Homeschooling 101: Where Do I Start?

Several weeks ago my inbox was flooded with messages from frantic parents. The message was always something like this …

I think I’m going to have to homeschool this year. Can you help me figure out what to do?

So I put together a survey, and did a short Zoom call. Would you believe that up to this point, I had successfully avoided using Zoom during #corona?? But this seemed like a good reason to give in and go virtual. With parents all across America trying to figure out how to best set up their home environments for learning, I felt like maybe I had a few things to share. I promised to share much of that information in a blog series, so today I bring you Part One, with many other posts to follow this week.

I’m no expert in homeschooling, but after 4 years of trying to figure things out, I have learned a thing or two, and am happy to share what I know with those of you feeling overwhelmed and out of sorts. Whether you are feeling like you want to go all in with homeschooling, or your kids will be home for Virtual/Remote Learning, I hope this series of posts can give you some helpful hints and help you feel more at peace.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Homeschooling 101: Where Do I Start?

First of all, take a deep breath. You can do this. Remember that we are living in a unique time in our life. This is a historical time - we’ve never lived through something like this. Some of our great-grandparents may have experienced something similar back during the Spanish Flu of 1918, but the world was vastly different then. This is a temporary time in our lives. We will come out of it changed, for sure, but this year (or two, depending on how long it takes), will not ruin our children’s education. Or their socialization. So stop what you’re doing, and just breathe.

One of the best pieces of advice someone gave me 4 years ago was to not get caught up in the many years of education ahead of us, but to simply focus on making a decision for the most immediate school year. Every year circumstances change, and educational needs of each child change, and there may be a time when homeschooling doesn’t fit for one or both of our children. So we give ourselves a lot of flexibility to change things as needed. Many of you are looking at homeschooling for just one year, due to COVID-19, and this advice is crucial for you. Don’t stress about your child’s educational plan past this year. Focus only on this year ahead of you.

Now that you’re laser focused on just the 2020-2021 school year, sit down and list out your priorities and vision for your year together. Remember, these are YOUR priorities. The choice you make is 100% okay - this is a no judgment zone! Some questions to think about:

Do you have to work while also schooling your child? Do you have to go into an office? Do you have to work at home, and if so, is it a flexible schedule - or do you have certain hours?

If you have to work do you have people that can help while you work?

Does Virtual Learning through the school system mean your kids will be on the computer 5 hours a day instead of in a classroom? If so, is that something you’re okay with?

Do you have the freedom to forget about standardized education for a year and create something different?

Do you have babies or toddlers to care for in addition to school-aged children?

What do you want your days to look like? Do you want freedom in your days (and do you have the ability to create that freedom), or is it better for your family to have a stricter routine/schedule each day?

Once you’ve thought about your family priorities, sit down and create a Vision for your homeschool year. We choose to homeschool, year after year, because we want a different lifestyle than the one traditional schooling forces upon us. This year, many of us are forced into a different lifestyle, so if you have the freedom to stay home with your kids and a work schedule that can be flexible, I encourage you to think of this year as a year of living intentionally together. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to create a year of learning and a year of memories that you can look back on as a special time together - even in the midst of turmoil around our world.

I know I know …. but you’re worried about whether or not your kids will be able to transition back to public/private school after this year, right? Trust me on this … they will be fine. There are tons of studies that show that kids who are homeschooled transition just fine into a regular school setting - and many times they actually go back to school ahead of their peers. And besides that, listen to me when I say this …. this is ONE year. You are not going to completely screw up your kids’ education in one year.

Yes, you can do this. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be so rewarding in the end. I’m going to walk you through creating one of the most memorable years of your children’s childhood  - so take a step back, and just breathe. Nothing worth doing well is ever easy.

Today’s Assignments:

1. List your Priorities

2. Create a Vision

Then come back here tomorrow and we’ll talk about creating a schedule for your year of learning together.

More Homeschooling 101 here.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.

The Clothesline

This post was originally published in April 2015 when we lived in the cutest little bungalow in Atlanta. Since we left that house, I've longed for a new home that had the same feeling of home. This weekend, we hung up our clothesline in our new home on the North Shore of Massachusetts. It's funny ... that simple act of hanging a clothesline ... it feels symbolic in some ways. No longer are we wandering along a road, searching for a place to hang our hats. We are finally settled. And it feels so so good. Although our house isn't 100 years old, and there's no road that runs directly beside our new clothesline, so much of this post rings as true today as it was 3 years ago. And yes ... the picture is new :-).

I stand outside basking in the sunshine while I hang clothes on the line. Get a pin, hang it up, get a pin, hang it up. There’s something so calming about doing the laundry this way.

