Today we continue our Homeschool 101 series and share a blog post from our very own Linda Difino, Director of Virtual Environments (aka The Convention!). If you've ever been asked about socialization and homechooling, then this post and the list of resources at the end are for you! Veterans, you may find some new twists for your answers. Enjoy! Arby's recent socialization posts got me thinking about how ridiculous this argument really is. If you're a homeschooler, you know. You've been there. Conversations with non-homeschoolers inevitably come down to one question. The conversations usually go something like this: "Oh, wow. You homeschool? Really? Isn't that hard?"

"No, it's really great! I love it!"

"Well, I could never do that!"

"Sure you could...there are LOTS of resources available to help you."

"But don't you worry about socialization?" I think its time for homeschoolers to approach this question differently. In my recent post, Defending Homeschooling, I challenged myself and others to think about really listening to the answers we give to the questions we are so often asked. So do I worry about socialization? Honestly?  No...not for one single second! And why not? First, because I know my kids ARE being effectively socialized...they really don't need school for that. They are living in and amongst family, friends, and neighbors. They are learning from mature, responsible adults how to be mature, responsible members of society. But there's another more important reason I don't worry about the socialization my kids are "missing" by not attending public school.  It's simple. In terms of socialization, my children have not missed anything of value.  Rather, what they have missed socially actually has negative value.  In other words, I'm glad they missed it! After pondering this for a few minutes, I had a thought. And I got out my dictionary.

an·ti·so·cial (ân'tç-sô'shəl, ân'tî-) adj.

1. Shunning the society of others; not sociable.
2. Hostile to or disruptive of the established social order; marked by or engaging in behavior that violates accepted mores
3. Antagonistic toward or disrespectful of others; rude.

Doesn't that sound a bit familiar?  It seems to me that the conduct and behavior most often displayed in today's American public schools would be more accurately defined as "anti-social" than "social". Doesn't it seem just a little strange that WE are the ones being questioned about our childrens' socialization?  I've come to the conclusion that the wrong people are being asked the wrong question. So the next time someone asks a homeschooler,

"Aren't you worried about socialization?," 

I propose a different reply:

"No. Aren't you worried about anti-socialization?"

Now it's your turn! What is your favorite answer for the "What about socialization?" question? Leave them in the comments below!   Further resources: HSLDA has an article that includes some studies. It offers great things to read and consider as possible answers when you are asked this question! Isabel Shaw refers to research by Dr. Raymond Moore and other studies in her article about socialization. Amanda Pelser takes a look at the definition of socialization on her blog. Susan gives a simple example of how socialization can affect children, and considers if we really need to worry about "the S word". Linda shares an interesting conversation about socialization, and here's another one for good measure. Just need something goofy to send to your friend that won't stop asking you about socialization? Consider this spoof from homeschool father and comedian Tim Hawkins.   Linda Difino originally posted this article on The Homeschool Apologist. Linda is the talent behind Home Educating Family's free online convention. She is a blissfully married homeschooling mom of four amazing kids. With more than 20 years of homeschooling behind her and 10 years still to go, Linda is pretty passionate about her role as homeschool mom and as an encourager and instructor of homeschool families all over the country. Linda lives in the Chicago area with her husband, Jim, and two of their children.  

