What does homeschooling REALLY require? The current trend seems to be hybrid schools, box programs, online schools, or homeschool communities that claim to be the "answer" to a successful homeschool experience. Granted, all of these things can be great HELPS in homeschooling. I have, however, seen some claim to be all you would need to homeschool your children. I disagree. A successful homeschool lies within the homeschooling family. Never forget the HOME in homeschool. In this four part blog se...
Sep 16, 2016•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Love is the beginning and end of education, because love is the way we become more human.” — Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word I’ve heard the advice, and I’m sure you have too. You should always start your day with math. Kids need to tackle difficult subjects while their brain is fresh. Kids need to get the hardest thing out of the way first. Kids need to eat that frog so they don’t procrastinate. Poppycosh. I am all about personal productivity and doing hard things first to get them out ...
Sep 09, 2016•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have I mentioned lately how blessed we are to be a homeschool family? Sure, homeschooling takes work and there are sacrifices to be made. Let’s not forget that our home constantly looks lived in, but the gifts we receive in return are priceless. Today, we celebrate the gift of homeschool! Here are just a few reasons homeschooling is a gift to our family. Listen or read more at http://tablelifeblog.com/2015/08/the-gift-of-homeschool.html
Sep 02, 2016•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast I used to dread kindergarten pick-up. My little guy would board the bus at 7:50 am. He looked adorable climbing up those big steps with his oversized backpack and book in hand. The book was as oversized as his backpack. In kindergarten, he read big books: Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, The Hobbit. He didn’t notice that people noticed. I noticed that they noticed, but I was just so thankful he was content at send-off. Unfortunately, pick-up was another story. I’d get to the pick-up line at around 1...
Aug 26, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you ever have one of those mornings? The kind where nobody wants to get moving (including you). Nobody has a good attitude. Nobody can bear the thought of one more day of long division. It happens more than I care to admit around here. Which is why I have a secret weapon for starting school days. No, it’s not coffee (ok, it is just a little bit). Instead it is Morning Time. Morning Time is a time when everyone in the family can come together for a period of family learning. Most families incl...
Aug 19, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Homeschooling has broken me, I think. I didn’t realize it until last week. That it has broken my brain. That it’s broken the way I think about everything. But I’ve never been more sure that I’m a homeschooler raising homeschoolers, and I’ve never felt stronger in my convictions. Like with so many things, I have Dave Grohl to thank. But let me take a step back … When my son was 6, he expressed an interest in learning piano. And like all parents, we immediately tried to figure out how to move a 1,...
Aug 12, 2016•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s been quite the school year, there’s no question about that. We moved across the country, we hung out for five months with family, did school in their basement, house shopped on the weekend, then moved again to another state. There were many times this year that I questioned everything, but now, looking back, I realize that it’s all ok. Even in the craziest of school years, there’s been lessons learned. Kids will learn, no matter what. It’s like a train you can’t stop. We can’t stop–and we w...
Aug 05, 2016•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast You know that awkward moment when your best friend asks you what you thought of her book? And you liked it, you really liked it, but the English teacher in you wants to ask, “Are you sure somebody didn’t help you with this?” Because it’s just that good. You talk to someone every single day — so much so that your husbands have their eye-rolling synchronized at your antics — and you just never really know what they are capable of do you? That was me last summer when Sarah released the first editio...
Jul 29, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast When I was a kid my two favorite things to make where, drawings of the Rice Krispie characters and to create paper balls. When I say paper balls, I don’t mean that I just crumbled a piece of paper into a ball, that would be kind of lame, and not worth writing about. I mean that I soaked strips of paper in water, and carefully laid each piece over the last, forming a 3D paper ball. While I continued to enjoy art and creating, my confidence in my ability waned, as it does for most students startin...
Jul 22, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast The role of recitation and memorization has taken on a deeply personal role for me as a homeschool mom over the last several years. I first began to consider recitation while studying various homeschool methods as a new homeschool mom. I could see the value of memorization in education, but it didn’t feel like a good fit for my son. His memory was terrible. My daughter on the other hand remembered everything she heard or saw. I figured that memory was something you were either good at or you wer...
Jul 15, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anytime you write a book there are bound to be misconceptions. Write a book on homeschool planning and there are SURE to be misconceptions. After all, the Internet is filled will homeschooling moms, each one an expert on their own home and their own children — as well they should be! These moms have their own ideas of what works and what doesn’t, and they are all exactly right for their families. Which is why I wrote Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace with multiple disclai...
