Those of us that home school, began our journey with thoughts.  We thought that our children could get a better education at home.  It wasn’t enough to think about home schooling.  From those thoughts, we began to visualize what life would be like if we home schooled.  Those of us that had positive images of the home school lifestyle, got started shortly thereafter.  It wasn’t enough to visualize, and so it was time to take action.  We took action by withdrawing the children from school, selecting curriculum, and deciding how, when, and where we would have school.

According to many philosophers, again, everything starts with a thought.  If your thoughts are filled with fear or uncertainty, then change those thoughts to more positive ones that will help you to form the home school that you really want.  If something isn’t working out for your family, then recreate it so that you have and do what you really want.

The reason that I address this today is that there are so many families around me right now, that either home school for the wrong reasons, or home school for a very short while, decide that it doesn’t work, and send their children back to school.  It is my belief that anything worth doing is going to be hard, and that we harm our children when we start something as complicated as home schooling can be, and then give up before even giving it a fair chance.  If you don’t have a positive thought, then don’t remove the children from school, but if you do, then find others that can help you, and get as far away from negative people with negative feedback as possible.  Naysayers don’t know your situation as well as they think they do, so let their words blow away with the rest of the dust in your life.  Think happy thoughts, decide what you really want to have happen from this experience, pray, visualize, create a journal, collage, vision board, anything that helps you to stay focused on the big picture.  Most of all, practice daily gratitude.  The simple act of being grateful makes even the worst days seem to work out in the end.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

Some good examples would be to turn an old t-shirt into a tote bag, or a pillow.  A laundry detergent box can be decorated and used as a caddy for a number of different things.  Aluminum cans can become Christmas ornaments.

My oldest daughter has created, and is still working on a castle made of various cardboard food boxes, and reinforced with paper mache.  Our middle child made a chili pepper (which is popular in Southwest decor), out of paper mache and a clothes hanger.  Both girls will finish their projects today so that they can be taken to our picnic/parkday tomorrow.  From there, we will find a place for them to display their work such as the local library or even museum.

The only expense for this project for us has been for the paint that the girls are using to paint their finished work.  They are learning to look at trash differently before they throw it away, and they are learning to use resources wisely.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

Therefore, we do, in a sense, practice year round home schooling.  As I have said in previous blogs, learning is present all the time.  There is no reason to limit the children to having class 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, off on weekends and holidays.  There is something to learn in everything that we do, and the most diligent home schooling parent will be sure to keep records of each task, even those that aren’t assigned.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

One such book in particular has really touched our souls, and I feel that it is worth mentioning.  Most children, whether public schooled or not, know something about racism and discrimination.  However, do they know the origins of some of the ideas and backward thinking that caused some of our social problems today?  Of course, we can tell them what we know, but do they really understand?  I read the book, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Taylor when I was in school, and loved the book.  Therefore, when I picked it up at the library, I was sure that my own children would love it too.  They looked at the old, faded cover, and immediately decided that the book was boring.  I declared that I was going to read it out loud to them for school, and that was that.

Since it had been so long since I had read the book myself, and because I was so much younger when I first read it, I did not realize how valuable the story really is.  The story is so vivid that my children were hooked from the very first chapter.  The story is told so realistically, that they actually feel anger and sadness along with the children in the story.  However, the point of the matter is that they are getting to learn about how life really was for minorities in the 1930’s in a way that truly touches their hearts.

If we were using a more traditional approach to education, the children would be given a few chapters, if that much, about The Civil Rights Movement and what life was like for children during “Segregation”, but would they really understand it in the way that they are understanding through the use of this excellent example of a living book?  I have read from textbooks about Martin Luther King Jr. but they still ask me who he is and what he did when they hear anything about him, so did the textbook really do it’s job?  Did I really do my job by teaching it to them in that manner?  Therefore, a biography about Martin Luther King Jr. will be much more effective than our original ways of educating and learning.

I get so excited about these truths, because it feels like a whole new world has been opened to us.  As homeschoolers, we have permission to learn about EVERYTHING.  We don’t have to wait for the state to decide at which age a child is ready to learn about a given subject.  We only have to open our books, open our minds and open our hearts.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

*The children should learn some patriotic music to sing at fairs, festivals, etc.

*I want to start a Bible story book that will be comprised of written narrations and illustrations of Bible stories read.

*I want to find art print books to help with our art studies.

*I want to be able to attend more cultural events as they become available.