It’s such a sensory experience. I feel the dampness of the clothes as I pull them from the basket and put them on the line. I smell the fragrance of detergent and fabric softener. I hear cars driving, people walking, and the occasional airplane overhead. I see the many different colors in the clothes we wear daily.

And it’s no different in the taking them down. The dampness is gone – replaced with warm dryness, and sometimes that stiffness that only the sun can give. The smell has shifted to the clean smell of sunshine. We hear the siren of a fire engine; the neighbors’ dogs barking as people walk by. The sun is so warm you can almost taste it – making you long for a very cold glass of water.

As I do this work – the work of hanging up our laundry – the little ones play around me. Throwing sand out of the sandbox, picking leaves and flowers off the plants that have been patiently waiting  for the arrival of spring, inspecting the world in only the way tinies can.

People walking by sometimes stop to chat, commenting on the clothesline or the flowers we just put in. Sometimes it’s a familiar face, other times it’s a complete stranger just finding their way to their car parked down the street.

I can’t help but think back to when the house was built, over 100 years ago. Some mother did just as I now do, grab a pin, hang it up, grab a pin, hang it up. Talking to the neighbors as they walk by. Watching her little ones run around in this very same yard – I can’t help but wonder what it looked like back then.

In just a few short weeks, we have made doing laundry this way a part of our life. I find myself checking the weather at night to see if there will be sunshine to dry my clothes the next day. Hanging clothes up on the line even on cloudy days, in hopes that even a little bit of fresh air will do a tiny bit of good. I get disappointed if a day goes by and that little clothesline of mine is empty.

It’s funny how something so simple – and seemingly old fashioned – can bring such a smile to our faces. This business of hanging up clothes forces me to slow down and enjoy my surroundings. We’re all so much happier when we are outside; it just makes sense to do the daily business of life outside. The things of nature – the trees, the wind, the birds, the squirrels, the neighborhood owls – they all remind us that we are just one tiny part of the vast world that we live in.

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

Diving in to Homeschooling

When we first decided to Homeschool, I had no idea what it would look like for us. When we did Homeschool Preschool, I bought a curriculum that I only sort of liked. I never loved it - it never felt like it had much flow to it - and I always felt disjointed and off base. I didn't decide to homeschool because of some deep educational philosophy - I decided to homeschool because it simply felt like that's what God was calling us to. I had read many books over the very early years of parenting, and traditional school just didn't seem to jive with the kind of parents we had been striving to be. I can't really put words around it in any other way - it was something that had been on my heart for years, and was a feeling I just couldn't shake. When I told a dear friend that, she said Then Crystal, I think you have to listen to that.

Now I understand how that argument can be challenging for some. I guess it's all too often that parents use "But God called me to it" as a reason for homeschooling - when really what they want is to keep their children from the world. There are too many cases of child abuse and neglected disguised as "God called me to." But I do believe God calls some of us to a life of homeschooling - and I had come to a place where I felt like I should really start listening.

I started questioning friends who homeschool on how they knew it was the right decision for them. As I heard their answers, I felt this deep gut truth ... that homeschool was the life God was calling us to. It probably helped that Kindergarten at our local public school costs $400/month in our new town - and that's $400 that we don't really have. So I informed my husband that I wanted to homeschool for Kindergarten and see how it went. He agreed that it was the right choice for now - and that we would reassess for First Grade.

And then we moved. And God gave me this amazing group of women who homeschool based on the educational philosophy of an old British lady named Charlotte Mason. I had never heard of Charlotte Mason until I met these ladies - but when they invited me to be part of their study group, I eagerly said "YES!" I was probably 5 pages into the book we were studying when I said to my husband, "I found it! These are all the reasons I want to homeschool! She put words around it all ... here it is!!! It's right here! This is what I've been feeling for so long!"

After a significant amount of reading, podcast-listening, and researching, we've decided that homeschooling based on Charlotte Mason's philosophies are the perfect fit for us as a family - not only for Kindergarten, but for the early years of education. Her educational philosophy meshes quite well with the pace of life we have tried to live for several years now, and it has been a breath of fresh air to find other homeschooling families with similar philosophies and lifestyles.

Charlotte Mason believed that formal lessons shouldn't start until a child was 6. The months of October - December consisted a lot of re-orienting ourselves to a new town and yet another new life, so it was easy for me to do "School Lite." A is just Kindergarten-age, and no formal schooling is required in the state of Massachusetts until first grade, so I embraced living into our transition. We used Five in a Row - and we all enjoyed it - but it never felt like enough for my  incredibly bright, extremely inquisitive 5 1/2 year old. 

Since A turns 6 in February, we decided to use the New Year as our launching date for formal lessons. I made book lists, requested books from libraries, ordered math and handwriting curriculum, and started to put a plan down on paper for a Charlotte Mason inspired Kindergarten Winter Term. D gave me some quiet time last weekend to get everything together, and A started getting really excited to "start real school."

