I'm back!

Hi! I know I have been gone for so long, but it seems when things are exciting enough to write about, I am also too busy to write! LOL! We have ahad a great few months! We have been traveling like crazy since May! It all seems like a blur now, but we had a wonderful time!

We are getting ready to start our next homeschool year, and I have been busy collecting curriculum, making schedules (which I will alter like 50 times during the school year)! I am also Reading a GREAT series of books by Oliver DeMille!! The first one is called "A Thomas Jefferson Education." He is AWESOME! I don't care if you don't homeschool. Every parent and educator needs this book! It talks about how to raise up leaders. Part of that equation is raising kids who educate themselves. He makes the argument that nobody educates someone else. Sure we can give them work to do. We can lecture them, but the student is the one educates himself. They have to be inspired to learn. They have to be taught HOW to think, not told WHAT to think! He also talks about the best way to raise up good leaders and statesmen is to give them three parts of the education equation : classics, mentors, and inspiration (as apposed to requirement). The book talks a lot about the state of our leadership crisis in America and basically how that can be changed by this form of education, called Thomas Jefferson Education (TJed). I also love how it calls public school, and even a lot of private schools, "Conveyor belt education." =) Anyway, luckily, I do already teach a lot like he states in the book, which is a relief, but I will be learning as I go as well....mainly in the reading classics category. I have read a lot on the list in the past, but still so many more, and I want to be ahead of the game. Basically, I want to give myself a better education as well, so that I can help my kids to be leaders and statesmen...something this country is in desperate need of.

There have been a lot of thoughts going through my head lately about homeschooling, especially as I am questioned more by people who are thinking of doing it themselves or the people who roll their eyes and claim they NEVER could do that! I may be wring about some of these thoughts because I feel there are some misleading thoughts floating around out there that need to be addresses, and I also need to process my own thoughts by writing them out. =)