love to paint

I met a mom yesterday at the library who put her two little girls in school in January (she had homeschooled the first half of the year).  We had a great conversation about homeschooling and I enjoyed meeting her. Where I live it can be hard to get connected to other homeschoolers, but once you do make a few friends you'll be off and running.  But, that first few connections can be really tough sometimes because I live in a very homegrown community.  I remember this well. This morning I remembered a book that I wished I'd recommended to her.  It's one that I love.  When I read it, I remember thinking--that's exactly what I would have said--and I wish I'd had this the year I taught kindergarten to my oldest daughter. The book is called When Homeschooling Gets Tough by Diana Johnson.  It's out of print, but there's lots of used copies out there on Amazon.  I thought I'd mention this in case anyone happens to read this post and want a little homesc...

I had a funny encounter two weeks ago in Goodwill.  I was looking with my little boy for Christmas presents for our family.  There was a woman who was an army staff sargeant also looking in the same area.  I struck up a conversation with her about the pan she was looking at.  Somehow we ended up talking about garage sales.  I mentioned that there are websites that will tell you where the garage sales are (and do the searching for you).  I never remember things like that off the top of my head, so I gave her a card with my blog address on it and said that I'd posted about the sites.  Her response was funny.  She said she was so glad to meet me and know that I was a blogger.  She explained that she had a very different impression of bloggers and then she asked me for a second card.  I chuckled.  Here I was with Eli in my tennis shoes, jeans, and a long sleeve shirt--carrying my "outdoorsy" style purse that doesn't like to stay shut. ...

Distractions are a constant struggle with homeschooling.  I deal with them very imperfectly, but I have come to realize that there will always be distractions.  We hold ourselves often to an ideal--our house should be clean and picked up, meals always made on time, shopping done, kids happy and quiet.  But, I don't think that is the way life really is.  One friend once told me that she had come to realize that at different phases of her life she needed to accept a different level of cleanliness in her house as well as modifying her own expectations of her cooking.   When we became moms, I think that most of us realized it would be difficult to wash clothes and linens as often as we did before we had kids.  And meals, well, they went from several dishes to one main dish and maybe a side dish for a while if not forever.  If you are like me, you've tried to be supermom and do everything.  It's very hard at times to balance our expectations, our husb...

Recently I shared some thoughts about homeschooling with my sister in law and she suggested that I might post some of my response to her questions here on my blog.  Before I share, let me explain who I am and where I'm coming from. I've been on all sides--public school, private school (to a lesser degree), and homeschooling.  I have a master's degree in education and taught both Elementary and Middle School, have tutored high school math, taught math in a community college GED program, taught unsuccessfully at a private Christian school, and have now been homeschooling for five years (if you count the two years that we formally homeschooled for preschool).  The unsuccessful jaunt is a story in and of itself which I learned a lot from.  But, I think I'll save that for another time... I remember the middle of PK3 and my husband doubted whether or not I could commit to homeschooling.  We were two of those parents who couldn't wait for our kids to start learning, ...