Category Archives: Guest Posts

I Want to Homeschool, But I Have to Work {guest post}

Midvale Company employee Elaine Regen, Payroll Department, main office, December 1951
Jamerrill Stewart from Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling guest posts today on the quandary of a working mother who wants to homeschool her children, but can’t see a way out of her career.  I pray this blesses and encourages my readers who have found themselves in similar circumstances.  Thank you, Jamerrill for sharing your heart!

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Countless times I have had mothers say to me,

“I wish I could homeschool, but I have to work.”

I worked full-time, 36-40 hrs every weekend as a Charge Nurse, for the first three years of our homeschooling journey. Slowly, the Lord showed me that it was costing my family too much, in more ways than just financial, for me to continue working outside of our home. {You can read more about my journey in my current series, Choosing Home}

I am in no way condemning any woman in any situation. We all have life circumstances in which the Lord must walk us through. You may already be creatively working outside the home and homeschooling. On the other hand, you may be researching homeschooling and wondering how you could ever be home with your children. My heart is to offer bits of my journey to you as hope that the Lord is still in the business of giving us the desires of our heart.

Here are a few reminders that may bless you on your journey as you seek the Lord as to what is His will for your family.

* Believe God – If you have the desire on your heart to homeschool, but are unable to at this point, take that desire and offer it back to God. Many times, He prepares us for what He has called us to do during these waiting seasons.

* Talk to your spouse - The Lord first put the desire on my heart to homeschool while I was reading the book “Bringing up Boys” by Dr. James Dobson. Our oldest child was barely two years old. I had taken the leap of faith to quit my job in the I.T. industry to stay home with our sweet boy until he started school. I felt conflicted knowing that I never wanted to leave him, but one day I’d have to give him away to the school system. One evening I mentioned to my husband a crazy idea I read about called homeschooling. To my surprise, my husband replied, “Well, of course that’s what we’re going to do!” Your spouse may agree that homeschooling is a goal for your family. Then again, your spouse may not agree. Take this to prayer as well and release it to the Lord. If it is His will for you to homeschool, he will confirm it in the heart of your spouse. This may take time, but He is faithful.

* Consider the cost – Many moms spend a huge chunk of their paychecks on childcare, after-school and summer programs, wardrobe, lunches, and gas. Not to mention vehicles, vacations and credit cards. If you look at your budget and don’t see how it’s possible for you to leave the workforce, prayerfully ask the Lord to expose ways that your family can save money and cut back. For a season consider cutting out all extras like sports, music lessons, eating out, movies, extra shopping, you get the idea. Consider cutting your lifestyle back to simply the essentials. { Here are some of the things I gave up to be a SAHM} Believe me, I’ve gained far more than the earthly items I’ve sacrificed. Dave Ramsey, who my husband is a big fan of, says, “Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else.”

* Baby Steps – While the Lord has led me to stay home full-time, it was a slow and steady process to get to this point. Carefully, he led me to step down from full-time to part-time hours, then part-time to PRN-then PRN to home free! Sure, we didn’t know how we were going to make it on just one income. My husband even had a five-month season of unemployment where God provided for us supernaturally. The point is for me it has been a faith walk. The Lord has honored our decision by helping us cut expenses, pay off debt and learn to trust Him fully.

*Wait well – My friend, I know that is easier said than done. You know the biggest component in your waiting season.

Waiting.
{Ouch!}

Gods Word promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us {Deuteronomy 31:6}. Trust that as you continue to delight yourself in Him, that He will give you the desires of your heart {Psalms 37:4}. Trust that these desires in your heart are from the Lord. Believe that He will bring all these good things to pass. He’ll put you right where He needs you to be.

Has the Lord brought you home from working full-time? Do you have an encouraging testimony you’d like to share?

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Jamerrill Stewart loves Jesus fiercely. She and her husband Travis have been married for 13 years, and are the blessed parents of 5 children ages 11, 8, 5, 2 & infant. Jamerrill writes about homeschooling on-the-cheap, frugal/large family living and all things Jesus at Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling.

top photo credit:Kheel Center, Cornell Univ

The Perfect Mess {guest post}


Photo Credit: Caroline Broyles

“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

It was an early spring morning and the birds chirped cheerily as the sun rose in the sky.

Cup of coffee in my hand, I sit down in the rocker, on the front porch, to spend a few minutes in the Word.

Being allergic to mornings, this is a rare, but sweet occurrence. To have some quiet before the pitter-patter of little feet hit the floor makes me feel so much better about the day.

And I have big plans for this day. This day we are starting fresh with a new schedule that I have laid out.

