Homeschooling Saves Tax Dollars

A mom in your neighborhood is preparing lessons to teach her children. In the minute it takes you to read this, moms all over the USA are using their "freedoms" and investing their own money in their child's literacy, prosperity, and future. This mom does this because she knows government run schools are not working anymore. She is saving millions in tax dollars by homeschooling her child.

Pray for a homeschool mom, love on a homeschool mom, and appreciate a homeschool mom!

I love this sign!!

Homeschooling from your bookshelves? It's possible come see how!.

Time to get ready for the new school year!!! Unless you school year round like us.
Well I'm all for frugal!
Most of us homeschoolers have enough materials on hand to educate a small army...lol.
This summer go through your bookshelves and make 3 piles:

THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY

Throw Away Pile: The first pile is just plain old junk, stuff that is used up, scribbled on, torn up etc. Get RID OF IT!! Including that workbook you bought on Ebay that smells like nasty musty YUCK!!

Keep Pile: This is stuff that you can use, organize it by subject, I like to buy magazine holders from the Dollar Tree or use cereal boxes with the top and side cut out and some cute wrapping paper to cover them. They are very durable if you put some clear packing tape on the bottoms. Use these for booklets, workbooks and things like that. Put subjects on them and on free days or Mom is sick days, tell our son to go and pick out an activity and spend an hour working on it. It makes learning fun because he can pick what he wants to do. Jot down what you have and later on in the summer when you really start planning out the coming school year you can see what you have to work with.

The sell/giveaway/trade pile is for stuff that is still usable, but you don't need it anymore or it did not work for your child. I have gathered up enough stuff to sell that I was able to buy some new goodies at the homeschool convention that I might not have otherwise been able to afford. The giveaway items are things that are still in usable condition that you can bless another homeschool family with. PaperBackSwap is another great way to get rid of books you no longer need. Check them out to see how they work. Or read my blog post on how it works.

By looking through what you have, you can make a plan of action for your coming school year. I am betting that everyone has at least 1 full subject that they can teach this next school year without having to buy a thing. Take some time and get digging around, see what you can find to
THROW AWAY
KEEP
SELL/GIVEAWAY

Post on here to let us know what you find!
Moe

Popular Blog Posts...Finger Pointer Thingy...

I am really surprised that this is one the most popular blog post!! It's very near and dear to my heart, but I was thinking that most people stopped by (over 100,000 of you!) to get the yummy recipes! But I guess I’m wrong. Here is on of the most popular blog post.

POKING FUN IN THE HOMESCHOOL

 With the Homeschooled Young Man going into his junior year of high school in the fall, I've been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking back on our homeschool years.

We have been downsizing our homeschool materials for an upcoming used curriculum sale and it has brought back some fond memories of days gone by.

Just today as I was sitting in my rocking chair, a chair that holds many fond memories (our church nursery was remodeled and they bought brand new rocking chairs and gave away the old ones. They were delivered to my house and what a blessing it was to sit down in one, pick up the phone and call my out of state friend and say "Guess what I am doing? I am sitting in one of the rocking chairs that we both rocked our babies in!" It was a precious moment, remembering those days, for her 19 and 16 years ago, for me, just 15 years ago.

Ok, rabbit trail here; back to the title of this blog post Poking Fun In The Homeschool...lol.

Finger Pointer Thingy

My son walked up to me this morning and poked me in the side with that finger pointer thingy. I am very ticklish and I was just giggling like a schoolgirl as he kept poking me with it. The more I laughed the more he poked. I was not so much giggling at the tickling as I was at not having seen that finger pointer thingy in a very long time! He came across it as he was digging through his closet the other day.

I remember the day I bought that Finger Pointy Thingy, we were at a Scholastic Book Fair sale and I was buying my teaching supplies, like a real teacher don't ya know? Hahaha, it was one of our first years of homeschooling, ya know the one where you have the Homeschool Momma jean dress on. Actually, I wore a cute denim apron that my Mom decorated up with buttons that had pencils, a school bell, books, and cute stuff like that sewn on. Watch out, we had the student desk, a decorated classroom, my student wrote with feet flat on the floor for penmanship, pets were banished from the schoolroom until school was over. Ya, you're gettin' it now! lol. Yes, I was one of those 8:20am-3:00pm homeschoolers in the beginning. We even had school colors and a school mascot, we were Home of the Pugs!

I had big plans for that Finger Pointer Thingy, it was going to keep my boy's eyes focused on the board, it was going to keep him engaged, and it was going to force information into his little brain! I was going to fill that bucket (child) up as full as I could with information that he could spit out on a test!! You bet ya! He was going to learn!

Long about October of that same year, the Homeschooled Young Man asked if he could do his history on the couch with the dog, I told him as long as he got his work done. Then next thing you know he was under the kitchen table (his all-time favorite place) on the floor with the dog doing science. A short time later, he discovered fort making with sheets, blankets, and kitchen chairs to study in. These shenanigans nearly ended our homeschool career before it really got off the ground when Homeschool Dad saw what was going on. Because you know, homeschooling dad's think that learning can only be done in a straight backed chair, a desk and feet flat on the floor.

Over time I sold the desk, took off my cute denim apron (I still have it), took down the classroom decorations and started HOME SCHOOLING. That is school at home, or better known in the teenage years as car schooling since we live in the middle of nowhere and I am driving the Homeschooled Young Man back and forth to job shadowing, 4-H, hospitals, doctor's offices, the medical school, and volunteering. We just pack up the schoolbooks, pile into the car and off we go! His chemistry book seems to be intriguing to many doctors and starts up some interesting conversations with them. They have shown him apps that they still have on their phones for the Periodic Table and chat with him about their own struggles in O Chem.

After attending my first homeschool conference, I also realized that teaching is not simply filling a bucket with information that can be spit out on to a test. That one really rang my bell.

My homeschool décor has also changed; I have cute laminated quotes and pictures all around our homeschool bookshelves. They perk me up on a long day and get me through the tough times.

The picture below is from WWW.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com I've had it for years on my refrigerator and no matter how bad my day is, I can look at it and just laugh, I don't know why it makes me feel happy, but it is just so funny!

You can see how our homeschool has evolved over time, changed and morphed into something wonderful and unique to our family, now do you see why I was giggling so hard when being poked with the Finger Pointer Thingy? It is amazing how a little Finger Pointy Thingy can bring back so many memories.



Gluten Free Grilled Rosemary Pork Chops

Just in time for grilling! Gluten Free Grilled Rosemary Pork Chops recipe can be found over at the Whole Food Mom on a Budget blog. She has lots of yummy looking recipes, not all are gluten free, but most could be easily adapted with a few small changes.

We don't have the grill ready to go so I think I will make these on the stove. YUM!
Enjoy!
Moe