Morning baskets are one of the very first things that my mom recommended to us when we started schooling at home over 4 months ago. I quickly realized that everywhere you look in the homeschool community, there they are. If you’re anything like I was you are probably wondering what is this whole morning basket thing business and is it a good idea?
Morning basket is just another name for a practice that has been going on in the homeschool world for over 30 years.
Basically it’s a time each day when everyone in the family comes together to learn about specific things. It has other names such as Morning Time, circle time, symposium, or power hour but it doesn’t matter what you call it. The jist is still the same. Everybody is learning together at the same time.
People often ask if they actually need a basket in order to do this. The answer is ‘no’. You definitely don’t have to have a basket. We use a big VS tote bag to toss our MB stuff into when we are schooling on the go. However, it is helpful to have one location to store all of the items that you use during your MB time. A basket, bag, plastic bin, ect would work too.
What’s the point of a morning basket? Why do it?
So the concept of having MB time is to go over certain subjects or topics together as a whole. No matter what age gap you may have, you can utilize this time to school together as a family and to cover specific things before breaking off to one on one curriculum. It simplifies the day but it also is a neat way to start your mornings all together with your children and even spouse. Brian joins us for when he can for prayers, praise and worship, and bible story.
What goes in a MB? Like, what subjects do you include?
You could do anything that you personally want to do and whatever fits group learning with your family. It’s totally customizable to each school house. For us personally, we open with a prayer, sing a praise and worship song, talk about our weekly Bible story, read aloud (sometimes this is Biblical and sometimes it’s just traditional read aloud content), then we start that day’s curriculum. I don’t cram every subject in to one day. It’s simply too much to cover in my opinion. We stagger days so our morning basket time includes me teaching/briefing that day’s subjects. For example, Mondays and Thursdays are Math, Geography, & Science. Wednesdays and Fridays are English Language Arts, History, & Timeline. Tuesdays are class in another town so I leave that entire day open for Walmart pick up and ‘field trips’. We like to utilize our time out of town. Ice cream dates. Park dates. Play dates with our nwa friends. The safari. Ect. Our specific curriculum’s core is geared around memory work. It teaches world history and timeline by song. It teaches skip counting by song. It teaches science and astronomy by song. It’s mind blowingly extensive and incredibly catchy. If you haven’t looked into memory work and that concept of teaching I can not recommend it enough. I have learned thousands of things that was not taught in public school. Things that my teacher friends said that they didn’t learn until college, if at all. I will share the kids singing their memory work here and there on social media but for copyright purposes since it’s a private program that required acceptance and tuition I am not able to share a lot of details on the memory work itself. I’m being modest when I say how extensive it is though. It shocked me. Anyways, back to our MB — we in short use this time to gather as a family and spend time together, in God’s word. We use it to go over our daily curriculum before we break off and I work one on one with each kiddo. Our son and preschooler don’t have as much school time as our 3rd graders so that makes one on one time much easier for me to fit in. I take care of the littler kids first then move on to the older two. Our curriculum changes each day but I don’t change my basket every day. I change our read alouds out. I change our flash cards out. I change random things here and there as needed but our curriculum teachings are all pretty much in one sourced binder that I use to teach from. The kids binders-workbooks are in our school carts. My biggest thing going into this was NOT to have multiple books for the kids to have to manage. I wanted everything in one SIMPLE spot. (And I’m not talking basic reading content. We LOVE our library and it grows daily. I’m talking Day to day curriculum.) For us, this is a binder system. I can include endless curriculums and programs in one binder without having several different books. As a mom of five, basic is key. I will never be that school house with hundreds of workbooks or programs that looks nice in pictures but doesn’t get used. There’s no reason to have an overboard amount of curriculum. Young children won’t be able to cover that much stuff in a school year without the parent overwhelming them. My children (or children in general) don’t need that kind of sensory overload nor do busy moms that are running households and managing everything under the sun. Structure and simplicity is everything. It’s not only eco friendly (less paper because you can laminate and reuse stuff for other children), child friendly (not having multiple work books to handle), but it’s also cost effective. Even if you have kids of different ages, there are still ways to utilize more practical options in regards to not have 5-10 books for each student. I buy a workbook, scan/copy from it, three hole punch it, and pop it into their binders. Done and done. Easy peasy. Everything in one spot for each child. It makes schooling on the go SO MUCH MORE FUNCTIONAL too. I also highly utilize digital download purchased sources. I download them and back them up twice onto thumb drives then print as needed. They last forever and work for kids of a huge age range. I have a very minimalist approach to our lifestyle and all of these tips help me stay in line with that. There are times when multiple sources are needed. I totally get that. A binder system Is still my favorite way to store each child’s work. I can not say this enough, you don’t need to recreate Public school at home! You don’t need a ton of items to homeschool Or to spend thousands of dollars on products. Don’t do it. It goes against the point of schooling at home, in my opinion and can make the whole concept overwhelming for both mom and child(ren).
How long should MB time be?
It is going to vary from family to family.
If you have kids that are close together in age so you’re able to use this as a really efficient way to teach multiple ages together, it will probably be a large part of your school day. It takes us an hour to an hour and a half. the prayers, bible story, and singing part isn’t actual book work type of schooling so this isn’t an hour and a half of focused schooling. However, if you’re dealing with a wide variety of ages your MB time is probably going to be a lot shorter.