This day we are going to accomplish big things.

I am going to smile more. We are going to finish all of our schooling. I am going to take time to play, read books and interact with each one of my blessings. The house will be in order when dear husband comes home to the delicious aroma of the dinner I have cooked.

Yes, I contentedly sigh within, it is going to be a good day.

And then it happened.

“Mommy!” I hear a yell from the upstairs hallway.

“Brother just threw up and it’s all over the floor.”

I run upstairs to find child #2 laying on the floor with fever on his brow.

My plans of the day slip away from my grasp as I assess the mess before me.

The clean-up begins and before the last towel is put in the washer, another child toddles up to me “My tummy hurts”. And so it goes…

Within 2 hours every child is laying on the floor of the den, sick.

And I groan.

What happened to MY plans?

And then I am reminded of the words that I read just that morning.

“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.”

I had my own plans, but the Lord had directed my steps. I had my own agenda and He had said that a different path was better for me that day. I had thought the day would be full of great things, and the Lord was asking me to be content with my two mites and offer those up to Him.

“But, Lord, wouldn’t it have been more glorifying to you if I had accomplished all those wonderful things? Would not it have shown all those who think I am crazy for having so many children, that it can be done? How can this…this chaos bring you glory?”

Soon, I am chastened in my heart as it comes to mind– that His way is perfect. Perfect.

This throw-up mess is…perfect.

“But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.” Ps.115:3

If the Lord has done what pleased him, who am I to complain? The soul thrives best in the Valley of Humiliation. My new direction of the day is to love, comfort and care for these sick ones. This will bring him glory more than my shiny house and hot cooked meal. I may not be teaching them their three r’s today, but I can teach them the compassion of Jesus through my gentle caresses.

I head back into the room with renewed strength and grace to be a mama in just the perfect way the Lord had laid out for me.

*The above story is fictitious, but certainly could have been our home on any given day.

Jenny is an ordinary mom with an extraordinary God. After a beautiful courtship, she has now been married for 16 years. She and her husband homeschool their 7 children (ages 14- 2mo). When Jenny is not teaching, playing with her children, or changing diapers, she loves to sing, write and blog. She has unmatched socks, messy closets and is allergic to mornings. Come and be encouraged, blessed and challenged in your high calling as a Titus 2 woman over at A Mother’s Heritage. You may also follow her on Facebook, or Twitter.

Knowing My Son Belongs To God – Guest Post

When Angie sent me her guest post, I had not expected to cry. I know Angie as the fun-loving mama behind The Homeschool Classroom.  This post hit me where I live.  From the stanza of the song she mentions to the emotions she conveys in this post, I found myself remembering, and being thankful all over again to have been given the chance to mother a child with a congenital defect.  Truly, all these little ones belong to God, no matter how “imperfect” they may seem.

We all have a story.  Angie’s is about her son, Jack.

photo by Gabriela Camerotti

My middle son is the one child that has probably given me the most tension headaches from clenching my jaw so tightly. When he was preschool aged, I once described him to somebody and said,

Jack knows how to push your buttons. And if you don’t notice that he’s pushing your buttons, he’ll be sure that you don’t miss it.

Though I had some depression during and after each of my three pregnancies, it was during my pregnancy with Jack that I had the worst depression, and it was after his birth that I had my worst postpartum depression which climaxed one night when I considered thoughts so horrible that I wanted to be sick.

One of the things that helped bring me out of that postpartum depression was a check up when Jack was still a newborn. Our doctor had heard what he thought was a heart murmur in the hospital after birth, but later couldn’t hear it, so thought it was nothing. At another check up, he seemed to spend an eternity listening to Jack’s tiny chest. He declared that Jack did, indeed, have a heart murmur. He would need tests that day, as well as an echocardiogram later.

As I watched my then two year old yelling, “Give me back my brother!” as we heard Jack crying from inside the X-ray room, I realized that God had given me this child to protect. He was not a punishment (as my depression-raged brain was telling me), he was a bundle that needed protecting and I had a God that knew I was the person to do it.

We were thrilled as years went on (though other minor medical issues popped up from time to time) that Jack’s heart was strong and he continually got good marks from his cardiologist. They were confident to move appointments farther and farther apart. Even with this, they promised that his defect would need to be fixed one day, but this would likely be in his 40′s, 50′s, or even into his 60′s. I imagined Jack as a grandfather when I thought about his heart repair.

At one appointment, we were told that they were downgrading his defect, but also had found a leak. This leak, the cardiologist warned, would probably be what would be more apt to cause problems. Still, when asked about repairs, he assured us that we would likely be looking far into adulthood, as we had always expected.

