Encouraging Moms Who Homeschool

Not a super-duper long post today.

Just sharing a Facebook Live that I did recently.





I hope it blesses you and reminds you of something amazingly good...like how much the Lord has planned for you :)


And be sure to find me on Facebook if you'd like to see more stuff like this ~~

All Things Homeschool

AND

Titus 2 Discipleship With Jan L. Burt


Lord bless you today as you lean in big time to the promises of God for you!

Have you been homeschooling for a while?

Or are you relatively new to the homeschooling world?

However you answer those questions, this blog post is for you. And let it be known that even if you have only been homeschooling for a week, that still counts as “a while” in the homeschool community!

You may have noticed that there is a TON of reading material aimed at encouraging new homeschoolers, but those resources sort of seem to dwindle away for those who have been at it for a decade or so. I think that is because those of us who are “veterans” work hard to encourage the new homeschooling families… But the truth is, we long-term, older homeschooling mothers need a hefty dose of encouragement on a regular basis as well!

That’s just one reason The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Homeschooling with Heart blog is so wonderful! It gives homeschoolers of all ages and stages the encouragement so desperately needed! One of my life goals is to encourage homeschoolers. This lifestyle m…

Take a deep breath…


Now slowly exhale.


Ready or not, homeschooling mother, it… is… APRIL…


For many of us who are homeschooling, April is truly our make or break month.




You can, with one quick glance at your homeschool bookcase, determine exactly which subjects are on the verge of completion for the year…and which ones are on the verge of imploding.
Whatever curriculum you are mostly done with will most likely be completed by the year’s end. It is basically a done deal, and all your hard work these last months is about to pay off. The celebratory shout as you close the cover one last time on that book you have been opening nearly every day, since last August… Oh, that’s a feeling only homeschoolers truly get to revel in!


(Let me pause here and briefly share a tidbit of information to encourage you, my dear fellow homeschooler: Interestingly enough, while public schools typically consider a textbook or a course “complete” once they have worked through 80% of the material, most…

Hello to all my fellow mothers who homeschool!

I have to tell you, as the calendar rolled from 2018 to 2019, I could hardly believe it. How did another year pass by so quickly?

I don't ever get used to the speed at which life travels. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I need to be aware of the days and weeks, and feeling like time is flying by helps me to refocus, slow down, and be present in the "right now".

I have a couple of things to mention, but I also wanted to share about a GIVEAWAY that I am going to host here on my blog.

I am giving away one paperback copy of the devotional book "Whispers of Hope: 10 Weeks of Devotional Prayer" by Beth Moore.



This book sells for $14.99 at bookstores and on Amazon. And one person will be mailed a physical copy as soon as this GIVEAWAY comes to an end!



All you need to do to enter is A) post a comment on this blog post to tell me what you are most excited about OR are most dreading in 2019 or B) find me on …

You're reading this blog post. So you are most likely a homeschooling mom. (I'm a genius for deducing that...)

But what else are you?

Don't just give the pat answer(s) that come to mind immediately. Really THINK on this for a sec...

What are you, lady? Besides a mom who homeschools her kids, what exactly are you?

Have I got you feeling frustrated yet?

If so, GOOD! Then I have done my job today and made you look a bit deeper than you usually do. And maybe you saw some things you really didn't like when you took that deeper look...

But maybe, just maybe, you saw at least one thing that you really & truly love.



I clearly recall a particular day when I realized that I had sort of, well, lost some of the best parts of me. And that was kinda scary to admit to myself. I mean, what do you do when you realize you are living in this body but you somehow misplaced a key part of what makes that body uniquely you?!


I may have had a bit of an internal freak out.

And then I start…

If you know me (that is, know me in real life versus the blogging world) then you probably know that I am none too fond of the self-help mentality. It's not that I have anything at all against people in need of help; I put myself at the top of the list of people I know who need help. But the notion that I can somehow fix myself ~ let alone fix anyone else! ~ is a complete misnomer.  It's a continual cycle of "work harder" followed by gut-wrenching disappointment. And there's a reason this is the cycle of self-help...it's because we cannot fix ourselves! That's God's job, and He's exceptionally good at it.



Having said all that, I'd like to share about something that we moms do have the ability to change for the better. Our attitudes. I'll go so far as to say that I feel many homeschool mamas could benefit from an attitude adjustment (me included!). We're often so tired, over-worked, and spread thin that we succumb to a bad a…

Today's post is a short one (primarily to share a video with more details about The Once-A-Year Homeschool Planner  ~  An All-in-One, All-Student, All-Subject Planning System  ~ click on the link below to watch it!)  BUT I did want to let you know an easy way to KEEP MAMA HAPPY, whether or not you end up using the planner.

Here's the deal: Keeping up with planning and grading can be really difficult, especially when you are home educating several kiddos at the same time. It's easy for the homeschooling mother to feel overwhelmed and even discouraged...and a mama who feels that way is probably not simultaneously super-duper happy.

Here's a tried & true idea that has helped me avoid the overwhelm & discouragement: Plan in "batches" & grade student work every... single... day! (Not sure how to batch plan? My next post is going to be all about that topic!)



Don't just roll over and go belly-up by giving in to the commonality among homeschoolers. P…

If you are homeschooling your children during the high school years, you want to do it well.

And that includes creating a high-quality transcript. As in, the very BEST homeschool high school transcript.

In this post, I'm not going to give you a transcript template or form. And I'm not going to recommend or review a high school transcript service or provider for homeschoolers (although I have done that in a prior post ~ and I will link to that post below).

What I am going to do is share with you a session I created covering this topic in great detail for a homeschool conference. You can watch the presentation in it's entirety, no strings attached, for free (and it was not "for free" via the conference!)

It's technically about electives in the homeschool ~ but I covered a lot of ground, including dual enrollment, transcripts, what counts as credit for college, how to calculate credit hours, and more.

So if that sounds like something that you would like to check…

How to manage the daily maintenance and running of your home while maintaining a successful homeschool is one of the greatest challenges the home educating mother will face. It's not just about time management when you live this unique lifestyle; I would venture to say it's actually about maintaining the sanity of everyone who lives and learns within the four walls known as both "HOME" and "SCHOOL".

I am the mom of five wonderful children. Which means that we had seven people and three dogs living in the same space. Which was the same space we were using for our children's education on a daily basis. And as an average middle-class family living on one income, our house was for sure a home and most certainly not above average (read that: we did not have space for a homeschool room that was separate from the kitchen table...)

Nobody knows how to make a whole lot fit into not a whole lot of space like a homeschooler, am I right? But managing to fit a schoo…