My guest this week is Linda Pilkington who was a struggling reader destined to become an illiteracy statistic until her fourth grade teacher stepped in. Linda learned that reading was fun! She has since turned the written word into a career and owns an online business selling greetings cards and book club products. City Castles formed the platform to launch her dream of one day writing, promoting and publishing a book. Linda’s story of perseverance and faith in God is one only she can tell. She ...
Mar 16, 2012•58 min
My guest this week is my blue eyed son, Simon McNeny, who graduated from homeschool, the local Community College, and finally Texas A&M with a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife and Fisheries. He works with the Okapi at the Dallas Zoo where his job is not that different from the chores he did around the house while he was growing up, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning! Simon has known he wanted to work with animals since he was very young, he put in at least 4500 volunteer hours at the...
Mar 09, 2012•59 min
Mike Donnelly, from the Home School Legal Defense Association, returns to my show this week with more news and wisdom about homeschooling in America and Europe. When he’s not talking to me Mike serves as Staff Attorney and Director of International Relations for Member Affairs and is Adjunct Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College, in Virginia. His work at HSLDA is to defend both the American and International right to choose how we educate our children. Mike and his wife teach their se...
Mar 02, 2012•58 min
I have a fascinating guest this week, Robert Velarde, homeschooling father of four, curriculum creator with Sonlight and philosopher. Robert received his Master of Arts degree from Southern Evangelical Seminary and serves as an adjunct faculty member at Denver Seminary. He has written, The Wisdom of Pixar, Conversations with C.S. Lewis, and The Heart of Narnia and most recently co-authored, with Sonlight founder Sarita Holzmann, a new high school curriculum called, What Good is Christianity? Rob...
Feb 24, 2012•58 min
This week I’m talking to my blue eyed cowboy who has agreed to join us for a cuppa. Larry McNeny shared the homescholing years with me whenever he wasn’t out on the road as a Tour Manager for any number of impressive bands. His glamourous life got the children’s interest a whole lot quicker than anything I was trying to do with them! “Did Ozzy really bite the head off a bat?” is a must know for young, impressionable teens and my cowboy spent many a happy hour regaling them with wild and exciting...
Feb 17, 2012•58 min
Come and meet Barbara Allisen a life long kindergartener who loves to play with puzzles and blocks, build with lego and make crafts, shape play-dough and read Big Books all day long. Affectionately known as Mrs. A. she carries the memories of more than 1,000 children’s school beginnings in her heart. Barbara’s kindergarten and preschool experience includes inner city, private, big new & very small old schools both public and independent. Barbara believes that although children make up 20% of...
Feb 10, 2012•58 min
My guest this week first came to my attention as I was prowling around my biggest fan’s website. We have a mutual friend, thanks Tina for the intro! I am thrilled to welcome Rebecca Kochenderfer to my show. Rebecca is the Senior Editor for Homeschool.com. hailed as the #1 homeschooling site on the Internet by yahoo, google, and Forbes Magazine, with over 2 million visitors a year. Rebecca is the co-author of, Homeschooling for Success: How Parents Can Create a Superior Education For Their Child ...
Feb 03, 2012•58 min
Luke Holzmann is the son of John and Sarita Holzmann, founders of Sonlight Curriculum, and my guest this week! He was homeschooled through 8th grade, went to public high school and then attended Biola University on swimming and academic scholarships where he studied Motion Picture Production. Today, he works at Sonlight, promoting homeschooling as an excellent option, if not a fully comprehensive education experience. He writes captivating blogs that are thought provoking with links that may tak...
Jan 27, 2012•58 min
Laura Grace Weldon is a poet whose poems have been published, but not the ones she likes! She is an author, her new book, Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything, tells of the curative value of connecting more deeply with nature and letting go. She is an artist, a messy one at that, a tincture and meal concoctor both skills demanding courage and a degree of risk from their recipients. She has deadlines but would rather hide in books or watch foreign films than meet them. Laura ...
Jan 20, 2012•58 min
My guest this week is a little different from the norm. I thought that the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq, just in time for Christmas, was a subject that potentially affects everyone in our nation so I invited my friend Sandra Beck to join me today. Sandra hosts two Shows here on Toginet Radio: Military Mom Talk Radio and Motherhood Talk Radio. She is an active contributor and participant in many charities and strives to make the world a better place for today’s and our future’s childre...