How do you deal with toddlers or babies during MB time?
I include them for as much of it as possible. I don’t expect perfection. We all know how demanding and on their own terms toddlers can be. I work with what the day presents. Sometimes that’s beautiful and smooth. Sometimes that’s baby wearing. Sometimes that’s feeding snacks to a younger siblings while I teach. Sometimes that’s letting her color or draw in her work book. Sometimes I’m nursing while I read our Bible story. It changes each day and we just work with it. Flexibility. The perks of homeschooling. Multi tasking. The gifts of a mom of many.
Do you do anything special for poetry or literature during MB time?
Not typically. We have tea time for those subjects. Once a week we have a tea party. I play classical music. We bake fun treats together (My daughters are huge into baking right now. They LOVE the show kids baking championship on TV. We bought them a ton of baking tools. Piping tips and bags. A spin table. Beveling tools. Aprons. The whole shebang and they bake for us atleast 5 times a week so I make sure to include them in tea time prep.) We get our tea cups out. And we read poetry aloud or talk about literature.
Do you include nature studies or animal science in your MB time?
You guys can do whatever your hearts desire. There are no rules. We personally, set aside a separate time for nature and animal studies but those are things that you could include in your MB time.
Do you HAVE to do MB?
No. Definitely not. Again, homeschooling is about what you want to do and what works for your family. There isn’t a right or wrong way. There is more functional ways though so just find out what that looks like for your home. For us, it’s simplicity. It’s flexibility. It’s embracing nature and music. It’s a Christ centered foundation. It’s not holding a standard for public school routines. It’s child led approaches to everything that we do. From baby led weaning, to toddler led potty training, to respecting that sometimes kids just have off days and aren’t going to be productive learners. Last year My 7 year old called ‘stupid’ by her teacher multiple times when she was asking for help with math. The same teacher called me to ask me what was wrong with my daughter and why she wasn’t ‘being a Good learner’ that week. She told me that kids are still be expecting to preform perfectly even when they aren’t feeling well emotionally. Mind you that my child was SEVEN YEARS OLD. It made me sick. My husband and I went to the school and had a meeting with the teacher and both principles. I’ll never forget that experience and how hard it burned a scar into our family. It’s a huge motivation for me as a mother and as a teacher. Y’all, it is possible to cover a vast majority of subjects effectively without compromising the beauty of day to day adjustments and child led fluctuations!
I try to keep my social media pages and blog a positive space. Not because I want things to “look perfect” but because I want to always be a positive light to people. I don’t like the idea of someone seeing my content on their feeds and feeling a negative feeling. There’s enough drama and negativity in the world. But this past few days have been incredibly hard on me. I’m a huge storm of doom and gloom. I wanted to hide it and go about my social media life as if it didn’t happen to keep my content positive but I’m not going to walk around my feelings or sugar coat it any more.
I feel ashamed of myself and my body.
I regret rearranging my living room furniture the day before I found out that I was expecting.
I feel embarrassed for being so pathetically excited. I bought baby girl clothes because we have everything for a boy. I ordered the blood test to find out the sex next week. My grandma made the baby a blanket. I was planning photo sessions. Nurseries. Names. Coming home outfits.
I wonder why we lost the baby.
I wonder why I just didn’t get pregnant to begin with.
I wonder what the point was of getting pregnant just to have my heart ripped out by losing it.
I wonder what the odds were. We were being safe. I had decided not to get pregnant right now because of the whole Covid 19 thing. I’d need a sitter every doctor’s/midwife’s visit. If I wasn’t able to birth at home my mom, photographer, children, mother in law, ect couldn’t attend the birth or the hospital. The virus itself is scary. We had decided to use protection indefinitely so the fact that I was pregnant was shocking in itself. I took 5 tests and still couldn’t believe it. I genuinely felt like that baby was meant to be here! He/she had a purpose in this world.
I can’t even explain how thrilled I was. Pregnancy makes me feel like my truest self. It is a happy place for me and we knew most of Granger’s pregnancy that we planned to have another baby. Originally we were only going to have one more and we were going to wait until I was closer to 35 but at some point we both just got this peaceful sense of not feeling like the Lord was putting a cap on our family size. We didn’t feel like we’d end up with 20 kids someday or that we’d have another baby right away. We just simply felt like God wasn’t calling us to be done adding to our family. We felt a calling towards adoption again. If you don’t know us or our story, we were in the process of adopting when we conceived our oldest child. The adoption fell through due to legalities with being pregnant while adopting but we were able to pick the home that that sweet boy went to. It was a gift to be apart of his story. We also were foster parents with hopes of adopting through foster care but our boys were reunified with their mama (she fought hard to get her babies back and we were so happy for them all.) Then I got pregnant a few months after they left our home. Along with adoption we felt a call towards birthing another baby as well. We didn’t feel peace with being done growing and we didn’t discuss a stop number. A stretch from where we were a year and a half ago. We were done, done when we first got pregnant with our 5th. Like, Vasectomy as soon as the baby was born, done. However, God changed our hearts during the pregnancy and he changed it at the same time on our own terms apart from one another. I’d say that it was crazy but it was God. We both just had this sense of letting go and letting God. No pressures. No set numbers. No closing doors. No worrying about what people would think or say. Authentically open hearted to whatever the end game was on how big our family would grow.
