Homemaking on the Homestead

As the school year ends for so many there are always many questions when it comes to homeschooling.  Can I really do this?  Can I prepare them for college?  And doubts and confusion are very strong.  Mama...  if you homeschool your child/children..  don't doubt yourself or your conviction.  I wrote this a couple years ago..  You can do this..  think outside the box..  and relax.. it will be ok..   I received a comment on a previous article I'd written: “ My Homeschooling Advice to my Daughter ”. I was going to reply to her in the comment section but my reply got so long that I decided to share my thoughts on a blog post. ~smile~ Here was the comment/question: “This was my approach to homeschooling too. My girls are now 9 and 6, and I'm worried about how to homeschool for the next 10 years. I don't know if I have it in me to homeschool for the next 10 years, and I don't know if I would do a good e...

  A few days ago I was in Target.. and looking at all the school supplies for sale.. I got excited for moment.. and then .. I got even more excited.. This year I am retiring.. yep.. for the last 28 years I've bought school supplies, curriculum, made plans, and organized the education of my 8 children... but .. I AM DONE!! Thank you God for seeing me through the last 28 years.. I do not regret one single day!!! If I had it to do all over again.. I would do exactly the same thing.. I would homeschool each of them all over again.. there were great years, there were good years, there were difficult years... BUT.. I never wavered from our conviction.. I stayed true to what God called us to do.. and this year.. (with a bit of sadness) I walk by all those cute back to school supply sales (all those Minion school supplies had me wishing I had just one more kid to homeschool.. ).. and thanked the LORD.. I am DONE!! . I've taken all 8 kids all the way through high...

My daughter Hannah has started homeschooling my oldest granddaughter, Elizabeth. She is in kindergarten and having a super fun time with her. She called me the other day and was wondering what she could be doing with her 3 year old daughter, Rylee. Rylee is a very busy little girl, very hands on and badly wants to “do school”. She does not like coloring or writing. I suggested a homeschool box of hands on fun things for her to do while she is schooling Elizabeth; a box that only gets brought out at school time in order to keep everything interesting to her. One of the fun things about being a grandma is finding ways to help my children out, and anything homeschooling gets me excited. So I set out on a quest to see what I could find for little Miss Rylee that would be different and hands on. I went to the local dollar store and my two daughters, Leanne and Sierra, went along with me. We pooled our creative juices together to see what kind of things we could find a...

With costs of a college education going through the roof and parents wondering how on earth they can provide this for their children, it may seem like an impossible task, but, there is hope. First off, I’ve heard from parents that did not want to have more children simply because they feared how they could put them through college. I find that odd, from my own perspective. If a child wants college, he/she can find a way to make it happen. When I had my children somehow I missed the memo that said it was MY responsibility to put them through college. Every child has to make their own choices in life. Some of my children have not gone to college (gasp!), and some have. And for the ones that have, they have done it on their own. It is possible for a child to earn a degree, work a full time job and pay for their degree on their own. I know because I have children that have done this. You just have to think outside the box. College just does not always happen inside a...

I received a comment on a previous article I'd written: “ My Homeschooling Advice to my Daughter ”. I was going to reply to her in the comment section but my reply got so long that I decided to share my thoughts on a blog post. ~smile~ Here was the comment/question: “This was my approach to homeschooling too. My girls are now 9 and 6, and I'm worried about how to homeschool for the next 10 years. I don't know if I have it in me to homeschool for the next 10 years, and I don't know if I would do a good enough job preparing them for college. A future veterinarian and doctor.... as a mother who has "been there, done that" I hope you'll share your insight.” When I began homeschooling my kids I honestly never worried about the next year or the next and certainly not 10 years. You see I felt that God had led us to homeschool our children. It became and still is a matter of conviction. I determined in my mind th...

My daughter Hannah is getting ready to start a little formal homeschooling with my oldest granddaughter. So we had a talk recently about this. I gave her my thoughts and advice. I thought I would share what I told her, perhaps it would be a help to someone…. 1. You’ve already been homeschooling, just by living everyday life. Don’t sweat it… 2. When all of you (referring to my children) were 5 I focused on only a few things. Reading every day to you, teaching you to read, math…. because in the end.. knowing how to read and how to think logically (What I feel math is all about), will give them the keys to ANYTHING they want to pursue in life. 3. I taught all of my children to read using “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons”… maybe it’s not for everyone, but I used it for 8 children, with various learning styles and they all learned to read. It is simple and not stressful for the mother or the child. 4. If she gets to a point in the book that it becomes...

