Category: Giveaway

This week’s topic for the Not-Back-to-School blog hop hosted by Home Educating Family is Homeschooling Outside the [Curriculum] Box! This week one of my readers will win the On the Go Planner from Home Educating Family. Look for the details at the end of this post!

Back when Mom started homeschooling my sister and me, there weren’t a lot of options for home educators. A handful of companies sold their curriculum to both private schools and homeschoolers. Most people picked one and ordered all of their subjects from that publisher. Mom used curriculum from ACE, also known as Accelerated Christian Education. Interestingly enough, it’s the same curriculum that was used by the Christian school that my husband attended. ACE wasn’t perfect, but I still got a solid education.

When it came time to choose curriculum for our own children, my husband and I both wanted to try something different. The traditional “school-in-a-box” curriculums were pretty pricy, and I felt comfortable enough to pull together an eclectic mix of books and curriculum. I’d read a bit about Charlotte Mason’s methods by then, and while intrigued by them, I was not confident enough to totally forgo all structured lesson plans and workbooks. Science and history were materials that fit the “living books” type of approach, while language arts and particularly math were closer to traditional, structured workbooks.

I quickly discovered though, that plenty of education went on outside of those carefully chosen materials! All of the “Why?” questions posed by my kids turned out to be great opportunities for discussion, experimentation, and creative projects. A question about colors turned into a Sunday afternoon spent mixing primary color finger paints to see what colors resulted. Driving by a wind farm on the way to the dentist inspired a discussion about power generation.

At first I was frustrated whenever things like this came up during our “lesson time”. After all, I had a checklist for us to complete! I learned not to underestimate the value of unscheduled learning this spring when the kids and I had a picnic. We finished our sandwiches and the three oldest kids started exploring the pond in our backyard. They were making note of the various wildlife they found and happily reporting their observations to me. I’d brought our science book with us, and was just about to call them away from the water so that we could read our lesson, when it hit me… They were already learning science! I started laughing at myself and tucked the science book back into my bag; it really would be OK if we read our lesson later.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have “the checklist” and I’d be lost without my Well Planned Day, but now I know that the list can wait when opportunities arise. The books and worksheets will still be there later, and encouraging the curiosity of the moment is what will bring my kids back to the books to learn more!

Now for the giveaway details! Just leave a comment on this blog post and on Thursday a winner will be randomly drawn from all of the comments. I’ll announce the winner next Friday! Due to international sweepstakes laws, this giveaway is for US entrants only. This giveaway is not tied to any social media site. All prizes must be claimed within six weeks.

This week’s topic for the Not-Back-to-School blog hop hosted by Home Educating Family is Making My School Unique! But first, let’s announce the winner of last week’s giveaway… Andrea P, congratulations!

This week you can win one of Home Educating Family’s gorgeous wall calendars. Look for details at the end of the post!

We do education year round in our house, and it works really well for us at this point in our lives. Still, we do celebrate what we call New Book Day. (Doesn’t that sound so much more fun than back-to-school?) That’s when everyone gets some new pencils, crayons, etc. and we start our new books. Even Mom gets some new pencils, pens, and notebooks! It’s nice to have a fresh starting point once a year. Honestly I’m amazed by how much the kids look forward to New Book Day! It’s definitely become a tradition in our home.

We also consider birthdays holidays. Everyone get the day off from studying, and of course there is always cake! It makes birthdays special, and that way we can party at leisure without worrying about completing the day’s lessons. Besides, decorating the cake and correcting long division at the same time could get messy… in more ways than one!

We usually take a few weeks off in December. I look for winter/Christmas themed worksheets online and print them off for the kids. They have fun and still keep skills sharp. We do a lot of crafts and baking too. Christmas ornaments are a favorite project, and the kids always help me make homemade dog biscuits for our German Shepherd’s stocking! Last year we did the Jessie tree ornaments and readings. That’s another tradition that we’ll be continuing. Most of these activities might not be strictly considered “school”, but there’s still plenty of educational value in them.

We’re still in the beginning stages of our home education journey, and I’m sure that we will add plenty of more traditions as we go along. How about you? Do you have any special traditions in your family?

And now for the giveaway! To enter, simply leave me a comment telling me about a special tradition your family has. A winner will be randomly drawn on Thursday, and announced on Friday. Due to international sweepstakes laws, this giveaway is for US entrants only. This giveaway is not tied to any social media site.

The lovely folks over at Home Educating Family are hosting a Not-Back-to-School blog hop every Friday this month! And there will be prizes! This week, we’ll be sharing our homeschool stories and you could win a one-year subscription to Home Educating Family Magazine! Be sure to look for details about the giveaway at the bottom of this post!

I’m a homeschool graduate, but I spent my elementary years at the local public school before my parents made the decision to homeschool my sister and me. My husband attended the same private Christian school from Kindergarten straight through High School graduation. We actually discussed how we would educate any children we might have back when we were dating. Home education was very important to both of us, and we agreed that we would teach our children at home.

Fast forward about ten years, and our oldest was four years old, and just itching to jump into “doing school”. I’d been reading and researching homeschooling methods and curriculum choices for a while. I was amazed at how many more choices there were compared to back when Mom was teaching me. I figured I had a pretty good grip on what to do and how things would work. After all, I’d been home educated, I’d been reading up on the topic, and I considered myself a reasonably intelligent person. On top of that, my very bright daughter was more than anxious to start learning how to read! This was going to be a piece of cake…

You know what the Bible says about pride going before a fall? Completely true.

Nothing, and I mean nothing went the way I planned. Munchkin loved books and doing as many activity worksheets as I’d give her, but reading would take tears and another two years to master. We may be the only family in the world who hated Hooked on Phonics. I had ideas for elaborate educational projects, but didn’t really take into account the attention span of my still-young child. Not to mention trying to figure out what to do with two and three year old boys when I was trying to work with their sister! Wasn’t this supposed to be easy?

Of course, home educating moms and teachers everywhere knew what I didn’t yet understand: Teaching is hard work! I took a step back, a deep breath, and looked for what God was teaching me about teaching.

We eased up. We still read books, and Munchkin still asked to do worksheets, particularly ones that had to do with numbers, shapes, and patterns. We shelved Hooked on Phonics and tried a different phonics program several months later.

I learned that our homeschool will not look exactly like anyone else’s. And that’s OK. God gave me wonderfully unique children, and educating them would require an approach that would probably be a little different from how other families did it. I learned to keep the ideas that worked, and not worry about letting go of the ones that didn’t. I learned that planning is important, but flexibility is absolutely necessary. Most of all, I learned to enjoy the ride.

Oh sure, there are still days where I think arithmetic might be out to get me. Some days are more stressful than others, and it’s still a lot of work. But overall, I enjoy my job as a home educator. I’m the one who gets to be there when they read their first book, learn to write their name, and all of the countless other firsts.

Now, more than ever, I am beyond grateful for the time and sacrifice that Mom and my tutors put into my own education. They gave me a priceless gift, and I pray that I can pass it on to my own children.

To enter this week’s giveaway, just leave a comment on this blog post. The winner will be randomly chosen on Thursday and announced on Friday. Due to international sweepstakes laws, this giveaway is for US entrants only. This giveaway is not tied to any social media site.