I know that people have an opinion about our family size but at the end of every day, we don’t care what anyone but our kid’s think. I will not be on my death bed and regretting having a big, close family. I won’t be regretting struggles financially or physically that we had because of our family size. I will not regret not being able to go to Disney World once a year like we did before. I won’t regret this choice. I will die surrounded by love and lives that the love of my life and I brought together. I will leave behind a legacy, a crew of children that will always have each other to lean on in the hard times. Sometimes I imagine what our home will look like on holidays in 20 years from now and it makes me emotional. My babies with their babies. With their partners. A huge group of lives that started because Brian and I fell in love. A house full of love and laughter. I will never regret listening to God’s call to motherhood and to having a large family. I know that this is why I am here. This is what I was called to do. I find peace in that. I know that God has a plan for us. As much as this aches and apart of me wants to be mad, I KNOW my calling. I know that this isn’t over. I know that I will meet that baby one day. And I know that we will grow again. I don’t know when or how but it will happen and i’m done thinking that my timing is best or trying to manage that. I’m full heartedly letting go and letting God. I’m trusting HIS TIMING and his plan. All I can do is pray for the journey, trust the Lord, and work within my self to find peace with our loss. I’m also done feeling the need to keep it all together in front of people. I’m done feeling like a failure for having hard times.
I get the desire to have it all together or to stay positive on social media. I do. I’ve been there. But I also think that disappointment and heartbreaks are apart of life. By hiding those ‘ugly bits’ we are putting up a false sense of being immune to struggles. Like our lives are so perfect that we can lose a pregnancy and just breeze on with our day as if it’s all just fine. It’s not true. This has wrecked me. I’m still not on my own two feet yet. I’m devastated. I just want that baby back, safely growing inside of me. I’m going to stay raw to that grief process.
I don’t know when we will grow again. Or how. But I do know that we will. Not because that’s just what I want or have planned but because that’s without any doubt what God has called us to do.
Weekly meal & routine schedules, we all know about them. They are either our saving grace, completely unpractical, or maybe they are a bit of both. For my family, they are definitely a huge help but I believe that’s because I know when to break them. I do not stress over following a strict schedule. Rather than that I just use it as a basic guide to each day. You all know that your girl is a list making, schedule drafting, over planning fool. Organizing my thoughts onto paper has been a way of life for me since I could write. Journaling. Blogging. List making. Planning. Scheduling. All of it is my jam. It makes me feel like I have my life together haha. I love it. However, as a mom of five strict schedules simply do not always work out. Sick kids happen. Grumpy moments happen. Lazy days happen. Late nights that turn into late mornings happen. With that said, it is super nice to have a game plan for the typical days. It is also important to me to have some kind of structure in regards to school days. It helps teach the kids a routine that can transfer in to their working adult life. It helps us make sure that even though we are flexible with WHERE we school, we are covering all of the important things in our curriculum.
I do not have more than 3 hours of focused schooling a day. We have two types of schooling. I call it book work/focused schooling and experience/ritual schooling. With our Latin and review time it’s very light hearted. I do not consider this time ‘focused school time’ or book work schooling. Nor is nature studies, animal science, fine arts, music, poetry, literature, ect. It’s relaxed and playful. I also keep our intro to morning basket playful. We open with prayer, sing a kid’s hymn, and go over that weeks bible lesson before we start working. The concept of a Morning basket is a practice that has been used in the homeschool community for over 30 years and I will be doing a blog post next week that goes into details about exactly what a morning basket is/what’s in ours but for now I’m going to stick to talking about our schedule as a school house of 4 plus a cute bonus 7 month old.
After our opening bible lessons are done we start our school curriculum. A lot of the time we school on the go so I toss our morning basket in a tote bag. In the barn, by the creek, on the trampoline, when we are traveling in different states, by the pool, in the car, on the living room floor or couch, at the bar, at the shaved ice stand in town, at our feed store on days when we go to work with my husband, etc. We are always super flexible with schooling locations and I absolutely love that. We don’t school at our kitchen table full time despite it being our school house space. It’s a lovely home base but it’s just not always fitting with our active, adventuring family. Despite where we school at we do the first part of morning basket together. This usually takes an hour or so and is where I go over the basics of that day’s teachings. Once we’ve gotten the over all lessons out of the way I start focusing one on one with the kids to make sure that they are each understanding the curriculum. Depending on the subject different kids need more or less assistance. I also am very flexible with breaks. We don’t do 3 hours straight of schooling. We take breathers as needed each day.
