Launch Day and a Livestock Show!

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This is an exciting and busy week in our house. The children have their livestock show this week and today is the official launch day for Heroes Next Door! I can not thank you enough for your support as we launch this book. It has been a dream of my husband’s to be able to provide a book that engages middle grades students while teaching them about history through story. This book shares the Vietnam War in a way that is real, relate-able, and age appropriate. In honor of launch day we are hosting a giveaway for a free copy of Heroes Next Door: Hornet 24. Enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win. (Hint, there is also a bonus giveaway on our Facebook page)

If you are curious about the livestock show, I interviewed my son in Homesteading Homeschool: Our 4H Pig and my daughter in Homestead Homeschool: Our 4-H Goat. You can follow us on Instagram @dawnpelusoschoolinswag to get see some pictures from the show this week and I’ll share a blog post about their experiences Friday or Saturday.

Finally, if you are like me and struggling with being consistent with your time with God amidst a busy schedule then I highly suggest you check out this free webinar by Jami Balmet and the folks at Ultimate Bundles titled, “Finding God in Your Busy Day”. I have heard several presentations by Jami and they all have been excellent. I am looking forward to the opportunity to hear her again as I struggle to get back to consistency since the baby was born. Jami will teach you where to find unexpected pockets of time for God and devotions, where to find Bible Study resources, and what your Bible study time should consist of.

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When you sign up for our free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

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This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

Deals and Freebies!

Don’t forget to sign up for the 5-day no-prep crafts challenge from Jamie at Hands On As We Grow. The deadline is fast approaching! It’s perfect for preschoolers to get crafty without the hassle! Click here to learn more!

A SchoolhouseTeachers.com membership is one price for the entire family with courses for all ages. From preschool through the last high school year, SchoolhouseTeachers.com has it covered, and the price is locked in for as long as you keep your membership! Get a peek as you play our short Scavenger Hunt that ends with a chance to win fantastic prizes like Kindle Fire tablets, a laptop computer, and SchoolhouseTeachers.com memberships!

‘History’ Lego Projects

I’m so excited to be able to share with you all of these wonderful Lego projects submitted by readers. These children have done an outstanding job with their building and creativity. I believe that building and creating allows them to not only build fine motor skills but engage their minds in creative and critical thinking that is every bit as beneficial to their brains as ‘book work’.

This month’s theme was ‘history’ and you can see we had a variety of ideas related to that theme. (If you forgot to send in your pictures I will take submissions through the weekend.) The theme for April is ‘free choice’. So anything they create!

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Please feel free to share this post to show your friends and family your hard work and invite your friends to join in next month’s Lego Challenge.

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Victory Gardens and Ration Books

20180405_120333 — It doesn’t look like much now since the seeds have not sprouted but hopefully by the end of the month it will have beautiful plants.

World War II changed the fabric of the United States in ways that are unthinkable to us today. How do we help them understand what life was like here on the home front during the World War II period? I really wanted my children to understand the sacrifices that were made by both our military and our civilians during World War II. This week we have been focusing on life on the home front. In addition to conversations about what it was like we planted a Victory garden and started using our simple version of ration books.

For the Victory garden, the children first researched what types of foods would typically have been planted in a Victory garden as well as the types of seeds that could be planted in our climate this time of year. Then they had to till the soil and remove any weeds. Once the soil was ready they went through and found seeds that were appropriate and planted the seeds. Over the next few weeks they will tend to the garden and hopefully get to enjoy some of the ‘vegetables’ of their labor.

If you do not have enough space or have other restrictions that do not allow for a full garden a few small containers can still give you a hands on experience. My three year old wanted his own so we cut off the top of a milk carton, filled it with potting soil and planted lettuce. You can make something simple like our milk carton planter or purchase indoor gardening kits like this farmers garden window sill kit or these herbs in a jar.

