I think homeschoolers have proven that the lack of socialization myth is just that: a myth. But the fact is that everyone, homeschooled or not, will meet all sorts of people during the course of their lives, and sometimes they’ll have questions about how to deal with them.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie has been in print since it was first published in 1936 because Carnegie was so good at explaining how to get along with people. This particular copy is a vintage copy, but I don’t know the exact year it was printed: inside it says “Copyright 1936, 85^th printing.”

This is one of the books on the Recommended Reading List of my book Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers. As I said in that book:

This book is especially valuable for homeschooled students, because they will be heading out into a world where they may face some negative experiences and people that they missed out on by not attending public school.

What do you think about homeschoolers and socialization? Leave your answer as a comment on this post by Friday, March 19, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing for this hardback copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks With Over 125 Illustrations

Being homeschoolers, we love books: the older the book, the better. Buying old books is something we just can’t seem to stop doing.

Last summer, my husband and I were at a book sale up in Door County when we found the cutest book. It’s a kindergarten story curriculum published in 1890. The author, a teacher, organized it into a school-year’s worth (September to June) of stories and object lessons for young children.

Our youngest is 17, so we didn’t really need this book, but I just couldn’t resist it. We bought it, and both my husband and I read it. We were quite taken with the animal and nature stories, fairy tales, fables, and simple object lessons that explained how items in daily use at that time were manufactured. In fact, we agreed that it would be a great book for homeschooling parents except that the print is so small that it would be hard to read aloud. And that got us thinking……

What if we republished the book with a larger font and wider margins so it would be easier to read aloud? Then my husband said he thought he could find some nice illustrations, appropriate to the time period and even the specific stories. After all, kids today are very visual. They love storybooks with pictures! So he spent ages finding the coolest illustrations to go with the stories. Being the artist he is, he also came up with a beautiful cover. The whole process took several months.

And the result? We’re happy to announce that the book, Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks With Over 125 Illustrations, is now in print! It’s available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and pretty much everywhere you can buy books. It was just published, so it’s not in the homeschool catalogs yet, but we’re working on that. In the meantime, we just put it up on our site if you want to learn more.

I wish I’d had a book like this when I first started homeschooling…. I think it’s an ideal first curriculum for homeschooling parents and teachers of young children who enjoy and appreciate vintage texts.

science project ideas

scrapbooking

life stress and homeschooling

how to use free audio books

And much more….check it out here.

What’s the most important thing you want to teach your children so they’ll be prepared to live on their own someday? Is it how to budget? How to cook? How to live within their means and debt-free? Or something else?

Leave your answer as a comment on this post by Friday, March 12, and you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing for a hardback copy of Life on the Edge, one of the books on the Recommended Reading List of my book Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers. As I said in that book:

Dr. Dobson discusses important subjects like choosing a career and a marriage partner, as well as just dealing with the ups and downs of life as a young adult in today’s society. His Christian faith is always evident in what he writes, yet his practical advice is valuable for readers of any faith.

Stay tuned for more giveaways!

Gever Tulley’s Tinkering School sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s just the kind of experience today’s overscheduled, classroom-imprisoned kids need. But at $1200 for 6 days, it’s out of the reach of many parents.

But why couldn’t a few parents get together to provide a similar experience for their kids? Maybe hang out in someone’s garage with a bunch of power tools and some donated lumber, and let the kids loose (with some parental guidance) to tinker to their hearts’ content?

As long as the parents teach the kids how to use the power tools safely, I think this would be an awesome learning experience. Perhaps a homeschool support group could sponsor a day-long tinkering workshop for kids. I mean, who wouldn’t want to build their own roller coaster?

(Here’s another Tulley video; it’s called “Five Dangerous Things for Kids.”)