With Day One in the books, I'm feeling so good about the direction we're taking. We had such a peaceful morning - who knew that was even possible?! We had tea together, we read books, asked questions, sang songs, talked about life, played with numbers, and began our introduction to cursive. A loved every minute of it - and I have to admit - so did I.

Stay tuned for more about why we chose Charlotte Mason and how we're structuring the rest of our "Kindergarten" year. 

Thoughts on Christmas Eve

When we got on that plane in Atlanta just over two years ago, I had no idea how much our life would change. I can remember a late night conversation with D that went something a little like this ...

We've struggled for so long - even in this neighborhood that we love so dearly - at finding the kind of community we really want. If we can find community there ... if we can find a church there that really fills us up ... one that really challenges us ... one that helps us go deep. We can make life there work.

I dare say that two years and four moves later, we've finally found it. It wasn't until we find our little neighborhood in Beverly, and our church in Salem, that we became really confident that this move - away from everything and everyone we've ever known - wasn't just one big disaster.

It's not perfect - no church is - but we finally found a place that helps merge our love for tradition and liturgy with our love for creative worship. A place that challenges us to go deep in our faith, and to put that faith into action. A place that instantly connected us with other people, who have very quickly become the exact kind of community we've been searching for. We may have only been there for a couple of months, but we have already become deeply committed. It is so so good to find a place that feels like home.

So you can imagine I was quite excited when an all-church meeting was announced for mid-November. I couldn't wait to hear about what was coming up in the next few months. A thousand questions crossed my mind ... 

Will they celebrate Advent? Or will they jump right in to celebrating Christmas?

Will there be mid-week services?

Will there be a candlelight service? What will Christmas Eve look like?

Will there be a Christmas Pageant?

And as the Pastor told us how we would have a very short Christmas Eve service in the middle of the afternoon, and then we would be invited to go out into the community to bring worship to other places, I found tears streaming down my face.

I was heart-broken. I was angry. I was terrified.

As I got in the car, I turned to D and said - through tears - I have to give up Christmas Eve this year. And I don't want to. Why is it that God always calls me to do something I don't want to do?!

His reply revealed just how much he knows me ... I couldn't help but think of you as he talked about Christmas Eve. I thought, Well This isn't going to go over well. I wonder what we'll decide to do."

I grew up in a very traditional, very liturgical church. We went to church every single Sunday, where worship was the same week after week. My favorite services as a child were the big ones. They called them "Festival services." There were trumpets, a loud organ, a procession ... have you ever watched the Vatican Christmas Eve mass on TV? It was kind of like that. And I LOVED it.

Christmas Eve was my favorite worship service of all. I have incredible memories holding a burning candle as the lights were dimmed while everyone around me sang Silent Night. It sounded like what I think an angel choir might. And I remember a very similar Christmas Eve service, when my oldest was 2. She held her candle so tight, and sang the words she knew so loudly, that it brought tears to my eyes.

And now ... now I was being asked to do something very different. There would be no candlelight service with Communion and all of my favorite songs. Instead we were going to bring worship to people who we had never met before.

I was heart-broken. I was angry. I was terrified.

But not once did I ever think we’d skip that part of Christmas Eve worship. Because I heard God loud and clear in the words that the pastor spoke over and over again. Christmas is about the day God came to us. It only made sense that we would bring Jesus to the ones who might be lonely and forgotten on Christmas Day. And that they might bring Jesus to us.

So we signed up for the morning shift and were assigned to a group home for senior women. On Christmas Eve morning, my sweet A looked at me and said,

But Mama. I don’t want to go. I just want to go to church.

I sat down next to her and gave her a big hug, and I said,

You know what? I don’t really want to go either. I hate going to new places to meet new people. But how do you think we would feel if we couldn’t go to church? Especially on Christmas Eve?

I’d be sad Mama.

Me too. And how would you feel if someone said they would bring church to you?

I think I’d be excited to have church at my home.

Me too. So today, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring church to people who haven’t been able to go to church in a really long time. Because sometimes God calls us to do hard things.

I’m not really sure if I was talking to her or if God was using my words to her to speak to me … but in that moment, I caught a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is all about.

And as we walked in to the home that morning, I think we were all a little terrified. No one really knew where to go, or what to do. But we finally got settled in, around tables with some of the residents, and as I saw my husband begin to play guitar, and my girls begin to sing, I was overcome with a wave of emotion. As I talked to the women at my table, I began to understand why going out of my comfort zone was so important for me this year. I needed to see Jesus. I needed to experience him in a very different way.

That night, at our Christmas Eve feast of potato soup and bread, we did a little debrief of the day. A said, I was brave today. And I had to agree.

