The Backstage Pass

Yesterday, my blog stats jumped five folds.  Wow.  That's thanks to Beth from 123 Homeschool 4 Me who has very kindly listed this blog as one of her 13 Homeschool Blogs You Should be Reading!  I feel it to be a great honour to be publicly mentioned in a positive way by anyone, so I want to take this opportunity to thank Beth and everyone who finds what I write here to be useful.

As we approach our end of year (we plan to start our summer at the end of July), I have been reflecting quite a bit on the school year.  To put it very briefly, I don't feel very successful about this past year, and I am working on plans to bring about positive changes in the new academic year.  Therefore, to find this blog on the list in the midst of my internal struggle to find a solution for what I would consider a 'better' year starting in September, compels me to write this post in order to clarify any romantic/idealistic ideas that anyone might have of how life is around here.

Just to set the record straight:
1.  This blog is a record of one narrow aspect of my life, i.e. the more academic aspects of homeschooling my son.  It is a one dimensional view.  I don't set out to present myself, or my family, or my approach to be perfect, and would be disappointed for anyone to read this blog then go away thinking that I have it all together or all figured out.  As it is, I regard homeschooling as equivalent to my full-time day job, and I put my best efforts into it.  I record and share what works for us in terms of academic pursuits.  I work 'behind the scenes', so to speak, to resolve challenges and personal struggles but I don't feel the need to voice my grievances in public because they are essentially private matters to be resolved privately.

2.  I think motherhood is a very challenging job.  Add homeschooling to that, and the pressure to do well instantly doubles.  If you read this blog and it looks like my homeschool runs smoothly and effortlessly all the time, just know that it takes constant, tremendous amount of work to get here and we are not at where we want to be yet.

3.  My son is a very spirited child.  Like everyone else, his personal characteristics can be interpreted either as strengths or weaknesses depending on the situation he is in.  A child who knows his mind is very rarely one who is also readily compliant or eager to please anyone else.  As his mother and his primary teacher, it is my duty and responsibility to assist him to build on his strengths and to overcome his weaknesses.  This aspect of character building is very seldom mentioned on the blog because: (1) I don't have any curriculum to recommend, and (2) it is a constant work-in-progress so I don't feel I can give any advice.


On that note, I want to let you know that I will not be writing for the rest of the Homeschool Help series.  I have been thinking about it alongside with all the points mentioned above, and I don't feel that I can contribute adequately to the rest of the topics.  Nonetheless, I will continue to support the series by reading the insightful posts written by the other contributors.

Technology: A Few Considerations

The original title of this post is "Your Favourite Apps (iPad or Droid) or Learning Websites".  If you are looking for a list of favourite technological applications, please skip ahead to the bottom of this post to the links of the other contributors since they can probably give you a more comprehensive list than I can.

If, however, you are interested to take a step back from the discussion of the attractiveness of technological applications and consider the soundness of the underlying assumptions, I invite you to join me for the rest of this post.

Nowadays everyone seems to be so wired up 24/7 by all kinds of electronic gadgets that the use of technology is welcomed into all aspects of our lives without question.  It appears to me that almost everyone is so enamoured with the convenience, efficiency, connectivity that technology supposedly offers that many assumptions have been made with regards to it being a solution to all the problems of modern day living.  I would like to suggest that we, as homeschooling parents, make the same careful consideration about the usefulness of technology in our children's educational life as we would about the usefulness of public schooling as part of our children's educational experience.

Consideration 1: Which Aspects of Educational Problem Does Technology Solve?
If you do a quick search on the internet about technology and education, you will find overwhelming support for the use of technology in schools and learning.  Technology can indeed increase access to information for children who live in remote parts of the world where access to modern schooling would otherwise be very difficult.  In such cases, we're talking about access to information.  Amassing information does not automatically translate into being educated, although it is certainly a step above having no information at all.  I am assuming that if you are reading this post, you have overcome barriers to access information so your concern would be that of using technology to help your children gain a better education.

That brings us to the question of definition.  What do we mean by a 'better' education?  Is it academic achievement?  If so, the quote below tells us that technology doesn't solve this particular problem.

"... there is no clear, commanding body of evidence that students' sustained use of multimedia machines, the Internet, word processing, spreadsheets, and other popular applications has any impact on academic achievement."

-- Larry Cuban

former president of the American Educational Research Association

Are we then referring to motivational issues whereby we believe that children will learn certain subjects (e.g. reading, maths, chess) more effectively using software programmes with cartoons and/or animations?  Apart from some children with very specific developmental needs who may benefit from such instructions, I am not sure learning from a machine is more gratifying than learning from an interested adult, especially for a child.

As for using technology to hold children's interest, I would strongly suggest prioritising the child's social and emotional needs first.  Many so-called motivational or behavioural issues displayed by children and adolescents are symptoms of unmet social and emotional needs, which can only be corrected through interaction with another caring human being.  Don't take my word for it -- do your own research and decide for yourself whether this is true.

"... education is not a mechanical system, it's a human system.  It's about people."

-- Sir Ken Robinson, How to Escape Education's Death Valley

Using technology as a substitute for human interaction in the face of learning issues does not offer any effective long-term solution.  Take for example playing chess.  I could have easily saved myself the trouble of driving over 30 miles each week to take Tiger to the chess club by having him play against chess softwares online.  But I don't.  Chess softwares can't model resilience (losing a game with grace, winning a game with integrity), humour, and friendship in the ways that his chess coach and team mates can. 


Consideration 2: Age Appropriateness
By age appropriateness, I am not referring to the content ratings such as PG or 12+, etc.  I am thinking about whether the use of technology is what children need most to achieve a balanced development in childhood or adolescence.  While technology offers much convenience and efficiency to the work of adults, I am not convinced these same goals are applicable to children's development.  I strongly recommend parents do their own thorough research into child development, brain neurological pathway developments, and child psychology to determine for themselves whether factors such as having a strong relationship to caring, communicative adults in the family, developing empathy and social skills in the real world, establishing a connection and an awe for the natural world, are not as important, if not more appropriate, for the child to become a well-adjusted, balanced individual.  This report is a good place to start.

