Category: Homeschool Encouragement

How many homeschoolers are there? Number of Homeschooled Students-in-the-US 0

How Many Homeschoolers Are There in the USA?

Last August, a new study was released showing a continued increase in the number and percentage of students who are homeschooled in America.  The last time the U.S. government released data about the number of homeschooled students was back in 2007. Since I am doing a series about homeschooling in general (How to Start Homeschooling, Choosing homeschool curriculums, etc.), I thought this was the perfect opportunity to share some of the...

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11-Year Old Shares Her Thoughts About Homeschooling

My friend’s daughter wrote a blog post about homeschooling and they generously offered to let me post it here.  I loved her piece and I hope you do too!  My mom thought it would be helpful for me to give my perspective on homeschooling. Being an eleven-year-old homeschool student has some good things and some bad things. Good things: -I can sleep until nine every day! No getting up early...

One of *Those* Days 0

One of *Those* Days

I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, right? Not only are there a mountain of dishes to be put away, but  there are dishes in the sink filled with cold nasty water with floating bits of who-knows-what. (Grrr.. why didn’t we just do them last night?) There’s laundry still in the dryer, waiting to be hauled out and folded. LD lost his math book. We spend 15...

Homeschool Encouragment 0

Homeschool Encouragement: To Homeschool You Need…

To Homeschool We Need… Love The most important ingredient of homeschooling is simply love. Homeschooling is about the relationships, not the curriculum we use.  Some days will be wonderful, other days… not as noteworthy, but at the end of the day did we connect wit the kids, snuggle with the kids, help them find their own voice and strengths. I help motivate them and support them. I try to keep...

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10 Ways to Fill Your Home with Love

It’s always time to fill the house with love, right? With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s timely to think about what this means. Sometimes love isn’t just the feelings you have, it’s the actions you take.   I wrote this post last year as I struggled with major (ear) problems that led to 6 ear surgeries in 8 months…  You can read more at this post,  I’m going deaf today. (I am...

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How to Get Started Homeschooling (with Unit Studies)

Someone recently asked me how to get started homeschooling. She was interested in creating some unit studies for her kids and wanted to know where to start.  Since I tend to create our history and science units myself, I thought I’d try to share how I pull our units together. I’ve written a lot of related posts about homeschooling things like planning, preparation, assessing our long term and short term...

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What Happens in a Homeschool Day? Our Week (or 2) in Review (K, Grade 3, Grade 5)

I thought I would put a post together that helps give a flavor of what our daily homeschooling routine looks like. So many of my posts are compilations of our activities, but they don’t actually show what happens day-to-day.  It’s about time to do that again (and I enjoy reading these posts later as the kids get older!) We have finally gotten back to a relatively normal schedule. (If you...

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20+ Thoughts For the Busy Homeschool Family… Remember…

  Sometimes I need some homeschooling encouragement. Here are some things I need to remember as we race through our day… Think about dinner in the morning — That tops my list because having dinner planned (or better yet, waiting in a crockpot!) makes the end of my day SO much better! The education is important, but keeping the family healthy, happy and on track really has to top my...

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Advice to New Homeschoolers

At some point soon I’ll be sharing some of my plans and the curriculum  choices for this next fall. But before I do that, I really wanted to write a post with advice to new homeschoolers.  I want to stress how different each and every homeschool family is! So without further ado, here’s some of my thoughts about homeschooling for those who are new to the adventure: *In many states,...

Homeschool socialization 6

Homeschool Questions Answered: What About Socialization?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked by people “What about socialization?” or something to that effect. Depending on the tone of the person asking I’ve responded in different ways.  My answer has also changed as the kids have gotten older. These days in answering that question I often start with my own thoughts about socialization… “well, I want the kids to be good listeners, polite, well-rounded,...

Reasons for Homeschooling 9

Homeschool Questions Answered: Why Do People Homeschool?

People are often curious why homeschoolers have chosen this route. After all, the vast majority of people choose to send their children to public school.  On the other hand, there are now more children being home-schooled than are enrolled in charter and voucher schools combined. I read recently that there are now over 2 million homeschooled children. In 1999, three reasons for homeschooling were the most frequently cited: 49 percent...

Time and the Busy Parent 3

Time and the Busy Parent

Do you ever find yourself saying to yourself (or to others for that matter) “there’s not enough time in my day.”  I’ve been thinking about that a lot and how my attitudes about time affect the relationships I have with my loved ones. There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” –Brian Tracy One of my New Years...