From IAHE Board Member, Penny Taylor:
I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are certainly a bunch of homeschooling resources out there! How do you know where to begin? I’ve been a homeschooling mom for 27 years and I’ve got a few suggestions for you to consider. Reading books about homeschooling can help you solidify greatly the “why” of your homeschooling and then the “how” is just the way to accomplish it. Although my list is admittedly very limited, these books will get you started, helping with both the “why” and the “how”.
Here’s a good beginning…The IAHE now offers its revised publication, Home Education in Indiana and is certainly worth having. It gives an overview of all the basic things we would spend hours discussing and you’ll have it there at your fingertips as a reference. Well worth the price!
Now I’ll start my list of recommendations where I, myself, started as a former public school teacher with concerns about this whole idea. I read Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore’s books after hearing him speak in downtown Indianapolis. At my husband’s insistence, we went that meeting but I went with my arms crossed expressing resistance and with a great deal of doubt. In about fifteen minutes, I was scrambling for anything on which to write notes and left that gathering a homeschooling mom. So, I recommend to you his books…any of them. Here are some titles, just to name a few:
- School Can Wait
- Better Late Than Early
- Home Grown Kids
- Home Style Teaching
- Home Built Discipline
- The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook
Another book that I consider a “must read” is Clay and Sally Clarkson’s Educating the WholeHearted Child.
For some other, really good “how” books, look for Ruth Beechick’s The 3 R’s and You Can Teach Your Child Successfully. For those of you with older students, with high school at the door, you might want to investigate the work of Inge Cannon, particularly her “Transcript Boot Camp” now available on DVD.
Many times, we feel our ability to get the educational component of homeschooling accomplished is prevented because we just can’t seem to get it all done in a day…the house, the meals, the laundry, the children, the schedule. A book I would recommend is Managers of Their Homes by Teri Maxwell. Just reading it is helpful, figuring out a practical schedule is eye-opening, and working through that schedule is freeing – even if just for a while. I have found that the more scheduled you are, the more flexible you can be.
Connected to that idea is another hidden but very important and practical help in getting your day under control – menu planning. Just remember the day rises or falls in the planning and that routine is your friend. It saves you time and money… and it’s a wonderful skill for your children to learn, too. This is a real pet topic of mine so if you need any help beyond what you’ll find in these other resources, I’d be glad to help. Just a couple of recommended cookbooks to get you thinking are More with Less (economical, common sense cooking) and Fix It and Forget It (crockpot cooking).
And, over all these topics, our banner cry should be “Simplify!” Alas, “simple” is not easy nowadays.
As time goes on, I’ll be adding other reading recommendation to “Penny’s Picks” that I hope you will find helpful.