Last year, we had an appointment that had been two years since the one before (definitely the longest we had ever gone between appointments). It was the very first appointment where I wasn’t afraid going in. This had become routine, and we were used to things always being better. It was one of the first appointments where I took Jack in without my husband (although as homeschoolers, I did bring along the other children). The appointment seemed to go just as normal. He had an echocardiogram, an EKG, some time with the doctor (who is always full of jokes), and then he said he wanted to review some video and he’d be right back with us.

The doctor came back into the office and said, “Hey, Jack – I want to see one thing myself. Let’s go back and look at your heart again.” We had never done this before, but I still felt pretty good. The doctor told us to go back to the room while he looked up some measurements. I had a nervous feeling in my stomach, but was still okay.

Back in the room, our always joking doctor walked in with a serious look and took a deep breath. Then came a long talk that was hard for me to remember. There was talk of the leak, of an enlarged root, of the possibility of an aneurysm. Jack, then eight years old, had his head dropped down. Only when he made the sign of the cross did we realize that he was praying. He didn’t even understand what was happening, but he was scared.

In an odd twist of fate, we had just a week earlier received our new insurance plan for the year and one of the specific notes was that it would only cover 90% of a repair to a congenital heart defect. I mentioned it to our cardiologist, and he was shocked. I told him that I understood that 10% of a repair wouldn’t be pretty. So, trying to lighten the mood, I asked with a laugh, “He’ll still get to wait to have this repair until he’s well off our insurance, right?’ He looked at me with a genuine look of empathy and quietly shook his head no. He assured me that it wouldn’t be done right now, and that they would watch how things developed. He promised they would fix it when it was “bad enough” to definitely need it. In the meantime, Jack (at eight years old) was given a prescription that he will likely take for the rest of his life.

I couldn’t come to terms with all of this. It was too much to take in. Coming just six weeks after the sudden and unexpected death of my Grandma, it seemed unbelievable. (Oddly enough, though we didn’t have a clue that this would happen, my other Grandma would pass away just five months later.) I would sometimes drive by myself and just cry. “How could this be happening? Why would you do this to him, God?” I would plead.

Finally, one day while driving, Casting Crowns came on with “In Christ Alone.” As I listened to the song, I sobbed. When I got to this part of the song, I came to a true epiphany:

“For I am His and He is mine -
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”

I truly, in my heart, realized that Jack belongs to God more than he belongs to me. I may very well love Jack more than any other person on this planet, but the love I have for Jack can never compare to the love that God has for Jack. Even though I already knew this, it’s like at that moment, God used that song to really speak to my heart and remind me of that. It was then that I was able to let go of a lot of my worry about our new situation. No amount of worry would change it. All we can do now is pray and know that we need to understand that we may not know what the future holds, but God does and He will be with us.

Angie is a homeschooling Mom to three children. She is a former domestic flunkie who writes about all of the things that happen in life between loads of laundry at Many Little Blessings. She is also the founder of The Homeschool Classroom and Catholic Mothers Online.

How I Homeschool My Preschooler – Guest Post

Tara is a blogger after my own heart!  Her blog, Feels Like Home, is full of useful information and practical advice with a writing style that is easy {and fun!} to read.  Perfect for the mom who needs good ideas, but doesn’t have a lot of time to sift through froo froo.  You might remember her from a post I did on storing hand-me-downs because she is working through a series of posts on creating a keepsake quilt from baby clothes…something I hope to do someday with Emmy’s things.  Today, she offers her take on homeschooling preschoolers, namely her 3 year old daughter, Grace.

My daughter, Grace, is 3, and she is eager to go to kindergarten.

My husband and I have made the decision to homeschool our children, so she won’t go to kindergarten. Trying to stave off a big meltdown when she comes to this realization, I suggested to her that we could “play kindergarten” at home, now.

I want to pause to tell you that I work full time (as a high school teacher, ironically). My daughter spends her weekdays at a preschool/daycare. I lament it daily. My husband and I are working to change our situation by January when our second baby is due. Our circumstances are what they are for the moment, and I have to make our schooling plan work.

I mention Grace’s preschool/daycare partly to say that she gets lots and lots of time to play. Grace has plenty of social time with her friends, as well as unstructured time to play and run around and do the things that 3-year-olds need to do. She also gets some time at preschool to learn to cut with scissors, color, paint, and write her name.