I'm writing to you today. You? The mom homeschooling multiple ages - the one with perhaps a toddler, a baby, a first grader, sixth grader, and a highschool student - or maybe you just have two, but different ages, different grades. Your home is busy and you, the busy mom, are trying to manage to get your teaching done along with managing all of the other jobs in your home. It's work. I'm not going to try to beautify the reality of the truth. Homeschooling, mothering, being a wife, and running a family is hard work. However, work can be beautiful, rewarding, and full of absolute joy moments. But, how? How do you successfully homeschool multiple ages and tick all the boxes that need to be ticked and still end the day with a joyful heart? You may be even asking if that is even posible at this point! How? How do we do our day? Here are six strategies that have helped me homeschool multiple ages. 1. Start the day with prayer. This is so important, no matter if you have one child or ten children. When we intentionally step back to start our day first in the Word, it sets the tone for our day to be different. It doesn't guarantee the perfect day, but it keeps our priorities directed on the real important. When we gather our family together to start with a word of prayer dedicating the day to the Lord, we are, in fact, setting apart our day to be different. Mothers, do not get discouraged if this isn't a habit or you miss a day - simply pick up where you are, even if it is in the middle of the day, and sit down with your family and pray. It's not about perfection, it's about progress. 2. 30 Minute Clean. In the morning we will spend thirty minutes tidying up the home. Everyone is assigned an area to work on and we all work together to get everything completed. We only work thirty minutes - set the timer - and encourage everyone to work hard. When the home is tidy and in order it helps me, the mom, stay focused. Take the time this summer to develop a cleaning routine with systems for each day and then follow through on it. Thirty minutes makes a huge difference in the day, and if it is written down and expected, it will become a habit. 3. Work with the littlest ones first. A mother of ten blessed me with wise words many years ago when she encouraged me to start with the littlest first. It can be simple - read a book, color, let them help with breakfast - but try to start with them and fill their attention cup. Often I'll have them color or help with a science experiment or such while I work with the older ones. However, make a pointed effort to have a special time of learning with just them. You will be surprised at the delight and joy this will bring to their {and your} day. 4. Combine subjects. I have tried curriculums where all of my children have their own material for each subject. It’s great for the first weeks, but then by mid October I am burnt out. I simply cannot teach six history lessons, or four science lessons, and so on. Over the last several years I've adapted the structure of our learning and academic day so that subjects are now combined. One, I make sure that our entire family is studying the same time frame in history - from the little ones to the highschool students. Two, I try to use the same curriculum with a range of students and then adapt the lessons to fit each one. I'll expect the older ones to write a paragraph on a topic, and will have the little ones do some copywork related to what we are studying. I do the same with science, music, and Bible time. The more you can do together, the easier your day will be, as you'll spend less time jumping from subject to subject. Instead you can cultivate a beautiful learning environment with everyone delving into the same subjects together but at different intensities. 5. Teach in the afternoon. I should have titled this teach when the little ones nap. It is very hard to teach and work with the older ones while you have a two year old and a four year old that are busy. In the morning we'll do lessons that are easy for the little ones to be involved in. Then when they take a nap after lunch, I will work intentionally with my older students. That doesn't mean the olders don't do work in the morning - they can do independent work, math, spelling, music practice, and even help with the little ones during those hours. Carve a quiet time in the afternoon for almost everyone - anyone not doing school work can read, draw, paint, etc. Guard this time! I need the silence in the day as well - it recharges me so that once nap and quiet time are over I have the energy to get through the late afternoon and dinner hour. 6. Get comfortable in your own learning environment. Stop doing "school" at home. This has been perhaps the toughest concept for me to understand and implement. This goes back again to combining subjects -- for years I operated under the mindset that each child needed to follow the exact scope and sequence that I might find in a public school handbook. I forgot that I was not recreating school at home. After several years of operating this way, I began to gradually realize that home educating looked different than what I grew up with. I started to discover the rhythms of my own family and instead of fighting how we operated, instead began to settle into the unique daily routine that worked best for us. Moms, it is okay if you do things different, if you don't follow the scope and sequence exactly. You know the final academic outcome, you know they need to learn certain things - discover what works best for your family and do not compare. I'll end it with these words told to me by another very wise friend - comparison is the death of contentment. When we compare our day with another homeschooling family's day and then use their day to measure the success of our own, chances are we will end the day with an uneasy heart. Use others to motivate you, guide you, give you ideas, and encourage you - but don't compare. Mothers, you are the perfect parent for the children that you are blessed to teach right now. Rest assured in that and know that motherhood and homeschooling isn't done in one day. You have a childhood to work with them. Embrace the ups and downs and ebb and flows of your day and year. You will finish. Keep your mindset on the goal and love the everyday joys that teaching your children brings. Now it's your turn! Do you have another suggestion to add? Which of Rachel's tips was your favorite?  

