So you’ve been hanging out at the pool or beach with the kids, making meals that don’t heat up the house, enjoying the nice weather and just plain appreciating the fact that it’s summer.
Me too.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with taking a few minutes to tiptoe over to this week’s edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling and see what other homeschooling parents are thinking and doing these days. After all, whether or not you’re taking the summer off of homeschooling, fall is just around the corner, and it never hurts to keep that homeschooling fire going, even if you just set it on “simmer” for the time being. 
With the renaissance of homeschooling in the early 1980s came a trickle, and then a flood, of books and magazines about homeschooling.
These were eagerly read by homeschooling parents wanting to know how others were teaching their children, because there weren’t many homeschoolers around to talk with.
Today, reading about how other families homeschool their children is almost too easy. There are more magazines and books than ever, plus countless blogs on the Internet where parents reveal every last detail of their homeschooling journeys, or so it seems.
There’s a very real danger here, however. With so much personal revelation out there, it’s way too easy to compare your family and your homeschooling experience to others. This is not a good thing!
You can always find someone whose homeschooling experience sounds far more successful than your own. It’s way too tempting to think, “We have so many struggles, and after reading about this family, it’s obvious that I’m in over my head in this homeschooling thing. Her kids are doing so many wonderful projects, and I have to fight to get mine away from the video games to do anything. I give up!”
The fact is that every family is different, and no family can imitate another and come up with the same results. It’s not fair to compare another family to yours: different kids, different parents, different financial situations.
When you read about other homeschooling families, try to think about which of their ideas would work for your family instead of imitating everything they do in a misguided attempt to “succeed.”
Besides, homeschooling success is defined in many different ways. For one child, it’s getting to college on a full scholarship. For another, it’s making his or her way in the world on their own. For a few, like my teenage son, it’s functioning to the best of your abilities despite multiple disabilities.
So go ahead, read all the homeschooling books and magazines and surf homeschoolers’ blogs. Visit the Carnival of Homeschooling each week. Glean as many great ideas as you think might work for your family. Discard those that turn out to be wrong for your family. And always keep in mind that there’s no one right way to homeschool. The beauty of homeschooling is that it can be tailored to each family, each child, and each parent.
Renae at Life Nurturing Education is hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling this week, which is based on the theme of Top Ten School Supplies. She has an nice variety of posts, too.
This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is being hosted over at the NerdHouse; check it out!
The skies are gray, the temperature’s headed back down again, somebody still isn’t catching on to fractions and keeps whining to you that it’s too hard……feeling down? Get a double shot of homeschool encouragement:
1) Dewey’s Treehouse is sponsoring this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling.
2) The February issue of “The Imperfect Homeschooler” is up. Read the whole thing here and get upcoming issues in your email by subscribing here.
There now, don’t you feel better?
Wait until you see the clever way Beverly over at Beverly’s Homeschooling Blog set up this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling. It’s really cute, and she sure got a lot of submissions. Check it out!
Blog carnivals became popular a few years ago, but most lost steam (and participants) as the novelty wore off. But not the Carnival of Homeschooling. Check out this list of education-related carnivals. Many have not published a new edition in months. Yet, of those still in the game, most are not as old as the Carnival of Homeschooling.
Who gets credit for this? First of all, the Cate family, who initiated the Carnival of Homeschooling and organized it so that, week after week, other bloggers could sponsor a weekly edition using a template, so to speak, set up by the Cates. (I was so happy to have a post in the first edition.)
Also, we have to give credit to the many, many bloggers who live the homeschool lifestyle and are willing to share regular little peeks into their lives so that other homeschoolers (and potential homeschooling parents doing research) can benefit from their experiences and advice.
I write books about homeschooling. So do many other homeschooling parents. We’ve worked hard and I think we publish some pretty helpful books. But I always recommend to new and prospective homeschoolers that, in addition to reading books about homeschooling, they visit the Carnival of Homeschooling. Surfing through the various editions of the past as well as the current Carnival will give you a very wide-ranging, informative and true-life look at the homeschooling life. As they used to say in the old Bell Telephone commercials (I’m dating myself here), “it’s the next best thing to being there.”
