Now that I’m done homeschooling my kids, I’m finding it harder to come up with homeschool book and article ideas. But I want to keep encouraging those of you who homeschool your children. So here’s what I’m going to do:
First, I’ve decided to end “The Imperfect Homeschooler” newsletter. It’s been a labor of love for the last seven years, but it’s time for me to move on. That said, I’ll continue to share links to wonderful online educational helps and freebies, as well as the “What Our Kids are Missing Out On Dept.” and an occasional article by me, via weekly updates (the first onejust went up on Wednesday) on our new site, “Thriving in the 21st Century.”
After all, why do you homeschool? To prepare your children to thrive in the future, right? So you need the best resources and information you can find, and I plan to offer them to you every week.
You can subscribe to my weekly updates by using the RSS link at the bottom of the main page(subscribe-by-email links will be available on the right side of the page shortly). But current subscriptions to “The Imperfect Homeschooler” newsletter will no longer be active, so if you’d like to keep receiving homeschool encouragement and information from me, please subscribe on the new site.
Second, we’ve rounded up hundreds of articles and blog posts I’ve written over the years and we’re assembling many of them into a series of four eBooks collectively entitled “The Stages of Homeschooling”:
The Stages of Homeschooling: Beginnings
The Stages of Homeschooling: Enjoying the Journey
The Stages of Homeschooling: Letting Go
The Stages of Homeschooling: The Empty Nest
These upcoming eBooks will be available at Amazon.com and BN.com (Barnes & Noble). I think you’ll like them, and I hope you’ll learn a lot from them, too. Keep an eye on this blog for news of their arrival.
Finally, for those who are looking for personalized encouragement, I’m now doing homeschool consulting via phone (U.S. only) and email. Click here to learn more.
I want to thank all of you who have taken time over the years to write to me and share your thoughts and concerns. It was great to hear from you! I hope I’ve demonstrated to you that it’s been a joy to live the homeschooling life. I wish you all the best as you teach your children.
A friend visited our new home today and had a lot of suggestions for how we could update it. I appreciate her input but I probably won’t take most of it to heart.
One of the things I decided over the course of our past four years as renters is that I spent far too much time thinking about making changes to our previous homes and then, eventually, making those changes. Yes, it’s fun, but it sure is time-consuming, and I just don’t want to spend that kind of time on a house anymore. I’ve decided I will appreciate the house as it is, and not spend too much time obsessing over changes. Yes, there will be changes, I’m sure, but I’m just not willing to put a lot of time into thinking, planning and executing them.
I didn’t make this decision on purpose. I think it’s a byproduct of living in a rental house after 25 years as a homeowner and enjoying the freedom of looking at ugly carpeting and thinking, “If this was my house, I’d replace that carpet, but since it’s not, I don’t care,” and then going on to do whatever it is I wanted to do for fun because I finally had the time. There’s a certain freedom in renting that I really enjoyed, and I guess subconsciously I’m trying to retain some of that freedom even though we just became homeowners again.
Another thought: we completely remodeled our first house, and bought our second house new and then completely decorated it. Maybe I just got burned out on all that decorating and now I don’t care as much? Who knows? What I do know is that I appreciate our latest house despite its dated wallpaper borders and various-shades-of-80s-beige walls, and that is very liberating.
How about you? Are you at this stage yet? Or would you agree with my friend that the box light fixture in the kitchen should be replaced with can lighting, and the basement walls should be painted a color other than white?
The first time our daughter drove past the home we just bought, she said, “It’s so small!” I responded, “That’s what you’re going to hear me say every month when I open the electric bill.”
That was one of our goals. We spent so much money over the years heating and cooling our homes, and we were sick of it. Money is much tighter now than it used to be (at least for us), so who wants to give so much to the utility companies? Not us.
There are other advantages to having a small home. There are fewer rooms to clean. The property taxes are lower than most. (Heck, the price of the home was lower than most.) And living small forced us to give up a lot of furniture, so we kept only our favorite pieces and are enjoying them more.
That said, it’s a bit cozier around here than in our previous homes. Sometimes we bump into each other in the kitchen or the hall. We’re all sharing the same shower (not at the same time, of course!) And since I’m a cook-from-scratch person most of the time, the kitchen cabinets are packed tight with pans, small appliances and other must-have-to-make-dinner items.
It’s only been a month, but so far we like it. And on the days I get frustrated with the lack of space, I figure I’ll just pull out the electric bills and re-examine them. That should help!
Over our previous moves, we got rid of a lot of stuff. What remained could be grouped into three categories:
Our Favorite Homeschooling Books
Our Favorite Toys
Our Favorite Mementos
Now, since we finished homeschooling our 18-year-old in June, you might be wondering why I kept so many homeschooling books. Well, for the same reason I wanted to keep the toys: for the grandchildren I may get someday.
Yep, I know it’s silly, but I just couldn’t let go of those things. Never mind that I don’t know if my grandchildren will be homeschooled. How can you get rid of Saxon 54? Or the Miller family series of Amish stories? Or the Holling Clancy Holling books?
Did I mention that books are heavy and take up lots of boxes?