“Get used to being passed by, if you take walk breaks,” I read recently in one of the forums for those using Jeff Galloway’s ‘run-walk-run’ method for runners. ¹ I’m fine with that. I wouldn’t have been fine with being passed up ten or fifteen years ago. But as a forty-something-year-old , I’ve struggled with a knee injury for several years. Yet I knew I needed to step up my exercise to offset all the sitting inherent with my writing job. So, I figure it’s still progress. Walking, running, whatever… I’m still moving forward. And, actually, one of the tenets of the “Galloway method” that seems counter-intuitive is that that run times can actually improve when taking well-timed, short breaks. You don’t always have to “go all out.” What’s my point? Metaphorically speaking, I wish I’d comprehended this message as a much younger woman, as a young mom. Beginning homeschooling was an exciting time for me. We’re blessed with children of varying learning styles,  some of whom would be considered ‘behind’ or  ‘ahead’ in various areas like all normal children, and I was delighted to be living and learning along with them, attempting to meet their individual needs. We’d gotten a little way into our home educating journey when I seemed to lose sight of that. I have a streak of the Type A overachiever in me, and it seemed that suddenly this thing called “classical homeschooling” was everywhere (yes, I’ve been homeschooling long enough to remember when the classical movement really became popular!). Oh…I’d better try that. Here kids--memorize this, study that—whether I felt it was age-appropriate or not. Didn’t matter if we liked it or not either, an “expert” told us to. I worked hard to ignore the fact that the method simply wasn’t working for our family—it was supposed to be SO GOOD. Oh wait, accelerated academics? Yep, sign us up. Seemed like the thing to do to put off the homeschooling nay-sayers, if my early elementary students could rattle off a list of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs or the periodic table. And I may not want to touch the stickier topics of “lifestyle” that seem to go hand-in-hand with some segments of the homeschooling movement, but I’m going to go there. Want to be a ‘good’ Christian woman? Wear only dresses…don’t wear makeup... don’t cut your hair…bake your own bread…do 5 a.m. devotions…schedule your day in half-hour increments…live a rural lifestyle…do, do, do… Which resulted in, for me: stress…pressure…unrealistic expectations. I so deeply desired to follow Christ whole-heartedly, to feel like I was doing the right thing for my family, that I was easily swayed by voices who sounded like they knew just how to get there. It took me a while to discover that, in the words of Diana Waring, "family life is best lived by principles, not formulas." ² I was striving so hard to be the Perfect Homeschool Mom. I exhaustedly gazed in the mirror one day and no longer recognized the person staring back at me. Where was the fun-loving, light-hearted me? This person was scowling and grouchy, because she was crumbling under the weight of the pressure to keep up a standard that God had never given her to bear.

Cartoon courtesy of Todd Wilson, www.familymanweb.com

I’m not saying that any of those choices are necessarily bad (except maybe the pharaohs list...). They just weren’t my convictions. Or my husband’s. And somehow I’d lost sight of why we’d begun homeschooling in the first place. I was struggling to follow a standard I didn’t even really embrace, and was actually impossible for me to live, anyway! I was so worried about what other people thought of me, of our child-rearing, of how we homeschooled, of how we LOOKED, that I was losing the excitement I’d started with. The waters of my Christian life had become muddied by all the competing voices, insisting their way was The Right Way. I had become concerned with meeting an outward, appearance-based standard that was sucking all the joy out of my Christian walk. Not to mention the expressions on the faces of my little children, which told me that they were not having such a terrific time, either. Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.  Colossians 2:20-23 (emphasis mine) I needed to remember why we’d started this whole thing in the first place. Since I’m visual, I decided to make a list. I conferred with my husband, and we came up with a “Why We Homeschool” list. Here are a few things we came up with:

• to build family togetherness
• to weave God and our faith into all of our subjects, and not have ‘Bible’ be just another subject
• to tailor our children’s education to their strengths/weaknesses
• to remove our kids from some of the public schools’ negative influences

There are other reasons, but they’re OUR reasons (and I don’t want to give YOU a standard that is not yours to meet!). But, may I just tell you, there was not one bloomin’ thing on there about meeting other people’s standards of education, lifestyle, or anything else; wearing or not wearing a particular type of clothing, or using a specific curriculum or method. I wrote my List over a decade ago, and I still look back on it when I begin to feel that old pressure mounting. It’s a good reminder for me-- helps me regain my bearings and focus on the important things. And the running metaphor? I realized that it was just fine if it seemed other people were “passing me up.” That holds true for my Christian walk, as well. My turn to “run” will come at some point. I may be walking while someone else is running, but it may happen the other way around, too. I’m not to compare my weaknesses with other people’s strengths, and vice versa. I realize my race is just that…MY race. And for me, not always running full-speed ahead is a good thing. I am in great need of a walking break now and again. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self a few things, like: Life will bring enough hardships all on its own. Don’t make it harder. Try not to give a hoot about what such-and-such thinks of what you’re doing—they’re not perfect either. You have a Bible—read it. Talk to your husband about what’s important to both of you, and don’t be swayed by the latest teachings and fads circulating in the homeschool world, no matter how good they seem, if you know they’re just not for your family. But the thing I’d most like to go back and tell my younger self? They’re the words of Jesus:  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.  John 10:10 And… it’s Ok to walk, sometimes.     1)      http://www.jeffgalloway.com/training/walk_breaks.html 2)      Bill and Diana Waring, Things We Wish We’d Known (Emerald Books, 1999), 222.

