PARENT AT THE HELM

Lifeboats: What Homeschooling Advocacy Means to Me

I never set out to become a homeschooling advocate, though that is what I'm often called. As I watched three young hearts and minds blossom in an educational experience antithetical to my own, it was impossible to keep the discovery - the joy, the love, the obvious "naturalness" of the process of learning...

Homeschooling: When Doubting Thomas Is Your Husband…Or Yourself

By Linda Dobson I'd love to report that when homeschooling is the topic of spousal discussions, it produces an instant meeting of the minds. This isn't always the case. While in some households Dad tries his darnedest to sway Mom, more often it appears...

Homeschooling: Dealing with Doubting Relatives

It's one thing to paint your house, only to have your mother-in-law stick up her nose and mutter something about nausea. It's quite another to soul-search, decide that the very best thing you can do for your children is to create a new...

The Hidden Harm of Children’s Stress

The hidden harm of children's stress is a topic worthy of lots more attention. A lot of parents realize that today's focus on standardized test scores hurts their children because they can see the loss of exercise, the amount of learning that's falling by the wayside to concentrate on English and math, and the epidemic proportion of children placed on harmful/too many drugs in an attempt to...

Homeschooling Starts In Many Different Places

For some folks, the decision to pursue homeschooling is a piece of cake compared to actually facing the first day of complete responsibility for their children's education. I know: I've been there. There can never be a definitive...

Serious Folks Can Bring Too Much School into Homeschooling

y Linda Dobson Have you heard the old saying, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy?" This could easily translate into, "If Mama is stressed-out over homeschooling, her children will be, too." It's the nature of family that what affects one of us affects all of us, and this phenomenon is especially...

Mother’s Love Leads to Better Learning

The Connection between Learning and Loving While the connection between loving and learning may seem as common sensical to you as it does to me, it saddened me that common sense needed to be tested in the laboratory. So now everyone knows the great news - providing love and a nurturing environment to small children helps the hippocampus grow larger which improves learning. Now all parents can support their children during the early years. Not so...

Homeschooling Resources: Artobet!

Incorporating a study of the artists has always been hard for me in our homeschooling. There is so much information available that it becomes overwhelming. I have struggled with this since day one of our homeschooling journey. Do you find yourself in that same position? I have often tried to find a product that will work for our family, but our budget doesn’t allow for most of these curricula. If our budget...

Weirdest Homeschooling Laws

Here, in no particular order of weirdness, are some odd rules and regulations about homeschooling:

Are You an Accidental Homeschooler?

Are You an Accidental Homeschooler? Please join me in a big ol' Parent at the Helm welcome to our newest sponsor, Time4Learning, helping to keep informative PATH posts in your homeschooler e-mail box or on your Facebook page throughout the seasons. We're happy to share this guest post by Nela Prado! Even before they have children, some families already know that they want to homeschool, while others find themselves homeschooling based out of necessity or by accident. These “accidental homeschoolers” had their children in schools and – for many different reasons – decided that homeschooling was the best...