Monday & Thursday:
7 am - Brush teeth, get dressed, make beds, & eat breakfast
8:30 am - Morning Basket: Bible Lesson & Prayers, Presentations for Community Day on Tuesday’s, Read a Loud, Memory Work/Mathematics, Geography, & Science
11:30 am - Lunch & music time
12:30 pm - Quite time (naps, bible verse studies, or reading in separate bedrooms || no electronics)
1:30 pm - Review daily teachings and work on Latin
2:00 pm - Fine arts (crafts)
Tuesday:
6:30 am - Brush teeth, get dressed, make beds, & eat breakfast
9 am to 1 pm- Foundations in Siloam Springs
Wednesday & Friday
7 am - Brush teeth, get dressed, make beds, & eat breakfast
8:30 am - Morning Basket: Bible Lesson, Prayers, Read a Loud, Memory Work/English, Language Arts, History, & Timeline
11:30 am - Lunch & Music time
12:30 pm - Quite time (naps, bible verse studies, or reading in separate bedrooms || no electronics)
1:30 pm - Review daily teachings and work on Latin
2: 00 pm - Nature Studies
Of course, what works for us may not work for anyone else but this is the routine that I’ve found to be the best for our family. It took some trial and error to get a perfect rhythm so hopefully this helps some of you in drafting your own schedules.
Year round schooling?
What is it?
Do you do it?
How do you do it?
Why do it?
Isn’t that over board?
Don’t kids need a break?
You’ve probably realized by now what this post will be discussing. I’m going to talk about the in’s and out’s of year round schooling FOR US. Of course, every family and school house is different. Not one is just like another. That’s probably my favorite thing about homeschooling (outside of the time that it gives me with my children). Each school is unique to each family. How beautiful is that? That’s how education should be, in my opinion. It should be one of a kind to cater to every single child’s specific needs.
For our family, that looks like a huge blend of curriculums, methods, approaches, programs, learning styles, curves, ect. In a ‘perfect world’ to some people, all kids would be a grade ahead and perfect little learners. In our world, we aren’t perfect nor do we aim to be. We struggle sometimes. We aren’t all ‘ahead’. We don’t all learn the same way or at the same pace. We have kinesthetic learners. We have visual learners. We have open and close learners. We have a dyslexic learner. We have an ADHD learner. We have a hard of hearing learner. We have a learner that learns so fast and effortlessly that he gets bored way too easily. We have a preschool learner. We have a learner that tries with everything that she has to do everything right and gets genuinely upset when she gets something wrong. We have overly competitive learners. I could go on and on about our little students but my point is that not one child is exactly the same. They are a blend of many things with different needs. That is why our programs range so widely and why we do not exclusively use one curriculum or teaching approach. That’s why we school year round. That’s why we have flexible school routines and schooling locations. That’s why we skip days sometimes. That’s why I never do more than 3 hours of focused learning in one day at my kid’s ages.
Year round school is just as it sounds, it’s year round.
We do year round schooling because it helps keep curriculum fresh in the kid’s minds. There isn’t that 2 1/2 month break between grades where students aren’t learning/reviewing what they learned during the school year. We also do it because it gives us the chance to really touch on the struggling areas before we move on to the next grade level or stage.
For our school house personally, we do cut back a bit during the summer time though. We only school 3-4 days a week and it’s usually a lot of reviewing/copy work/memory work. My goal in this is to really pound in those core facts and details. The same concept as sight words. Getting them so used to specific basic curriculum that it’s instinct to know them on the spot. Skip counting. Sight words. Musical curriculum that teaches history timelines and state capitals by song. Science flash cards that quickly trigger anatomy parts by visual learning. The list of examples and approaches that I use are endless. It’s a little bit of a spiral approach during the summer months but that’s okay with us. It works incredibly well.
In doing the memory work and lessening the amount of time that we have school, it helps to not over load the kids or burn them out on it. We also travel and school on adventures outside a lot when the weather is nice so that helps too with there not being a sense over over kill. I have done this since our kids started school. It isn’t new for us but now it’s exciting for me because what I’ve always done during school breaks will correlate with what I’m teaching all year long. Year round schooling is not for every family and that’s okay. However, if it is for you - embrace it. Make it light hearted. Keep it fun. In fact, do that anyways. As a Charlotte Mason styled teacher I’m a huge believer in embracing nature, literature, art, poetry, the Bible, music, animals, etc. I just all around have a free spirited approach to things and it works beautifully for my family but you can still keep things less structured at times even if you have a traditional style of teaching.
H a v e f u n. Learn with your babies. Embrace this calling to homeschool. Soak it in and enjoy the journey. It’s a stage of life that we will never, ever get back.
Hey guys, today let’s chat about gardening in the Summer. Here in Oklahoma we have hot and humid summers. Keeping plants alive and thriving can be a challenge so I’m going to share my basic tips for summer gardening and preparing your fall garden, as well.
Firstly, you want to make sure to prep your garden area with soil and fertilizer. Living on a ranch we are blessed to have an endless supply of natural fertilizer such as livestock and chicken manure. Between manure and top soil we typically have a great blend of garden soil. You can also use egg shells as fertilizer or purchase soil and fertilizer at your local supply store.
Next you want to make sure that what you’re planting can thrive in your climate. For us, veggies are the way to go. We do have fruit trees in our yard and a strawberry garden in a large feed trough but all in all, vegetables Are ideal. You can buy them already as starter plants or you can plant them as seeds. We always do seeds and never have had an issue.
Weeding is inevitable but it’s so important to keep your garden free of weeds and debris. It helps makes sure that the plants have freedom to grow uninterrupted of pesty weeds.
Buuuugs! Check daily for bugs as they can kill an entire crop in a matter of days. Treat them as needed and always be mindful of them.
