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The Benefits of Homeschooling

The concept of homeschooling has been around for decades now, and it has become more popular in recent years for very good reason! Our family will be finishing up our sixth year of homeschooling this year. More and more families are choosing homeschooling as an alternative to traditional schooling for various reasons in the last few years. While there may be some challenges that come with homeschooling, it also provides many benefits for both children and parents alike. In this post, we’ll look at some of the many advantages of homeschooling your kids.

Here, I will list a handful of the benefits to homeschooling your children:

  1. Personalized learning experience

Homeschooling allows for a custom, personalized learning experience for your child. You can tailor the curriculum to your child’s learning style and interests. This means that your child will be able to learn at their own pace, and you can adjust the curriculum to meet their, and your, specific needs. This can lead to better learning outcomes and higher learning levels.

  1. Safe learning environment

One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling is the ability to provide a safe learning environment for your child. You’ll be able to control who your child interacts with, and you can ensure that they are not exposed to bullying, violence, negative peer pressure, or things that are against your family’s beliefs. This can create a positive and safe learning environment that fosters your child’s growth and development, reinforcing the things that you teach them that are important to you.

  1. More time for family

When you homeschool your child, you’ll have more time to spend with them. Many times, you and your kids are your best selves in the mornings after everyone has had a good night’s rest. Morning time with my kids has been the most rewarding times we share. This means that you’ll have more opportunities to bond, play, and learn together as a family too! You’ll also have more flexibility in your schedule, which means that you can plan more family activities and vacations. You get to set up the schedule that works well for your own family!

Overall, homeschooling provides many benefits for both children and parents. It allows for a customized learning experience for your child, provides a safe and nurturing learning environment, and gives you more time to spend with your family. There will come some challenges and trials with homeschooling at times, and it does take some sacrifice, but I wouldn’t choose for my kids to be educated any other way for anything despite these things.

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Christmas School 2022

I chose to do a whole month for a specific Christmas curriculum this year for the month of December. We chose to do a campfire curriculums Christmas unit study, they had a couple choices to choose from. It’s now well into January, and when I look back on the month of December and ask my kids what they thought I am pleasantly surprised. The curriculum we did involved a story of Christmas based on the shepherds experiences. It also had activities you could choose from and core subjects of math, science, and language to go with each day’s program. Not only did my kids enjoy what we were learning, but I Iearned a lot along with them! We learned about sound waves, how glass is made, and how to bake some new Christmas treats. I have the most fulfilled experience homeschooling my kids when we can learn new things alongside each other and I felt that month of Christmas school was a great example of this. Obviously, the day to day learning of math, English, and other subjects isn’t going to be something that we do together or that I learn new things from all the time, but if I can take moments of learning with my kids and provide more opportunities for all of us to learn something new, I’ll be happy! There is something very powerful and memorable about learning and growing alongside each other that I want to take full enjoyment from. Because of the Christmas school experience we had, I plan to implement more unit study learning from other units the campfire curriculums offer. What about you? Do you have any experiences with your homeschooling journey where you’ve experienced something similar? I’d love to hear you’re thoughts and experiences!

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Unexpected benefits from raising chickens

I have been interested in raising chickens as pets and for their eggs for quite awhile now. I never expected all that would result from this experience. We recently found ourselves in a very unique situation where we could actually make this happen. We moved into a guest house on some family property while we looked for a house. The move was pretty hard on our family as it was such a huge change moving from a big city and friends to a small town. The house we were living in was on some land so there was plenty of room for us to try our hand at raising some chickens. Wow, what a learning experience it has been and continues to be. If you never had chickens you would never know the crazy, quirky, and weird things that you’ll experience! I never realized how much personality that chickens have, but now I know and I can easily see why people love their chickens! We named our girls Agatha, Abigail, Virginia, Maia, Poppy, and Rosie. My boys, ages 12 and 10, and I have had so much fun with the chicks and we have been learning so much. Something crazy that we found out was that when the chicks are in the sunlight, they fall to one side and their wing goes up making them look dead, wow did this scare me the first time it happened! My friend told me that chickens like privacy when laying their eggs so she put curtains over the nesting boxes, we did and turns out it was necessary. They go in behind the curtain and are protected from the others pecking them while they lay. The “egg song” is one of the funniest things that still makes us laugh every time we hear it bellowing out from the coop each day. We now have our own home and our family, along with our hens and dogs, have settled in very nicely. The chickens actually ended up being what our family needed during this transition, they really brought us together, taught us a lot, and caused much laughter! I’m very thankful for these hens that have benefited our family in so many ways. Now we have fresh eggs each day too! If you are thinking of trying your hand at raising some chickens, if you have a setup that allows it, I strongly encourage you to give it a try! You might just be as surprised as I was at all the benefits that will come along the way!

