I am a former reading and ESL teacher. Currently, I am a homeschooling mom of five and wife to my husband of 3 years. I left the teaching profession, not because I did not like teaching but because I felt a great obligation to my family that I could not fulfill while working.  From the beginning I felt a need to homeschool on the cheap, since the family would benefit from one less paycheck. I already a had a great amount of free resources that I had pulled from while a teacher and had confidence that I could build the curriculum for my own children from the ground up using free or cheap resources from the internet and other places.

Each of my children are very different. They have different skill sets, different interest, and different tolerances, so I learned right away that I would need to tailor each of my children’s curriculum individually. The internet was such a great tool for this. I use the library of course. What a great free resource, but the internet’s possibilities were endless. The internet became our source for impromptu research. It was in the throws of research that our love of the internet and its vast amount of brain tickling knowledge grew. We are all a bunch of fact junkies and spend a lot of time with our face in a computer. (Don’t worry we socialize too. I’ll get to that in one post or another.)

I am so thankful to be at home with my children and so thankful I have the liberty to homeschool. I have seen them blossom so much academically, socially, and most importantly in the confidence of being who they are.

For fun I spend my time  crocheting,  handlettering, and gardening and reading.  I am the non-fiction lover in the family, so most of my reading is done on the internet about faith, good health, or current events. Crochet, handlettering and doodling are my creative outlets. Gardening is my therapy.  I have taught myself most of these skills using  internet resources (shocker, I know) and the library, so I practice what I preach. I also have a couple of manuscripts for children’s books that I work on occasionally, but none of them have been published. It is mostly dedication that is lacking.

Soon after we first began homeschooling, I joined every Facebook group I could, read every homeschool blog I could, and attempted to wrap my brain around this new life. As I got more comfortable in my new role, I noticed how many others were wary, undecided, lacking confidence and needed advice or materials. I knew that part of the reason for my quick transition was my 16 years teaching. I had experience on many grade levels and all subjects. I was attracted to the questions that all of these mothers asked and I found myself hanging out on site or another just to answer the next question.  Yep, I was a question stalker. I suppose this new role took the place of the dependence that my teaching colleagues and I had on one another. The exchange was wonderful. I gained as much from the moms as I was hoping to give.

I hope to share more here, where I will be sharing with you my thoughts, ideas, successes, and failures on parenting, homeschooling, and life, but you will probably love the resources the most. Some of the posts will be works in progress as I will be adding resources as I find them. If you have a questions, either about homeschooling or materials for a certain subject, you can  join my group on Facebook where I and a number of parents share homeschooling resources,  and teaching tips throughout the day, so that you can relax more and enjoy homeschooling.