beginning

Homeschooling through the high school years can be a tremendous blessing and an opportunity for you and your children. This workshop will address parents' questions regarding these important years of growth and potential. You can do it!

you will learn how to do the following:

• Keep records, create transcripts and build resumés

• Earn college credits during high school

• Maneuver through the maze of college entrance testing

• Choose a post high school path other than college

• Participate in extra and co-curricular activities

• Manage the difficult subjects (algebra, chemistry, etc.)

upcoming "Finishing the journey (FTJ)" workshops:

Finishing the Journey: Homeschooling Through High School Workshop (in conjunction with the Considering Homeschool Workshop)

Saturday, September 8, 2013...

Have you heard about home education and want to know more about this educational choice for your children?  Do you want to know what is involved before you commit to this new lifestyle of learning?  If so, this workshop will give you a foundational understanding of home education in Minnesota and how it relates to you.

Find answers to important homeschooling questions:

• What are the legal requirements for a parent to homeschool?

• What do I need to get started?

• Am I qualified to educate my children?

• What about the socialization of my children?

• Where do I find curriculum?

• How do I choose curriculum?

• How do I know it's the right choice for me?

• What are the advantages of homeschooling my children?

• How much does homeschooling cost—financially and in other ways?

• What if my children are older and in high school?

• How is home education different from other education choices?

Make the most of the “togetherness” inherent in homeschooling—with some fun and games designed to build family relationships while reinforcing skills. Games promote family bonding while building math, language, and thinking skills. Game play reinforces both character and curriculum by encouraging children to take turns, follow directions, think strategically, and recall information learned or skills developed.

“There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.” —Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, 1913

...

A funny thing happened to me the other day. I was having a chat with one of our neighbors as we watched our kids play. Of course, the topic of school came up. After hearing the news that we homeschool, my neighbor suddenly appeared starstruck and exclaimed, “Wow! You must be Supermom!” I mumbled something about being pretty normal and we left it at that. But the whole conversation stayed with me for the rest of the day.

This sort of thing is said to me often. As soon as the word “homeschool” is dropped, people look at me like they can actually see my cape flying in the breeze behind me. As if somehow I have this amazing superpower that enables me to stay home with my three sons 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and somehow keep my sanity.

Later that night, I relayed the whole story to my husband. His wise reply to me? “So? You are Supermom.” (He’s so nice to me.) Why, then, did it bother me so much?

WHY AM I BOTHERED?

After some time, it hit me. The reason it bothered me so much that everyone, including my husband, thought I was Supermom was this: I’m just not. It seems so simple and...

Does your child have good hearing but listen poorly?

Some parents refer to this as selective hearing, but your child may actually have trouble listening. While hearing is the ability to detect sound, listening is how the brain processes auditory information.

Children with poor auditory processing skills tend to exhibit the following problems:

• Trouble hearing or easily distracted in noisy environments.


• Hard time following a conversation or following directions.


• Disorganized and forgetful.


• Problems with reading, comprehension, spelling and/or writing.


• Trouble recalling a story in proper sequence.


• Difficulty understanding verbal math problems.

Auditory Processing problems closely mimic AD/HD symptoms, and children are often misdiagnosed. If a child is having trouble processing auditory information, he or she will often appear to be inattentive. It is similar to a bad cell phone connection. The child does not get all of...

Snow days. Even if our children went to school we don’t get those here in the Arizona desert, so we decided to create our own—using shaving cream!

Aside from the 3R’s, I usually teach to the oldest and let the younger ones pick up what they pick up (which is usually a surprising amount).  But sometimes I like to take the day off from our normal routine and just have some good ol’ open-ended play specifically geared towards my youngest! 

Open-ended play is where there are no expectations, no specific problems to solve, no rules to follow, and no pressure to produce a finished product. This kind of play helps children build knowledge, skills, and creativity at their own pace! It fosters critical thinking instead of merely imitating. 

So, after piling on the couch and reading the classic children’s book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, we made our way to the dining room table to play with shaving cream.  I let the kids pick out toys that they wanted to bring to our “snow play” and I turned them loose. 

What your child brings to the play will spur the creative process. Will they...

We were home schooling when nobody was homeschooling. We started with our firstborn son in his kindergarten year, 1980--81. It started out as a matter of convenience (we didn't like public school but lived a half-hour commute from our church's Christian school) but soon grew into a conviction.

Over three decades later, we have never experienced a moment of doubt as to our choice. That little boy in kindergarten is now a college graduate, a lawyer and a married man with three children, all of whom he and his wife plan on teaching at home. He is also the eldest of our fourteen sons and daughters. His younger siblings, some of whom are also the parents of our 11 grandchildren, are homeschooling as well. Obviously, our children are as pleased as their parents are with the method of education we chose.

Over the years, of course curious people have asked us why we made the decision to begin and continue homeschooling our children. There are many reasons we love it, but for the sake of brevity I'll share a few here.

First, we love having so much time with our children. It hurts us to hear parents talk about how glad they will be when the kids go back...

Okay, I’ll admit up front that I am unmarried and have no children. What could I possibly know about mistakes new homeschoolers make? I’m just a pipsqueak!

My list of credentials is short but Very Weighty. (Every pipsqueak thinks their credentials are Very Weighty.) I was homeschooled my entire life. My parents have helped run support groups and state homeschooling organizations in several states. I’ve watched many homeschooling families and seen some run very successful homeschools and others crash and burn. By dint of keeping my eyes and ears open and using my Acute and Intuitive Perception (pipsqueaks always think they have Acute and Intuitive Perception), I have compiled a reasonable list of common errors that trap new homeschoolers. Kindly be impressed!

Error #1:

Viewing academics as primary. Actually, homeschooling is first and foremost about character education. Raising an intellectual genius is pointless if he is lazy, rebellious, thinks humanistically, and lacks integrity, right? Some of the world’s wickedest men were very smart. But so what? They were evil. You are not just training...

HOMESCHOOLING: NOT JUST AN EDUCATIONAL OPTION...  

When we begin home-schooling, most of us view homeschooling as one of three options for educating our children – we can choose public school, private school or home school. And we choose homeschooling for a multitude of reasons as the best alternative for our family. It may be that our child needs more one-on-one attention, or that he is being bullied, or that we want to teach academics from a biblical perspective.

Whatever the reason we begin homeschooling, we spend a lot of time focusing on the “schoolish” aspects of education. I even went so far as to pack my children’s lunch and send them out the back door to return via the front door to be welcomed and taught by “Mrs. Karman.” When the bell rang, my children filed into their desks in the schoolroom.

That didn’t last long.

In homeschool support group meetings, we talked about the difference between home school and home education. We realized that, after all, a real education wasn’t dependent on bringing all the trappings of school into the home. Education was:

The...

Premise:  If the right curriculum can be found, it will perform the magic – the abracadabra – to transform a student from ignorant to educated all by itself.

As an experienced homeschool mom, speaker and curriculum writer, I’ve noticed that many believe this and seek earnestly for the genie, or the wand, or the catalog.  And, lest you think I’m loftily looking down my nose, let me add that I was one of them.  In the early days of homeschooling, I was convinced that there truly existed a perfect curriculum, and spent years on a quest, like those in search of the Holy Grail, to find it.

Most of us who invested way too much time and money on this zealous mission have found by now that there is no fantastic carpet ride — only increasing disappointment, discouragement, and often the end of homeschooling altogether.  We wonder why all of our attempts end in defeat, in our children showing distaste and disgust at the results of our valiant effort to find the perfect curriculum.  Convinced that it’s the curriculum that accomplishes the difficult feat of teaching, we continue to crawl toward the...