Homeschooling -FAQs

I get asked a lot of questions about homeschooling...from family, coworkers, friends. I am certainly not an exhaustive resource, but I can try and answer some of the questions I get asked the most.



Why do you homeschool? First of all, I want my children to learn about God as much as (more than?) they learn any other subject. They will not learn this in a public school. In addition, our public school system is becoming less and less tolerant of people with a Christian world-view. To me (this is my opinion only, it does not have to be yours), it seems more like I would be sending my children on a hostile foreign mission than to be fairly educated. As Christians, we want our children to be lights in a fallen world, especially in their areas of direct influence. I have to ask myself, is my five-yr-old equipped to defend her faith against the darkness?  I don't think so, and I don't want her tender heart crushed by mean-spirited people so young. For our family, there is also a scheduling issue. Since my husband works second-shift, my girls would never see him if they were away at school. He would be off while they were at school and working when they were home. In addition, my children LOVE to learn... I mean it- they LOVE it! They want to experience new things. As their parent, I want to be there to see the "light bulb" go on when learn something new.  

Will you ever send your children to "real-school?" The joke in our house is that if we send Susannah to school, they will likely send her back! The real answer is that I don't know for sure... My husband and I committed to homeschooling through grade school and will re-evaluate when Mikayla is nearing 5th grade. Also, if you ask this question, please don't imply that home educating is not "real."  Most homeschooling families spend a lot of time and effort educating their children and don't appreciate that others think it isn't "real" enough.

Practicing Patterns for Math

How do you have time? First of all, I am a nurse, so my schedule is usually three, 12-hr shifts a week at a local hospital. Those are long days, but I purposefully work a flexible job where I can pick and choose my hours and shifts to be best for my family. I am also very lucky that my husband is committed to helping me in educating our children. Although there are some things he does not feel comfortable teaching, he can definitely help them with their workbooks and math. I generally try and leave a list of what they need to work on while I am working...it's a system that works for us right now. I see Sue Patrick's workbox system in our future!

"Do it Carefully" Workbook, practicing fine motor skills

Do you have to have a degree or something?  I do not have to have any special training to school my children at home. I think people think I sit at home, write a curriculum, and then lesson plan for them. Thankfully, this is not the case! I think there wouldn't be nearly so many homeschooling families if it were! There are many types of curriculum out there, some of which do not even require textbooks, however, I have chosen to use Heart of Dakota's curriculum. The writer of this curriculum was a teacher for many years and has pulled together some of  the best resources for homeschooling families. There is a teacher's guide and then all of the other subjects usually have their workbooks or texts that she guides us through. I don't have to do any planning, and it helps to make this an enjoyable experience for all of us.  

My classroom NEVER looked like this!

Don't they need socialization? I actually don't get asked this as much as you might think.  Thankfully, I have been blessed with many friends who were homeschooled their whole lives and have no problems relating to other people, so it isn't something I worry about too much.  Also, I know my children are exposed to more experiences on a day-to-day basis that teach them to relate to people in an acceptable manner than they would ever learn in school.  They go with me EVERYWHERE so they need to learn to interact with a variety of people in many situations.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, just an opportunity for my to address the most frequent concerns and questions you may have about homeschooling.

Christmas 2011

Well, Christmas has come and gone already (wasn't December quick this year?), and I didn't have an opportunity to share much of our Christmas with you.  I guess we should catch up before the new year arrives, so here's what has been going on at our house...



Truth in the Tinsel: I mentioned in November that we were going to try an advent this year with the ebook Truth in the Tinsel.  The activities in this book are excellent and really focus on the importance of remembering that we don't just celebrate a baby Jesus on Christmas, but we celebrate the King who came to die for us. The girls and I did several of the crafts in the book, but we didn't get to do all of them. When it didn't get done, usually it was because I hadn't planned things ahead of time. Next year, I plan on fixing that by using the materials list and pre-packaging each day's supplies ahead of time. The other reason I didn't finish all of this book was because I didn't realize how much time our homeschool curriculum was going to spend on Jesus' birth. Usually our curriculum doesn't line up with specific holidays like that, but it did this year.

Pinterest: Okay, so if you haven't discovered Pinterest yet, check it out when you get a chance.  I used it this holiday season to find lots of yummy recipes, easy crafts for friends and family, and ways to jumpstart my resolutions for 2012. I love that it provides me an easy way to organize ideas so that I can easily find them again. 