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Rationing can be a difficult concept for children who have been blessed to never live through it to understand. So we created a simple ration sheet and chose three things to ‘ration’ in our house for the month of April. We are rationing chocolate milk, candy, and kindle/computer time. Real ration books had removable stickers that you turned in to procure your goods. However, in the interest of simplicity ours is more like a check sheet that will get marked each time they use one of those items. Once all the boxes are checked for an item, they do not get any more of that item until May. If this is something you are interested in, you can find a copy of it with the items left blank in the free resource library (you can sign-up for access at the bottom of this post). The children are very excited about the project, but I’m not sure how they will feel when they run out of something before the end of the month. I’ll keep you updated in our history updates.

We also watched a few video shorts from training and propaganda videos for World War II. These were popular cartoon characters that were used to encourage support for the war or train soldiers. There are many of them but some of them may not be appropriate for all ages due to crude humor. I have shared some links below to some that we found were good examples.

I have also found a few recipes that were designed for making foods using rations and limiting ingredients that were hard to come by. We are going to try a few of those recipes over the next few days. If they are enjoying that, I may challenge them to modify some of our favorite recipes to be more ‘ration’ friendly and see what they can create.

I have included some links below that have great information on Victory gardens and rationing. I would love to know if you try any of these ideas or if you have other ideas for helping children understand what life on the home front was like during World War II.

Victory Gardens

Rationing

Videos

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Deals and Freebies!

As someone who is trying to balance a six week old, homeschool, blog, and all of the other things life is throwing at me and still be consistent with my daily walk with God this webinar really appeals to me. I also happen to love Jami Balmet and have done several of her online workshops.

Want to learn how to find God in the middle of your busy life? Jami Balmet and Ultimate Bundles are hosting a free webinar called Finding God in Your Busy Day (creative ways to grow your faith when you don’t have time for devotions). Jami will teach you where to find unexpected pockets of time for God and devotions, where to find Bible Study resources, and what your Bible study time should consist of. Register for the webinar.

Our new middle grades historical fiction novel, Heroes Next Door: Hornet 24 is now on Amazon available for pre-order with a release date of April 10th! We are super excited about this and would love to have you share it with your friends!

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring But It’s Not Boring!

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When spring finally arrives it seems like everyone wants to be outside and enjoy the warmer temperatures. However, spring often brings some rainy days. Rainy days can bring complaints of boredom or a bit of stir crazy but they do not have to be boring ‘stuck inside’ days. There are lot of fun things to do on those rainy spring days.

One fun and tasty idea is to get baking! You can choose an old favorite recipe or a brand new one and bake it with the children. One of our favorites is pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. They are so yummy and easy for the children to make. You could even have the children look through recipe books for a new recipe to try. My second favorite activity works great once the baking is done… reading. Whether it is everyone curled up with a good book or a family read aloud, rainy days are a great time for reading. Then you can enjoy your fresh baked good while you read.

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Do your kids love science experiments but you often do not have the time to get them all set up? Rainy days are a great time for those experiments that they always want to do. You could have a few prepared and ready or just give them an ‘experiment’ box and let them have some fun. For an experiment box, simply gather materials that could be used to perform experiments and let them design their own. This can be materials that are readily available around your home such as vinegar, baking soda, string, clay, balloons, foil, pennies, etc. If you want to make it a bit more exciting, you can purchase a set of inexpensive safety goggles and lab coat to make young children feel like ‘real scientists’.

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Arts and crafts are also a great option on those rainy days. We have been doing a Spring Chalk Art Pastel course that even includes a picture of rain that would be quite appropriate for a rainy day. There are tons of free resources out there with crafts for just about any age or ability. You could let them come up with their own idea or find one that you think would be fun. If you are looking for some help with independent activities Hands On As We Grow has a free “5 day indpendent activity challenge” starting soon to get you going with some easy ideas.

Finally, if none of those ideas sound like fun you can take the advice of my three year old and , “just ride your scooter in the rain.” I hope you enjoy some of these ideas and I’ve added a ‘Rainy Day Activities List’ to the free resource library with even more rainy day ideas. Share with us in the comments what you like to do on rainy days.

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Deals and Giveaways!

Deals and Freebies

Any other Green Ember fans? We are getting super excited to listen (we like to do the audio as a family) to the last book in the series after it releases in April! In honor of that release Your Morning Basket Homeschool Solutions with Pam Barnhill has an awesome FREE Green Ember Gala coming up! Sign-up today for FREE. https://pambarnhill.com/green-ember-gala/ref/247/

Schoolhouse Teachers is also offering a great sale right now.

