hard work! That’s for sure. But it doesn’t have to be as hard as we sometimes make it. After years of making life harder for myself than it’s had to be, I’ve learned some tips that simplify your life, and make your home school far more enjoyable and impactful.Continue Reading
Questions to Help You Reflect Over Your Previous School Year and Plan for This Year
Reflecting over your previous year can help you as you’re making plans for this current school year. I encourage you to set aside an hour or two of uninterrupted time to reflect over these questions.
These questions are a great way to evaluate your homeschool, and help you develop a plan for implementing some changes. Don’t just do what you’ve always been doing. Your children are in a constant state of change, so we must adjust our approach to teaching our children as they mature. I’ve often found it so much easier to put my homeschool on autopilot. But in doing so, our school becomes stagnate. Learning loses its excitement, and I stop growing.
I’ve learned my lesson and I’m not doing that anymore.
What worked? Why did it work? (Let’s keep doing this, and perhaps add more.)
What didn’t? Why didn’t it work? (Let’s eliminate this.)
When did you feel like you were in your groove? (do more of this)
When did you feel like quitting? (do less of this)Continue Reading
Ideas for Serving as a Family
“To serve should be a privilege, and it is to our shame that we tend to think of it as a burden, something to do if you’re not fit for anything better or higher.” Madeline L’Engle
Service is the heart of our homeschool. Basically, it’s the heart of our family. ( In fact, my oldest daughter and I are in route to Africa to serve widows and orphan girls of Burundi. ) All that we learn, is learned so that we can better serve others. All that we do, we do not simply for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others.
Serving is a great way to teach our children to be people of action, not simple philosphers who contemplate the complexities of the universe in their ivory towers. Serving is a great way “road test” the ideas that we teach. It reveals the relevancy of learning. Serving has lessons of its own as well, and you can’t always predict the lessons that will be presented. Serving teaches our children to be generous, to give our best and to see other people as valuable and worthy of their time, energy, and material possessions.
Serving is all about loving.
Here are some ideas of how you can begin serving TODAY:Continue Reading
Homeschooling With Courage
It takes courage to homeschool.
It takes courage to decide that we, the parents, can do something better for our children than what the experts have suggested. (How dare we have the audacity to think that our Creator would tell us what our children need?)
It takes courage to swim against the tide. (It’s hard too!)
It takes courage to tell friends, neighbors and our family, that we’ve decided to educate our children as they look at us as though we’ve lost our minds. (Sometimes we question our own sanity.)
It takes courage to have your children with you all of the time, with no breaks. (It’s ok to daydream about how dreamy it would be to have your children in school during the day.)Continue Reading