When watering your garden, it’s best to do it in the early morning and Later in the evening. Never in the middle of the day. It’s hottest during the day and the sun is at it’s highest. You can burn plants up by not watering them during the coolest and most shaded part of each day.
When your plants are no longer producing, pull them up as they expire and till that area. You’ll find that doing this helps preserve the production of your other plants that are still fruitful but it also helps cut down on prepare time for your fall garden.
Once all of your summer garden has expired, give it a good weeding and till. Maybe toss in some top soil and Then plant your fall seeds.
Harvesting tips: in the beginning your garden won’t need harvested daily. Let those seedlings-veggies grow and thrive. Once you’re in full production you will need to pick your garden daily. Some days all of your plants won’t need picked so just skip those and pick as needed but everyday you will most likely need to pick something. Our green bean plants are always an every other day pick. our tomatoes are typically the same. However, our squash and cucumbers are an every day thing.
Canning: I’m not going to get into the details of canning because it’s extensive and a somewhat different process for each thing that you’re canning but if you’re interested in preserving your harvest long periods, I highly recommend learning to can. We can tomatoes, green beans, pickles, salsa, fish, venison, ect.
I hope that this basic tips and tricks helps some of you out. If you have any questions at all, I’m happy to answer what I can.
Welcome friends! Today I’m going to talk about why we chose to homeschool this year. I’ll also be covering some of the curriculum that we are using and I’ll be giving a few tips if you’re looking into homeschooling yourself. I’m not going to get heavily into those things since I am currently uploading an in depth video on YouTube but our internet is wonky so I’m having trouble. We ended up deciding to switch providers so the new service is supposed to be installed by the end of the week. The video is over 10 minutes long and my first attempt to get a video on YT. I didn’t realize how hard it can be to get videos to upload sometimes.
Anyways, back to the blog. I have gotten a ton of questions in regards to homeschooling and I cover this in my video but in brief, most people have been shockingly open hearted and embracing of us homeschooling. Most of the comments or messages that I get about it are actually other moms asking me for the details about what we are using and how I’m organizing everything. So many moms are planning (or preparing) to school at home this year through virtual learning due to Covid 19. It makes total sense that they are all looking for newbie advice. Remember, I am a newbie too. I’m not a veteran homeschool mom. However, I have spent roughly 7 years (since my oldest was a toddler) researching homeschooling and trying to convince my husband that it was the right fit for us. I also have talked to HUNDREDS of HS moms. For that reason, I feel like I’ve been doing this my whole life ha. It feels so familiar and comfortable. My husband jokes when I’m talking to someone about it that I sound like I’m speaking another language because I know so much about the lingo and terminologies. He feels lost when I get fired up and has to remind me that he doesn’t speak HS Mom hahahaha. Ope 😅
It’s a lot though and I totally get that.
I have said this several times but from day one of meeting my husband over 12 years ago I told him that ‘I want to have a lot of babies and pets and I want to homeschool them all on a little farmstead’. He laughs when we talk about it because he says that back then he thought that 3 kids was what I meant by a lot of kids. Now we have 5, plan to have another bio baby within the year, and are going to be adopting in the future as well. I have no clue how big our family will get but I’m so thrilled to be on this journey.
I’ve just always wanted this lifestyle for my babies and for my family. However, my husband was against it. He believes that the social aspect of it in regards to not being around peers or missing out on extra curriculars is detrimental to a child’s future. For that reason, he never openly considered homeschooling. He will tell you now that he had made his mind up on it and wasn’t open minded at all. He is definitely apologetic about that but he does have valid reasons for feeling the way that he does. I get it. What changed? Well Covid 19 happened. Distanced learning happened. From early March until now (nearing mid July) I have been schooling at home. We do school year round but that’s a post topic for another day. With our public school’s distanced learning it was very basic. Make a map of your room, write a letter to your teacher, read a book, make a treasure hunt map, ect. Right away, I added my own sourced curriculum and made my own lesson plans for all of their work. Double digit mathematics with regrouping. Sight word flash cards. Retell. Grammar. Science. It was stuff that I found the sources to and added to the schools ‘curriculum’ completely on my own. My middle daughter was having huge issues with math regrouping. After one day of me helping her, she mastered it. Brian came home that day and watched her solve sheet after sheet of problems. Mind you that a week prior to this at parent/teacher conferences we were told how badly she struggled at it and couldn’t figure it out. That was honestly Brian’s light bulb moment and when everything changed. I’ll never forget it. He said, “I can see why moms homeschool!”. Y’all, my insides and soul lossssssssst it. I knew that in that instant a wall had been broken down. I never looked back from there and here we are. I showed him grace and gave him space to consider everything but I also modestly brought up the idea of us homeschooling next year (2020-21 school year) a few times a week. No pressure on Brian. I just simply kept planting that seed while I was gathering my own game plan. In the mean time my mom had spent the whole year telling me about how awesome the program that she uses it. My mom was a middle & high school teacher. She has experience in education so her advice outside of her being my mom was greatly respected by me. She’s seen both sides of it. Public school and homeschool. In March after Brian made the comment that started it all, I began to research programs even more obsessively. During the first week of April I attended my first meeting at CC. CC is how Brian and I found compromise. With CC there is once a week classes so the kids get that school type setting and interaction. There’s fun community days with the other HS families. They can still do 4H and livestock showing. They can still do cheer, basketball, and baseball. We also do riding lessons with the girls (they are learning barrel racing, reining, pole bending, and western pleasure). Not to mention, our church family and friends that we see often. We are plenty social and highly involved in extra curricular things. We travel for cattle shows and for fun so the schedule flexibility of homeschooling was also a perk that Brian couldn’t ignore. It’s just all around the perfect middle ground and I’m so thankful that God softened Brian’s heart to it.