*I want to put a greater focus on “useful” crafts, and since my children love photography, then that can be our focus for the time being.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

I made the cupcakes for a Girl Scout party, and the tie dyed eggs for both the Girl Scout party and our home school picnic. Both were a hit, so I will definitely make them for future Easter parties. I did discover, however, that the coconut on the bunny cupcakes made it difficult to stick on the ears and cheeks. Therefore, I probably will not use coconut on them again. As for the tie dyed eggs, the first batch came out more like paint splattered eggs, because I forgot to do the light rinse at the end. They were still beautiful, but different, so I actually learned one more technique than I had planned. For the homeschool picnic, I remembered to rinse, and they turned out just like the eggs in the picture. If you have any other favorite Easter treat or egg ideas, please leave me a comment and share.

Have a Great Day!
Laurel Santiago

In addition to the news programming, we have a map of the world taped to the living room wall.  I don’t make very many references to the map or to the news.  The map is there, the news is there, and I often find my children making comments on what appears on the news.  They check the map often to find out where the events are happening. 

This is yet another example of why home schooling works, and why we don’t have to wonder if we, the parents, are good enough or smart enough to home school.  I am not personally a great history or geography teacher, but I know how to find out what I want to know, and that is precisely what my children are learning.  If they want to know where North Korea is after hearing or reading about the missile launch, they do not have to raise their hands and ask if the may have permission to go to the map.  They own their map, are free to study their map, and even have labelled a few areas that seemed important to them for one reason or another.  If they want to know more about what is going on with the missile launch, then there are three tv’s and a computer in the house that will tell them what they want to know. 

We don’t need textbooks, classrooms, or “no child left behind”.  The knowledge is free for the taking, and our job as home schooling parents is to keep encouraging them to read it, listen to it, watch it, write it, draw it, love it.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

At my house, if the children don’t wake up on their own, I wake them up between 8 and 9a.m.  Unless we have an appointment, there is no special reason to get up at that hour, but I feel like everybody is at their best at about that time.  They take about an hour to do their activities of daily living, eat breakfast, and find whatever it is that they need for “school” right then.  Since I work from home, I have the table near the computer so that I can prompt them and help them with their work while I do my own work.  During that time, we have several interruptions from the baby, but she is an educational lesson on her own, and there is nothing wrong with frequent, short, breaks.

We work this way until about lunch time.  After eating lunch, we run our errands such as paying bills, grocery shopping, or going to the bank.  By the time we get finished, it is usually time to get ready for an after school activity such as Girl Scouts or twirling.  Since I am involved in almost all of their after school activities, I have been able to work those schedules around so that they are over not much longer after their father gets home from work.

Once my husband gets home from work, the children help with the baby while I make supper.  After supper, we either run more errands, listen to music, read a chapter book out loud, work on other lessons that we didn’t make time for earlier, watch movies, read independently, play a board game, or use the computer.  Therefore, evenings are just as busy and productive as our days.

Because the best laid plans are known to fail every so often, there is no real hard and fast schedule.  We try to just treat each day as a new day, and look for the educational opportunities in everything that we do.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago

Have a Great Day!
Laurel Santiago

Public school teachers feel the need to defend their professions, but in my opinion, the teachers are just the employees.  They didn’t create the system, the government or the school policies.  However, there are a lot of teachers out there right now that don’t love their jobs and don’t love children.  Consequently, the ones that do take their jobs seriously, are given a bad name by the others.  Also, they don’t realize just how many times we, as home schoolers are offended by public school teachers.  If they did know, then they would not feel so defensive when it happens to them.  My oldest daughter once overheard two teachers talking badly about her.  One teacher was vehemently opposed to home schooling, and the other teacher apparently tried not to give an opinion one way or the other.  I’m assuming that the vicious one thought that my child was too uneducated to understand her lazy Texas accent, and couldn’t possibly know that she was talking about her.

At our last picnic, one of the mothers said that she has to stop herself from literally gloating or laughing at some of her worn out, public schooling friends.  Why would anyone want to put themselves through all of that stress on purpose, and why would they want that for their children?  It’s understandable that some mothers, especially those that work outside the home, may not see home schooling as an option, but for the majority of families, it is a choice.   What is most funny is when public schooling mothers complain over and over again about their child’s school, teachers,tests, etc. and then look innocently at you and say, “Oh, I could never homeschool.  My daughter LOVES school.”  Tell me another joke.  Some children do love school, and there is nothing wrong with that, but if you have a complaint and aren’t willing to fix the problem, then you are just talking to hear yourself talk.

I will leave you with a thought.  If you are homeschooling, try to be gentle around your public schooling friends.  They don’t understand what you are doing, and why you love it so much, because they have never tried it.  When public schoolers offend you, try to blow it off.  After all, if you are easily offended, it will just prove their point that we are a bunch of hippie, religious weirdos that like to challenge everything.  Therefore, try to set an example for others so that if they find themselves having to make the decision to home school or not, they will think of the nice families that they know, that might be able to help them with their efforts.

Have a Great Day!

Laurel Santiago