Grace’s Interests

When I first broached the idea of playing kindergarten with Grace, she was ecstatic. I talked with her about what she wanted to do, and I learned the following:

  • She wants to learn to read. Like, yesterday.
  • She is not concerned about writing, and she does not want to work on it.
  • She likes numbers, but she doesn’t want to learn “math” in terms of a school subject.
  • She is very interested in animals and general science concepts, though she doesn’t want to do those in terms of a school subject, either.

Curricula I Purchased

Given her interests and some wonderful advice from my friend Tiffany, I purchased the following:

How Our Homeschooling Works

Because I like John Holt’s unschooling model for small children, and I really wanted to foster the playing kindergarten idea, I didn’t set aside a block of time each day for “school.” Especially since Grace and I are apart for most of the day, I didn’t want school to be a chore at the end of the day. I was concerned that having a set “school” time each day after work and daycare would make school a duty that Grace and I would come to dread.

Instead, I set up a playing kindergarten basket next to our couch in the living room. In it, I put the first Hooked on Phonics workbook, the Stamp and See Screen & letter stamps from Handwriting Without Tears, the Kumon coloring book, and a book that I selected from Before Five in a Row. I also put the DVDs with all of Grace’s other DVDs, so that she could choose them when she has some tv time.

After I set up the Playing Kindergarten basket, I told Grace about it. I talked it up, not in terms of school and lessons, but in terms of “Here’s how we can play with these cool things.” She was super excited about the basket, and she has chosen something to work on most days since I set up this system. (I’d estimate that we do a lesson of some sort, at Grace’s request, 5 days a week, though they aren’t always the weekdays.)

Our Early Results

Grace adores the Leap Frog DVDs and asks to watch them at least three days a week. After watching the Letter Factory DVD three or four times, she knew all of the letters and all of their sounds. I thought that was an amazing result.

Because Grace learned so much from the Letter Factory DVD, Grace really doesn’t need the Pre-K level of Hooked on Phonics. We’ve done three or four lessons from it, but she’s become completely bored by the workbook. I’m going to pull the Pre-K workbook out of our basket and put the Kindergarten version in. I think it will be a lot more appropriate for where she’s at.

Grace really likes the Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives. She likes to play with the Stamp & See letters and the dough that came in our box, but we rarely use them to make letters. Usually, they are part of our unstructured play on the large Magna Doodle.

We are already most of the way through the Kumon coloring book. Grace loves it, and she will do ten or more pages at one sitting.

Grace is not into Before Five in a Row. Not at all. She loves to read and be read to, but she does not want to talk about the books in a learning sense. I’ve been trying some different tactics to make this work, but she has seen through me so far.

The Expedition Earth curriculum is a wee bit above Grace. I knew that was a possibility as it’s a K-3 curriculum, but we work on it bits and pieces at a time.

A Last Word

One thing that I didn’t mention previously is my iPhone. Grace has a few iPhone apps that she is allowed to play with: Super Why, First Words: Animals, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, Giraffe’s Preschool Playground, Tozzle, and Jirbo Match. Each one teaches letter skills, word skills, or thinking skills, and Grace thinks they’re really cool and fun.

I wouldn’t change our method of homeschool for anything at this point. It’s very low pressure, and Grace is learning in leaps and bounds. She is really far ahead of her 3-year-old peers (though that wasn’t my intention), and each new skill is leading to new interests.

For Grace, school is fun, and school is interesting, and that was my dream result.

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Tara is a wife and mom who has been publishing Feels Like Home since 2007. She writes a variety of posts: food and cooking tips, craft ideas, and a myriad of parenting (mis)adventures help make readers’ lives easier – or at least make them laugh along the way.

You can learn more about Tara at Feels Like Home.

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Guest Post- Favorite Homeschooling Gadgets

{Today’s guest post is from Betty at Peace Creek on the Prairie.   If you’re a homeschooling mom and have never visited her blog, I’d encourage you to head over there and take a look around.  Her post today is a conglomeration of some of her favorite homeschool gadgets and how she currently uses them or plans to use them in the upcoming school year.}

As a homeschool mom, I tend to look at things through a different window.  Many times that window seems small, as in, “I need more space”.   Other times, I am just trying to make do with what I have, but need to get ultra creative.

I love lists, and I love checking them off, but what do you do with them afterwards? I am not one to keep piles of paper—or maybe I am, but I don’t like them lying around. I am tired of buying binders for them, they are bulky, heavy and don’t really fit neatly on bookshelves, since they are not “square”.  So, this leads me to one of my newest gadgets.