Then there are the toys. For instance, every time I looked at the Little Tykes kitchen set, I remembered my eldest two children (then ages 3 and 2) excitedly watching the UPS man as he delivered the enormous box that contained their new kitchen set, which I had paid for with Huggies points. (Do they still have those?) How could I get rid of that?
As for the mementos, I find that I lose my memories unless I find items to trigger them. So it’s hard for me to give up the items because I’ll lose the memories. That explains why I kept little fuzzy sleepers and my kids’ favorite dolls and my son’s Sesame Street metal car collection (dang, those things are heavy!)
But we no longer have room for most of these treasures. And when I think about it, why should they sit in boxes and plastic containers when other children (children who exist right this moment, as opposed to my someday-grandchildren) could be getting use out of them?
That’s why we’ve been giving things away, and selling big things on Craig’s List, and just plain clearing most of it out. It is not easy. But I think it’s the right thing to do.
(Full disclosure: I didn’t get rid of all our best homeschooling books. I’m keeping the very best on our shelves, and that includes the Saxon 54, the Millers and the HCH books. But I’ve decided I’m not keeping books in boxes anymore. So I’m keeping what I can fit on the bookshelves, and the rest have to go!)
By the way, which of your homeschooling books are your favorites, the ones you’ll never let go of?
Our new home has just over 1,000 square feet upstairs plus a basement. Our last rental home had over 2,000 square feet upstairs plus a basement. You see the problem here.
I keep thinking it’s like trying to fit a size 12 foot in a size 9 shoe. Despite all the purging we did over the last two moves, we have to get rid of more stuff in order to fit four people and their stuff in this house.
I decided not to let anything in the house that isn’t going to stay here. So you can imagine what the garage looks like.
Someone suggested that had I spent more time over the last 30 years getting rid of stuff instead of keeping it, I would be better off.
I thought about that for a while. At first, it sounded right. But then I realized that while I did go through things at times, I was never forced to do a major purge because we lived in a big house that allowed me to store things instead of getting rid of them. Also (and most importantly), I was so busy raising and homeschooling four kids that I never had time to do a major purge.
And that’s ok, because I spent the time I could have spent going through stuff doing more important things, like explaining algebra, playing games, and reading to my kids. Now that they’re grown, I have more time to go through everything. So while going through all this stuff now isn’t a lot of fun, I’m glad I had the time with my kids when they were home.
So if you have lots of kids and lots of clutter, take heart. Someday you can take care of the clutter. But the time to take care of the kids is now.
Wow, a month away from my blog….never thought I could do it, but it was actually rather freeing. Still, I’ve missed blogging and am happy to be back.
So as I mentioned last month, we’ve moved, AGAIN. That makes three times in four years (for anyone keeping score), and if I say so myself, this was our most disorganized move yet, which is kind of depressing because we have a lot less stuff now than we did four years ago.
Part of the reason this latest move has been so crazy is that we moved into a much smaller house. We’ve always known we would need to downsize, and I thought I was ready for it. I love reading about the tiny houses that are so hip right now; just the thought of simplifying and streamlining the prodigious amount of crap stuff that a homeschooling family of six can accumulate made me happy and excited for the future. But the reality was that we had to slog through a lot of stuff in the heat and humidity (our leases kept going August to August) and it’s really gotten old.
That said, it’s worth it, because we feel lighter with every box we take to the Goodwill store. And (even at my age), I’m learning all sorts of good lessons through this experience. I’ll be sharing a few in future posts; let’s call them “The Downsizing Chronicles.”
As for those announcements I said were upcoming, it’s almost time. Stay tuned.
Just saw the latest edition of Home Educator’s Family Times, which has gone digital. One of my articles is on page 24: check it out!
Also, having survived several failed closings on a house that turned out to have a bad well, we are now buying a different house and will be moving shortly. During the transition, I probably won’t have time to blog. But moving isn’t the only big change I have coming up, so stay tuned for updates. And enjoy your summer!
….you’re invited to the 10th anniversary of the Johnsburg (IL) Homeschool Resource Center’s Open House and Used Curriculum Flea Market this Saturday, 7/30/11.
I’ll be on the panel of homeschool speakers who will answer your questions in an afternoon session (the flea market is held in the morning). Johnsburg in in the far NW suburbs of Chicago, and just a little ways south of the Cheddar Curtain (IL/WI border).
In response to my post last week “Young Men Need to Work,” I received an email from a reader that made so much sense that I just had to share it with you (with her permission). She and her husband are raising their sons to know how to earn money without having a regular paycheck. Here’s what they’re doing this summer:
We are teaching our sons to think outside the box, much like the men in your family did.
One way is to help the elderly with their errands for a small fee. Today he is helping his dad paint a rental house that a senior citizen from our church inherited from his parents. The man can’t afford a professional painter yet the work still needs doing. My husband had the day off and took our 14 y/o with him. They will earn enough money for a small profit and just enough to buy a storage unit full of stuff from someone who defaulted on the bill. Then my husband will help our son post the items on eBay. With that money our son will purchase curriculum for this school year. Hopefully he will make more than when he started to be able to buy himself a Razor scooter.