Christmas: Although I was glad to avoid long car trips to the Midwest this year, it was sad not to see my family, especially since Jeff worked Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  However, we had a great Christmas at home and Skype helped us all connect by video even 800 miles away. The girls and I chatted with my parents, siblings, and even my little niece (who is adorable!).  We had church in the morning and just spent the afternoon relaxing.

One little bit of excitement was that the neighbor's dog had puppies on Christmas while I was puppy-sitting! I took Mikayla over the next day to see them and she is in LOVE!

I feel like this month has flown by at the speed of light and am looking forward to getting back into a routine again next week. I probably need the structure even more than my girls do!

Santa? We know no Santa here!

About a month ago, Mikayla ran up wiggling a very LOOSE tooth.  This posed a couple of difficulties for us. First, I had a daughter a little afraid that it would hurt or bleed (even though it was the third loose tooth). Second, we needed to tell our children the TRUTH about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, stat! Jeff and I spoke with the girls about the Easter Bunny back in the spring right before Easter. You can read about that here. 

Since it was so close to Easter when we had that talk, we didn't discuss Santa and the Tooth Fairy and had every intention of returning to that discussion at the "right time."  The time is never right (at least in our house) until your daughter is about ready to lose that third tooth! So, I sat the girls down and explained to them that Jeff and I have pretended to be Santa or the Tooth Fairy in the past, but we are not going to do this anymore. I explained that we want our focus to be on Jesus during holidays, not Santa or the Easter Bunny. This went really well. There were no hysterics or tears (I had planned for both). Susannah doesn't even seem to care one way or the other.  Mikayla has had some questions, but hasn't been upset by the information at all.  She was more upset to realize that Jeff and I were eating "Santa'a cookies!" I had a little more difficulty in convincing her the Tooth Fairy wasn't real. Her main argument was that,"The Tooth Fairy is just really fast so you don't see her."  It took a little time, but I finally had her convinced.

First of all, let me say this. When Mikayla was little, I was on the fence about even starting a tradition of celebrating Christmas with Santa Claus.  Unfortunately, I was convinced that it was a "necessary" part of childhood and I would hurt my daughter if I didn't follow this tradition. At this time, my main issues with not celebrating Christmas with Santa or Easter with the Easter Bunny centered around focus. I felt like observing these traditions could easily lead to a self-centered holiday instead of a Christ-centered holiday. The blog post that motivated our family to oust the Easter Bunny is here. 

"The Easter Bunny, Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. are all characters that families tell their children to believe in. They can't see these characters, the kids learn about them from what their parents tell them and one day they find out that it was all a myth. And then there is God; the kids can't see Him, they learn about Him primarily from their parents and a naive mind could then think that God is mythical as well...I think there is great potential for confusion. The truth about God is the most important thing that I will teach my children and I want to avoid things that could confuse them."
I was really convicted after reading this that we really needed to change some things. This conviction only grew stronger as I continued to read her post on Santa Claus.

This is an except from an ebook called Treasuring God in our Traditions by Noel Piper. You can download it here.

"Think how confusing it must be to a literal-thinking, uncritical preschooler. Santa is so much like what we’re trying all year to teach our children about God. Look at the “attributes” of Santa:

• He’s omniscient—he sees everything you do.

• He rewards you if you’re good.

• He’s omnipresent—at least, he can be everywhere in one night.

• He gives you good gifts.

• He’s the most famous “old man in the sky” figure.

But at the deeper level that young children can’t comprehend yet, he is not like God at all. For example, does Santa really care if we’re bad or good? Think of the most awful kid you can remember. Did he or she ever not get gifts from Santa? What about Santa’s spying and then rewarding you if you’re good enough? That’s not the way God operates. He gave us his gift—his Son—even though we weren’t good at all. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He gave his gift to us to make us good, not because we had proved ourselves good enough."

For our family, this was a huge change in focus. Naturally, since I like to talk, I told some of my friends at work about our decisions. I was actually quite excited to do so, but could only explain it in 30 second snippets between patient care (I am a hospital nurse). I have received a huge amount of support from several friends, especially those that made the decision to never to start the Santa/Easter Bunny tradition in the first place. Others have been in complete disbelief and have voiced concerns that my girls will "ruin" things for their children. Although this is the decision that my husband and I have made for our family, we know it is our personal family decision and have no desire to impose it on others. My girls have been told not to "spoil" things for other children, however I am fairly certain that if they are asked about Santa, they might just tell you the truth about Jesus!