Jan 10, 2012•56 min
For my first show of the New Year I am delighted to be talking to my dear friend Gretchen Roe, community liaison for the Calvert School. We are going to be unveiling a new joint venture Calvert is involved in with the Jemicy School for children with reading difficulties. Gretchen is also going to be sharing with us the good news of her husband’s new job and how she and her family rose to the challenge and uncertainty of unemployment. Gretchen’s job has her traveling around America to talk at num...
Jan 06, 2012•58 min
For the last show of the year I have invited three of my friends to help us navigate the New Year and the twelve months it holds without setting too many goals. They will give us their top tips on choosing what to add or take away from our lives and urge us to be kind to ourselves. Ally is host of This Little Parent Stayed Home where she keeps her listeners uplifted and motivated each week on Fridays at 5pm CT. Sandy hosts Heartfilled Holidays a weekly Toginet show airing on Mondays at 1pm CT, a...
Dec 30, 2011•55 min
How much of your traditional holiday activities will show up in your children’s homes when they move on? This week I am talking to my four children about what they remember, the good and the not so good, about the busiest time of the year in the McNeny household. The shows, the concerts, the church services, the wreaths, the books, the tree, the cards, the food, the smells, the crèches and losing the baby Jesus! Come and have fun with me and my children as we reminisce about what the photographs...
Dec 23, 2011•1 hr
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages I bring you the greatest show on earth! My guest this week is Omar Abderrahman who will share a snippet of his extraordinary childhood with us. Omar’s non-traditional education will cast out all those doubts about deprivation and lost opportunities some parents feel when they’re having a bad homeschool day! He is a personal family friend who mentioned, one fine day when he heard we were considering homeschooling, that he was homeschooled! After running ...
Dec 16, 2011•57 min
Northstar Worldwide offers support and resources to homeschooling families all over the world. I am happy to welcome one of their directors, Steve Richards, to my show this week. Steve is a founding member of a home education group in England called Home Service and he has spoken widely on the topic of home education in the United Kingdom and overseas. Both he and his wife, Lynn, homeschool their children and we are going to be talking about Education in general and in particular in England. Quo...
Dec 09, 2011•58 min
How do you go from being the head editor of the New York Times' front page website, night edition, managing a team of editors and producers to being the principal facilitator of your homeschool, empowering a cluster of eager young minds? My guest this week, Laura Noueihed, is going to be answering this question for us when she opens a window onto her life of word mongering and child raising. Laura has her Master of Science in Journalism, with concentrations in print and new media, from Columbia ...
Dec 02, 2011•58 min
My series on graduated homeschoolers is almost at a close and this week I thought I’d bring you two nearly graduated students who are on the cusp of moving up and away from their homeschools. Callan Roe is an exuberant 17 year old, horse lover with ambitions to pursue an international business degree. Ready to take the world by storm she is keen to tell you all about herself. Zoe Cottrell Bentley is a 15 year old scientist with ambitions. One of them is to work as an exogeologist for NASA. You’l...
Nov 21, 2011•58 min
Jonathan & Linnea Lewis are my guests today. They are newly weds and on fire to talk about what happened to them after the work at the kitchen table was done. As a couple they have an unusual combination of experience in the area of higher education and the work force. Linnea used Accelerated Distance Learning to earn a BA in 18 months for a fraction of the normal cost. She then went on to study for and sit her paralegal certification exams, all from the comfort of her own home with the help...
Nov 18, 2011•58 min
Ever wonder how homeschoolers feel about their lot in life once they get to college or join the workforce? Laura Lee Ellis and Joshua Williams, both lifelong homeschoolers, will be talking to me this week about how home-educating families can prepare their students for college, adulthood and beyond. Laura will tell why she feels homeschooling uniquely prepared her for her earthly journey. In her blog, Life as a Rough Draft, she offers tips on how to take home education to the next level and thri...
Nov 11, 2011•59 min
Highland dancing and horse riding were two of the subjects Jenni Hodgman took at her Australian homeschool and after graduation, instead of going to University, she took a gap year or three to discover the world and unravel her dream. She has danced with OzScot Australia in Edinburgh, Oman and Sydney. She and a friend backpacked through Europe. In Alberta, Canada, she was introduced to a top Western horse trainer, who offered her a job for the summer. Her family took a very unstructured approach...
