When Your Homeschool Looks Nothing Like the One on Instagram

Written by Jessica.

In September, at the start of a new school year, everything feels optimistic and promising. The school supplies are still shiny and new. All the curricula that were carefully chosen still feel like good picks. The school area and the house are picked up and organized.

I’ve been homeschooling long enough now to know, however, that there are going to be bumps, distractions, failures, mishaps, mistakes, and tough days ahead. It won’t feel like September all year long! And it’s during these more turbulent times that homeschoolers can fall prey to comparison.

What We're Reading in September 2019

I've kicked off the school year by rallying several hundred moms to join me in the Storied Mom Reading Challenge. Are you one of them? If not, why not?

There's still plenty of time to grab a Reading Guide before the month's end. It's your chance to reclaim the education you never had and to make reading a priority in your life. It's an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, by showing your kids that developing a robust reading life isn't just important for kids. It's important for moms too!*

The Storied Mom Reading Challenge

Calling all bibliophiles...and other moms who maybe aren't avid readers yet, but who want to be!

With the school year kicking off this month, we're all keenly aware of our part in helping our children nourish their minds and their moral imaginations. This is especially true for homeschool moms. We feel the weight of their education daily.

In our earnest desire to build a good foundation within them, we become very passionate about growing our kids' intellect and kind of dispassionate about growing our own.

We convince ourselves that learning alongside them is good enough--that if we just read with and to them, we'll nurture our own minds along with theirs. And while that's true to some degree, in many ways, it's a theoretical platitude.

5 Steps to Start Homeschooling

This week marks the start of my 13th year of homeschooling and my husband's 20th.

Why the discrepancy in numbers? you ask. Because he's a second-generation homeschooler. He was homeschooled back in the early 90s when it was super weird and slightly illegal in many states. And now he's crossed the great divide between homeschooled and homeschooling.

The student has become the teacher. (Or at least the teacher's helper.)

The homeschooling landscape has changed quite a bit in the last 25ish years since he first started. Golly, a lot has changed in the past 13 when I grabbed the baton from his mom to carry on the legacy. It's not the same race that it was. And if we're being truly honest, he and I are not the same runners. We're in the final stretch with our first child and just barely out of the gate with our last. We're in the messy middle, you might say.

I Never Thought I'd Ever Homeschool {an honest confession}

Written by Talvi McCuskey.

I never thought that I'd ever homeschool my children. I was not homeschooled, and none of my friends were either. I went to a private, Christian school from first grade through graduation. I enjoyed it and was grateful for the opportunity.

I then went on to Baylor University and eventually the University of Colorado School of Law. I practiced law for five years and always assumed I would work after I had children, and that my wonderful mother would take care of them while I was at work.

Fast-forward a few years. I got pregnant and eventually looked into the eyes of my girl for the first time. My world stopped and I fell in love with that sweet baby.

I knew I could not leave her.