Luke2:14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
   and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” 

Just in case you are wondering, this has not affected my children's ability to pretend, play, or use their silly imaginations! 

Truth in the Tinsel

Ok, so I have never been a person who does advent activities.... Honestly, I really only thought of them as the calendars you see in the stores that pop out a piece of candy for 24 days leading up to Christmas (and who really needs any more candy leading up to Christmas?).  This year is going to be different- our family is going to plunge right into the Christmas season with a neat little ebook called Truth in the Tinsel.

The author, Amanda White writes,

I want them to say, “the best present of all is Jesus!”

I really believe December is one of best times to impress God’s Word on your kids’ hearts. Our whole country turns its attention to Christmas–stores are playing songs of worship to the newborn king, movies are playing on cable that show the real meaning of Christmas and people even decorate their yard with Bible characters!
I try to leverage this Jesus-centered month by helping my kids meditate on and learn the real story of Jesus’ birth. That’s how this ebook was born. Out of a daily advent-ure with my daughter when she was only 1 year old. Every day we read a passage of Scripture, made a simple ornament and then talked about the story. As we talked and created, God’s Word was sinking deep into her heart. She was meditating and focusing on Scripture–in her own preschool way.
This ebook will lead you and your children on your own experience through the Christmas Story. You’ll take a few minutes each day in reading the Christmas Story directly from the Bible, making a fun ornament craft and talking about it together.
Give your kids a few minutes for the first 24 days of December. You might find your kids giving themselves to Jesus in return!

I am so excited to be starting this with my girls in the next few days and wanted to let others know about it too.  Check out their facebook page too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever." Psalm 107:1

There are few times during the year that inspire us to examine the blessings God has given us as much as the week of Thanksgiving. I know in our house the hustle and bustle of the holiday week has a tendency to distract from personal reflections of how God has shown his love to us as a family. This year, Susie was sick and we were unable to do the traveling we originally planned. This meant we were able to slow down, stay home, and spend some great time with each other and totally enjoying each other's company (in between fevers!).

Although we have done some of our regular schoolwork this week, we took some time to focus on the Thanksgiving holiday. I pulled together some resources from the internet and we had some fun learning about the first Thanksgiving and doing some "Turkey-day" activities as we celebrated the things we are so thankful for.

Here are some of the things we did:

I found this interactive website at Scholastic.com that talked about the history of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. It gives good information on what life was really like for the Pilgrims. Mikayla really liked it because she could click on the slideshow and there was a little icon she could click to have it read the story to her. There were also printables that both the girls enjoyed. One of them is a play about the first Thanksgiving. I let the girls color the pictures of the characters. Then I laminated them and the girls made them into puppets for acting out the play.

We also love Confessions of a Homeschooler and she posted this Thanksgiving Preschool Pack just in time for Thanksgiving! Mikayla and Susannah loved the activities I printed out for them.  This size-sorting activity is just one of many we completed. Susie's favorites are the pre-writing/ tracing activities, but there are tons of things to work on.

One craft we enjoyed working on was this thankful turkey.  The girls wrote or dictated the things or people they were thankful for on this holiday.  Mikayla is thankful for "nature" twice simply because she wanted to make one for the bird cheeps and sounds and another for all other animals.

Thanks to Pinterest, we had some tasty treats to work on too! 

This is a Skittles Sorting Mat.  It was hard to keep the skittles from rolling around, but otherwise fun! Susie was taking things so seriously!

Today, Mikayla made these Oreo Turkeys-  She really enjoyed being able to make them all by herself once I showed her how to make the first one (and I enjoyed giving her something to do while I was finishing the meal!).

I hope you have had a great Thanksgiving holiday and taken a few minutes to reflect on the blessings that you have.  I know I have been blessed in so many ways, but right now, I am thankful for the change in plans that led to such a great day at home with my family!

Operation Christmas Child

Several weeks ago, I posted about our girls' excitement as we prepared for Operation Christmas Child.  Through the ministry of Samaritan's Purse, we pack and send shoeboxes filled with goodies to children all over the world!