What goes into a successful Home School Graduation Day? Whether you have one student graduating or are planning for several, there are three main points to consider. Communication, delegation, and participation are all key to honoring your graduate and putting together a day that everyone will enjoy. Some families mark the completion of high school with a special dinner or a party; others “roast” their student in good fun. For others the transition to post-high school life is seamless and not marked in a particular way. As a long-time member of a home school co-op and a veteran homeschooling parent of three, I have heard a variety of ideas from different families over the years. Our local community of homeschooling families has enjoyed conducting a graduation ceremony to mark the day for whichever students are finishing up that year. Three years ago we had eight students who participated in this ceremony, including my oldest two children. Last year we graduated three students, including my youngest child. The first step in planning a successful graduation ceremony is communication. Make a list of graduating students, and then contact them to ask if they would like to participate. Conduct a meeting with these young people and at least one of their parents to get their input. We began with an informational meeting to talk about ideas. Most people who attended ended up participating. A few opted to attend a larger state homeschool graduation and some decided to celebrate in their own unique ways. One thing we have learned from 17 years of homeschooling is that homeschoolers as a group can be quite individualistic.  We planned our ceremony to have some structure but to accommodate the ideas of our students. At this initial meeting try to select a date, time and place for your commencement so you can get it on everyone’s calendar. Adjust quickly if needed to accommodate the availability of your location, then reserve that time as soon as possible. Get everyone’s contact information and communicate clearly and often to the whole group. My primary roles in the planning of our graduation ceremonies were serving as a co-catalyst for making it happen and the communications clearinghouse for the group. I learned how to send out group e-mails and quite a bit about delegation and follow through. You’ll need to discuss expectations at this meeting and talk about just how your students want to mark their day. Make sure everyone’s voice is heard and remember that a bit of humor can help smooth the negotiations. Define your budget during this communication step, and then add a bit more to account for unexpected expenses. We found that our students had some definite ideas about what they did and did not want in the way of celebrating this educational milestone. Reach an agreement early on for how simple or elaborate you want your ceremony to be and decide which elements are most important to you. Our students were adamant that they did not want to wear caps and gowns so we struck that as an option. They decided on dress clothes such as they would wear to church. Determine if you want music and try to reach an amiable consensus on style and quantity. Remind everyone that gracious compromise is an excellent thing! Select a date, time and place for your ceremony. Decide if you’re going to have a key note speaker, live or taped music or performances of some other kind. Some students may wish to showcase a particular skill, so decide how you will accommodate their wishes. Others will become quite shy or afraid of becoming emotional in front of an audience and just want to sit back down after the conferring of the diploma. Determine if you will need someone to run the PA system at your location and arrange for a backup just in case. Discuss the reception after the ceremony. The primary goal should be to enjoy the time together and let the students visit with friends and family who want to wish them well.  Think simple and throw perfection out the window!   Some groups might do a pot-luck meal or a barbeque.   We had a pot-luck dessert reception with each graduate’s family bringing their favorite dessert and culinary donations from friends.  