Since I covered so much in my video, I’ll try to keep this next part short.
For beginners, it can be extremely overwhelming. Countless programs. Countless curriculums. Countless homeschool styles. Countless terms that you may not understand. Firstly you want to know which homeschool style you are. I’m an eclectic. A blend of traditional and Charlotte Mason. Mostly CM, for sure. There’s a lot of styles. Traditional, classical, unit study, un schooling, Charlotte Mason, ect. Then you need to decide on what program you’ll use. Knowing your homeschool style will help you narrow down programs. Also if you’re religious or exclusively seeking a secular program, that helps narrow things down too. We use Classical Conversations, Abeka, The Good and The Beautiful, Right Start, and some McGraw-Hill stuff but I also have Life of Fred, Blossom & Root, math u see, and Exploring Nature with Children stuff so we will try different things to see what fits us best. Another awesome aspect of homeschooling. You can make your school completely one of a kind and customized. There’s Horizons, Saxon, Singapore, Explode the Code, Mastery Books, Lessons for a Living Education, First Language Lessons, to name a few resources that you can look into. In relation to your homeschool style, you should consider how your children learn. Mine are mostly visual and kinesthetic learners so programs like Singapore aren’t as ideal for us. If you’re schooling through your public school or programs like K12 or Epic, they can hook you up with the resources that you’ll need. Contact your school’s virtual learning coordinator for more info.
My next bit of advice is the advice that multiple HS moms gave me. It’s use a binder system with subject dividers and don’t try to recreate public school at home.
We are using 2” binders for all 4 kids plus one for me. I put lesson plans, grade charts, and visual boards in mine. In theirs, it’s 4 weeks in advance of curriculum divided by subjects. I do not assemble binders in advance for the whole school year. I explain why in my video. We also use a cart system but I’ll be posting a detailed video of our school house area next week so I’m not going to get into that right now.
As for not trying to recreate public school, Enjoy your babies. Adventure and school outside around the ranch or at the park. In your back yard under a tree or picnic by the creek. School in jammies all cuddled up on the couch by the fire on a cozy winter day. School in the barn with the show cows and horses. On the trampoline or the top of the swing set. On the patio, by the pool. Listen to classical music and have tea time with your kids while you read poetry. The options are endless. These are just a few that we’ve done or plan to do. Have flexibility in each day for adjustments. Homeschooling has so many benefits and adjusting to your child’s specific needs is one of them but spending that extra time each day learning and growing together is in my opinion the biggest benefit of all. You can have a traditional approach to your curriculum and still leave after 1-2 pm free for playing with your kids or be flexible with your school house depending on what is presented to you that day. Since you are schooling one on one or even one on eight, it’s still much smaller than a classroom size. You are able to give higher concentrations of attention to each student which results in shorter school days. Children do not need 8 hour school days! A few focused hours a day for work is plenty.
I hope that this blog post helped some of you that feel lost in the HS world. If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact me. If I can’t answer them, I’m blessed to have a large outlet of friends that are HS vets and can also help.
I few months ago after I had a boost in followers on social media I requested that people ask me any questions that they wanted to, no matter how blunt or personal it was. I’m going to share some of those questions now along with basic ‘get to know me’ type of questions. It’s been so long since I’ve done one of these. I feel like it is the perfect time for a reintroduction kind of thing ☺️
Describe yourself: My name is Callee Lane. My husband, Brian and I have been together for 12 years. We have 5 children. Charlee (8), Andlee (8), Hudson (7), Eilee (3), and Granger (7 months). I’m 30 years old. I love being a mom and wife, writing, spending time with loved ones, traveling, homesteading, decorating my home, gardening, managing animals/pets, crafting, and going on adventures.
What inspired you to start blogging? I’ve always loved to write. My mom has countless pages of book reports and stories that I had written from the time that I was 8 years old until I graduated high school. Journaling and blogging on paper or on my private blog was a way of life for me. The more pregnancies/children that I had, the more that friends would constantly contact me with motherhood questions. I was always being told that I should write a book or start a blog so in time, I did. I mean, I was already blogging privately so what would be the difference in creating a public one? But I will be honest, after a few years I got burnt out on it and slacked. Not just that but life was (is) insanely busy. I wasn’t going to force content just to keep growing my following so I simply stepped back. With Covid 19 and basically never leaving home or being distracted other than the basics of raising kids, that love for blogging has sparked back up. I’ve been writing non stop it seems and I’m excited to dive back in to this world.
Describe your blog: It’s definitely an eclectic type of blog but it’s mostly focused on motherhood/basic everyday life so in short I’d call it a lifestyle blog.