When I travel on the London Underground these days, I often see families where each member appears to be more interested in their hand-held devices than interacting with one another or noticing what is around them.  I have watched a preschooler who did not look up once from his iPhone game (no doubt it must have been an "educational" game) for the entire one-hour journey on the Tube.  His parents were sitting on either side of him, equally engaged in their own iPhones either texting or playing games.  What happened to face-to-face human interaction?  How much creative thinking or real people skills is a child who spends more time looking at a screen than looking at real people's faces going to have?

Consideration 3: Consumption versus Production
I am aware that some parents are convinced that their children are learning a lot of valuable skills through playing computer games.  I have also read about children who allegedly learn programming skills and games design skills through spending most of their time playing computer games.  If those reports were true, then these remarkable achievements ought to be congratulated.

For many years, my husband and I have tried to elevate our status from 'food consumers' to 'food producers', but we have not had much success with growing our own food.  Having said that, I know of many people who have successfully grown their own food.  That's why I'm not knocking the reports of those outstanding children who have managed to make the leap from being consumers of computer games to producers of those games.  The key difference is making the leap, and I don't think that is an automatic or easy process.  An obvious example is that I haven't heard of any musician who attributes his/her musical achievements to having been exposed to the very lucrative 'Infant Great People' merchandise.

A few people in our family hold well respected positions in the technology industry, and not once has any of them expressed a concern that Tiger is missing out by not spending enough time as a consumer of the latest technological gadget.  In fact, Tiger has proved the whole 'missing out' idea to be a moot point because he was interested enough to persuade his father to spend the most part of a weekend to teach him the basics of network architecture.  Since I don't know much about this part of technology, I am relying on my husband's assessment that Tiger is fully capable of understanding the fundamentals.

In addition, if Tiger didn't know what to do with himself at any time -- that hasn't happened yet -- I would rather see him lose himself in his daydreams or staring at the sky, than to see him spend time in front of a screen.

So, What Applications Do We Use?
We do use technology sparingly at this point, taking into consideration Tiger's age and his needs.  I expect to be using a somewhat different approach during the high school years, so please bear in mind that my response above applies to what I find to be most appropriate for Tiger so far, from birth through the elementary school years.

The most frequent use of technology in Tiger's education is YouTube.  We use it mostly to watch documentaries, as a supplement to what he has already studied from various books.  The other website that we use occasionally is Khan Academy.  I can foresee Tiger using more of this website in the future, but in the near term our focus is still primarily on hands-on, concrete activities.


If you've read the entire post up to this point, I want to thank you for staying with me through the thinking process.  For your patience and tolerance, you can now finally look at lists of useful apps provided by the other contributors:

• Savannah shares her Twenty Free Learning Apps.

• Julie has found Educational Ways to Use an iPad, as her husband actually created an educational iPad app to help with multiplication.

• Lucinda shares her Favourite Homeschool Apps - For Kids and Mums.

• Despite all the technology her family is surrounded with, Bernadette and her crew are NOT Technie Home Schoolers as they are still basically book, paper and ink types.

• Chareen also shares what she uses in My Favourite Apps and Websites for Learning.

• Erin wonders what she would do in If I Had An Ipad.

• Nicole introduces us to The iWorld of Homeschooling: Favourite Apps! and shows us how the iPhone and iPad have completely changed how she homeschools.

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 6/4/13
2. Hearts for Home Blog Hop #20
3. Collage Friday - The Week of Practicum
4. TGIF Linky Party #79
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Grumbling
6. Share it Saturday
7. Sunday Showcase - 6/8/13

Science in Our Home

Science is one subject that I feel that I haven't figured it all out, even though we have been learning science since the beginning of our homeschool journey.  In many ways, our approach has been somewhat haphazard.  We tend not to follow any specific curriculum (although I have tried to do so several times in the past), and just tie the experiments with whatever topic Tiger is interested in at the moment.  To those who are left-brain orientated, such 'jumping around' can be very unsettling.

Nowadays our approach to maths looks, from the outside, to be skipping around as well since we no longer follow any specific curriculum.  However, I am more confident about applying the same approach to maths because Tiger has had a few years of covering the ground work (number sense, basic operations, etc), so to speak, but I don't feel that I have any means to measure what the ground work is in science.

"Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it has perhaps no educative value."

-- Charlotte Mason

We started off Year One following the Classical approach.  The recommendations from The Well Trained Mind sounded very logical to me: start with Life Science, followed by Earth Science, then Chemistry, and last comes Physics.  As the Classical approach started with Life Science, I was able to incorporate Nature Study at the same time.

The one year of following the general scope of Life Science was an interesting learning process for me.  We tried several science curricula but could not find a good match.  We would start off very enthusiastically only to find, after a few weeks, that one of the following scenarios would inevitably happen:

• the curriculum that started off with great promise of rigour became underwhelming one-third of the way;
• required too much writing that Tiger wasn't ready for;
• the experiments leaned too much towards entertainment or craft rather than science;
• too much theory; 
• too confusing;
• too much spoon-feeding;
• unnecessarily complicated experiments

Despite the unsatisfactory start, we still bumbled along using various sources of hands-on experiments that were relevant to the topics that Tiger was learning, as well as keeping up with regular nature study.  At the same time, I began to realise that the compartmentalisation of science as suggested by WTM is counter-intuitive, and that science happens in real life in a myriad of fascinating, interrelated ways.  I also began to wonder whether there really exists a specific sequence to the learning of science.

I got my answer through observing how easily Tiger understood and completed the experiments at the science classes in the co-op last year.  That series of science classes were all physics topics which, according to WTM's schedue, we were nowhere close to covering in Year Two.  The ease at which Tiger grasped the lessons taught at those classes reassured me that learning science in the elementary years has much to do with:

• using common sense
• observing and participating in real life
• being open to new and/or unconventional ideas
• maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity about a great many different topics
• being interested to learn and understand
• avoiding dogma

The above points are also the guiding principles of how we approach the learning of science in our home.

To get an idea of how science is learned by other homeschooling families, please visit the other contributors to this series:

• Chareen feels that Science in the Junior Years is about exploring the world around you.

• Lucinda shares her tips on How to Make Sure Science Gets Done When You're Not Using A Curriculum. 

• Julie shares her expertise on Creating Your Own Science Curriculum.