When we began homeschooling, it was so nice for us to be able to stay in on a cold rainy day and read book after book while the neighbor kids stood out in the rain waiting for the bus. I remember my kids spending happy hours in the basement, using an easel my sister gave them to paint masterpieces while I put classical music on the tape player (”Peter and the Wolf” was a special favorite, and I loved it because it introduced them to the orchestra and the instruments used in it.)

Sometimes we took a day out to go to a children’s theater with a small group of homeschoolers we had met (this was before there were any support groups in my area). The kids loved sitting at the play with their friends and then meeting for lunch at McDonald’s afterwards. All seemed very aware that it was a school day for other kids but they got to have fun.

We also learned to go to museums in the afternoon, after all the school kids had gone back to their classes, and we’d have the whole place to ourselves. The kids loved it!

On cold days, when the snow was blowing, we could stay in our warm house, and I’d let the kids have mugs of hot chocolate while they did their schoolwork. An extra-special treat was to have chocolate-chip pancakes for lunch.

On library days, they could spend an hour picking out books, then go home and sit together on the sofa or the screened porch and read book after book, for as long as they wanted.

Sometimes we’d meet homeschooling friends at the park and the kids could play for hours, with no time restraints marked by whistles or ringing bells. They’d play for a while, come back to the picnic table for a juice box and a snack, and then run back out again. I’d bring them home sweaty, tired and happy.

When I first began homeschooling, I also had a job working as a proofreader/writer for a woman who ran a company out of her home that employed only freelancers. While we met at the office to go over a project and pick up our assignments (this was long before email!), our kids would hang out in the conference room and draw pictures together, or spin on the chairs. They thought this was great fun 

When the kids were 6 and 7, I had another baby. They had prayed for a little sibling, and because they didn’t have to go to school each day, they got to be there to help give her a bath or spoon-feed her at mealtimes. Since she was a spring baby, sometimes we’d just put her on a blanket and sit around her and marvel at how beautiful God had made her. The kids were so excited to see her each morning; how glad I was that I didn’t have to send them off to school!

These are memories from the first years of homeschooling. We made plenty more for years after that. The freedom that my kids had to learn and explore was something that shaped them and can never be taken away from them. It helped make them who they are today. They, of course, don’t remember as many of the details as I do, but I remember their happy faces. I also remember them watching them run out to play with their neighbor friends after the school bus brought them home in the afternoon, and thinking that they had the best of both worlds. They were free to learn and play all day, and to have fun with their neighborhood friends once they came home from school.

The messy house, the garden choked with weeds, the laundry basket that never stayed empty…..those things bothered me at the time, but now they’re distant memories, and I realize how unimportant they were. It was worth putting up with the mess and the difficulties so that the kids could grow up learning and playing on a natural schedule instead of an artificial one. They enjoyed years of unstructured play and pursuit of their own interests. Our family time came naturally; we didn’t have to schedule it. It was just our life.

Some of you reading this are going through challenges right now. It comes with the territory, and you may need to make some changes to make life less difficult. But don’t quit homeschooling just because it’s harder to juggle the kids and the house than you thought it would be. You need to look at the big picture. Think about the advantages you’re giving your kids by homeschooling them. Make a list of all the things they’ve learned lately, and of the things you hope to do with them in the future. And remember that nothing worth having is easy to obtain.

You’ll have to make sacrifices: of your time, of your energy, of your money. Speaking of money, you know, when I look back, living on one income all those years meant we didn’t drive expensive cars or go on extended high-end vacations. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that we had time together….. nothing can replace that. You’ll have that too. Concentrate on the positives, and enjoy this time with your kids. You won’t be sorry.

First we had fog, then snow, then it got colder. The result was that everything got this cool frozen fuzzy look, as though Frozone had dropped by and left his mark. Looks awesome, but I’m still ready for spring to get here.

Lately my husband and I have been discussing special needs trusts. Thinking about what could happen in the future is especially hard for those of us who have children with special needs. Stories like Edgar’s are reassuring, because they remind us that God will look out for our children even after we’re gone. I love this story!