Would you like to join us for a FREE study of Heidi? (or choose a different book of your choice). LitWits.com has generously offered my readers a free study when they use the code: 11READ4FUN These are a super easy and fun way to engage your whole family in a good book. https://litwits.com/product-category/kits/

Evan-Moor is having a special sale this week on their Teacher File Box! TeacherFileBox is a subscription to digital lessons from over 450 Evan-Moor books including ALL grade levels and ALL subjects

Little Women is only .99 on kindle right now! (Amazon prices subject to change always check before purchasing.)

FREE Baby Yoda Art Lesson from Nana!

All About Learning has released the best deal of the day: A FREE Snowman Pack with reading and spelling activities for a variety of ages.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Spring, One of My Four Favorite Seasons!

Spring is one of my four favorite seasons! Honestly, I enjoy all of the seasons, but by the end of one season, I’m ready for another. This year’s weather has been a roller coaster ride, and we have bounced between cold weather and warm weather for the last month. I’m hoping this warm weather is here to stay for a while.

Spring feels like such a time of renewal and new life. The birds are out singing, the flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and life seems to hold so much hope and promise. I can’t forget my favorite part of spring, strawberries! We just had our first bucket of fresh strawberries for the season last week and they were so good!

Spring Fever Homeschool Solutions

One part of spring that could be viewed as a negative is ‘spring fever.’ The children, and if most of us are honest, the parents are ready to be outside. Sitting inside and doing schoolwork can seem arduous on the first pretty days after winter. To balance that natural desire to be outside enjoying the weather with our need to complete our schoolwork we take school outside.

Sometimes, like today, we literally take our schoolwork outside. Math seems a bit less tedious when there is grass under your feet and sun on your face. The children either take a table cloth to lay on, sit at the picnic table, or grab a folding chair and take their work outside. To help us stay organized when we do school outside, we keep book bags where they can store their materials.

Rainy Spring Day Homeschool Activities

When it is time to come in or on rainy days, we can do schoolwork related to spring inside. This can be completing on of the fun Spring Chalk Pastel Lessons, doing a study on birds, flowers, or plants, or even reading books about Spring. We have started going through the spring chalk pastel art course and are really enjoying it.

It is such a fun and easy way to incorporate art into our nature study this month. A couple of good book options are Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed or the one we want to read this year, The Penderwicks in Spring. We have read the first book in this series and really enjoyed it.

Other times, I use various parts of the season to create natural learning opportunities. It is the perfect time of year to learn about plants and gardening. You can study how to grow them, pollination, and nutrition by actually planting a garden, harvesting your crop, and my favorite part, eating what you grew.

If you cannot plant a garden where you live, you can plant a few windowsill plants or visit a local farm. In addition to gardening, we love to raise baby chicks to become laying hens which provide eggs for our family and some of our friends.

Even if you can’t raise chickens, it is a good time of year to visit your local lawn and garden or feed store and let the children see the baby chicks. You can also purchase simple kits to raise and release butterflies or lady bugs that let children see the life cycles up close. These are nice because it gives you the live animals and hands on experience without the long term commitment of animals like chicks.

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Spring Bird Study

Spring is also an excellent time to study birds. You can get a field guide, like this Peterson’s First Guide to Birds to help you identify the various birds you see near your home. This is one of my favorite bird guides because it is very simple and easy to use. Some other guides are more thorough but can be overwhelming to children (and parents that are new to bird watching).

If you want to entice more birds to your yard or make it a bit easier to study them you can put up a bird feeder. This can be a homemade one or something like this inexpensive bird feeder that attaches to your windows.

I’ve talked about Our Hiking Adventures before, and spring time is a great time to hike. This is a great way to see different plants and animals while getting a bit of exercise. There are other Peterson’s First Guides like the bird one above that can be a great way to learn more about what you are seeing as you hike.

If you have small children, they may enjoy just walking and looking for various colors or shapes. Whether you go to a local park or simply ‘hike’ though a nearby field or forest it is a great chance to get outside and enjoy spring.