Our church secretary made a beautiful cake with all their names on it as a gift to the graduates. Decide as a group what each family's responsibilities. Our graduates decided that each student would be in charge of their own announcements, photos and diploma. That way each family could go as simple or elaborate as they wanted. Some people ordered custom invitations online or at local print shops, our family found nice ones ready made at a local office supply store for about $20 for our two  students. A parent of one of our graduating seniors volunteered to make a diploma for whoever wanted one. When we saw her mock up design on beautiful paper with seals and ribbons we were so impressed that everyone ordered one. Each person was in charge of getting his personal information to her and paying her a nominal fee to cover her expenses. These now hang proudly in our children’s rooms. The second key point to a successful graduation ceremony is delegation. This step ideally occurs at the end of your initial meeting, so make sure everyone has the privilege of participating in some capacity. Many people will volunteer at this time for some task they would like to handle. If volunteers don’t materialize, ask and delegate. Be very specific about what you have in mind, one person’s idea of simple might be powdered lemonade and paper plates, while others prefer nicer party ware and would rather scrimp in another area. It is important to be accountable with the budget and encourage planners to be creative. My idea of party punch is Koolaide, so it was humorously suggested that perhaps another mom could volunteer to head up the food portion and coordinate the drinks and paper goods aspect of the party. She did a beautiful job, and I was grateful to not have to handle those details. Decide if each student will set up a table showcasing their interests, education and hobbies. This was something we implemented, and our guests enjoyed getting to know each student better through looking at her table. We learned things about the graduates that we hadn’t known before, and everyone had a lot of fun. Younger siblings could be involved in serving in many different ways. Some of ours supervised the potluck (young children first in line tend to get carried away with the goodies and run amuck). They also helped with decorations and cleanup, as well as passing out programs before the ceremony. We decided to keep our decorations simple to focus more on enjoying the day, ease the cleanup and lower cost. Poll your participants to see if you can incorporate things from their homes. We were able to have flowers and greenery gleaned from family yards, tablecloths and serving ware brought from home and borrowed from church. The third key to success in your graduation day is participation. Confirm that all key people have saved the date, that your location is reserved, and that you have helpers to run your PA system or play music, slides, etc. Plan on getting an update from whoever is in charge of each portion of your ceremony. It helps to keep a master checklist to keep you on track. One of our graduate’s parents volunteered to put together hand-crafted thank you notes, and we upped our budget a bit to include small gift cards to Barnes and Noble or Starbucks as thanks to our sound system operators and others. If you are holding your graduation at a church, try to arrange to decorate the day before or a bit early prior to the ceremony. To save time and stress, plan on plenty of help for this step. You may or may not decide to have a rehearsal. A brief one is helpful if you have a large graduating group just to get the timing right. However, be considerate of family time constraints and the fact that many will have out of town guests. Do not think in terms of a wedding rehearsal: keep it simple, low-key and above all, short. The day of the graduation plan on arriving an hour early to make sure all is ready and to complete any last minute preparations. This should also give you a few minutes to breathe and remember why you’re doing this: to thank God and to honor these amazing home school graduates and their parents. This is a day of celebration, a marking of a passage. Take the time to be in the moment and just enjoy it. It does not matter in the grand scheme of things if there are some “oops” moments. Try to stay relaxed, laugh a bit, and keep some tissue handy! Most of all just enjoy this young adult that God has given you to shepherd for a time.   Karen Ray is a freelance writer and graduated homeschooling parent based in New Mexico. She earned a BA in Journalism from UW Madison, WI.  Karen and her husband Ian homeschooled their three adult children from toddler days through high school.  During their early childhood she was extensively involved in the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) organization. She also served as a board member of the Mesilla Valley Christian Home Educators Co-op for several years and taught classes on NM history and wildlife to area children as part of the co-op.  She has tutored home schooled students in writing and has been published in “Southern New Mexico” magazine. Currently she is actively involved with high school students at church and enjoys encouraging other parents in the homeschooling lifestyle.  She has represented the homeschooling community in public speaking via radio interview and seminar. In her free time she enjoys traveling New Mexico’s back roads and collecting the stories of its lesser known citizens and places.

