From the category archives:

School

Editors Note: This is the second in an ongoing series of interviews with homeschooling families. Our first interview with Jen McKinnon is here. We hope you enjoy their stories as much as we did and if you are a homeschooling family interested in being profiled, please contact us.

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Our second interview is with Tara Wagner from TheOrganicSister.com. She and her husband Justin unschool their 10 year old son Zeb. Continue reading…

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Editors Note: We’re (not) back to school at the Family Hack house, and the nuts and bolts of a DIY education have been on our minds. As we mentioned in another of our homeschool pieces, there is no better guidance for a homeschool family than the tales of those who have “been there, done that”.

In that spirit, we’ve asked some homeschooling families a series of questions about how they homeschool, what challenges they face, how homeschooling fits with family life overall, etc. We hope you enjoy their stories as much as we did!

This is an ongoing series — if you are a homeschooling family interested in being profiled, please contact us.

Our first interview is with our always-inspiring friend Jennifer McKinnon from www.jenthemom.com. She and her husband Chuck homeschool four beautiful children…

Continue reading…

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Like most homeschooling families, the walls of our house are lined with books. We turn to them for ideas, answers, solutions, inspiration, entertainment, and reassurance. During this brand new school year, here are a few we recommend.

NOTE: Although this list emphasizes homeschooling, (since that’s what we do) it’s not limited to information only useful to homeschoolers. Regardless of the form of “school” you’re using, your kids are learning all the time — and so are you.
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“Why don’t we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers.”

Ken Robinson is right up our alley. This 20 minute talk is terrific…and quite funny.

Related Posts:
Classroom To-Go: Brain Builders for Kids on the Road.
A Simple Trick to Turbo Charge Learning a Foreign Language.

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Khymi in the car.

“Why do they call it homeschooling if we’re never home?”
— A favorite bumpersticker

I grew up (and was homeschooled) in a rural area, where it took an hour to get anywhere and an average of two hours to get the place you needed to go. My parents figured out in pretty short order that if we didn’t take advantage of our time in the car, I wasn’t going to have much in the way of formal education. Car time evolved into one of the most focused and structured part of my homeschooling life. In fact, I think one of my main motivations to get my driver’s license was to get away from algebra.

I’ll occasionally hear my homeschooling-parent friends lament a day of travel or errands as a day “lost” from homeschool. Of course, I find myself thinking “what are you talking about? That’s the best time to do schoolwork. Hey, the kids are strapped in; they can’t get away!” Of course, in all seriousness, homeschooling on the road does present challenges: reading and writing, probably the backbone of a lot of your school activities at home, are difficult, if not just impossible to accomplish in a moving vehicle; reading can cause carsickness, and writing with anything sharper than a crayon is probably a bad idea. But, if necessity is the mother of invention, these limitations should only inspire us to greater creativity. I’m firmly convinced that travel time is a great homeschool opportunity. Here are some good resources to jumpstart learning on the go.
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This is the background story of how a family with two small kids lives the mobile lifestyle talked about in the best selling book the “4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. This blog will feature lots on in depth, detailed posts on how we’ve made “family hacks” to get the most out of our time, money and mobility.

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