I have found that if I need to edit my blog posts and make them more readable, I never post. I just don't want to do it. So the post is more my train of thought over the past two weeks. Sorry :)
I left my job! Living alongside my kids is my dream and I am very good at making dreams come true. I just do it. I figure out how to make it work. We live on less so that we can live together. Day in and day out. I enjoy making my house a home, I enjoy helping my children navigate the world, I enjoy working in the yard and garden. And by doing these things I believe I am serving my community. I do not need to be a librarian to give back. It all starts with family. The breaking up of the family is when community starts to fall apart. Families are the building blocks. It starts at home...and I'm back home!!!!
"Career encourages what I consider to be a terribly unnatural self-specialization: in our urge to compete, we try to become very good at one small thing to the exclusion of all others. This is called professionalism but could be more accurately labelled 'being useless.'" -Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto
Get a life! Live in the present. Don't let life pass you by. Give your kids the most badass childhood and let them pay you back by wiping your ass when you are old. Hear that kids? I'm not leaving you an inheritance but I am giving you the most amazing life right now. I think that's for the best. I require very little and will not be a burden when I'm old. I promise (wink).
I'm always hearing people talk about the need to make money to give their kids a better life. No! My time and love will give them a better life. Stay home! Find what you are good at (there must be something) and do it. Money will come. If not, do something that gives you just enough to live and play with your kids (and buy alcohol) and do that. Reduce expenses and work less. Only if you want of course. If you don't want to, then buy shit and invite me and the kids over.
If you have ever read The Freedom Manifesto, you can clearly tell I am re-reading it.
Here is what I'm going to focus on now that I'm home.
Real skills so they (and myself) don't have to hire out.
Fix plumbing, cars, electricity, carpentry, cook, clean, garden, sew, etc.
I feel like they do need some planned days and curriculum but mostly they just need me to be present. They need me to understand them and who they are and support them.
All of the homeschool blogs are about making money. I don't mind people selling their own products, but the getting free curriculum for reviews and pushing products linked to Amazon is getting out of hand. There is no way these people can possible use this many resources and if they do, is that a good thing? Homeschool moms who have been doing this longer usually know better but newer moms are being done a disservice and likely going into debt.
I think you do probably have to go through the natural stages of growth as a home educator like Julie Bogart describes in her podcast. However, fellow homeschool moms could be a bit more helpful in that journey instead of overloading on the resource recommendations that cost beaucoup bucks (and are not any better than what you yourself can do).
A lot of moms skip around so much from one resource to another or plan so much that they get overwhelmed and never do. My advice would be to plan less and do more. Just do it. Just read aloud and discuss. Spend the whole day exploring an atlas resource and doing activities. Don't worry about getting to every subject. Just do something! Now. Stop thinking about it.
A lot of this is advice to myself by the way.
Another thing that drives me crazy are all of the moms that think they need to stick to the curriculum. I think a lot of them live in states where they need to report which sucks, but if you don't, then don't! If your kids hate a book, stop reading it. Life is too short for that shit.
We use Bookshark, but not as it is intended. I do like the Reading with History and Language Arts which I will likely continue to buy (but probably without the books). It's crazy expensive for the complete package and we don't use the math and I'm not loving the science. We will likely go a different route for those next year. We are way behind as far as their schedule is concerned because we do go on a lot of nature walks, we do live a Brave Writer lifestyle, we go camping and out of town, etc. I do not make the kids sit down and do everything before they can go outside or take breaks. We follow rabbit trails, etc.