Four years ago, a few of us decided to make packing the shoeboxes a church ministry sponsored by our Sunday School children. The adults do the shopping and bring in various hygiene items, school supplies, and toys to pack on the first Saturday in November. The first two years we participated in Operation Christmas Child, we set a goal of 100 shoeboxes for our church. Each year we reached our goal, but then we decided to change our strategy a bit last year. My sister-in-law had been in prayer regarding this ministry and suggested we prayerfully ask God to determine the number of shoeboxes we were to send in His name. We held a "shoebox drive" in September to collect the many shoeboxes everyone had been saving. Our total count was 300 boxes!  We weren't totally sure if we would fill them, but once again, God made it happen.  Considering we are a small church, it was obvious to us that this was blessed by God.

This year, we continued to place our faith in God and allow Him to lead us in this ministry. Just a little over a week ago, we packed 312 shoeboxes! This has truly become a ministry of the church family as we wrap ALL those shoeboxes, gather/sort/count ALL our supplies, pack ALL the boxes, check ALL those boxes (sometimes twice!), pray for ALL those boxes and their recipients, and finally deliver ALL those boxes to a drop off center where they will begin their journey to the hands of a child. We are so blessed by the parents, children, and college students who give up their busy Saturday morning to help us. 

This week is packing week for Operation Christmas Child, so you still have a chance to pack a box and get it to a drop-off center. Their website has all the information you need to pack a box and local drop-off points.

Here are some of the things we have learned as we have packed for a large group...

1. Since it is uncool to send a box with a toothbrush, but without toothpaste (or vice-versa), it helps to rubberband them together ahead of time.  (Trust me when I say that it really stinks to try and figure out which shoebox doesn't have the toothbrush in it at the end of a long packing day!)

2. Since soap has to be placed in a baggie anyway, it makes life easier to put a washcloth in there too. 

3. Set up your packing area ahead of time.  We usually set up our tables the night before so that there is less chaos the day of packing. 

4.  Have a check point, especially if lots of kids are doing the actual packing. We have between three to five "checkers" who check each box before it is cleared.  We check to make sure we don't send pencils without sharpeners (totally uncool) or flashlights without batteries.  We also place a picture of our Sunday School students in the box and label/rubberband it. 

5. Pay for shipping online. If you pay for shipping ahead of time, you can print labels for the shoeboxes and track where they end up! It is so exciting to know that the shoebox you diligently packed ended up halfway around the world!

6. Pray, Pray, Pray! Pray for the children who receive these boxes and pray that it helps to open their hearts to our Lord and Saviour.

This experience continues to bless our family and our church- I hope you give it a try too!  Here are some other links about Operation Christmas Child you might enjoy:

Operation Christmas Child

Our Family for His Glory

Impress Your Kids

Edited to show the girls once we packed up the vehicles to drop off all these shoeboxes! They were packed in soo tight!

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

Today, on Veteran's Day, is my husband's birthday.  He doesn't like his picture posted on the blog too much, but you will see him around and hear me talk of him often. We first met almost twelve years ago at the Tom Rose School for Dog Trainers (of all places).  Yes, we were both originally dog trainers before pursuing our current careers!  We still train dogs on occasion and hope it will be something Jeff can "retire" to, but even if it isn't,  it has always been a lot of fun for both of us.  Although we certainly didn't experience "love at first sight," Jeff and I believe God meant us for each other. Like many other people, we are still growing into God's plans for our family and living out His design for our lives.  We have weathered many storms and seen many rainbows, but I know the best is truly yet to come for us!

1 Corinthians 13:4-8  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

These are some of my favorite verses on love in the Bible... so familiar, yet no less true. 

This year, Jeff's birthday celebrations have been a little low key since we both had to work today. Yesterday, I was off, so the girls and I made and decorated some really yummy cupcakes!  They were soo good!  The time change has completely thrown all of our time clocks out of sync so the girls were too wiped to do any other crafts for Daddy this year.  He received his gift about a month ago when he got his new puppy, Diesel, from Belgium. Diesel is a Belgian Malinois, a herding breed that is frequently used in police work over here in the States.  They are high energy, intelligent, fun loving dogs that require a lot of training (a great dog for a dog trainer, lol). 

Also, before I forget, I would like to express my appreciation for all the veterans of our wonderful country. We are grateful for the service, time, and sacrifices you have made for our nation.