You were so brave today Autumn. Are you glad we went?

Yes Mama. Those ladies were so happy to see us!

Christmas Eve was different for me this year. It was calmer. Quieter. More still. I missed my family - I missed the bigness that used to surround Christmas Eve. Both at Church and at home.

But this year we began a new tradition - that of showing our children what Christmas really means. This year we remembered that Christmas isn’t really about the fanfare or pizazz. This year, we experienced firsthand how God didn’t wait for us to come find Him, but instead - he came to us.

Maybe my kids won’t grow up with memories of trumpets or candlelight services on Christmas Eve. But they will grow up with memories of doing hard things because Christ did hard things for us. They will grow up with memories of visiting the ones who are often forgotten and neglected on the most special days of the year. They will grow up seeing glimpses of the Kingdom of God. And for that, I am so thankful.

This was originally written as a spoken reflection for a worship service at High Rock North Shore where several of us reflected on our Christmas Eve experiences. I have very gently edited it to try to make it relevant to all readers - whether you attended worship with us this morning or not.

Photo by Gareth Harper on Unsplash

Welcome to the New Look!

Welcome to the new Soul Munchies!

Many of you know I started this site some years ago as a safe place to wrestle with questions of faith and daily life. Since the birth of this site, I've been through a divorce, re-marriage, a couple of job transitions, several transitions between faith communities, the birth of two children, the purchase and sale of a house we loved dearly, and a huge move from Atlanta - the city we have called home for most of our lives to the Boston-area - a new, very big, very unfamiliar one.

After only a few months in the big city of Boston, we found ourselves longing for a quiet, small town life. We stumbled upon the town of Acton, Massachusetts, where we bought an updated 1950's ranch with a huge yard and tons of potential. Each one of these transitions has shaped me in some way, and has also had fingerprints in the creation and evolution of Soul Munchies. 

With this new redesign, I bring to you a new mission: to explore what it looks like to live simply, faithfully, and seasonally. Although there are exceptions, you'll find that most posts fall into one of three categories: Food, Faith, or Family. These are my three passions, and are the things I devote most of time to, so is only fitting that they are what I write about.

I am so glad you've decided to stop by and I can't wait to get to know each of you a little better!

How to Prevent Human Trafficking

Human trafficking ... child slavery ... it's easy to dismiss these problems without thinking twice. No way does that kind of stuff happen here in the United States, right?

Wrong.

Just yesterday, the Washington Post published an article identifying my own home city - Atlanta - as a hub for human trafficking. Stories abound of women who have been able to escape and live the rest of their life in fear.

Unfortunately, human trafficking is difficult to stop because the victims are hard to find. There are many organizations trying to raise awareness of the issue, but it still remains an "out of sight, out of mind" problem. Last month, President Obama declared January to be National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Because it's such a "hidden" problem, it can be hard to know how one person can help stop human trafficking. Here are 8 things you can do to help prevent human trafficking:

1. Volunteer at a local organization. The Polaris Project is one of the leading organizations in fighting human trafficking and modern-day slavery in the United States. They've got a great website listing organizations by state.
2. Contact your local representatives. Ask them to support anti-trafficking legislation. You can see all pending legislation here.
3. Report a Tip. If you have witnessed human trafficking or modern-day slavery firsthand, contact the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. All reports are 100% confidential and interpreters are available.
4. Host a Chocolate Campaign. Not For Sale offers a chocolate fundraiser that helps you raise awareness of modern-day slavery as well as raising money to prevent it. With Valentine's Day coming up, this could be a great way for your organization to get involved!
5. Speak With Your Money. Check out your favorite stores to see what they are (or not) doing to prevent modern-day slavery. Or instead of going to a store, shop online through organizations that help prevent slavery. Two examples are: The Freedom Store and Made By Survivors.
6. Join the Student Abolitionist Movement. If you're a student, this is a great organization to get involved in. This network of students provides you with programs and resources to educate, advocate, and take action to help end modern-day slavery.
7. Raise Awareness. Most people have no idea that modern-day slavery and human trafficking even exists. Talk about it with your friends, co-workers, small group, family, etc.
8. Pray. Many times, this is left unsaid. Pray that God work through all people who are committed to ending human trafficking and modern-day slavery. Pray that God work in the lives of those who are doing the enslaving. And pray that God protects the victims who are being enslaved.

If you're involved in raising awareness for human trafficking or modern-day slavery, we'd love to share your story here on Soul Munchies next week. Just leave a comment below or send me an email and I'll be back in touch about how you can contribute.

This post was originally written in January 2011, so many of the original links were broken and have been removed. Because it is consistently one of the most popular posts on Soul Munchies, I have re-published it in its entirety here. Look for more updated information about human trafficking and how you can get involved in preventing it in the coming months.