Can I tell you something that's hard to admit? I've spent a lot of time in the past year being a miserable homeschool mom. Countless hours of training have gone into perfecting my craft. I'm excellent at complaining about parenting struggles, whining through hard days, and generally being difficult to be around.
After our most challenging homeschooling year yet, I have it down. Here's how you can be a miserable homeschool mom too!
Listen or read more at https://www.adriennebolton.com/blog/2017/01/miserable-homeschool-mom.html
- The idea of anchoring or tethering our children to a cultural heritage.
- What are some Morning Time elements that help to convey this cultural heritage.
- How Cindy handles the aspects of our heritage that are not positive or admirable.
- The connection between language and memory and how language helps form relationships with ideas.
- How technology is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to our efforts to be people who practice Remembering.
Is your husband against homeschooling? I know what you’re going through. Wanting to homeschool, but not being able to. I’ve been where you are and can help.
Dear Mom,
I see you. Wanting to homeschool, but your spouse is against it.
I see you. Counting down the days until Christmas break. Yearning to have your kids home with you each day.
Listen or read more at https://www.findingjoyinthejourney.net/spouse-is-against-homeschooling/
Today we have another installment in our veteran's series on the Homeschool Solutions show. Ann Karako, mom of five, joins us to talk about her experiences homeschooling high school with five kids, graduating four of them, and living to teach others that they can do it too.
On today's show we chat:
- What Ann's kids have to say about their homeschool experience.
- The things Ann worried about when she first started homeschooling and what she would tell her younger self.
- Ann's biggest homeschooling mistake and how she would fix it.
- How Ann is transitioning to life after homeschool now that she is just about ready to graduate her youngest.
- Ann's best pro tips on homeschooling the high school years -- and she has a ton of them!
This is an episode you won't want to miss.
Your little one knows many letter sounds and it’s time for the magic of putting them together and reading their first words. Use these top 10 tips for teaching short vowel sounds to start your child’s reading adventure!
Listen or read more at https://pk1homeschoolfun.com/tips-for-teaching-the-short-vowel-sounds-to-beginning-readers/
On today's episode of the podcast we are joined by Jamie Erickson from The Unlikely Homeschool to talk about how she uses Morning Time as a forum to teach her kids manners.
In the show we get a glimpse into Jamie's Morning Time including:
- What makes Morning Time a good setting for teaching manners.
- What kinds of topics have she covers in her Morning Time manners lessons.
- What are some of Jamie's favorite resources for teaching manners in Morning Time.
- What fruit she has seen from her efforts to intentionally work on manners with her kids.
Join us as we explore this very practical way to use our Morning Time habit.
It’s the question that haunts many homeschooling parents – how do I know that I’m doing it right? I’m responsible for the education of my children and there’s no-one and nothing to tell me WHAT to do and WHEN to do it and HOW to do it and argh! It’s enough to cause a meltdown.
To extend the question, without strict curriculum, and standards, and lots of other children to compare to and rank with, how on earth do we homeschoolers know that we’re doing a good job? How do we know this is all going to work out OK in the end?
Listen or read more at https://fearlesshomeschool.com/homeschooling-doing-it-right/
- Why go to a homeschool convention at all.
- Our favorite panel or talk from a convention and how to decide which speakers to see.
- How to avoid “overload” and work the vendor hall like a pro.
- The pros and cons of going with family or friends.
- How to stick to your budget and the one tool you should not forget to take to the convention.
- How going to conventions have helped us in our homeschooling and why we wouldn't miss going each year.
Have you seen the video where someone is trying to line up a litter of cute, cuddly kittens? If you haven’t, let me spoil it for you: it doesn’t work very well! As you can imagine, it’s a full thirty seconds of constant redirection, repositioning, and mayhem. To everyone watching, it’s hilarious, but to the poor person trying to herd those kittens, it was exhausting.
This image hits close to home for homeschool moms of multiples. Some days, homeschooling multiple children is very much like herding cats. As soon as you get one seated, another pops up and wanders off, and the day is similar to the old whack-a-mole game.
Can you relate? Listen or read more at https://www.sonlight.com/blog/multiple-children-homeschool.html
Today on the show I am joined by homeschool veteran and writing guru Julie Bogart. Part of our veteran's series, Julie has graduated five kids and now helps homeschool families the world over not only with writing skills through her Bravewriter program but also with how to homeschool bravely through her Homeschool Alliance and her new book The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life.
In this conversation we chat about Julie's fond memories of homeschooling, what she did well, her biggest homeschool regrets, and she shares tons of wisdom on how to be true to yourself in your homeschool.
I’ve noticed that my attitudes get passed along to my children with pretty much zero effort on my part. When I am happy, things mostly flow along happily. When I worry, their worry amps up. When I am frantic, so are they. When I am calm … well, there’s always an exception to prove the rule.
Listen or read more at https://pambarnhill.com/how-to-homeschool-with-confidence/
- How prayer can be both a personal discipline and a corporate practice
- What are the best ways to teach and model practice of prayer.
- Tips for modeling something when we are just learning it ourselves.D
- Different types of prayer and the value of each.
- Tips for praying the Scriptures.
- And recommendations of prayers and more to read for moms.