• Savannah offers a guest post by Claire who teaches science without a formal curriculum in Science with My Scalliwags.

• Bernadette shows how she tackles science shoes off and hands on in Scientifically Speaking.

• Nicole addresses the issue of Science: The Epic Failure that Wasn't by sharing her realisation that science is so much more than a curriculum.

• Erin shares how her family kindles an interest in scientific matters and how they keep that interest alive in Kindling & Fanning Scientific Minds.

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/28/13
2. Hearts for Home Blog Hop #19
3. Collage Friday - Joy and Loss
4. TGIF Linky Party #78
5. Creative Learning #16
6. Weekly Wrap-Up: The First Week of Summer Break 2013
7. Share it Saturday - Awesome Science
8. Sunday Showcase - 6/1/13
9. Science Sunday: It's no kids week!
10. Homeschool Science Share & Tell - May 2013 edition 

 

Groups - Home Ed and Otherwise

I had a quick look through the various homeschooling e-groups that we belong to and this is a sample of what's on offer to homeschoolers:

1. foreign languages (Chinese, Spanish, French, Latin)
   
2. field trips
3. theatre studies (drama, film studies)
4. arts and crafts (weaving, sewing, basketry, woodwork, mixed media, arts awards)
5. nature-based education (forest school, forest conservation, gardening)
6. language arts workshops (creative writing, poetry)
7. park days
8. sports (karate, fencing, horse riding, sailing, trampolining, multisports, gymnastics, swimming, bowling, scouts/guides, climbing, kayaking, archery, ice skating)
9. music (choir, instruments, music production, musicianship)
10. science (engineering and electronics, robotics, physics, science fairs, various LEGO groups, science awards)
11. history workshops
12. geography workshops
13. maths workshops
14. special interests workshops (magic club, first aid, philsophy, cookery, circus skills)
15. toddlers and preschoolers groups

The scope of activities is amazing, isn't it?  These homeschooling groups (or home ed groups, as they are normally called in England) are all run or organised by homeschooling parents and are pretty informal, in the sense that the length of each workshop can range from one day to an entire 10-week term.  I suppose in some ways their function overlaps with that of co-ops, except that they are much more relaxed, the nature of the activities are usually less academic, and they allow different families to dip in and out of them as necessary.

Most of the time interest groups are started by one or a few parents to fill in a gap when their own children has a need and the corresponding activity has not been offered yet.  These groups are basically created out of various homeschooling parents' initiatives.

As is obvious from the list above, it is very possible to home educate your child successfully in England by just signing up to the activities that are currently on offer.  I know of at least two families that do exactly that.

I apply the same basic principles in selecting how much external participation Tiger does as I have mentioned here.  It is really a question of finding the right balance for my family.  More than 90% of the activities listed above take place outside of our local area (i.e. more than 10 miles away from us) so Tiger's regular homeschooling group meet-ups has been for:

• drama
• field trips
• workshops
• forest school

We have had more success with attending home ed groups than with co-ops -- we have been actively participating in various home ed groups' activities for four years now, but we only lasted six months in the co-op.  The high level of flexibility to move around to different groups at different times is crucial to us largely because of Tiger's asynchronous development.  In some areas he learns at the speed of the bullet train, in others he can be like an old man riding a mule, yet emotionally he is still a regular eight-year-old boy.  I don't expect anyone or any group to speed up or slow down for him, so one-off workshops or activities that allow for different learning speeds work best for him, e.g. drama and forest school.

Socially, the amount of regular interaction we have with other homeschoolers as stated above, is sufficient to keep us happy.  We don't limit our social interactions to homeschoolers so Tiger's social circle is very wide.  In other words, his peer group is not restricted by age group, locality, or methods of learning.  He is led by his interests to have regular meaningful interactions with adults as well as school-attending children, both locally and further afield.  For example, Tiger's passion in military history has resulted in him holding membership to a national history group that meets regularly to discuss, investigate, and debate over research and findings in archaeology, history, and battles.

These are books that Tiger reads at his own leisure.

Tiger is also a member of a junior chess club that competes at county and national levels, a local junior tennis club, and a regional junior archaeologist club run by working archaeologists.

Interestingly, I am aware that there are at least 10 homeschooling families that live locally to us, but there is no local group.  Everyone seems to have already found a comfortably suitable way forward without the need or desire to form a local group.

I have met a number of these families through our rounds in the home ed groups circuit over the years.  The common characteristics of these families, as far as I can gather, are that:

• they are decent, honest families who are discreet and fiercely protective of their personal privacy;
• they are very often blessed with an independent spirit that requires little external validation for what they consider to be a personal decision and indeed a private matter, i.e. to educate their own children.
• they know why they are homeschooling their children, and they know what to do to best support their children's needs, so most of them just want to be left in peace to get on with their family life purposefully.

Some people may find the lack of a local homeschooling group to be disconcerting, but I see that as a blessing in disguise in that I am free to pick and choose different activities that appeal to Tiger's interests, without being limited to the ones that are being offered by the local group, had there been one.  As far as I can tell, the only drawback of not having an active homeschooling group local to us is that I have to work doubly hard to find appropriate opportunities for Tiger to participate in activities that matter to him, or to create those opportunities for him.  Luckily that doesn't bother me at all.  More importantly, Tiger is thriving in this extremely flexible environment.

Having said that, there is nothing to stop me from taking the lead in organising regular activities for the homeschooling community in the future should the need arise.  In fact, I often toy with the idea of starting regular group activities locally, but that hasn't happened yet because Tiger still needs individualised and focused support from me at the moment so trying to start something now would only distract me from giving him the attention he needs.  To meet Tiger's needs is, afterall, my top priority in this homeschooling journey.

With the wide variety of activities that are available to homeschoolers these days, there are so many ways to create a great education that is tailored to meet each child's needs, based on individual families' circumstances and requirements.  For other examples of how homeschooling groups might work for your family, please visit these ladies to read what they have to say on this topic:

• Chareen wonders about where you get your Homeschool Support.

• Bernadette shares a sad story about the demise of a homeschooling group when some are Unable to Commit.

• Julie declares that she will always be a member of a Local Homeschool Group.

• Erin has been involved in home education support groups for three decades.  She shares an overview of that journey and the importance the groups have played for her family in It Takes a Community.

