Great news! As we travel home from vacation today we also have the thrill of traveling over to Simple Homeschool, a phenomenal source of encouragement and inspiration for home-educators everywhere. Jamie Martin (Steady Days) and Tsh Oxenreider (Organized Simplicity) keep things running over there, and it’s such a joy to join them for today. Will you hop on over and join us as well?
{Even if you don’t homeschool you may still enjoy a little blast from my 1985 past … My only regret is that I don’t have a picture. We could’ve really had a laugh…}
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The 1985 fall cover of Teaching Home magazine features a smiling family of four together on the couch reading a book on space exploration. The five-year-old daughter grins, trying not to giggle, remembering the promise of ice cream on the way home.
I still remember choosing orange sherbet.
I didn’t know we were educational pioneers, I just knew we had a great thing going. While everyone else was at school my brother and I explored the woods and picked blueberries and visited museums and rode bikes for hours on end. My mom made every moment a teachable moment, instilling in me a love for learning and cultivating curiosity and creativity. She taught me to see, to notice, to think. And most of all, to care.
But now I’m the mom, and the tricky part of having such a phenomenal homeschool experience is that my memories are idealistic and dream-like. They stand in sharp contrast to the somewhat lackluster homeschooling that takes place in my present suburban life. While I remember hours spent by the wooded creek near our home, catching crawdads and water skippers, my children’s version is sugar ants and a garden hose trickling down the driveway.
Some days I have to ask, Can I really string these ordinary days into an excellent education? … (Read the rest here…)