Homeschooling A Houseful

Recently I made a comment to another homeschool mom, a new homeschool mom, and well I like it!! She is a new homeschooler, and was asking what specific curriculums everyone uses. My comment went something like this: "It's not the curriculum that's the question. The question is, how you and your children learn, what goals you have for your homeschool, why you homeschool, those are the questions. After you find the answers to those questions, then the question of curriculum is easy!" I would recommend you write out a list of "why we homeschool" and refer to this list, often. I also would recommend that this list stay handy always, it's always open for editing and adding to. Things change, as you work along the journey of homeschool, motherhood, and well life in general- things change. Keep your mind open to those changes and allow them to better your life, as you move through it. I would also recommend you read more about philosophies and personalit...

How we manage to get our crew out the door! With school starting and extra curricular activities, and Co-ops, along with regular life, we need to be able to move our crew out the door and to the van, oftentimes through a parking lot. Parking lots are dangerous, let alone one where everyone's trying to leave at the same time, such as a Co-op. This years school crew, the kids who go places with me and are involved in these activities are ages, 15, 13, 12, 9, 7, 5, 4, 2, and new little princess in November. or very close to that age :)   Let me also just point out that the ones 7, 5, 4, and 2 are all boys! Yes that matters! Even though some girls can be like boys, boys are still boys!     So here's what we do, let's look at our co-op, as that's one that everyone goes to, and everyone brings supplies and bags, plus Mom brings supplies for classes too.     In our Co-op we designate an area, or corner to be our dropping place. As you en...

Earlier this morning as I was having a moment, ok I was actually having a bath! Trying to soak some of the pregnancy pains out of my back and hips :) Oh if it were that easy! I had a thought strike me, an AH-HA as some might call it! It's interesting how each child has a pure genius, yet some may not seem to be so much of a genius!!! Ok so that's not exactly something new, but it has hit me at a time that I needed it, again. As I was sitting there, thinking about my 13 year old, and how "far behind he is in "school"" A thought struck me, honestly it was inspiration given by my Heavenly Father- as the peace it brought afterwards can only be from him. This thought was purely simple, YES, but look at what HE CAN DO!!! I started letting my mind wander and thought, yes so true, it seems the children who have the book smarts, don't have the street smarts. While those who can figure things out, and are hands on- get in there and get it done- don...

I am somewhat new to all this, but I am going to start a facebook page, for my blog!  homeschooling-a-houseful is now on facebook! I am sure I'll have a learning curve with all this! So be patient!!!!

(Post that has been long awaited by some who attended a class I recently gave! So Sorry for my delay!) Common Question: How do you homeschool so many? And amidst babies, and toddlers? Pregnancies and moves? Chaos and yes even in the calm of the storm!? How do you keep up? How do you know what's going on? How do your children know what to do? Without you constantly nagging them! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! Yep, little nagging involved (don't include the younger batch!!!)   INTRODUCING MY LIFESAVER OF HOMESCHOOL!!!!! OUR ACCOUNTABILITY SHEETS, or AKA INDEPENDENT STUDIES SHEETS! (I personally prefer to call them accountability sheets, but somehow they always get called I.S.)    I can not figure out how to attach a file. SO, you will need to recreate this. Trust me it's not difficult, as I am not a computer person or even very great at graphics (as you can see!) I do want to emphasize that this must be personalized to each family, and child. It must meet how...

So this year we were SUPER BUSY/CRAZY this summer, I helped organize a few too many, large homeschool events!! I never did get our family school lessons organized! So we will be a little slow to start some of our family lessons, but at least we have our regular individual lessons started! Anyways, I'm planning on trying out the Mystery of History this year, MOH. I just found the BEST blog that offers free printables to go along with the MOH, and thought I'd share!! It's called, My Homeschool Printables . I LOVE when homeschool families use their talents to create such wonderful items, and then share! I'm not a crafty mama, so I share what I have- organizing and support, and others share their loves, cute printables!

Earlier this week I was organizing our "learning area" and bookshelves. I came across some papers that I had printed from somewhere, and there wasn't a title page with them anymore. I decided to skim through them and figure out what it was and whether I wanted to keep it or toss it. I finally figured out it was the small book by the DeMille's, the 5 habits of highly successful homeschoolers. After I read through the introduction, I decided this would be a good read and threw it on my night stand! It caught my attention, and looked like a quick read. BOY was I WRONG!! (and honestly I should have known better, seeing that it's by the DeMille's! I mean really they don't do quick reads or mediocre thoughts!) I just wanted to ponder about a few thoughts that have hit me recently, a few ah-haw's so to speak! One thing that I loved, and I don't really have much to add, just that it really brought such a peace and yet so much enthusiasm and excitement t...