• Nicole explains in Homeschool Groups -- This Mom's Lifeline! why her homeschool group is pivotal to her homeschool experience.

• Savannah speaks of her Local Homeschool Support Group - A Breath of Fresh Air, and feels that no blog, forum or online group recharges or equips her to be a better home educating mother like her local support group.
•  
•  Lucinda discusses the benefits of growing a local homeschool network in Why I'm Glad We Joined Our Local Homeschool Group (Even Through We No Longer Go).

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/21/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #18
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 24, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Time for Nothing and an Exciting Something
5) TGIF Linky Party #77
6) Creative Learning #15
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One at NCHE
8) Share it Saturday! Creative Play with Kids
9) Sunday Showcase - 5/25/13

Our Co-op Experience

At the beginning of my homeschooling journey eight years ago, I used to read about the many interesting co-op experiences that the American homeschooling families have, and wished that there were homeschooling co-ops where we live.  I imagined that I would be able to enjoy educating my son with like-minded people.  However, since there was no such arrangement near us, I had to find my own way which eventually morphs into our own unique approach, which you read about on this blog.

In the past two years, I have seen an increase in the number of co-ops started in various areas near us.  Last year, we spent a fair bit of time with one particular group and I even taught art for a term to the children there.  At the start, it was a lot of fun -- new people, new friends, new environment, new way of learning (this particular co-op hired 'specialists' to teach science and maths).  Nonetheless, after six months, I felt the need to reevaluate our participation there for various reasons, including the type of social experience Tiger was having there, as well as the difference between the goals of the co-op and our family's educational goals.

The biggest concern that I had, which made me decide to discontinue with the co-op, was that it started to feel like and was being treated as a parent-coordinated version of a private school, with the accompanying (unspoken) requirement that all children who attend the sessions learn at the same pace.  This inevitably gave rise to motivational issues and disruptive behaviour in some children who were not able to keep up but whose parents dropped them off at the venue (as they would at any school) and thus were not on site to support their learning.  The atmosphere and environment of the co-op had become counterproductive to the types of learning that I want Tiger to be exposed to, so we don't go there anymore.

Despite our discontiuity at the co-op, the experience of having been there and taking the time to reflect upon our experience was helpful in the sense that:

1. it helped me to make careful consideration about the types of environment (people, atmosphere, attitudes) that Tiger is exposed to;
2. it helped to bring about more clarity and further refinement of our family goals;
3. it gave Tiger an opportunity to start learning about the different types of environment that can result in different outcomes and behaviour;
4. it gave me confidence that our home environment is the one that provides the most flexbility and effective learning experience to meet Tiger's evolving educational needs.

I think there are some benefits to joining a co-op where learning is coordinated as a group, for example when there is a group of children who are following the same curriculum or are preparing for the same examination.  The sameness in progression required to take the examinations on a common date or to achieve a shared learning objective makes a co-op arrangement useful for peer group motivation as well as for cost-sharing of materials and instructors.  There may exist certain benefits for such an arrangement to take place at a later stage for Tiger, probably at high school level, and the experience of shared learning may not necessarily have to be in the form of attending a class at a physical location.  Online classes and discussion forums are two possible ways to experience share learning that is not limited by geographical locations and chronological age requirements.

"Kids propser best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them."

-- Sir Ken Robinson, How to Escape Education's Death Valley

Based on our experience, I'd say this:
If you are lucky enough to find a co-op near you that shares your ethos for education, it would be a wonderful opportunity to explore; otherwise, a formal co-op arrangement is neither crucial nor essential to the success of your homeschool in your child's elementary years, more so if your vision for your child's childhood is one of natural exploration and learning at his/her own pace.

This is especially true if the child's home environment is warm, loving, and nurturing, and is one that provides plenty of well-rounded learning opportunities to support the development of a balanced individual.  Therefore, I think that a formal co-op for an elementary-aged child does not add anything substantial to the experiences that he/she is already getting at home.

"If you can light the spark of curiosity in the child, they will learn without further assistance, very often."

-- Sir Ken Robinson, How to Escape Education's Death Valley

While I still keep my eye out for co-op opportunities, I have not yet found one that provides a high enough "value", as I have mentioned here, to entice us to commit to the large amount of time required outside of our home environment when it is already meeting Tiger's current need for an individualised, one-to-one educational setting.

Again, I can't emphasise enough that this is my personal view, based on our personal experience with one particular co-op group, evaluated using our family's goals and values.  There are certainly many different types of co-op experiences that others will no doubt have, so I strongly encourage you to read about them from the other contributors:

• Chareen feels that Together Everyone Achieves More, as she shows that when we share the load we move forward in strength.

• Nicole asks The Co-Op Question: Yeah or Nay?, which helps us to think about how to evaluate if a homeschool co-op is right for your family.

• As co-ops are not common in Australia, Erin shares how she is Creating Synergy.

• Bernadette sees Beneficial Co-op(eration) and tells why she looks forward to organising or joining a co-op in the next few years.

• If you are interested to know How does homeschool co-op work? Julie will show you three different ways to run a co-op.

• Savannah discusses The Ins and Outs of Co-ops and asks you to think about why you are participating.

• Lucinda also talks about The Pros and Cons of Joining a Homeschool Co-op and shares how to get the benefits of being in a co-op even if joining one isn't right for your family.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/14/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #17
3) Collage Friday - Math, Appliances, and Other Goodies
4) TGIF Linky Party # 76
5) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Didn't Go to Nashville
6) Share it Saturday
7) Sunday Showcase - 5/18/13

Nutritious meals, quick!

Maybe it's because I like food that I don't find it a challenge to prepare meals everyday for my family.

Breakfast is usually very simple -- a few pieces of toast with butter and jam.  Lunch is usually leftovers from the night before, or sandwiches if we are out and about, or jacket potatoes with an assortment of toppings.  Dinner is the main meal in our home so it's the one that I cook from scratch every day.  On Sunday the importance of the Sunday Lunch takes over so I spend most effort at preparing a full roast on that day.