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Spring Fun

Of course, Spring is not only about school. There are so many fun things to do in the spring. You can go to a local farm and pick strawberries or visit your local farmers market to pick out yummy spring vegetables.

My children enjoy picking (and eating) strawberries, and it seems they eat more than they put in the baskets some years. Our strawberry-farming friends even joke about weighing the little ones before and after picking. This is a great way to get children excited about eating healthy foods and provide an understanding about where food comes from.

It is a wonderful time to break out the sidewalk chalk and the bubbles and just enjoy being outside. Kites are also a big hit at our house; from little simple ones, they make themselves to larger ones that need a little help and guidance. They are a fun way to spend a spring afternoon.

In addition to these ideas, I’ve added a fun spring bucket list to the free resource library with lots of fun ideas for spring!

Spring Ideas and Resources

When you sign up for our free resource library, you will get a link and password to the library; we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

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This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always, I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in, and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

Deals and Freebies

Schoolhouse Teachers is now offering a lifetime option! They are a great place for a one stop shop curriculum or a way to have a lot of options to fill in different electives and courses into what you have already chosen.

FREE zoo scavenger hunt from Journey Homeschool Academy

The Homeschool Curriculum Summit is coming soon! Grab your free ticket now!

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

FREE Month of Kindle Unlimited: I have been using this for my own pleasure reading as well as books for my son and daughter and really enjoying it.

Not Consumed has a new Pre-K and Kindergarten Curriculum for sale!

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

World War II and the Korean War

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As I sat down to find resources and determine how we would study these wars I found so much on World War II that I could not include it all. World War II had a profound effect on the United States. While we focus on the United States and American history we will certainly read and cover things that were happening in Europe and the Pacific because it is all so closely related. I have included a good overview of the history of that time with the resource list that is posted in our free resource library.

We are going to start our study of World War II talking about how things changed here in the United States. We are going to plan and plant a Victory Garden, use ration books, and create some dishes that would have been popular during rationing, fortunately not German sawdust bread. I have found several great resources on Victory Gardens and I’ll share those next week along with our plans and progress. If you are wanting to get started with a garden you can visit your local farm and garden store or check out this seed kit or this organic kit that you can order online. If you do not live in an area where you can grow a full garden, something like this self-watering tomato plant that grows in a jar or even these edible flowers are a great way for your kids to still get an understanding in a hands-on way. You could also complete a lapbooking/ notebooking project focused on life on the homefront.

Then we are going to study the war itself, the causes, the battles, and the aftermath over the course of the next two weeks. We have The Usborne Introduction to the Second World War book to help guide us through that process. It is a great book with lots of solid information and pictures to help them understand. I am also considering this great file folder game from Home School in the Woods. We will also listen to The Hiding Place or C.S. Lewis at War by Focus on the Family, both if time allows. We will finish up our month with a study of the Korean War. There are not as many readily available resources for children studying the Korean War but we found several good websites that will help us facilitate discussions about the Korean War.

We are looking forward to two field trips this month in our study of World War II. We hope to go visit the USS North Carolina Battleship as well as the North Carolina Museum of History. Both of these are places we have been before but it has been several years since we had the opportunity to visit the Battleship.

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Deals and Freebies:

It is the March “Building Readers & Writers from Preschoolers to Teens” Bundle! Do you have a reluctant writer? Does your child have a desire to read? Do you have a preschooler at home? If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, you need this month’s March bundle at The Old Schoolhouse® – 13 eBooks and 4 Print Magazines for only $29!

Fit2B Girls Ecourse and Fitness

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I want to take just a few minutes and talk about Fit2B. As you may know if you read my post about My Tummy Team Experience and a Sale!, I have had issues with core strength and had to do some physical therapy to strengthen my core and heal a diastasis.

Through that I found that many traditional exercises can be harmful to your core muscles and make the diastasis recti worse. However, Fit2B offers online fitness courses (both monthly subscriptions and one time purchases) that are specifically designed to be tummy safe.

*Some of the links in my posts may be affiliate links see below for more information. *

They have some great programs that are easy for a busy mom to do from the comfort of your own home and they are well done and modest enough that I’m comfortable watching them in front of my children. For only $14.99 a month you can have access to great safe fitness programs to help you get healthy or stay healthy. I believe that we serve our families best when we do what we can to be healthy and strong.