We are saying yes to
Brave Writer
Hoffman Academy
skipping Bookshark books
science experiments
nature walks with play
nature study at home
math games and Teaching Textbooks
Arrow read alouds and historical fiction (not only Bookshark)
documentary hair day (brush hair and watch documentaries)
reading day (pile up books in middle of floor) and board games
BW extras day - teatime, freewrite, art and music, writing projects, arrow work
field trips
7-9am - me time
9-3:30 - present with kids
3:30-5 - chores and dinner
5-9 me time/kids free time/practices (extra curric for kids but I can read, or Ade and I watch sports)
Monday
I had me time from 7-8:30 and then cleaned the kitchen. I woke the kids up at 9. We read our read alouds and then they worked on their Bookshark Language Arts. We are ahead in History so I am trying to catch LA and Science up. After that, they did silent reading and math while I worked with Mirek. We did Language Arts and History and then Mirek watched some science experiment videos on plants. We didn't get to math, but I can tell it is something that Mirek really likes. When we were working on letter sounds he wanted to count all of the letters instead. He is always asking me math problems and asking me to count things (like all of his manipulatives). I have always hated math so I am reading a book called Let's Play Math just for him. So far, my other kids have not loved math either (maybe it's my fault), but I can tell it is his thing so I am sacrificing some time to do this right for him...hopefully. The older kids watched some videos on electricity and conducted the experiments themselves. I don't really like the worksheets that go along with the experiments so we are skipping them. We went to the library to look for a topic for mini books. Eaden ended up choosing cats, Taven Vikings, and Naia unicorns. We hung out at the park for a while. By the time we got home, it was past 5. We had picked up some pizza so the kids ate that and I drank wine and read my books.
Tuesday
I woke up at 8 so only had 1 hour of me time. We still did lessons though. Mirek focused on math for the day. The kids looked over their books from the library and started taking notes. Eaden had dance.
Wednesday
I woke up at 8:30 with Lela so had no me time. I made 2 kinds of cheese, butter, and baked bread. The kids made a fort, played basketball, and Clue...that I could see. Mirek had speech and Taven had basketball practice. I found Bookshark level 5 for 200$! I'm going to start AAR 1 with Mirek tomorrow.
Thursday
I woke up around 8. Lessons started around 9:30. Mirek started AAR level 1 and did really well. After finishing their work, the kids played Clue again and I got some cleaning in. Eaden went to ballet.
Friday
Clean my moms, hair, dance/basketball
Eaden stayed over with her cousin to be in the MLK parade and Weston stayed with us.
_______________________________________________________________
Following are some photos from our beach house trip a few weeks ago.
These photos are from the week before last.
Last week we went to the beach house with the Girl Scouts.
So now it's Monday and we are home. I'm going to finish my coffee and wake up the kids...
I left my job! Living alongside my kids is my dream and I am very good at making dreams come true. I just do it. I figure out how to make it work. We live on less so that we can live together. Day in and day out. I enjoy making my house a home, I enjoy helping my children navigate the world, I enjoy working in the yard and garden. And by doing these things I believe I am serving my community. I do not need to be a librarian to give back. It all starts with family. The breaking up of the family is when community starts to fall apart. Families are the building blocks. It starts at home...and I'm back home!!!!
"Career encourages what I consider to be a terribly unnatural self-specialization: in our urge to compete, we try to become very good at one small thing to the exclusion of all others. This is called professionalism but could be more accurately labelled 'being useless.'" -Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto
Get a life! Live in the present. Don't let life pass you by. Give your kids the most badass childhood and let them pay you back by wiping your ass when you are old. Hear that kids? I'm not leaving you an inheritance but I am giving you the most amazing life right now. I think that's for the best. I require very little and will not be a burden when I'm old. I promise (wink).
I'm always hearing people talk about the need to make money to give their kids a better life. No! My time and love will give them a better life. Stay home! Find what you are good at (there must be something) and do it. Money will come. If not, do something that gives you just enough to live and play with your kids (and buy alcohol) and do that. Reduce expenses and work less. Only if you want of course. If you don't want to, then buy shit and invite me and the kids over.
If you have ever read The Freedom Manifesto, you can clearly tell I am re-reading it.
Here is what I'm going to focus on now that I'm home.
Real skills so they (and myself) don't have to hire out.
Fix plumbing, cars, electricity, carpentry, cook, clean, garden, sew, etc.
I feel like they do need some planned days and curriculum but mostly they just need me to be present. They need me to understand them and who they are and support them.
All of the homeschool blogs are about making money. I don't mind people selling their own products, but the getting free curriculum for reviews and pushing products linked to Amazon is getting out of hand. There is no way these people can possible use this many resources and if they do, is that a good thing? Homeschool moms who have been doing this longer usually know better but newer moms are being done a disservice and likely going into debt.
