The Joyful Home Schooler by Mary Hood, Ph.D.

From the moment we started home schooling I have read every thing I could get my hands on about it. Somehow I missed this book at the library, The Joyful Home Schooler by Mary Hood, Ph.D. Oh how I wish I had read this 3 years ago! We have tried several different methods of schooling our daughters. From what we began with, Cyber School, to eventually pulling together our own curriculum. While I must say my preferred method is scouring the aisles of Goodwill for "school books" and searching the web for any and all printables, something just wasn't clicking with my 12 year old. I started to notice that she was learning WAY more on her own, reading books that she picked out at the library. Her questions became more and more about the things she was learning from the books than about what we were "learning" in our basement/office/school room. I saw her having a renewed interest in learning something new! What joy that brings to a mothers heart! But still, I found myself saying, "Let's get back to the learning from my curriculum planner with pre-printed worksheets to tie in the 8 subjects that we must get through in your 7th grade year." We are so programmed to think that there is only one way to learn, or that we have to have the school room in our homes to effectively home school.Not true! I know that in my own life, even now, when something is of interest to me I will read everything I can about the subject. When it is in our own desire and interest to learn something we retain more of what we learn. We are not just memorizing facts short term to make it through the test.
With that being said, the approach that Mary Hood uses makes so much more sense in our situation. I don't think that this is one size fits all but for us, it works. Some of the main points that Mary makes is that we need to get rid of our assumptions about learning and education, ditch the concept of "grade level", the organization of the curriculum (covering several subjects at the same time), and the mandatory covering of certain subjects to turn out well rounded adults.
I encourage you to read this book if you are interested in home schooling or if you are home schooling and just need a new perspective.

"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." Matthew 9:17

Never has this verse gave me such perspective than after reading this book.

Many blessings!

Welcome!

Hello, I'm Tonja!
I am a proud wife to my amazing husband and mom to four.
I am currently a stay at home mama to 3 of my 4 children, one of which is home schooled. My youngest is turning 2 and my oldest is getting married in 5 short months! We recently bought a house and are excited to start the decorating projects and on top of that planning a wedding so I am excited to take you on this journey with me!
After reading blogs for years, my heart wouldn't quit telling my head to start a blog of my own! I was always turning the idea over and over in my head and coming to the conclusion that the blog world was full of everyday moms like myself. Which kept me away from blog world until now! It's a new year full of new ideas and promise. Let's get this started!
Feel free to drop a line and introduce yourself--I'd love to see who is out there following along with my journey!
Thanks for stopping by,

Tonja