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Another program that they offer that we are enjoying is the Fit2B Girls Course. This is a video course that I am working through with my ten year old daughter. It has components on modesty, fashion, core strength, female anatomy, periods, eating healthy, fitness, and more. Each portion is set up so that you can cover the topics in any order and wait on any you do not think your daughter is ready for.

For example, we did the Fashion module but skipped the part about make-up because she is not yet at an age where we are considering make-up. The ones we have covered so far were well done and a great way to help teach my daughter and start some conversations. This could easily be a health course for your daughter or just something you work through together.

Another key fact to note is that it does not cover physical intimacy. This course is focused on, “holistic, non-sexual body education that empowers her to respect her body and keep it healthy.”

I hope that this resource blesses some of you that are looking for ways to incorporate safe fitness into your busy day. I’d love to hear in the comments about your favorite fitness programs and how you continue to stay healthy and strong.

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Carole P. Roman Book Review

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Books, Books, Books! We love books in this house, chapter books, picture books, poetry books, history books, fun fictional books, character building books, we keep a large library of books available for everyone to read. There are books in almost every room of our house. This month we had the opportunity to review some children’s books by Carole P. Roman. We were blessed to receive three books from the Carole P Roman books and collections. She has several different collections but ours came from her If You Were Me and Lived in… history series. The three titles that we received were, If You Were Me And Lived In…Tthe American West, If You Were Me and Lived in… Ancient China, and If You Were Me and Lived in… The Ancient Mali Empire.

We started our exploration of these books with a family read aloud. I chose to read If You Were Me And Lived In…Tthe American West for our family read aloud because it was a subject we had recently studies in history. All three children really enjoyed it. The pictures kept the attention of the three year old and the older children enjoyed the story. There were most impressed that the sister in the story had to collect buffalo poop.

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I also wanted to get a feel for how the children would do with the books reading them on their own. Each week they read a book (sometimes they choose and sometimes I assign), complete a journal entry about that book and then conference with me. I assigned the ten and eleven year olds one of the books and had them follow that process. These books are shorter than the books my eleven year old normally reads so it only took him about 20-30 minutes to read the entire book, If You Were Me and Lived in… The Ancient Mali Empire. While this was not a book that challenged his reading abilities, he enjoyed reading it and learned quite a bit about the Ancient Mali Empire. He thought that the books were, “good but not long enough”. He found the fact that girls in Ancient Mali were married very young to be one of the most interesting facts that he learned from this book. He went around telling everyone in the family about it that day.

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My daughter who is not as fond of long chapter books as my son was delighted to find out that she was getting to read a shorter book that week. She read If You Were Me and Lived in… Ancient China and really enjoyed the book. She was somewhat familiar with Ancient China from our history studies but still learned plenty of new information. She thought that the books were “good with lots of facts and only a little bit of story. ” She learned that parents would have chosen spouses for their daughters and found that very strange. She was also interested in how important ancestors were to the Chinese people.

I liked how she took historical facts and weaved them into a story like presentation. This style of living book seems to keep my children’s attention as well as helping them remember the facts that they are learning. I also really liked how she included a glossary at the back of the book to help them better understand any new vocabulary. We really enjoyed the Carole P. Roman books and collections and highly suggest that you check them out. I am hoping to add more of the ancient history ones, such as If You Were Me and Lived in…. Ancient Greece, to our collection before next fall when we will be studying ancient history. There are many more books that other Crew members reviewed so click the link below to check out some other reviews.

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History Updates: World War I

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We have been trying to get back into our routine since having baby Joseph. The older children are doing a great job getting their contract work and this week I managed to get most of the other work done with them that I had planned. We were focusing on World War I and used this online video from North Carolina History Museum. The video focuses on North Carolinians in World War I but is applicable to anyone studying World War I. One of the big focuses of the video is trench warfare, so to help me assess how much the children learned I had them complete the notebooking page on World War I trench warfare from Notebookingpages.com. They have so many different options, just on World War I they have over 50 pages.