Hooray! It's September, and if you're a homeschooling family, we invite you to celebrate that you are Not-Back-to-School! Well, you may be in session, but you're educating at home! We'd like you to get to know our review team! Each Friday in September, members of our review team will be writing about homeschooling on their blogs. This week they'll be sharing their homeschool stories with you. It's going to be great fun peeking inside these women's lives and learning how they came to be homeschooling moms! Next time you read their reviews, you'll have a bit of insight into their backgrounds! You'll also find some blogs to bookmark and visit again. So, grab a cup of java or lemonade, put your feet up, and enjoy mingling with these ladies on the internet. Leave them a note on their blog and let them know you're a Home Educating Family reader! Most of all, have fun! Teisha Priest Stephenie McBride Jennifer McDonald Christy Kramer Shari Popejoy Anne Campbell Ann Hibbard  Heather Henriques  Jenny Herman Pssst...they have giveaways, too! Do you have a blog post that explains why you chose to homeschool? Leave your blog name and the link in a comment below.

I’ll never forget our first year of homeschooling. I sort of “fell” into homeschooling, and so, admittedly, I was not as well prepared as some of you dear readers will be. In fact, I was about as green as green could get—but I was trying—right down to the flag salute and scheduled recess time. Like many new homeschool moms, I was trying to imitate what I remembered about school. And the school that I attended as a child had a flag salute. So we did, too. As you are probably guessing, our first year was tricky. The neighbors thought we were crazy, my parents wondered out loud about my “ability” to teach our children, and I had no idea how to get dinner on the table and still teach math, reading, and science. Or, maybe I didn’t need to be teaching science to our second grader? The opinions on teaching science to second graders were mixed, after all. Can you relate? Oh, the things I worried about! I needed a class for homeschool rookies, but unfortunately, there were no such classes around. Homeschooling is the best decision we have ever made with regard to how we would educate our children. But I won’t lie to you—those first few years were especially challenging. If I could start again, I would do a few things differently. But even so, God has a way of working all things together for good as we trust him. Here are just a few of the many things he’s taught me over the past fifteen years: Education is Discipleship “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” (Luke 6:40) Education is discipleship. This simple sentence has become the mission statement of our homeschool. The Lord has taught us the simple truth about education through homeschooling. And the truth is that ALL education can be summed up in one word: discipleship. Because the Bible tells us that students become like their teachers, we know that our children are modeling us in every area of life. Luke 6:40 bears special meaning for homeschooling parents. It reminds us that no matter who is teaching our children, they are being discipled; and it compels us to examine our own lives, because our children are very likely going to be just like we are. The culture we live in has made academics the “main thing,” but I beg to differ. Academics pale in comparison to teaching our children what it means to be men and women who are sold out for Jesus Christ, ready to give an answer for the Hope that lies within them. Education is simply the opportunity to shape the hearts and minds of our children. There can be no greater goal than to teach our children to follow hard after Christ. Manner is More Important Than Method As a new homeschooler, I was bombarded with academic opportunities. Dozens of programs and curricula overwhelmed me at the homeschool conference. I studied my options, poring through homeschool catalogs and investigating different companies. Our coffee table overflowed with flyers and curriculum samples. If I could start over (which I can, each year, by the way!), I would have spent more time praying and preparing for the manner in which I would be known for teaching our children, rather the method I chose. At the end of the day, my kids remember much more about how I taught them, rather that what I taught them. As you begin homeschooling, take some time to think about how you want your kids to remember their homeschool years. I have learned that the relationships I foster with my children are much more important than the books I choose. Fruit Grows Over Time No one ever plants a fruit tree and expects mature fruit to appear overnight. Yet, for some reason, homeschool parents often feel pressure to “out-perform” in almost every area of parenting, even when children are very young! Your kids don’t need to be seen as geniuses. If your neighbors ask your fourth grader what the capital of Texas is and he answers “Oregon,” don’t panic! Remind yourself that good fruit takes time to grow. The results of good homeschooling take time to see. We can place undue pressure on ourselves and our children when we saddle ourselves with expectations that do not come from the Lord. See his expectations and live up to those. The rest either don’t matter, or will come in time. There will never be a teacher more devoted to the success of your child than you are. Child Training Trumps the A-B-Cs Is your child disobedient? Whining? Ungrateful? Rebellious? If so, then “real” school has begun. Training your child to be obedient is more important than teaching addition. Don’t be afraid to stop formal schooling to teach the greater lessons of life: obedience, respect, truthfulness, graciousness, and love. I have met many parents over the years who miss the true opportunity of homeschooling by focusing solely on academics. Their children suffer for it. The parents suffer too, but it’s usually later down the road. Consider Eli, who served as a priest in Israel. His unwillingness to discipline his sons brought dishonor to his family, and ultimately, grave punishment to his sons and himself. You will not have done your child any favors if he or she is fluent in three languages, but cannot speak a single one in a loving and respectful way. When we honor God’s ways first, the rest will follow. Learning Style Matters Take the time to discover both your primary learning style and the learning styles of your children. Moms who know their learning style have an easier time choosing curriculum and a far greater success rate in teaching their children the best way. Your preferred learning style will guide the way you learn, and it will greatly influence the way you teach! For example, I know that I am a visual learner. If I had taken the time to discover this earlier in my homeschooling, I would have avoided many of the curricula that I chose, because I would have known that I would probably not enjoy teaching it. Generally, you will find that you and your children fall into one of these learning styles:

• Visual (spatial): You prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding.

• Verbal (linguistic): You prefer using words, both in speech and writing.

• Physical (kinesthetic): You prefer using your body, hands, and sense of touch.

• Logical (mathematical): You prefer using logic, reasoning, and systems.

• Social (interpersonal): You prefer to learn in groups or with other people.

• Solitary (intrapersonal): You prefer to work alone and use self-study.

There are many books and websites dedicated to learning styles. Check them out! You’ll be glad you did.   It’s been many years since I took my first steps as a new homeschool mom. Today, we are preparing to give our second high school diploma to a young girl (our daughter) who never went to “regular” school. Like her sister before her, Sierra is ready. She’ll graduate in June from our homeschool, and as she does, she may catch a glimpse of two wide-eyed parents staring at her in a cap and gown … not because they can’t believe she’s graduating, but because they can’t believe it went by so fast. With five more children coming up, we are learning just how fast it goes—and how worth it the journey is.