Planning is an essential part of homeschooling. As the years go on or the more children you have planning is how you make it through the day. You need to plan for each child along with planning for your day to day life so dinner is on the table and clean laundry in the drawers. Homeschooling is a wonderful adventure but it does not have to be chaotic and overwhelming. The solution comes in the form of a planner that is easy to use and more importantly that you will use. I used to purchase a planner every year for … Continue reading →

Life is more complicated than ever before. Most homes have two incomes and if not are caught in a constant struggle of making ends meet. Kids are involved in sports, music, social activities, art classes and anything else they can be signed up for to ensure they are fit for society. Our homes are filled with computers, laptops, furniture, books, curriculum, magazines, toys, gadgets, and everything new or sentimental we cannot throw away. Our lives are filled with obligations to family, church, friends and finding a way to keep our heads above water. We are all busy and we are … Continue reading →

My struggle is organization. I have a 7th grader, a 5th grader, a Kindergartener, a toddler, one dog, one husband and a home. That is a lot of work by itself but when you add in homeschooling, writing, blogging, writing unit studies, and tackling a mountain of laundry life can seem overwhelming. Homeschooling alone is a full time job. So anything that can help keep me on track, sane and organized catches my eye. However, I also need organizational tools that are easy to find, easy to manage and basically in my face. This is where Mayfair Lane comes into … Continue reading →

I am acquiring a shelf of learning resources. I’m sure that many of them are high-priced and fancy. These are high quality learning resources. Want to know where I’ve been getting them? Garage sales and friends. A friend was having a “get the stuff out of my house” giveaway, and she is a homeschooler. I took an armload. We have also been frequenting garage sales on the weekend and searching for manipulatives for math and activities that will build small motor skills, since this is an area that my daughter needs to work on. Yesterday we hit the jackpot. We … Continue reading →

I have spent the better part of the last two days in back-to-homeschool mode. We had a busy and productive summer working on problem areas, and even managed to get in a bit of travel by taking a working vacation for one of my daughters pageant activities. This year it meant looking a long list of syllabuses and determining what each child needed for each class. With the kids beginning the 7th and 9th grade this year, most of their learning will come in the form of classes outside the home. Their schedule this year resembles being in college. Many … Continue reading →

Question: How much time do you spend on each required subject every day? I’m having trouble scheduling my year and am wondering what other moms who have kids my children’s age, do. I’m happy to answer this question with the following disclaimer: what works for me, probably doesn’t work for someone else and vice versa. I think that one needs to consider the child in question, his age, how he learns etc. However, I will attempt to offer some thoughts and practical suggestions on scheduling that will allow you to glean something to put into your own routine. Math I … Continue reading →

Now that I’m officially homeschooling two and have three more that are sort of ‘tagging’ along, I’ve been making major revisions and evaluating my previous schedule to try and include more of my children in more of the activities. Mind you, it’s not that I feel my younger three need to homeschool. . .but they really want to do something more formal than what we’ve been doing and so a compromise of sorts has been born. One aspect of this new ‘compromised’ schedule is the first day of the month. The first day of every month, I’ve decided to set … Continue reading →

Today I decided to take a look back. I do this every year for several reasons, but namely, it makes me feel like we’re going somewhere. It’s really easy to get “stuck” when I look at the tiny steps my children take daily. It’s only when we look backwards, that we can see how far we’ve come and how all those little baby steps add up to one big leap. I was going to post a blog on what I thought about my year and then I decided that you probably don’t care. Or if you do, you shouldn’t. You … Continue reading →