A couple of weeks ago, an opportunity came up for me to get a comb binder.  I scrambled over ideas of how I could use it for.  Here is my list:

  • Instead of using file folders for my lapbooks, I can make Topic Centered books and bind them together.  We will put all parts of our lapbooks on cardstock, like we did on our file folders.
  • All those recipes that I never get in a three ring binder, can be bound with my comb binder.
  • My children’s notebooking pages, copywork, coloring and such, can all go in a book for them.
  • I can put my husband’s instructions for mechanical things that I have printed for him, and make a book for him.
  • Pages and Ideas from my favorite magazines can be bound together.
  • My lesson plans, reading record, lesson logs, and so forth will have a book.

My list goes on, but you can see how this will make a bit of a difference.  For our chore lists, I plan to make morning, afternoon, and evening sections, and bind them into a book.  Each day will have a listing under the different times of day.  They will all be laminated and able to have a dry or wet erase marker used on them. The cool thing about my comb binder is I can add pages easily, very much like a three ring binder.

My next gadget is our wall sized dry erase board.

I use this board for so many things.  During school for math problems, reading troubled word families, sentence diagramming, spelling words, assignments and so forth.  I use it at night to leave my husband instructions for warming up his meal if he has been out in the field and didn’t want to stop long enough for me to bring him food.  On Saturdays, we do our home blessing.  I list all chores that must be completed on Friday evening.  Though I like to keep up during the week, we just don’t, so on Saturday we get it all done.

Another gadget I love is my laptop.

From making my own homeschool forms, to making worksheets, downloading unit studies, and watching movies, my laptop is now an essential part of our homeschool.  I am also a new member of the TOS Homeschool Review Crew.  I will be reviewing homeschool related products on my blog.

My other gadgets are things that most of you probably use.  Three ring binders for various papers, again, before my comb binder, I used these a lot.  Things that are already in a binder will stay, as they are hole punched. Now, I won’t be buying so many though. ;)   staplers, tape, double sided tape, pens in various colors, mechanical pencils, paper cutter, dry erase marker, in different colors, binder clips, sharpies, three hole punch, singe hole punch, and so forth.  There are so many uses for these items.  I like to use colored pens for grading; I use my child’s favorite color to grade their papers.

Being able to have and use the above gadgets has helped our family be more creative with our homeschool curriculum.  We use many of these items for our unit studies.  One of my next items of want is a laminator.  However, for now, I either take my things into Office Max during their Teacher Appreciation Days or use contact paper.

What gadgets help you in your homeschool?

Betty

Guest Post – The Homeschool Basket Lady

{Today’s guest post is from Renae at Life Nurturing Education.  I’ve always enjoyed her practical, encouraging and insightful blog posts!  I asked Renae to guest post for me for the simple fact that she homeschools in small spaces and her organizational creativity is boundless!  Here is yet another example of that…}

The librarian called to tell me the books I requested were ready to be picked up. I said I’d be in later, and then I heard,

Oh, you’re the basket lady.

Should I be offended? I earned the nickname because of the old, wire basket I spray painted.

I used to take a backpack to the library and then transfer new books to their place next to the couch, but grabbing the basket is simpler. It does a great job keeping library books corralled, and it’s the perfect size for our check-out limit.

That library basket works so well, I don’t care that basket lady and bag lady sound so similar. I have bigger things to battle, things like books and paper.

Organizing Books

Since we don’t have a separate room for our personal library, our living room has three large bookshelves in it. I make space for a few pieces of pottery to act as bookends to help keep the shelves neat.

Our books are loosely organized by category and size. Curriculum is on the shelf above our binders. Reference books are to the left of my desk. Favorite children’s books are on a separate shelf next to the couch.

Organizing Paper

Besides books, our homeschool fills up with paper. My girls each have an old-fashioned school desk with a bit of storage for their plethora of drawings.

When their desks are full, we sort through and keep their best and favorite works of art.

What we decide to keep goes into a three drawer organizer. I also slip in small treasures, cards, and keepsakes to be added to their binders or scrapbooks later.

Our other school papers used to pile in my plan book and languish there. I resisted planning, because of the mess.

I found a cute desktop file holder to control that disaster. There are file folders for papers that need to be graded and papers that need to be filed. And my plan book fits right in the front.

Organizing Other Stuff

My desk drawers organize all of our office supplies: erasers, pencils, staplers, hole punches, flash cards, stickers, paper cutters, notebook paper, extra gadgets, and even the bills. I would like a new desk some day, but that might be as strenuous as packing up our whole house.

Some of our puzzles, cards, and games are stuffed in a small dresser that I use as a sideboard in my kitchen.

What is your biggest organizational challenge? Do you have any creative ideas for managing the stuff of homeschool?

Renae