Even though I enjoy preparing and cooking food, I don't want it to take over my life by spending more time in the kitchen than I have to in order to prepare a decent family meal.  I manage this in a few ways:

1.  Meal planning.  I have a weekly menu plan so I go grocery shopping with a full shopping list once a week, and I get everything I need on that trip.  This saves me time and cost since I buy only what I'll need to make meals for that week.

2.  Work fast.  This comes with practice.  Just like everything else, one gets good at what one does all the time.  I have had about 10 years of practice making meals in my kitchen, so I know where everything is and how to substitute ingredients effectively when they run out.  Speed also comes with familiarity, so I am reasonably fast when I work in the kitchen.

3.  Limit meal preparation time.  When I plan my meals, I make a mental note that each meal will not take more than an hour to prepare.  Again, Sunday Lunch is the exception but for the rest of the weeks we have relatively simple meals.  I learned most of my meal ideas from food magazines such as Easy Cook which has very clear instructions to make speedy yet delicious meals.

The application of the above three points have worked consistently to provide quick, delicious, and nutritious meals that meet my family's dietary requirements.  If you struggle to find time to cook while teaching your children at home, I hope the tips above will be useful to you as they have been to me.  If not, you are always welcome to consult the other homeschooling mums for other ideas.

This series is growing!  We have two new contributors to the series: Erin from Seven Little Australians and Counting, and Nicole from One Magnificent Obsession.  Please head over to see what they have to say about how to manage cooking and homeschooling at the same time:

• In Plating Up, Erin shares how the key for her family to successfully juggle cooking is organisation.

• Nicole talks about Realistic Meal Planning for Homeschool Moms and shows us how to avoid eating Chik Fil A every night.

• Lucinda lets us in on How to Ensure Your Kids Eat Healthily When You Don't Enjoy Cooking.

• Julie shares her Strategies for Cooking Healthy for a Family and tells us about five strategies for preparing healthy meals when time is an issue.

• Chareen shows us how she is Homeschooling and Cooking a Healthy Adventure for her family.

• Bernadette reveals her Hippie Method: Food Philosophied, in which she tells us how she makes easy, delicious, and (relatively) healthy food from scratch - almost every day.

• Savannah has a Cooking Tip for the Home School Mom which promises to show us that even if you don't enjoy cooking there are ways to conquer the "What's for dinner?" question without calling Dominoes!

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 5/7/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #16
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 10, 2013
4) Collage Friday - A Big Change and A Big Sale!
5) TGIF Linky Party #75
6) Creative Learning #14
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One That Was a Roller Coaster
8) Share it Saturday - Sensory Play Ideas
9) Sunday Showcase - 5/12/13

Any Room for Extras?

I think that when we consider how much extracurricula activities is suitable for our children, we can approach it from different areas.

From a Philosophical Point of View
For children who go to school, extracurricula activities usually means all activities that happen after official school hours, and are subjects that are not covered within the official curriculum.  In England, this usually refers to:

1. any activity that takes place before 8am and after 4pm from Mondays to Friday;
2. any activity that takes place on weekends, bank holidays, and school holidays;
3. 'discretionary' activities that parents have to pay extra money for their children to participate in.

I have just had quick look into several prominent English school's websites to check the types of activities they classify as being "extras".  The list include:

• performing arts (theatre, dance, instruments)
• hobby/interest-related clubs (sports, debating, cookery, chess, photography, film making, fishing, philosophy, pottery, gardening)
• field trips

Nowadays in our homeschool we make no distinction between 'extras' and 'core'.  This is because we have increasingly embraced the view that learning is an integral part of our way of life.  In our waking hours, we experience no separation between the times when we are learning and those when we are not, since we don't limit ourselves to how we learn, what we learn, where we learn, and who we learn from.  When something looks/sounds interesting, Tiger and I will go and check it out regardless of whether it is part of our current 'plan'. As a result, we spend about half of our time learning outside at different venues, from different people, about different things that don't necessarily tick any "academic subject" boxes.

I must point out that we did not start off on Day One being so flexible and freewheeling in our homeschooling approach.  The change has come about in response to Tiger's maturity, capabilities, and developmental needs.

At this stage of Tiger's educational life, I believe that a wide exposure to different ways of learning is necessary for him to be informed of the many different choices to getting a rich and fulfilling level of self-education.

From a Financial Point of View
Going out to attend activities costs money in terms of food, travel expenditure, and activity fees.  Therefore, I exercise discretion when choosing activities for Tiger to make sure we get the best value out of every pound we spend.

My decision process from a purely financial aspect is very straightforward: I will only pay for us to attend an activity if I feel that we are getting superior value out of our attendance.  Examples of this are the drama classes and team sports that Tiger attends regularly.

From a Time Management Point of View
Even though we are very flexible in our approach such that we have no specific "learning targets" to meet, I am still very conscious of the amount of time we spend on traveling to and from activities.  I tend to restrict our regular traveling times to within 1 hour of driving each way or within 30 miles radius of where we live.

In the recent years there has been a noticeable increase in the number of homeschooling activities that are made available to us, some of which are very tempting.  However, to avoid spending most of our time running around from one activity to another, I have had to learn to say no to many of them.  We find that our most effective learning experiences (for now) come from the one-to-one interaction at home at Tiger's own pace.  Therefore, while we welcome the variation that outside activities add to Tiger's overall education, I am always in the process of streamlining our selection so as to give ourselves time and space to rest, or to simply do nothing.  I don't feel that it is necessary to fill our calendar with external activities, especially when those activities compete with the time that can be spent with family or time that we need to get to know ourselves.


Lucinda from Navigating By Joy has joined us as a contributor to this series starting from today.  As always, each contributor has her own take on this matter.  Therefore, I encourage you to visit each of them at:

• Lucinda ponders about Homeschooling and Extra-curricula Activities - How Much Is Too Much?

• Bernadette is clearly Just a Homebody, as she makes suggestions about picking and choosing what's best for your family and your life season.

• Chareen's view is that It's all about a Science of Relations as she feels that it's not about how busy but about building a memory.

• Julie shares the Benefits of Extracurricula Activities since she feels that they are good for kids - mostly.