Jul 08, 2016•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast I love the Myers-Briggs personality typing. Myers-Briggs – the personality system that gives you four letters – offers a vocabulary for talking about the different ways that people relate to each other and the world around them. It’s been so helpful to me in learning how to understand and value other people’s responses to ideas and situations – including my children’s. I’ve written before about how personality typing helps me understand my kids, and I’ve written a brief explanation of how the My...
Jul 01, 2016•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’m not feeling quite as fly-by-the-seat as I often do because I’ve got a new system for keeping track of school assignments, and it’s rocking my world. I love finding ways to simplify homeschooling, and this method really takes the cake. I’ll tell you all about it, and then you have every right to say, “Of course, Sarah. Why haven’t you done this all along?” like I said to myself when my friend first showed me how it’s done. :) Here’s what happened. Listen or read the rest at http://amongstlove...
Jun 24, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this world there are two kinds of people. People who buy any old planner and just use it, and people who buy multiple planning products and never really use any of them. There’s quite possibly a need for a twelve-step program for that last group. The people in the last group aren’t wishy-washy. Instead they are optimists. They are always sure that a better way has to be out there. So they keep searching. I can fall into a similar trap in my homeschool planning. (Hello! Raise you hand if you’v...
Jun 17, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of many options is the running of our Academic Year. Traditionally in the US, school runs fall to spring with summers off. This is a wonderful option, one which many homeschoolers follow for their Academic Year. I would like to present another option, which is to align your Academic Year with the calendar. http://ladydusk.blogspot.com/2015/11/aligning-your-academic-year-with.html
Jun 10, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you know what a curriculum slave is? I’m sure you’ve met one before — perhaps you’ve been one before. (Or perhaps you’re one now, in which case we’ll try to help set you free in the course of this post.) A curriculum slave thinks the curriculum is her master, and she has to follow whatever the curriculum says — to the letter. The curriculum slave doesn’t allow herself to think about what is best for her students — or even for herself as a teacher. Instead, she exists at the curriculum’s beck ...
Jun 03, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast The search results taunt me. “Creative homeschool: A lot of ideas” “Great homeschool/education ideas” “Using Pinterest as a free homeschool curriculum” ( I give up. I just can’t live up to all the homeschool hype. The mummified chicken. The salt dough maps. The notebooking page for a third grader that has more lines than my kid could fill in a month. He burst into tears over that stupid notebooking page (no, I wasn’t requiring him to write on every line) and honestly I felt like crying with him....
May 27, 2016•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast I wish I could tell you that I have the formula for the perfect homeschool day, but sadly I do not. All I know for sure is that there are no two homeschool days that are exactly alike and whatever you plan, it will often not go exactly as planned. Yes, having a plan in place is important. If we don’t, the overwhelming nature of the task before us will paralyze us. So here are my best tips for creating a daily schedule that inspires you to get things done.
May 26, 2016•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Can I answer this question with a question? (No, not that question -- another one.) What do you want to accomplish with your homeschool schedule? Which scheduling method you use depends on what you are trying to accomplish in your homeschool, because both types of schedules lend themselves well to accomplishing very different goals. Block scheduling is used to organize your homeschool subjects in such a way that you are doing fewer of them at any given time. This allows you to focus deeper on fe...
May 25, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Recently I took part in an online conversation with homeschool moms about the value of cursive writing and whether it should be taught in a homeschool. It was a polite, but lively conversation and a number of people weighed in on the topic. The most surprising things about it, was that instead of relying on their own family goals or the latest research on the subject, so many families were basing their decision to teach cursive or not on the whims of the public school. "They don't learn it any m...
May 24, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast I see it time and time again. Desperate pleas for help from new homeschool moms come across the feed of our local homeschool group. "I am pulling my son out of second grade tomorrow, and I don't know where to start." "We are thinking about homeschooling our kids in the fall, and I need to know what curriculum to buy for a fifth grader?" "I've got to get my junior out of school -- she is miserable. How can I make sure she gets her Algebra credits?" You are out there -- moms who have made a decisi...
May 23, 2016•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast In episode 000 I introduce myself and give you the down-low on what the Homeschool Solutions Show is all about. Each super-short episode is an audio blog of a piece of great homeschooling content previously published online. You can find an index of episodes as we add them each Friday on edsnapshots.com/solutions.
May 18, 2016•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