Next week we are going to talk about the ‘Roaring 20s’ and I’m using the People in the 1920s coloring book for my daughter from this History by the Decade set. We may also watch this YouTube video, 1920-1929: Boom to Bust. Please note that the video does briefly describe lynching so you may want to preview it before showing it to younger children. We will be doing a study on Duke Ellington and other jazz artists. This collection is free with prime, Duke Ellington and More.

My son is researching World War I rations and finding that much has changed since the Civil War. He will be preparing us a meal to resemble those rations, stay tuned next week for pictures of that. He also chose to learn about and create a PowerPoint presentation on the Presidents from this time period for his monthly project. He will be presenting that to us next week. Elizabeth is working on her Freedom’s Heroes Badge for American Heritage Girls. This badge is not directly tied to World War I but focuses on our military and military history.

For reading they are going to have several choices including Kit Kittredge (we may also watch the movie). Another good option is The Great Depression (the American Adventure Series). We also have this biography about Babe Ruth that would be interesting for any sports fans.

All in all we enjoyed this week’s lessons and are looking forward to a busy week next week wrapping up this section by focusing on the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression. Also, don’t forget to make a Lego project related to history and send us a picture to go in this month’s Lego Challenge. Let us know what you are doing in history in the comments!

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Deals and Freebies:

FREEBIE ALERT! $100 worth of fascinating unit studies to ignite your child’s career interests, absolutely FREE this week @Educents!

The Mistakes I Made….

I think I could write a book about various mistakes I’ve made along this homeschool journey but I’ll focus on a few that I think may be fairly common and hopefully either help keep someone else from that same mistake or at least make you realize you are not alone.

My background is that of a public school student, teacher, and principal. So when I started homeschooling, I tended to fall back on what I knew. I found a curriculum that while Christian was in a very traditional style, I set up a classroom for us to work in, and I set up a daily schedule that looked much like the schedule I would have had in my classroom.

Our schoolroom before we finished setting it up!

That scenario might have worked well for some other family, but it was not a good fit for our family. We still have the room (though we don’t always use it) as it did work well for us to have a place to keep all of our homeschool things and to get away from everything else when we needed to focus on school. I learned that school could happen in that room but it could also happen in our kitchen, outside, or even in our van. We have however, greatly changed both curriculum and scheduling techniques.

We went from a traditional curriculum to using a different company for almost every subject. Some children do well with traditional curriculum but for us it was not the right solution. We used a variety of curriculum, focusing on hands on lessons and programs that worked well across multiple ages. The children started to enjoy our ‘school time’ more and it was much easier for me to teach most subjects together and only have to do things like reading with each child individually.

When we first started I blocked out my schedule to cover each subject five days a week during a certain time. For example, 9:00-9:30 reading, 9:30-9:45 spelling, etc. I found this was very frustrating for my children, sometimes we had to stop in the middle of a lesson, and sometimes they were done ahead of time. After a few weeks, I realized that I had the freedom to simply decide what we needed to cover that day and then work through it. We could move from one subject to another in natural progression. If my son drug his feet doing his math work (I’m sure that only happens at my house), instead of not finishing that day he knew he would have less play time that afternoon.

In addition to changing our daily schedule, at the end of our first year I realized that I needed to make a change in our weekly schedule. That change made such a huge difference for my planning and implementation. That first year I had planned out five days a week but it seemed like almost every week there were great field trip opportunities that I found out about and wanted the children to participate in: a trip to the local science center, a tour of the fire department, homeschool day at the local aquarium, etc. These trips were valuable learning experiences but because of how I had planned they made me feel chronically ‘behind schedule’. That second year I planned out our work over four days each week instead of five. This made all of the difference for us. It meant there was a day open for field trips or other appointments. If by chance we have a week where we do not have a field trip or appointment, the children have a day to enjoy playing Legos, working on projects, or other activities and I can get caught up on some household chores.

I’m so glad that I learned from those mistakes and found curricula that work well for my children and a schedule that allows us to fit in a variety of fun field trips and extra curricular activities. I hope that this helps someone not make those same mistakes. I’d love to have you share in the comments about what mistakes you made when you first started homeschooling.

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