What are your goals for life, blogging, business, ect? Oh gosh. A lot ha. Let’s just go with a short term answer. My summer goals for life in general are to enjoy more traveling with my family and to finish getting everything organized/ready to start our first full year of homeschooling. My blog goals are to upload content bi weekly. My business goals for the summer aside from raising healthy puppies is to add more new dams to our breeding program in hopes that next year we will have atleast one litter at all times. My long term goals is to be raising puppies full time. I’ve recently added 2 Sheepadoodles and a Poodle to the ranch but we have 2 more on the way as well so yay for growth.
If you could live anywhere, where would it be? Scotland! Hands down. If it had to be somewhere in the states, it’d be Alaska. I’m obsessed with beautiful scenery and my Scottish/Gaelic roots. There’s nothing better than adventuring a gorgeous landscape such as the Rocky Mountains or Alaskan wildness.
What made you decide to homeschool? I have always been super open about my desire to homeschool. It has been a dream of mine since I got married. With school shootings, teachers sexually assaulting students, bullying, suicide due to bullying, oversized classrooms, over worked and under paid burnt out teachers, maternal instincts to simply have my babies with me, ect it was just natural that my heart wanted to homeschool. I’ve never questioned that gut feeling. However, my husband’s one and only disagreement with me in regards to parenting was this topic. He never expresses strong opinions about things or is really serious about much. He always either genuinely agrees with me or simply doesn’t care either way. He is very compliant and supportive all around but this was the exception. He was deeply against homeschooling. To the point that he stressed out badly and lost a lot of sleep trying to talk himself into being on board with it. Mainly because of AG and school affiliated programs such as sports. He also was afraid of the socially awkward aspect of it or that the kids would get behind if we didn’t pick the right program. Thankfully distanced learning due to Covid 19 softened his heart on it and now we are finally in a lovely place of compromise about it. I’m so excited to continue on this journey.
You guys remind me of one of those self sufficient families with a ton of kids and pets, that homeschools, doesn’t believe in birth control, and lives totally off grid lol. Do you see yourself that way? Not exactly hahahaha. Barefoot & pregnant working the garden? Maybe. But I am definitely a big believer in birth control (not exclusively synthetic based, your girl loves natural family planning methods). We aren’t self sufficient yet as we do not have off grid power but we are actually working on that. We are in the process of converting to solar power for electric. Our water is sourced from a natural spring on our property. We garden-hunt and harvest our owns meats, poultry, and veggies. We planted several fruit trees this year so we can harvest our own fruit too. I’d love to be totally self sufficient but we just aren’t there yet. It’s big goals though.
Are you planning to have more kids? I remember you saying that your new son was your last one but we all know how that goes lol! Famous last words, right? He’s definitely not our last one. We plan to have more kids and haven’t set a number on how many more but SPOILER by this time next year we will have another one (or two if we are extra lucky 😜).
If you have more kids, What are you naming baby #6 if you don’t mind me asking? For a boy, it’ll be Roan or Acre Andrew. Roan is a Gaelic word for the color of the cattle that we raise. We raise a Scottish breed which I love since brian and I both have strong Scottish bloodlines. Acre simply just fits our family and lifestyle. Andrew is my dad’s name. For a girl, it’ll be Scottlyn Perry (Scottie), Everlee Grace, or Gracelee Perry. Scottlyn for the same reasons mentioned above, our Scottish roots. Gracelee after my great grandma. Perry after my father in law. everlee is just a name that i can’t shake. It reminds me of happily every after and tuck everlasting, two of my favorites. We also have been pondering Sutton for both sexes.
Will you find out the gender in advance this time? Yes but we won’t be revealing it until the baby is born. We’ve also talked about not announcing the pregnancy either until the birth.
Do you plan on working outside of the home when your kids get older? Originally my plan was to use my cosmetology license and do hair for a living once my babies are all in school. However, my heart called me in another direction. It called me to midwifery and for a year now I’ve been taking classes/interning under a licensed midwife in Arkansas. Unfortunately though due to covid 19 certain protocols have changed and I’m on rotation with other midwife students to attend births. As a result, I don’t get to assist births near as often as I’d like to and it’s put my training on slow motion. Also, we recently decided on homeschooling and I’m running a successful business raising puppies so we are in zero rush for me to work outside of the home. For now we are just focusing on growing our business and our family as well as productively homeschooling indefinitely with the occasional births and classes online. we are in an awesome place of comfort and peace all around.
Do you and your man like ever fight? You both are always so happy. oh my. So yes, We disagree at times and have had our fair share of struggles in the past but honestly, we rarely fight - FIGHT! I can think of twice in the last 3 years that we had a raise your voice kind of fight. We (I) fought often early in our marriage. I had a lot of emotional baggage and trauma due to past relationships. I struggled to just let myself be happy. I was terrified of getting hurt and i would try to push Brian away. He didn’t give up on me. He was so patient and loving through it all. I feel deeply honored to have him. Once I let that wall down, it changed everything. I always feel so awkward telling anyone how awesome my marriage is. I don’t know if it’s guilt because a lot of people don’t have this or if it’s weird for me because it feels kind of braggy but honest to God, my marriage is the only thing that keeps my head on. Brian is my rock and our relationship is ‘that fairytale stuff’ that you see in movies. It’s extremely humbling to know this type of love and peace. It makes me emotional every single time that I think about it. I am blessed beyond what I deserve and so thankful for my marriage.