• Savannah gets us thinking about how you choose when and where your children (or even you) participate in extracurricula activities in Extra Curricula Activities and Family Goals.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/30/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #15
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: May 3, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Taking Time to See Beauty
5) TGIF Linky Party #74
6) Creative Learning #13
7) Friday Flash Blog #16
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Wrapping Up
9) Share it Saturday - Homemade Mother's Day Gifts
10) Sunday Showcase - 5/4/13

Maths in Our Home

I remember the pain of learning mathematics through rote and drills when I was growing up.  When I decided to homeschool Tiger, I was determined to find a way for him to enjoy the beauty and fascinating nature of the subject.  I am convinced that the road to mathematical appreciation and understanding need not be painful, intimidating, confusing or boring.

For a start, Tiger could recognise patterns before he could talk.  Pattern recognition is an important element in mathematical thinking as almost all mathematical concepts can be simplified into patterns.  I remember that day very well.

Tiger was about 13 or 14 months old when one day he frantically pointed to a brown shape in a book that I was reading to him, then desperately tried to tell me something as he pointed frantically to the other end of the room.  I didn't know what he was trying to say.  In his desperation, he toddled to the other end of the room and pointed to the same brown shape in a picture on the wall.  I hadn't even noticed that brown shape until he pointed it out to me.

From then on, he showed great interest in patterns and shapes so I casually introduced tactile materials to support his exploration.

One of the major influences that Montessori's writing has on my understanding of education is in the area of mathematics.  Her writing convinced me of the importance and necessity of using tactile materials to aid a young child's understanding of mathematical concepts in a concrete manner before moving on to the more abstract planes.  For example, numerals such a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ..... mean nothing to a young child unless he/she can see and touch the quantity.  The lack of a foundation in understanding concrete concepts in mathematics is, to my mind, what makes the subject so incomprehensible to many children, including myself as a young child.

I remember meeting a very concerned mum whose nine-year-old daughter struggles with number sense in the private school that she attends.  The mum described how she tried to help her daughter with her maths homework and felt despair when her daughter could not answer the question "What is half of three?".  After struggling with this question for a long time, the little girl finally wrote the top half of the number 3, followed by the bottom half of the number 3, i.e. what looked like two brackets.  I felt very sorry for both of them, as I recalled my own struggle with maths, so I gave that mum a few examples on how to help her daughter get a solid understanding of what quantities represent before she worries about numerical symbols and operations.

Bearing in mind the need for a strong grounding in concrete concepts before progressing to abstract ones, I started to look for a Montessori-inspired, manipulative-rich math curriculum for Tiger's elementary school years and came across RightStart Mathematics.

We started using Level A when Tiger was five years old and he enjoyed this programme's use of games, colourful manipulatives and slow pace.  To him, maths lessons felt like playtime with interesting objects.  For the first two years of the programme, he was only exposed to numbers, quantities, and addition.

Although I believed in the strength of the programme, I was becoming a little concerned when I saw that other maths curricula were having children do complex division within six months.  Nonetheless, I stayed with this programme since it has worked so well for us.  All of a sudden, Tiger seemed to experience a sudden leap in his maths understanding.  I have no doubt that the previous two years had laid a strong foundation that had enabled him to do that.

Only when I became certain of Tiger's interest and competence in basic arithmetic, was I more willing to venture further away from the scope and sequence of RightStart Maths, so as to explore certain topics deeper and/or in more lively ways.  From then on, our maths lessons have become less about going through the motion of completing any particular curriculum or following any standard, but more about seeing connections and understanding mathematical relationships.

For other homeschooling parents' perspectives on mathematics, please visit this series' other contributors:

• Julie, who ponders on the question Why do we study math?  She also shows us some ways in which math is used in our society and shares with us activities that have real life application for children.

• In Doing 'Rithmetic, Bernadette gives a fairly traditional and uncomplicated look at doing math.

• Chareen asks the question, Should we teach math to young students?

• Savannah shares her tips for teaching math in Math and Tears; When Mom Learned a Lesson.

This post is linked up to:
1) Math Monday Blog Hop #96
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/23/13
3) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #14
4) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 26, 2013
5) Collage Friday - Reading, Selling , and Recommending Books
6) TGIF Linky Party #73
7) Creative Learning #12
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where We're Counting Down the Weeks
9) Share it Saturday!
10) Sunday Showcase - 4/27/13

A Sample of Free Curricula for Homeschooling

There is so much out there these days, especially on the internet, that one can learn as much or as little as one chooses.  The best part is that many of these valuable resources and ideas are generously shared with interested parties.  Since we have become more autonomous in our homeschooling approach, we have not used any specific curriculum from beginning to end.  Rather, our approach has been to pull resources from various places and to use them as we deem fit.

Below are some of the free resources that I find interesting.  We use them from time to time, with varying degrees of success.

General curriculum

1. Ambleside Online
2. Coursera
3. Memrise
4. K-5
5. Homeschool Share

Maths

1. Khan Academy
2. MEP
3. Can You Believe This is Math? 
4. NRICH

Science

1. MSNucleus
2. Inquiry in Action
3. Middle School Chemistry

Humanities

1. Khan Academy 
2. BBC Your Paintings
3. EDSITEment
4. BBC Schools Primary History
5. Thinking History

As the homeschooling movement grows and with more homeschooling parents blogging about their experiences, I have found many interesting lesson ideas and plans shared by these creative families that I sometimes adapt in my own homeschool.

Many people have also found Pinterest, Facebook, and other social media to be useful for ideas and links.  I don't use these so cannot comment on them.  As such, my list is inexhaustive.

For more sources of free homeschooling resources, please visit:
Chareen's Homeschool for Free {Resource List} which contains a few links to help you homeschool for free from all over the web.

Savannah's 10 Free Websites to Help Homeschoolers with sites that make your curriculum budget go further.

Bernadette shows how Homeschoolers Get It Free by keeping the cost of schooling down when they maximise available free resources.

Julie shares nine awesome free resources her family uses almost every week in Best Free Educational Resources.

This post is linked up to:
1) Math Monday Blog Hop #95
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/16/13
3) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #13
4) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 19, 2013
5) Collage Friday - Delight Directed Learning and a Super Morning Routine
6) TGIF Linky Party #72
7) Creative Learning #11
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One After the 2:1 Conference
9) Share it Saturday!
10) Sunday Showcase - 4/20/13

Leave Me Alone!