We have to teach our kids to think outside the box as the box gets smaller and smaller.
This is a great example of parenting wisdom. These parents are teaching their sons to be of service to others while creating income for themselves. And I love her imagery of the box getting smaller. That’s how it’s going to be for a while. We’ve got to teach our children to live in the real world.
A recent “Hi and Lois” comic strip shows Hi, the dad, dropping off his recyclables, pumping his own gas, using the self-checkout at the grocery store, stopping by an ATM machine and renting a movie using an automated machine. Later his teenage son comes home looking frazzled and announces “I cannot find a summer job! Where are all the jobs?!”
That’s a good question. Point taken.
As a five-year-old during the Great Depression, my dad sold gum on passenger trains to make money for his family. As a teen he hauled sacks of grain in a mill; he’s been a hard worker all his life and even though he’s pushing 80, he still repairs and restores cars and helps members of his family (just this week, he helped two different family members who were moving).
When my husband was a teen, he mowed his church’s acreage for free and cleaned buses for pay. By age 17, he had an engineering job that would become his occupation for many years. He’s always been a hard worker, has run two businesses and continues to work hard to take care of our family.
Ten years ago, my then-16-year-old son spent his summer working in a grocery store. It was a job he’d had for over a year; he would continue to work in several stores in that grocery chain throughout college. Today he has a good job for which he travels frequently and, because he’s in management, always puts in many hours.
You see the pattern here. Young men need to work. It helps them develop the work ethic they’ll need to support a family. But today, unemployment is very high among teens. In some areas it’s over 25%. Even those who do work are finding it hard to get more than 15 or 20 hours of work per week. We hope that this situation will change eventually, but what of our young men in the meantime? They’re at a crucial point in their development; if they can’t find work, it will be far too easy for them to sink into a stupor of gaming and partying as so many already do; others with more energy and nowhere to use it constructively may be easily lured into criminal activity out of boredom.
It’s crucial that we help our young men find work of any kind, paying or not. We can talk to our friends and neighbors to see who needs help around their homes and yards, or better yet, their businesses. Perhaps churches can mobilize their youth to work around the church grounds or in the community.
This is a nationwide problem; if we don’t get a handle on it, we’re going to have a generation of messed-up young men. That is not a comforting thought.
Amazon does strange things. Here’s an example: for some reason, they’ve put one of our books on sale for almost half-price. We didn’t tell them to do this, but they’re free to set the price wherever they want. So if you’re looking for a great deal (and I don’t know how long this will last), check out two classic wildlife novels in one book: Shovelhorns, the Biography of a Moose, and Black Bruin, the Biography of a Bear, now only $7.58 (reg. $13.95), only at Amazon.com.
I noticed the other day at the grocery store that there are an amazing amount of bottled teas nowadays. From tiny bottles to jugs, lots of tea is being sold, and I imagine someone’s making a pretty good profit off of it because it’s not cheap.
Of course, part of the high price is the shipping of all this liquid; given gas prices, that could be a good percentage of the price. And it seems kind of silly when you consider the bulk of those commercial tea products is water.
I used to drink Snapple on occasion, but it got so expensive that I decided I needed to find an alternative.
This summer we’ve been drinking homemade fruit teas. I put two bags of Celestial Seasonings tea into a pitcher of hot water and let it sit in the sunny window for a few hours. Then we mix some in a glass with sweetener (dh likes honey, I’ve been using Sun Crystals), and it’s just as good as Snapple, though maybe not as sweet.
Given that a box of Fruit Tea Sampler is $1.88, and I usually have a 50 cent or $1 coupon for it, I’m paying between 10 and 15 cents per pitcher of tea plus sweetener. Even without a coupon, it would only be 21 cents a pitcher. Quite a savings! And there are a variety of flavors, including peach, berry, cherry and blueberry.
When I get tired of fruit tea, I make peppermint tea. I bought some Frontier peppermint tea from Amazon last winter and drank it hot (so good!). Now I’m drinking it cold, and yet I still have tons of tea left because the bag of tea is so big (and there were two of them, but I’m still on the first one.)
Are you an iced tea drinker? If so, do you make your own or do you have a favorite brand you can’t live without?
One of the best things about not having cable tv is that you miss out on appalling cultural trends like this one. I had no idea that people did this to their children, or that so many people would approve of it.
How can grown women not only sanction but encourage the sexualization of their little girls? This is warped. Creepy. Beyond the pale.
I recently began sending out a subscription-only series of summer e-mails for homeschool encouragement with the oft-used title “The ABCs of Homeschooling.” Yesterday I learned that Dawn of the homeschool blog 5KidsandaDog has been doing a weekly blog meme with the same title for several weeks. I had no idea she had this series planned when I wrote my articles on the same topic and scheduled them with my email marketing service. It was a coincidence.
I believe that the more we share information with other homeschoolers, the better off everyone will be. In that spirit, I encourage you to check out Dawn’s blog for additional insight into the homeschooling life and to participate in her blog meme, which invites you to come up with your own “ABCs of Homeschooling.”