If you were rich, what would your life look like? B and I joke about winning the lottery or being rich sometimes so I’ve thought about this before. My life would look the same. In no specific order, our house would be our current house. We’d buy more land and cattle. We’d buy a big vacation home in Estes Park to visit with family and rent out when we weren’t there. We’d put a large sum into savings for each kid and future kid. We’d pay off our parents and grandparents debts. We’d have more children (doing that anyways but it’s probably be even more if we were wealthy lol). I’d buy more pets and donate to shelters. We’d travel more. We’d tithe the adequate amount and support great causes. But as far as what life would look like to outsiders, it’d look the same. Lots of kids. Lots of land. Lots of pets. A homesteading and homeschooling, wholistic lifestyle of traveling every chance we can.
If there’s anything that you’re jealous of, what is it? Easy! I’m super envious of naturally tiny women. Girls who do not have to try at all to stay tiny. No diet. No work out. No calorie counting. Just naturally tiny framed and cute. Maybe in the next life 🤷🏻♀️
What is something that you love and hate about yourself? I love my lifestyle and family. Like, I’m deeply obsessed with my crew and our way of life. My family, home, ranch, Pets, friends, and way of life is everythinggggg. I also love my hair. I whine about maintaining the natural curls but really, my hair is long, ringlet curly, and thick. I love it. I hate my stretch marks. I’m not one of those moms who loves the marks because it shows my ability to carry babies. I’m obviously unendingly thankful for my capability to keep having babies but I’m not all that thankful for the claw marks.
What is your biggest pet peeve? I have 3! Smacking, people who copy others, and lying. Smacking is really quite rude. My toddlers learned how to chew food with their mouths closed early in life. I have a hard time with people that mimic everything that you do or post. I used to think that it was comical and flattering but as I’ve gotten older, It just makes me very sad for them that their life is so empty that they want to be just like someone else. You can always tell the level of misery that a person is feels if they are pretending to be just like someone else. I also dislike lying. It’s one of the most disgusting traits that a person can have. Why lie about your own actions? If you’re that ashamed of them, don’t do them. why claim to have things that you obviously don’t? Vehicles, acreage, creeks, ect. How embarrassing. Lying all around about anything is pathetic to me and in my opinion an illness if it’s reoccurring.
If there’s one thing that you will always be known for, what would it be? My love for being a mom and having kids. I can’t imagine the day when I’m not longer carrying or raising babies. I’d love to be 40 and still having children. We shall see 😉
I hope that everyone is finding some kind of peace or compromise for this hard time. Us ranchers are definitely struggling so keep us in your prayers along with everyone else but at the end of the day, the show must go on. Finding a safe yet more functional to sustain balance is key!
A lot has changed during my 7 month break from blogging. My older children adjusted beautifully to home schooling and are loving it. They have learned so much. Specifically my girls. If you’ve followed me on here for awhile you’ve most likely heard me say that I’ve always wanted to homeschool but it was the one and only thing that my husband and i completely disagreed on. However, Distanced learning due to Covid changed him and now I’m thrilled to say that we will be homeschooling next year. He saw how much the kids and i benefitted from it. He saw the huge improvements in their math and reading skills. He saw how happy it made us. It’s a miracle that his heart changed on this but definitely a welcome one.
We realize that many if not all schools are going to offer distanced learning for the entire school year of 2020-21 but that wasn’t a factor at all in our choice. I know that most moms will be distanced learning at home through their schools anyways since it’s going to be protocol for a lot of schools so remember, that we are on this journey together. You can do this! We personally, won’t be using a public school program for our homeschool curriculum. We opted to go with a classical, Christian homeschool program rather than using the general public school curriculum process. We picked Classical Conversations. My mom has spoken so highly of it for a year now and months ago I started to seriously look into it. I attended my first meeting on April 8th and was hooked right away. It is a home school program but once a week there’s class in Person which I LOVE. It gives you professional help and guidelines to follow but also keeps the ball in your court as far as the pace/methods of how you teach goes. It’s the best of both worlds. Making new friends in a private school atmosphere with tiny class sizes but also mostly teaching from your home.
Cheers to a new beginning for my littles and I.
my bigs are thriving academically, My toddler just turned 3 and is still nursing full time so we’ve been juggling tandem nursing her and her little brother, whom turns 7 months old tomorrow. He’s grown and changed so much. My babies are now 7 months, 3 years, 7 years, 8 years, and almost 9 years old.
Crazy. Talk.
Seriously! Why does time have to fly by so fast?!
Aside from the typical quarantine business related to staying at home, home schooling, quickly growing children, missing our friends, owning/managing 3 businesses, and surviving the insane times that we are living in — we have just been working around our homestead. Gardening, working cattle, riding horses, taking care of the small animals on the ranch, raising puppies, baking more than I care to admit (holla covid 20 lbs over here ha), organizing our businesses as we transition a lot of our policies to improve things, preparing to home school again, and so much in between. The break that I took was wonderful and what I needed but I’m ready to be back in the groove of blogging so stay tuned. I have sooo many pre drafted posts that I’ll be uploading on a regular basis. My goal is to upload new content twice a week 🙌🏼
Coming up - Q & A to reintroduce ourselves to new followers, details in regards to our homeschooling program/schedule, and tips on gardening in the Midwest.