Have you ever felt like that sometimes?  I know I have.  I haven't actually screamed that out loud though, but I do find it useful to have time alone just to recharge.  Even with only one child, I sometimes find his intensity a bit too much to cope with, so the alone time gives me both time and space to:

• regroup my thoughts
• think things through
• reset the atmosphere (on particularly stressful days)
• learn new things
• engage in my interests

It hasn't always been easy to find a huge chunk of uninterrupted time for myself, but as Tiger gets older and becomes more independent, I am able to enjoy increasing amounts of time alone.

Here are the few ways that I have managed to find time for myself while homeschooling my son:

• Every day, I have 1 to 2 hours in the evenings between Tiger's bedtime and my own bedtime.  Mostly I spend that time researching on the internet for ideas, resources, and plans for the homeschool.

• When Tiger attends outside classes, I use the waiting time to read or draw or think.

• On the rare occasion when I feel the need to be away from everything and everyone, I tell my husband in advance to arrange for a day to be on my own when he will be solely responsible for Tiger for that day.

• As Tiger gets older, I am able to engage him in activities together so that I get to do what I enjoy (e.g. art, visiting galleries) while he benefits from participating in the activities as well.  This is not strictly time alone, but it fulfills my need to engage in activities that I personally enjoy.

I look upon homeschooling as my full-time job.  As such, I apply the same level of commitment and professionalism to homeschooling as I did with my previous career.  The only differences between then and now are that:

1. Now I work mostly at home.
2. My "clients" are my son (with whom I interact directly and to whom the product of my labour is delivered) and my husband (who is effectively 'paying' for me to teach our son and to whom I am accountable for the eventual outcome of his years of "investments" in our homeschooling venture).

Therefore, while I would not dream of pursuing my own interests during office hours in my previous career, I feel lucky that the nature of homeschooling gives me the flexibility to do so while not compromising my son's education.  I foresee getting more time to myself in the future as Tiger becomes more independent in his study, but I also see myself using that time to support his education by way of coordination, research, guidance, and possibly studying alongside him in more advanced materials.

For other perspectives on how to manage alone time while homeschooling, please seek further inspiration from:

• Chareen ponders on the question of How Important is Alone Time and Homeschooling?  In this post, she shares some thoughts on the quesitons: As a homeschooler do I need to spend time alone?  Just how important is it?  Why or why not?

• Bernadette shares how she schedules alone minutes into her days in No Never Alone.

• Julie tells us how she uses one hour of exercise per day to keep herself going in Parenting - How can I get some Alone Time?

• Savannah asks homeschooling mothers whether your alone time extend beyond your daily shower in Keeping My Inner Witch At Bay... Me Time.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/9/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #12
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 12, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Part Time Unschoolers?
5) TGIF Linky Party #71
6) Creative Learning #10
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the 2:1 Conference 2013
8) Fatigue and Frustration Friday Blog Roll - Week 2
9) Share it Saturday - Creative Play Ideas
10) Sunday Showcase - Seed Activities for Kids

Housework and Homeschooling at the same time

Housework is neither my forte nor my focus at the moment.  That's my short response.

When we decided to homeschool Tiger, my husband and I made a conscious decision to let our home be part of the living, learning environment for him.  That means that we welcome and encourage natural exploration and "messy work" that include hands-on projects and visual arts, especially in the early years.  To anyone who visits our home, it is clear that a child lives and learns here.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that my house is a tip.  There are reasons for this:
1) My husband grew up in an impeccably tidy house so he is very conscious and intolerant of mess.  Turning our home over into a living, learning environment has been a stretch for him, so I am respectful of his very reasonable wish to live in a tidy environment.

2) The Montessori method that I was heavily influenced by at the beginning of the journey made specific references to the importance and impact of the environment to the growing child.  A beautiful, carefully set-up environment (including cleaniness and tidiness) will affect the child's habits, neurological developments, and aesthetic taste.  It's all common sense, really.  A child naturally absorbs what's available in his environment.  If you feed the young mind with a sense of order and beauty, that is what forms in his neurological pathways.

3) I have a higher tolerance for mess than my husband does, but I can't stand looking at them for more than a few days, so in that sense I can let piles of "stuff" build up around the house, but they start to bug me soon enough and must be tidied away so that I may find my sense of peace once more.

It probably helps that there are only three of us in this household, and we live in a small house so in terms of floor space I don't have much to cover.

We also strive to live a simple life, which means:

• I don't have animals to look after
• I don't have unnecessary ornaments to wipe and polish
• I don't have fussy clothes that need special care
• I don't have parties in our house very often

Having a simple life means that I can spend the bulk of my time focusing on whatever is needed to homeschool my son successfully, which can include planning, learning (especially at the beginning), and letting him explore and use the home environment.  I aspire to have a show-room quality house when my homeschooling journey is over and I can spend all my time fussing over the make of the lamps or colour-coordinating the furniture in each room with the carpet, curtains, and bed linen, or varnish and polish all of my wood furniture.  Ask me about housework again in 10 years' time - I'll probably have magazine-worthy photos to show then.

If you find the above too wishy-washy, let me give some examples in more concrete terms: I manage on a day-to-day basis by focusing on one small area each time.  For example,

1. I might have a quick run around the house during break time to dust the surfaces.  This usually takes about 15 minutes.
2. I also do one small task each time I go into the bathroom.  It can be washing the sink one time, wiping the floor another time, rinsing the bathtub the third time.
3. Hoovering the floor usually happens in the 15-20 minutes after lunch or while dinner is cooking on the stove or in the oven.  Since our house is small, all the rooms can be hoovered in that time.
4. The kitchen sink is always clear in the evenings.  I make sure that all dishes are washed up after dinner and kitchen worktops are cleared of mugs and cutlery.  A sink full of dirty dishes is one of my pet peeves.
5. My husband takes care of laundry and does it all on the weekends.  I iron all his work shirts for the following week on Saturday nights while watching DVDs on my computer.
6. I am also training my son up to help with the housework.  Tidiness does not come naturally to him so our progress in this area has been excruciatingly slow, but we keep at it (upon my insistence).  His jobs are:

• to set the table for each meal
• to load and unload the dishwasher at lunch time everyday
• to put things back in their places away after using them
• to tidy his room everyday

I do a 'deep clean' once every six months, again on a rotational basis.  That means one or two areas of the house gets thoroughly cleaned and purged aeach six months so that by the end of each year the whole house gets done.  This typically takes 5 days each time.