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Choosing peace…

So many times recently, I have found myself letting fear speak to me. I know better and I haven’t agreed with fear but it’s been a fight to keep fear out. Fear is a very strong force and can instantly change you from stable to crazy. I have overcome a lot of fear in my life and I’m so thankful for this…but I know I still have a long ways to go! I’ll share this story as an example: at the beginning of this whole virus pandemic we’re in, I was discussing with my neighbor about how we were going to handle our kids playing together or not during this time. We got to talking about what was happening and what we had heard and by the time we were done I was so fearful I came inside and started crying. I shut all our curtains and sat and cried feeling completely uncertain and hopeless. Well, after a few minutes of this one of my boys walked in the room and was asking me about something and almost instantly I became clear headed and just fine. I looked at the closed blinds and thought back on this experience and literally had the thought, “what in the world was I thinking?” I felt crazy! I could clearly realize how strong the spirit of fear was that took over. I believe, and have believed for some time now, that fear is a spirit and definitely one you don’t want to partner or agree with. Even if you don’t believe fear is a spirit, you will agree it has a strong force that it carries. Healthy fear is different and is necessary, so listening to healthy fear is obviously good. It’s the unhealthy, paralyzing, “what if” fear that we don’t want to listen to…I regularly speak out and meditate on the 1 John 4:18 that says “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” and ask God to fill me with His perfect love to protect me from fear. I also am learning to not let the “what if” thoughts take over and to remember to pause and ask the Lord what He thinks about what’s going on. Has anyone else experienced how strong and overwhelming fear can instantly make you feel? I’d love to hear your experiences with fear and ways you’ve found that help you to keep fear out!

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The 3 P’s…

I have a hard time attempting to do anything that I feel I can’t do perfectly…this has really limited me for a long time. When my oldest son was a baby I remember hearing about a family in which the mom read a whole bunch of stories to her kids as their main educational tool, there was a picture i saw of her and her kids relaxing on the couch together with books around them. Something in me knew this was what I wanted for myself and my family. I remember resenting school growing up , I hated being stuck in the classroom when there was a huge, beautiful world outside the window waiting for me to explore and soak up the sunshine and fresh air! Deep down this desire would never leave, although I put my oldest and later, youngest sons into private school. For reasons I can hardly believe now, I didn’t think I had what it takes to homeschool my children. What I’m going to share here are the 3 huge obstacles, which all happen to start with the letter p, that kept me in so much bondage. The first I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, perfectionism. I thought in order to homeschool, or do so many other things in life, I had to do everything perfectly. The second p is performance, this expectation of myself told me I would absolutely have to perform in a way that showed me doing everything perfectly…oh my goodness this was a lot to carry! Last but definitely not least is people pleasing. Others’ expectations of me and how my husband and I were raising our boys and doing life, combined with the perfectionism and performance pressures I placed on myself made homeschooling way too out of reach for me to be able to do. My oldest son went to private school, preschool through 2nd grade, and my youngest, preschool and kindergarten. I ended up meeting a new friend at my church who homeschooled her two boys. She talked about her homeschool and the reasons she chose to do it and I knew I wanted to go ahead and try it. This friend presented her resources and plans in a way that made it sound simple. Of course, homeschooling is not simple but if you choose to let it be a journey of growing together and relationship focused, it feels natural and gives a deep meaning to learning. I was scared but we went for it. I’m not going to lie…the first year was challenging as we transitioned from “school” to “homeschool”. I learned that for us trying to do traditional school at home did not work. We’ve been homeschooling now for 3 years and I’ve learned so much from each year and make changes and improvements to our schedules and plans as we need. I never would have dreamed that I could homeschool but now I’m so satisfied and happy with it, it’s even better than I could have known when I saw that picture of the mom reading with her kids. My boys and I enjoy reading out loud together and reading alone. We read on the patio, in the front yard in the shade of our tree, in the living room comfortable on the couch, and around the dining table together and it truly is wonderful time spent together. Also, I never was much of a reader before homeschooling but in the last three years I’ve read so many books, I read for enjoyment now! We are on the homeschooling journey of constant learning together and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My hope is that this blog encourages you to realize you can do it, whatever it is you’ve not tried from listening to fears and hesitation. My guess would be that one or all of these p words I’ve talked about have something to do with you not doing what you’re called to do. YOU ARE AN OVERCOMER, YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN DO ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR MIND TO! Be blessed!

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Boundaries! They are life changing…

Until recently, I never really heard anything about boundaries, or I may have but never paid attention! My husband and I got married young and started having children. About the time my kids were 4 years and 2 years old I met a new friend, this friend would introduce me to some major truths I had never heard of. I had the view that keeping everyone, as far as family and friends, happy and pleased with me was what my goal should be, to always keep the peace. When my husband and I would make a choice other than what was wanted by others, there would be confrontation that was very unhealthy. I’m thankful to realize this now since my friend shared about what boundaries are and about a book called just that, “Boundaries,” by Dr. Henry Cloud. I read this book and felt so liberated in regard to myself, my family, and our feelings, needs, and wants! I couldn’t believe this was actually healthy and that in many ways, how I felt was actually healthy and right…I’ve been on and will be on the journey to healthier boundaries and more freedom always, but I am extremely thankful for how far I’ve come over the last ten years! I love the fact that the more I work on my own health in any area of life, the more it transfers to my family. The things I conquer will be the starting line for my kids to be able to go so much further by my age!

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Hello!

This blog I’m writing will share stories and information for things that have to do with faith, family, homeschool, and chickens! I’ve learned a lot about these things over the years, I still have much to learn but I believe I may be able to help someone else with my stories of things I’ve walked through and continue to walk through each day! There is always so much to learn every day, given the name of this blog. I hope reading some of the blogs I write will be used in some way for your good and help bring hope and breakthroughs for your life and family.:-)