We've all been there. You're tired. The kids are bickering. Again. If only they would just stop fighting. If only they could just quit all the arguing. If you had a magic word, you'd say it, right?
(Hey, magic words might be better than the other kids of words you're tempted to say when the children are fighting!)
Listen or read more at https://hswotrainingwheels.com/children-stop-fighting/
- how Heather's Morning Time changed has changed over the years.
- why is Morning Time still a valuable practice in the teen years.
- what kind of adjustments and challenges a teen-only Morning Time brings.
- how Heather's role at Morning Time changed as the kids have gotten older.
- and how Heather has been able to use topics from Morning Time as coursework and credits for the purposes of high school transcripts
- plus so much more.
Welcome to the NEW Homeschool Solutions Show. In this episode of the podcast I chat about the changes to the show. Instead of just being an audio blog, the show will now alternate between audio blog and interview formats. I am super-excited about the changes and hope you are too.
You can find the webpage for the podcast at pambarnhill.com/solutions.
I wrote last week about how your quiet time could be sabotaging your homeschool morning. This is so true for moms in particular seasons of life — especially when you are still waking multiple times each night or you have small children still.
But what about the mom whose kids are pretty much school age. Why might moms of older kids still be struggling with getting mornings off to a good start? I have a few theories that might explain what is standing in your way.
Listen or read more at https://pambarnhill.com/enemy-of-best-morning/
It was dark and rainy outside. I slowly peeled back the covers and eased away from the warm little body bedside me and into the cold. If I woke him, all bets were off.
I fumbled around in the dark for my glasses and slippers as I eased quietly from the room to make a cup of coffee. I was lucky. I had groggily slapped the alarm right as it began to beep and my early-morning visitor snoozed on unaware today.
Listen or read more at https://pambarnhill.com/how-your-morning-quiet-time-is-sabotaging-your-day/
I saw a photo the other day of a worn out, exhausted mother collapsed onto a chair, hand to forehead. The caption under the picture read “I put my symptoms into Web MD and it turns out I just have kids.”
I couldn’t help but giggle.
I knew exactly how she felt.
Listen or read the rest here: https://rinellafamilyoutdoors.com/2017/07/17/symptoms-of-a-homeschool-mom/
Everyone wants a perfect holiday. The candlelit dinner with the gorgeous turkey and delicious pumpkin pie dessert; the immaculately wrapped presents with bows that were made by a bowdabra
Christmas is the holiday of holidays. Between the presents, the food, the crazy relatives – it can be super stressful to try to make Christmas perfect. How do you manage your visiting family and enjoy the most stressful holiday of the year?
Listen or read more at https://www.hidethechocolate.com/perfect-christmas-with-visiting-family/
I am often asked a lot of things when out and about with my family. Are all those kids yours? Do you know what causes that? You Homeschool, Aren’t you tired all the time? Not only are they all mine and yes we are very aware of how it happens, we like having a big family and I love being at home and educating them.
Choosing to homeschool for my husband and I, was one of the easiest decisions we have made for our children. Both of our parents started out with similar foundations and choose homeschooling in a time where it was not as common or idealistic as it is today.
Listen or read more at http://ourhalfdozenadventures.com/2018/05/12/my-reflections-as-a-homeschooled-daughter/
Have you looked into the tired eyes of a public school teacher lately? Have you crossed paths with an overwhelmed mom scrambling to cook dinner, do laundry, and help the kids with homework an hour before bedtime? This homeschool life is a gift to so many of us, yet we often take for granted the privilege of homeschooling.
If you haven’t recently spent time outside your homeschool walls, it’s possible that you’ve been missing one of the greatest gifts of the homeschool lifestyle. Sure, we’re all thankful for the gifts of homeschool, but have we somehow lost our appreciation for the privilege of homeschooling? Maybe so.
Listen or read more at https://tablelifeblog.com/privilege-of-homeschooling/
I’m not going to lie. Having multiple people in the room all at once is often the hardest part of homeschooling. Harder than choosing curriculum. Harder than keeping up with the laundry. Harder than teaching math. (I know, right?)
Not only are you dealing with personalities and relationships but also with multiple levels and multiple subjects. And it never fails that everyone seems to need you all the time and all at once.
Listen or read more at https://pambarnhill.com/juggling-multiple-kids/
I asked a question in my It’s Not that Hard to Homeschool K-8 Facebook group recently: “Do you feel like a success as a homeschool mom? Why or why not?”
As you can imagine, there was a wide range of answers — but more “no’s” than I expected.
But as I think about it, it makes sense to me that we don’t feel confident that we’re doing a good job. I think we’ve got an idea stuck in our heads about what makes a “successful” homeschool — and it’s the WRONG idea.
Listen or read more at https://www.annieandeverything.com/homeschool-mom-failure/
John and I have a combined 30 years of homeschooling experience, and more like 40+ years if you count each of our children’s education separately! Some of that is our own experience as homeschooled students, and some comes from our perspective as homeschooling parents.
We are a team, but we definitely have our own perspectives on homeschooling, both the big picture and the day to day reality. What if you could ask us a series of questions about homeschooling to see the similarities and differences between Dad’s and Mom’s perspective? We’ve taken on that challenge in this post!
Listen or read more at https://humilityanddoxology.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/dad-mom-perspectives-homeschooling/