I'm clearly not a domestic goddess, so do hop over to see what other useful suggestions the other four ladies have for us:

• Julie shares in House Cleaning and Homeschooling how she has to keep her house clean all the time as she has a child with no immune system.

• Chareen wonders about the possibility of keeping the house clean and homeschooling at the same time in House Cleaning and Homeschool?

• Bernadette lets us in on her strategies of how to juggle homeschooling, cleaning and life without dropping a ball in 3 Strategies to Not Drop the (House Cleaning) Ball.

• Savannah shares her wisdom of embracing the concept of good enough when it comes to house cleaning in Practical Tips to Maintain Your House and Your Sanity while Homeschooling.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/2/13
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #11
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: April 5, 2013
4) Collage Friday - Surprises on Spring Break
5) TGIF Linky Party #70
6) Creative Learning #9
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Really Busy One Before Spring Break
8) Share it Saturday
9) Sunday Showcase

Book Recommendations for New Homeschoolers

When I embark on anything new, what I do is to make sure I conduct a thorough research.  For me, that means to read everything about and around the subject.  It is the same with homeschooling.  The decision to homeschool my son was made when he was still in my womb.  As a result, I read everything I could get my hands on about child development, education theories, parenting, child psychology, special needs, and homeschooling approaches.  My view is that, to educate my child effectively, I need to understand not only about teaching/learning but also about the child as a whole being, which extends beyond his academic training.

Homeschool parents may start their journeys at different stages of their children's lives, so the books that are relevant to new homeschoolers vary depending on how old their children are when they embark upon this journey.  I still continue to read widely about homeschooling and its related topics but I will limit my booklist to the books that I think will be most useful to parents who are starting this journey at different stages of their children's lives.

If your child is 3 years old or younger
Secret of Childhood was the eye-opener for me in terms of understanding the natural needs of a very young child in relation to how he learns, and about the importance of an environment that supports his development.  I read it shortly after Tiger was born.  After this book, I continued to read all of Maria Montessori's writings and, with the support from my husband, turned our lounge into a full-blown Montessori nursery and preschool environment to facilitate Tiger's learning from ages one to four-and-a-half.

If your child is 4 - 6 years old
Tiger started to read independently when he was five years old, and had completed the entire Montessori preschool curriculum by then.  I was looking into the Montessori elementary school curriculum when I noticed that Tiger's needs were changing.  For a start, Tiger has always been a fast learner so he never liked the repetition-to-mastery notion purported by the Montessori method.  At the same time, I was starting to feel that the rigidity in the Montessori scope and sequence was getting in the way of Tiger's developmental needs at the time.

Therefore I started to investigate into other methods of homeschooling and came across the Charlotte Mason method via A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning, and the Classical Method from reading The Well Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home.  Both methods attracted me in different ways.  I liked the rigour of the Classical curriculum as well as the gentle approach of the Charlotte Mason method. Somehow I managed to incorporate both methods for two years, taking what I felt was the best of both for us.

The books listed above are part of my research that had started before my son was born, so what I had implemented based on those books is probably most applicable to those families with very young children who have not attended school yet, since there are various degrees of structured learning in the above methods.  I arrived at the conclusion, based on my research, that a prepared environment would be the most suitable one to support my son's early development.  However, there are many parents whom I know to hold the exact opposite view, in that they believe that there should not be any form of structure for the very young child.  Once again, I urge you to do your own research to draw your own conclusions as to what suits your family most.

If your child is 7 years old or older
For families with older children who have been through the school system, I recommend the following books:

1.  Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling - I find all of John Taylor Gatto's books to be exceedingly reassuring that homeschooling is the right thing to do for my family.

2.  Creative Homeschooling - This book gave me a broad overview of the different ways I can support Tiger's changing needs.

3.  Legendary Learning: The Famous Homeschoolers' Guide to Self-Directed Excellence - I read this when I needed some advice on autonomous learning that sounds reasonable and not radical.

4.  A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century - This is a variation on the Classical Method, based on the education of the American Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson.  It also makes a strong case for parents to continue to educate themselves to be effective role models for their children.

5.  The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education - I have not read this yet but it is on my to-read list.

6.   School is Not Compulsory: An Introduction to Home Education - Written by a homeschooling charity in the UK, this book covers the legal aspects of homeschooling in England and Wales, gives advice on how to work with the authorities to successfully deregister your child from mainstream school, and gives several examples of autonomous learning practised by a selection of families in the UK.

7.  John Holt's books - John Holt has been callled 'the Father of Unschooling' and his books are very popular and reader-friendly.  His primary thesis is that children will learn what they need to know in their own time, in their individual ways.  I have read Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling but I don't relate to most of it.  Nonetheless, I am recommending his books based on the fact that many homeschooling parents who apply the autonomous-learning approach have told me that they absolutely love his books and feel inspired after reading them.

I also read many other homeschooling and unschooling books, all of which you can find easily by doing a search for "homeschooling" on Amazon, but I am only listing those that I personally have found to be the most interesting.

For more booklists and other insights, please visit the other four contributors of this series:

• When Julie was considering homeschooling she read many books, but only one convinced her to do it.  Find out which book that is in her post, Considering Homeschooling.

• Chareen feels that over the years there have been many how-to-homeschool books but only a few have stood the test of time.  She invites you to see her favourite four support books for homeschool mums in her post, Books to Support New Homeschool Moms.

• Bernadette shares her books recommendations to help you along your homeschool journey in her post, Many Books, Many People.

• Savannah talks about her holy trinity of home education books in her post, Three Great Homeschool Books.

If you would like to read more of this series, you might like to go back a few entries to read:

1. the introductory post
2. the first post on schedule and routines

This post is linked up to:
1) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #10
2) Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 29, 2013
3) Collage Friday - Books LEGOs, and Endings/Beginnings
4) TGIF Linky Party #69
5) Creative Learning #8
6) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with More Birds
7) Share it Saturday
8) Sunday Showcase
9) Hip Homeschool Hop - 4/2/13

It is featured on Share it Saturday.