Advice from a Homeschool Mom- You can do it.

One of the best decisions I have ever made in my life was to homeschool my children. The first being to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of my life and the second marrying my husband. See, it’s pretty important to me.

If you are new to the journey, I would like to share a few things I have learned after 6 years of being my kiddo’s teacher.

*There will be days when you want to quit. If you are like me, it will happen more often than you care to admit. I listen to people talk about things they do while the kids are in school and sometimes I think it would be nice to have a break. You’re kids will be with you all of the time. Be sure to take time for yourself so you don’t get too burned out. It doesn’t help the kids if you are running on empty. Just remember you are doing the best thing for your children. No one loves them or cares about them more than you do. How can that be a bad thing?

* Take it slow. It has taken me awhile to realize this but you have 12 years to get to everything they need to know. Just because the school covers something at a certain time doesn’t mean you have to. That is one of the joys of learning at home. If you want to learn cursive or multiplication at a different time, you can. Just do it.

* Have fun. The years will fly by. Yesterday, my dad asked me what grade Griffin was going to be in and it almost shocked me to say the 6th. Where did my baby go? If seems like yesterday that we decided not to sent him to the Montessori school and try homeschooling. What a great decision we made. Don’t waste these amazing years God has blessed you with your children. Play lots of games. The kids will learn so much about sharing, taking turns and being a good sport. These are very important skills.

* Character building is as important as academic learning. My husband and I have talked extensively about what we would like for our kids. We have decided that we don’t care what they choose for their profession. They can be garbage collectors or doctors. We honestly don’t care. Our only hope is that they grow into adults who love the Lord. Because we are only on this earth for a short time, we want to be positive that we will spend eternity together. We want other people to enjoy our children as much as we do. In order for that to happen, they need to have good manners, be kind, share, have patience and love others (among other things). We don’t feel like these qualities are encouraged in a public school setting.

All too often, the young people I come into contact are not a joy to be around. I just keep thinking that if they act like that now, what kind of adults are they going to be.

* Don’t give up. I know I kind of mentioned this but I feel like it is so important. Don’t get frustrated when the kids would rather do anything than school work. Be persistent. I truly believe that if we only do half of what we plan, it will be more than they would get if they were in the public school.

* Don’t buy more curriculum than absolutely necessary. Oh, if I only had half of what I’ve spent back on things we have never used. I could probably go on a trip to Hawaii. I have a serious problem with loving everything I see. I think this comes from wanting to do a good job with my children’s education. It seems like I am always on the lookout for something else. I would be better off if only saw new curriculum once a year. The choices of great curriculum is so overwhelming. Don’t let it discourage you. Pick what is best for your family and then dive in. (I am preaching to myself on this one)

* Attend a homeschool conference if you can. This is the place to get encouragement for the entire year. Make sure you plan your time well as these can be overwhelming also. Take a friend and have a great time. Don’t forget to wear comfy shoes. You will do a lot of walking.

* Don’t try to keep up with the Jones’. This is a huge problem for me. When I see the family with matching outfits, all playing musical instruments, older siblings carrying younger ones and helping out, speaking foreign languages and mentally calculating their grocery purchases, I feel like a failure.

Sometimes it is better to not even ask what other’s are learning or doing. My children are just ordinary children. I am just an ordinary homeschool mom. I am okay with that. I will not be able to teach everything that all of the other homeschooling families are learning. I am just going to do my best. Those families are not perfect even if they look like it from my side.

* Read Todd Wilson’s books. If you are ever discouraged, read something by him. He is funny, insightful and will make you feel normal. I love him. He also will be speaking at the TOS Expo this fall. Don’t miss it. It will give you encouragement and is a lot of fun.

Finally, know that God has definite plans for your children. You can’t change them. Isn’t that wonderful. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, you cannot change what God has planned for your kids. You can’t mess it up if he wants them to be a doctor and you’re not good at anatomy. You won’t make decisions that will keep them from being exactly what is planned for them. God knows where they will be in 10 years from now even if we don’t. How refreshing is that?

The choices we make are going to mold our children for God. What a great and awesome opportunity.

Happy Homeschooling.

If you would like to read others advice about starting this journey, check out the TOS Blog Cruise.

Unorganized, but in control!

This weeks question on the Blog Cruise is How do you organizer your homeschool space? If you have ever been to my house you probably know that I am very unorganized by looking at our school room.

This is a picture of our house. I include this because we use our entire house to learn. This is what keeps all of our school stuff contained!

The room that we use to keep our school stuff in was designed to be used as a dining room. But, we are not a formal type of family so when we built our house, I knew right away that this was going to be used as a play room/school room. I would really love for my house to be super organized and clean. But, after homeschooling for 6 years I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t gonna happen. My children are only going to be at home for a short number of years and then I will have time to keep everything clean and neat. Right now, I am enjoying learning with them and having fun along the way.