Nov 04, 2011•58 min
My guest this week is a Pakistani born British resident who, with his Scottish wife, homeschools their two children. During this hour we will find out how cultural dynamics have helped cement their family into a successfully homogenous unit. Imran Shah, a child protection social worker, public speaker and outspoken objector to the last labour Government’s attempts at further regulating home education in Britain, will be talking to me about the Hedders movement in the U.K. While his children were...
Oct 28, 2011•58 min
Eli Gerzon returns as my guest this week having been one of the first visitors to my show back in 2010. He is a self motivated young man who left school at fifteen when he discovered an alternative way to educate himself. He is in good company with Richard Branson, Michael Dell and the late Steve Jobs all of whom left school or college to pursue their own dreams. He took courses in anthropology and linguistics from Harvard before allowing his love for travel to blossom into his own business call...
Oct 21, 2011•58 min
Are you on the Mama Bus? Do you want to be? Are you giving your children an uncommon childhood? Do you know what a third culture child is? Are you part of the Edventure Project? If any of your answers to these questions are, “you what?” then you’ll want to hear the conversation with my guest this week where I will be dipping my toes into the Atlantic and waggling my fingers in the Pacific with Jennifer Miller, bus driver extraordinaire. Jennifer is passing on her legacy of an uncommon childhood ...
Oct 14, 2011•58 min
I am delighted to welcome Shannah Godfrey back to my show this week. The last time we spoke we heard what she had to say about reading, articulation, and teaching myths before we quickly ran out of time. Today we are going to be talking about good parenting practices, mistakes we make when teaching reading, self esteem and whether it is reasonable to expect your child to have left home by the time he or she turns thirty. Shannah was a gifted child herself and she will tell us why she could wait ...
Oct 07, 2011•58 min
My guest this week is the author of a new book, School is Where the Home Is: 180 Devotions for Parents. Her collection of anecdotal devotionals offers practical helps and biblical truths for fellow home schooling parents. Anita Mellott was born in India and grew up devouring books and mangoes. Prior to moving to the United States, she headed the Department of Journalism at Mt. Carmel College, Bangalore, India. For thirteen years, she worked as a writer/editor with Habitat for Humanity Internatio...
Sep 30, 2011•58 min
Debra Bell used to be a public school teacher until she discovered John Holt! She went on to homechool her four children for eighteen years and they all grew up, went to college and got jobs! This week she is taking time out from her busy schedule to join me and talk about teen homeschoolers and the digital age. Debra speaks at the Apologia Live Retreats where she encourages homeschooling Mums. Since retiring from teaching at home she has been working towards her PhD in educational psychology. S...
Sep 23, 2011•58 min
This week I am extending a warm welcome back to a regular guest on my show, Mike Donnelly, from the Home School Legal Defense Association, where he serves as staff attorney and director of International relations. Mike and his hard working colleagues at HSLDA defend both the American and International right to choose how to educate our children. Mike and his wife home school their seven children and he is a frequent speaker and writer on many home school related topics some of which he has share...
Sep 09, 2011•58 min
This week my guest is a multi-tasking, ideas Mum who lets her creative juices flow and overflow onto her children and other people’s children through her work with various local non profits as well as her websites. Tina Smith lives in Fresno, California, where she is president of The Learning Village Homeschool Resource Centre and a board member of the Discovery Centre, where she spent many years happily working before becoming a Mum. She is the creator of Mommy Chats a live chat room site for m...
Sep 02, 2011•58 min
I am going to be talking with world traveler, Lisa Shusterman, this week as she returns to the airwaves to continue a conversation we started at the beginning of July. This time we will talk about how after her return she found she had a different perspective on life. She will tell us how she packed for a year when most of us struggle with taking too much for a week. Lisa homeschooled her twin girls while on this adventure and with the help of her husband, achieved something that changed all of ...
Aug 26, 2011•58 min
My guests this week are Ian McNeny and Shelby Cook, lifelong friends, creative minds and both products of homeschooling throughout most of their lives. They are going to talk to us about life as homeschoolers, the opportunities they were able to take advantage of because they weren’t chained to a school desk and the flexibility it afforded them once they were released from the basement. They both describe themselves as “all round creative guy[s]…” and they are. One pursuing film and post product...
Aug 19, 2011•58 min