Do you have a student who would enjoy learning about HTML and making websites? I received an email awhile back from a homeschooling father and computer consultant. He is offering a free online course for kids to learn basic HTML. Classes begin April 7th. The class is 3 weeks long and he will have a new lesson online each day. It is totally self-paced and students can catch up and review missed lessons. From his website he shares: Students will learn: Basic HTML Tags Understanding of fundamentals of Web Design and Internet Pages The class is open to students from age 9 on up. Here is a list of his prerequisites: Class is open to any students 9 years and older Some familiarity with keyboard is valuable This is a free "beta" class and I'm asking the participants share their feedback with me to help me improve its value and ease of use. You can find out more information on his site and sign up for the class here: http://tinyurl.com/l7tf7b2 ...

This has to be the most different school year ever for me. Why? Because I am really only planning for one student! And that is vastly different from the first time, 25 years ago, when I was setting out on my homeschool journey and preparing for one Kindergarten student. I had no experience and very few curriculum choices available. How quickly the years seem to have gone by! Sierra will be graduating very soon. She is currently working on a few remaining subjects for her diploma. I will be issuing her diploma when her required courses are finished. If all goes according to plan she should be done by the end of the year (spring time at the latest). She has not taken a summer break in order to try and finish up this year. She is currently working on Civics & Economics, English writing and Literature. And her love of learning more and more about photography and art will continue to be part of her schedule. That leaves me with my son Isaac as my only student ...

My daughter Sierra is in 11th grade. She loves photography and takes amazing pictures and has an incredible eye for picture taking. I can’t even begin to understand how she sees what she does, but I would say it is a gift she has. My new fall blog topper picture was taken by her along with some other very pretty pics. So this year for high school we decided to make photography her elective. Not finding a lot of online curriculum guides for this topic and not wanting to turn this into another set of workbooks and tests (who wants to kill the joy of something someone loves to do and turn it into a chore? :), I chose to do this on my own. I want the study to be hands on, educational and enjoyable. I will be having her research various topics about photography (photo taking techniques, different types of lenses, F-stop, Macro settings, etc), research & discuss some on the history of the camera, taking lots of pictures, creating several photo projects and in the spring our...

Today my son, Isaac, and daughter, Sierra, had their first day of school for the new year and I had my 25th first day of homeschooling. On Sunday we sat down and reviewed schedules, goals and plans for the new school year. We discussed a few field trips and activities they wanted to do. The house was cleaned up and the school area (my dining room & adjoining sunroom) was organized and ready to go. Previously I had loaded all computer related school onto the school laptop. There is something fun about starting a new year. We were all looking forward to getting back into a routine. As much as I love summer and the lack of steady routines there is something comforting about the familiar routine of the school year. My daughter was up early and began by getting coffee, then going out for a run, coming back to shower/dress, eat and take care of her chores. Then she hit the books. My son got up a little later than her, but still before he was actually required to and go...

It’s that time of year again!  Time to make curriculum choices for the upcoming school year.   With only two students in my homeschool now and a lot of experience the choices to be made do not seem as overwhelming as they did years ago.      This year I am making one change from the norm.  For the last many years we have used Saxon math.  We have loved it.   All my children went through Advanced Math and one Calculus.  My husband has always been the math teacher (math is his strong point).  Well the last two years have been incredibly busy for my husband (80 hour weeks sometimes) and so I took over the math teaching with the help of my son Jacob (who was the one that did the calculus book).   But this year my son has also gotten busy and while I did take algebra, geometry and trig in high school…  that was a very LONG time ago!!   So I knew this year I needed to make a cha...

I think most everyone would agree on the importance of having children read. As a homeschooling mom I read and saw a lot of really bad literature for children and young people and decided early on with my children that I wanted them to be exposed to books that have stood the test of time and are consider excellent literature, the classics. Over the years as I would read classic books to my kids and they began to read them as well I saw firsthand many of the wonderful benefits that come from reading classics. Reading classics will expand and increase vocabulary. Children will be exposed to a vast amount of vocabulary words that they might not hear otherwise. And when the words are read in context it helps in understanding what the words mean. I’ve seen that reading classics gives children exposure to writers that have an excellent command of the English language. This in turn, I believe, will help make children better writers. When they read and see how our langu...

My pause in blogging has been due to being very busy in the last few days! My tomatoes are starting to ripen up thanks to a beautiful stretch of hot sunny days. I’ve gotten about 45 to 50 jars of salsa made. I have another big bowl full of tomatoes and am hoping to get some more over the next few days and have enough for spaghetti sauce. I also canned up another batch of zucchini bread and butter pickles. Here is a pic of some of my salsa and the pickles.. You can find my salsa recipe here: http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/cannedsalsa.htm   On Monday I was trying to decide if we should start the school year or wait another week. So I asked Sierra and Isaac (my only two students this year :) if they wanted another week off or if they wanted to start. To my surprise they were both ready to jump in and start the year. And that is what we did. This year begins my 24th year of homeschooling.. hard to believe it has been that many years.  For Isaac (8th grade) ...