Even though the room looks unorganized, I can ordinarily find whatever I am looking for. Whether it is a textbook, game, or art supply, I have a good idea where most stuff is kept. That is, if it was put away correctly. Of course this doesn’t always happen.

This is our main book shelf. Each shelf holds the majority of items we use for a particular subject. The top shelf is for games that we sometimes use and where we keep papers we don’t want to get thrown away.

Then next shelf down is for math manipulatives and a few Bible books. We use cloth containers with no lids and plastic containers to keep this stuff in. We usually can’t fit the lids on the plastic ones because they are overflowing with great learning stuff.

We then have some of our craft supplies (but certainly not all of them). We keep our paints in a closet upstairs. Craft supplies are also kept in plastic containers with lids. Sometimes the lids get used and sometimes not. It just depends on how often we are getting things out of them. Here you will find glue, tape, WikkiStix, glitter, pipe cleaners, stickers, staplers, pom poms and beads (just to name a few things). My kids are very artistic to so this is a huge part of our learning. My son loves to draw. Pencils,markers, and chalk are kept on Bella’s desk in a 3 drawer plastic container. The drawers come out easily so they can take them out as needed. Crayons have their own huge container that is kept on the blue cubbies. Coloring books and drawing paper are kept in a cubby under the crayons.

Moving downward you will find all of our math books and English items we are currently using and a few musical instruments.

There are also Cuisenaire Rods on this shelf. The two red boxes are a wooden train that I picked up at Michaels’ for the kids to paint. The yellow Rubbermaid container has a phonics game that Bella is enjoying playing right now.

This shelf has our movies and CD’s that we love. We have all of the Little House on the Prairie Series on DVD that the entire family loves to watch. Our US puzzle pieces is in the green drawer. You will also find our beloved “Your Story Hour” CD’s. The kids love learning history by listening to these wonderful stories. Recently we listened to the story of the Pony Express and Griffin couldn’t wait to go to the library to get more books on this subject. There is also a roll of art paper stuffed on this shelf.

The remaining shelves hold our books that we like to read over and over again. These are ones that after weeding our books, we cannot get rid of. Included here are “The little House, Mike Mulligan, Alabaster's Song, and many more favorites.

These two bookshelves go almost all the way to the ceiling. You can’t see but there are games piled on top of both of them. The blue one has a science shelf, a workbook shelf and the top shelf is reference books (dictionaries, etc.) The white shelf has art paper and books on the top shelf, June B. Jones series next (with rolly paint in the clear container), Magic Tree House Series and the bottom two shelves have Bibles, and 3 ring binders that we keep papers in.

Our family loves to play games and this is where we keep the majority of them. Bella’s sewing machine is also kept here. You can’t see in this picture but there are two more of these blue cubbies that lay flat on the floor so that these take up the entire length of this room. These hold lincoln logs, our 3 leap pads w/ over 40 cartridges, 2 lite brites, coloring books, board books, and much more. These cubbies are my sanity for our school room. Griffin measured them for me and they are over 6 feet tall and 28 inches deep. I can hide lots of stuff in here. On the ones that are laying down, we keep a huge Longaberger basket that has books we are currently reading in it. Bella has a large Rubbermaid container with her wooden play food for her kitchen. This is a favorite when they play restaurant. The 2 cash registers are also on the blue cubbies.

This is where we keep the kids legos. This container is 11 inches tall and 20 inches long and is almost overflowing. If this is in it’s proper place you will also find this on top of the cubbies that are on their sides.

This is Bella’s desk. The drawer system on the right is her Workbox containers. We use this to help us keep track of our daily work. You can read my review on this system by clicking here.

Griffin’s Desk is pretty messy right now. I usually stack the stuff I need on top of his Workbox boxes. Even though both of the kids have desks, we don’t necessarily use them every day. They do their handwriting at their desks but that is about it. They use Griffin’s desk a lot when they play airport traffic controller.

This picture shows a huge thorn in my husband’s side. (he he) This is where we keep our mountain of library books. Right now I have 102 checked out. Most of them are kept in these two wheeled carts but several are strewn about the house. We love books in our family. All kinds of them. We have field guides that the kids use almost every day to look up birds, flowers, trees and insects. They love taking their bird books to my mom and dads and identifying their birds for them.

The blue bag says “Homeschool Mom” and was a gift from my sister. This picture really doesn’t show how big it is. I love it and use it to carry things to work, homeschool book club and our homeschool group. You can get your own bag from Thirty-One Gifts which is a Christian company that sells all kinds of bags.

Wow, I am truly blessed to have such a plethora of homeschooling items and a great house to keep them in. Answering this question for this weeks blog cruise has opened my eyes to the gifts God has given me.

Yes, I’m unorganized but I feel like I have it all under control. At least for today!

Check out what the rest of the crew had to say about How they organize their space by visiting the Homeschool Crew Blog.

Have a blessed week everyone.