Truth in the Trenches

I don’t have it all together, scratch that… I sometimes downright suck at this whole thing. I have whole season where I SUCK at homeschooling or being fun mom or cleaning the house or making a home-cooked dinner. I am stretched thin you guys and it is apparent in the state of my home if [...]

*audio error is fixed!* When I tell people I was a homeschooled child, most people are full of questions. The regular world is shocked, because it isn’t something they ever expected. They seem to think that if you were homeschooled, they will be able to pick you out of a crowd. You’ll be weird, socially [...]

Homeschooling is never EVER perfect. It is chaotic, messy, fun, frustrating, overwhelming, exciting and outright adventurous every. single. day. There are no two days that are exactly alike and there is no magic formula. There is no perfect curriculum, no perfect routine, no perfect approach. Sometimes we try SO hard to get it all right, [...]

Our homeschool day is kind of like a living organism. I have to tend it, I have to be gentle and careful with it, I have to change and adapt and move with it. I can’t create a one-size-fits-all routine or schedule because it never fits for very long. I don’t have all the answers [...]

I have a confession, I am a curriculum hoarder. Ask my husband, he’s ready to lose his mind over the amount of books I have in my basement. But I have (what I feel is) a valid excuse… I am also a curriculum reviewer. Companies send me curriculum to try with my kids and review [...]

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, homeschooling is hard! It is, in fact, one of the greatest challenges I have ever faced: more challenging than cleaning my house or doing a huge work project or even changing my husband’s mind (as if THAT were possible). So many mom’s I talk to feel like [...]

Curious to know more about a morning basket? In today’s podcast episode I’ll share with you what a morning basket is, what it can look like and an example of what kind of books I have in mine. The idea is very Charlotte Mason in it’s approach, with reading and discussion being the primary point. It [...]

I don’t know how I can be such an avid planner in one sense and yet in another be so terrible at sticking with said plans. But I have learned over the years that making no plan at all often gives me permission to do nothing at all. We are much more effective when I [...]

Here’s the truth, we all work so hard to make sure that we “appear” that we have it all together. When we have a friend coming over, we clean our house and have a shower and straighten our hair and put on makeup. By the time company has arrived, we have spent the whole day [...]

I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all just trying to do our darndest to fit everything in. We all want the very best for our children, but let’s face it, we’re really just trying to survive right now! So I approach you from the trenches of survival, I yell across the battlefield of our respective homeschools [...]

Unschooling gets a bad rep and it kind of drives me nuts. I am not an unschooler but I love the philosophy behind it and I am working towards finding the freedom and flexibility to adopt this homeschool style. It has the potential to offer our kids so much more of a tailored education, to [...]

Traditional homeschooling is a style of education that closely resembles the school system. In homeschool circles, it is often referred to as “playing school” because you try to mimic the look, feel, and rhythm of a regular school day in your home. It can work wonderfully for some moms and children, but for a good [...]

Join me in a series about the different homeschool styles! In today's podcast we'll talk about the Charlotte Mason Method and what that looks like!

In today’s podcast episode, I managed to drag my (very tired) husband down to my studio in the wee hours of the morning to interview him. Because he was educated in the traditional sense (through the public school) and I was educated at home, trying to blend our styles and preconceived notions about our family [...]

Homeschool mom’s wear a lot of hats and trying to get everything done is exhausting and sometimes just entirely out of reach. One of the most common questions I get asked is “How do you do it all?” I realized that people see pictures and videos of us homeschooling, they see my very obvious presence [...]