I think you do probably have to go through the natural stages of growth as a home educator like Julie Bogart describes in her podcast. However, fellow homeschool moms could be a bit more helpful in that journey instead of overloading on the resource recommendations that cost beaucoup bucks (and are not any better than what you yourself can do).
A lot of moms skip around so much from one resource to another or plan so much that they get overwhelmed and never do. My advice would be to plan less and do more. Just do it. Just read aloud and discuss. Spend the whole day exploring an atlas resource and doing activities. Don't worry about getting to every subject. Just do something! Now. Stop thinking about it.
A lot of this is advice to myself by the way.
Another thing that drives me crazy are all of the moms that think they need to stick to the curriculum. I think a lot of them live in states where they need to report which sucks, but if you don't, then don't! If your kids hate a book, stop reading it. Life is too short for that shit.
We use Bookshark, but not as it is intended. I do like the Reading with History and Language Arts which I will likely continue to buy (but probably without the books). It's crazy expensive for the complete package and we don't use the math and I'm not loving the science. We will likely go a different route for those next year. We are way behind as far as their schedule is concerned because we do go on a lot of nature walks, we do live a Brave Writer lifestyle, we go camping and out of town, etc. I do not make the kids sit down and do everything before they can go outside or take breaks. We follow rabbit trails, etc.
We are saying yes to
Brave Writer
Hoffman Academy
skipping Bookshark books
science experiments
nature walks with play
nature study at home
math games and Teaching Textbooks
Arrow read alouds and historical fiction (not only Bookshark)
documentary hair day (brush hair and watch documentaries)
reading day (pile up books in middle of floor) and board games
BW extras day - teatime, freewrite, art and music, writing projects, arrow work
field trips
7-9am - me time
9-3:30 - present with kids
3:30-5 - chores and dinner
5-9 me time/kids free time/practices (extra curric for kids but I can read, or Ade and I watch sports)
Monday
I had me time from 7-8:30 and then cleaned the kitchen. I woke the kids up at 9. We read our read alouds and then they worked on their Bookshark Language Arts. We are ahead in History so I am trying to catch LA and Science up. After that, they did silent reading and math while I worked with Mirek. We did Language Arts and History and then Mirek watched some science experiment videos on plants. We didn't get to math, but I can tell it is something that Mirek really likes. When we were working on letter sounds he wanted to count all of the letters instead. He is always asking me math problems and asking me to count things (like all of his manipulatives). I have always hated math so I am reading a book called Let's Play Math just for him. So far, my other kids have not loved math either (maybe it's my fault), but I can tell it is his thing so I am sacrificing some time to do this right for him...hopefully. The older kids watched some videos on electricity and conducted the experiments themselves. I don't really like the worksheets that go along with the experiments so we are skipping them. We went to the library to look for a topic for mini books. Eaden ended up choosing cats, Taven Vikings, and Naia unicorns. We hung out at the park for a while. By the time we got home, it was past 5. We had picked up some pizza so the kids ate that and I drank wine and read my books.
Tuesday
I woke up at 8 so only had 1 hour of me time. We still did lessons though. Mirek focused on math for the day. The kids looked over their books from the library and started taking notes. Eaden had dance.
Wednesday
I woke up at 8:30 with Lela so had no me time. I made 2 kinds of cheese, butter, and baked bread. The kids made a fort, played basketball, and Clue...that I could see. Mirek had speech and Taven had basketball practice. I found Bookshark level 5 for 200$! I'm going to start AAR 1 with Mirek tomorrow.
Thursday
I woke up around 8. Lessons started around 9:30. Mirek started AAR level 1 and did really well. After finishing their work, the kids played Clue again and I got some cleaning in. Eaden went to ballet.
Friday
Clean my moms, hair, dance/basketball
Eaden stayed over with her cousin to be in the MLK parade and Weston stayed with us.
_______________________________________________________________
Following are some photos from our beach house trip a few weeks ago.
These photos are from the week before last.
Last week we went to the beach house with the Girl Scouts.
So now it's Monday and we are home. I'm going to finish my coffee and wake up the kids...
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