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Overwhelmed Homeschool Mom? Here's One Thing That Helped Me - by Jan L. Burt

 Homeschooling is a journey.  A beautiful, challenging, and often overwhelming journey down a long path. So many moms find themselves asking, "Am I doing this right?" If you have ever asked yourself that question, or if you feel stressed, overwhelmed, uncertain or downright exhausted, know that you are not alone.  In this post, I'm going to share one thing that helped me during my super-overwhelmed stage of life as a homeschool mom. And I hope I can share some encouragement, too.  Sometimes homeschool moms need a boost to help us keep going, because homeschooling is tough, it's a long-haul road, and it certainly isn't for the faint of heart. Your children are your students, and they stay right there in your home when the school day is done. This constant connection makes homeschooling the unique enterprise that it is, but constant connection can be taxing for moms. It's a full-time calling that requires dedication. And it can easily take over every aspect of y...
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Important Information About Getting Started with Homeschooling (from 25-year homeschool mom Jan L. Burt))

 So, you're considering homeschooling and have a few questions.  Hopefully this post can answer some of those! Getting Started: Yup, homeschooling feels pretty daunting at first. But keep in mind that with the right tools and resources and a healthy mindset, this form of education can be a tremendous blessing for you and your child. It's a unique opportunity to tailor your children's education to their individual needs and interests. And that is a pretty amazing opportunity, if you think about it! Getting started involves knowing your individual state's legal requirements for homeschooling families. HSLDA has a pretty comprehensive guide to each state's laws and standards, so consider taking a look at that site for more info. (I'll link it at the bottom of this post.)  You may need to submit notification of your intent to your local school district. There may be some curriculum standards that you will want to be aware of. For example, when my children were in hi...
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What's the End Goal for Your Homeschooling Journey?

 Is everything you do about your children's education? Or maybe you focus primarily on their interests in order to aid them in building their future and possibly their career. Maybe you just want your kids to be emotionally stable. Your end goal may be helping them get into a certain college or university or program. It could be an intentional focus on sports due to their athletic abilities (or any other myriad of activities wherein they excel).  None of those is wrong. Lots of parents choose home education for reasons such as these.  But as I reflect on my own five children and our 25 years of homeschooling, I know for sure that their character and their love for the Lord were the things I did right in focusing on, while simultaneously being the areas I wish I had spent more time, energy and focus on. It's a coexisting of two things in the same space; we did it well, and we should have done it better.  Some of their deepest struggles may have been lessened had I, th...
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The Great Halloween Controversy (& Why It Matters for Christian Homeschoolers)

  A few days ago, while I was out running errands, I saw a house (in a fairly nice neighborhood) with seasonal (read that: Halloween themed) "decorations" in their yard.  ... Okay, before I even get going with this post, I have to hit "pause" & state for the record that the word "decorations" feels wrong when what I saw was a means of glorifying death & very macabre ... As a mom of five now adult children who homeschooled for 25 years, every now and again I get a bit reflective and do a "rear-view mirror cross-examination" of things we did in our family that I would do differently if given the chance. One of those things is the way we "celebrated" Halloween.  We did all the things. Went to the pumpkin patch , did the corn mazes , carved the pumpkins, decorated the house with "creepy" things, let the kids pick (or design and create) their costumes, attended harvest parties , church events (and hosted a lot of church ...
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15 Bible Verses to Pray for Your Children by Jan L. Burt

I'm a Christian mom who homeschooled her kids. All five of them are adults now, and while I'm not actively homeschooling anymore, there is one aspect of parenting that has not changed since they all grew up and flew the coop.  I still pray for my children daily . And over the years, with the increase in praying that happened as my children went off to college and were far from home (952 miles from home in one case...), I have only grown more and more convinced that God moves and responds when we pray. His promises are completely true, but how could they not be when the One whose name is Faithful and True, the One who cannot lie and has never, ever failed to keep every single one of the promises He has made, is the One making said promises? Is the One listening when this mother prays?  And so, in this post, I'm going to talk about praying God’s promises over your children.  There are many definitions in varied dictionaries for the word “ revival ”, including:  the co...
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