I’ve had it, I’m sorry but watching the fear and pain and bewilderment of people frustrated with the public school distance learning is killing me. With six children (four graduated to aduldren), I have homeschooled for almost 30 years and I’ve mentored thousands of homeschooling parents. There is no success nor failure I’m unfamiliar with. I’ve heard it ALL! Let me help you heave this boulder! Here is the lowdown and I’ll tell you exactly what you need to know. This advice is refined from literal blood, sweat, and tears. 1. Do not buy ANY curriculum. Do not buy little desks. Do not buy bulletin boards. Do not buy any subscriptions with blingy boxes of science experiments. Do not buy anything except paper, pencils, and crayons until after you get to number 8. 2. Spend time determining your educational philosophy. Let your children play (in non-electronic ways) while you get a clue. We call this deschooling or detoxing and it’s a necessary step anyway. Ask yourself, “What
I was in some kind of crisis mode, I can’t remember what it was. My oldest son who was 10 (or maybe even 11) came racing through the room and I said to him, “Is it 12:00 yet?” He was more than willing to find out the time for me but his next question brought me to a place of complete despair. “What does 12:00 look like?” I remembering thinking, “What am I doing? At least in school he would have been forced to learn to tell time…” (and let me just say, Oh but Wow, if you knew me now...) Well, what I was doing was everything I was capable of doing—and that happened to be a lot. I was having babies and keeping their limbs attached and their ever-hungry mouths fed. I was reading books (in copious amounts) to them and to myself. I was gathering like-minded families and creating a tribe. This list does not include all the things you already know that I was doing as I ran this enterprise we call a family like a well-oiled machine (ha!) The fact of the matter is that my son had