“They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”" (Exodus 14:11)

We like the other part of the story.  Moses raises his staff, the Red Sea parts, the chosen ones cross on dry land and the enemies are snuffed out in the triumphant glory of God’s justice.

But on the eve of this great event, was there a spirit of heightened expectation?  A furor among a people preparing for deliverance?  No.  In fact, all seemed lost.  The mood was blacker than the cloud which hid them.  Like some group-think Stockholm Syndrome, the people actually yearned for their oppression.

Seems ridiculous in hindsight, doesn’t it?  But we don’t live every day with the benefit of hindsight as it relates to our circumstances, do we?  We go through our daily motions often feeling like there’s no straw to be found for the bricks we’re supposed to be building in our lives, our families, our schooling or our work.  We want to be delivered.  I know, because I’ve been there too.  We all have.

But often when deliverance comes, it doesn’t take the form that we think it should.  Exodus teaches us a valuable lesson.  Sometimes our deliverance feels like a dead-end.

Take heart.  While our perspective is like tunnel vision, God’s is not.  Exodus 2 tells us that God heard the groans of his people and took notice.  Isn’t that an encouraging thought?  Just because nothing seems to be happening, or perhaps your circumstances seem to be getting worse, doesn’t mean the world is ending.

We know the end of the story.  “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today… The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Are you willing to be silent and wait on the Lord?

Ran across this article (it’s a PDF that you can also get from this website) recently from my mom, who teaches kids in public schools to read.  Marc Prensky makes some excellent points that I think are as applicable for homeschool families as they are for public school teachers.  We think it’s worth a read.

The basic premise is that those of us who are teaching our kids have generally grown up in the pre-digital age and although we have adopted and embraced many of the “customs” of the digital age, we’re still digital immigrants as opposed to our children who have never known life without the internet.

Even our readers and followers who are “tweeners,” considering themselves in the digital age but of it, know that their experience and perspective on technology is different from their children’s and are often surprised at their acumen with digital technology even though they may have placed some substantial limits on it.

The point is that teaching digital natives, his term for those who have grown up in a digital world, has to take on a fundamentally different structure and methodology from the experience that we had growing up and being taught.  As I’ve mentioned many times before, we as homeschoolers often bring our own educational paradigm to bear on our children, a paradigm that was often shaped by our own experience in public school.  That paradigm has been rendered obsolete because the world has changed, but curriculum (both homeschool and public school) has been slow to change with it.

We find this very interesting as we’re rolling out our own attempt at a technology curriculum, which we’re developing as a means of teaching our own children (and one that we hope will be helpful to you).

The digital revolution is impacting us all, but as homeschoolers, we’re in a position to be more flexible, adaptable and creative in how and what we teach.  Our challenge is to not only understanding how the “delivery” of education is evolving, but in the midst of it to be guides and shepherds of our children’s hearts and minds.

As a marathoner, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten was, “Run your own race.”  In such a test of endurance, if you try to keep up with someone who’s faster than you or if you simply go out too fast and don’t run at a sustainable pace, not only will you fail to meet your own goals, but you risk the dreaded DNF… Did Not Finish.

We’ve all heard sayings similar to, “life’s a marathon, not a sprint.”  I believe that applies to homeschooling as well (not to mention marriage, raising a family and building a career!).  Like a fingerprint or a snowflake, each family has a culture of strengths and passions and skills and personality that are uniquely it’s own.  When we’re too focused on trying to run someone else’s race, to be like that “perfect family,” we accomplish nothing.  We wear ourselves down, miss our blessings and lose our soul.

I have a lot of respect for runners who are stronger and faster than I am.  I can learn a lot from them (whether I like them or agree with them or not!), maybe train with them from time to time, but when the day of the marathon gets here, I can’t run their race.  Envying them won’t make me any faster or stronger.  Let me encourage you to run your own race.  Know your pace and stick to it.  Pursue your own goals and finish well.

This week, I’d like to encourage you to keep your expectations in line with reality. Sometimes I think that we set ourselves up for disappointment by allowing our expectations (for our children, spouses, friends, jobs, church, you name it) to far exceed reality.

Do you sometimes set the bar so high for others that it simply can’t be met. I know I do. Are you expecting your children to do something they’ve never been taught to, to be something that God didn’t wire them to be or to overcome a habit that they aren’t aware of (or haven’t been working to break)?

Yes, we need to have high standards and good attitudes, but also realistic expectations. We need to push forward, but not set unrealistic goals. Not many people win the lottery, but anyone can make small investments that grow big over time. The thing about expectations is that they often affect us more than they affect those we put them on. The answer is not “no expectations.” The answer is realistic expectations!

Meant to send this as a Monday morning word of encouragement and what do you know… it’s late Monday night! But here’s the thought that struck me and I hope it encourages you.

As homeschoolers, we need to remember that we’re in the business of changing the world, and while we may be fortunate enough to reap some of the benefits in the short run, the fruit of our labors will really be measured in generations, not just seasons. This week may seem like just another routine week, but no one can put a value on the investment you are making in your children’s future!

Front Page of the Bible Reading Plan. Click the link to download a PDF version!

With New Year’s Day jut around the corner, new year’s resolutions are on my mind.  And one of those resolutions that I hear (and make) just about every year is about consistently reading the Bible.

There’s a TON of great reading plan resources available on the internet.  Not too long ago, I was searching for a plan for my children that didn’t overwhelm them but also wasn’t too light-weight either.  I searched and searched and while I came across a few that got close, there wasn’t one that seemed to be “just right.”

Bible Reading Plan-New Testament-Psalms-Proverbs

So, I took the best of a couple plans that I found and crafted one that hit all of the new testament, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Genesis in a one year format.  If your family is anything like mine, keeping children on track is tough.  One thing I like about this plan is that it has readings for Monday-Friday (convenient if you to incorporate into your schooling routine!) and leaves the weekends free for catch up reading.

So this Christmas season, as we look forward to a new year, I hope that you might be able to put this plan to use for yourself or your family.  This plan is best printed out on legal sized paper.  The document is 2 pages, however I designed it to print on the front and back of the paper.  I’ve got a folding system for it that’s probably too complicated to try and write, but you can probably figure out something that works for you and so that your plan also doubles as a bookmark.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year’s and Enjoy.

Ed & Jeff
The Homeskoolie Guys

The holidays are upon us and the Homeskoolie guys wish you a very Merry Christmas and a blessed advent season!  What a busy year it’s been.  From conferences this summer to building our internet store and writing our first curriculum (which will be ready in January) we’ve been really busy, not to mention leading homeschool families and other work commitments to pay the bills while we get Homeskoolie up and running!

If you’re anything like us, life is just hectic and while we all love the holidays, they can also be a time of stress.  It would be nice if life was like the cover of a Hallmark Christmas card, but then, hey, it probably wouldn’t be life.  It’d be more like heaven which, by the way, we’re really looking forward to this time of year!

Isn’t it odd that a season of expectation and joy often seems to be marked by busyness and stressfulness?  Maybe you’ve got it together.  If you do, that’s really great.  But I don’t.  And in the midst of the holiday hustle and bustle, sometimes I find myself falling into habits that I wish I didn’t: impatience, shortness of speech, frustration, things that all too often find their mark on those who don’t deserve it.

So here’s our gift to you this season.  This stirring reminder of the importance of encouraging our children was written by W. Livingston Larned and was reprinted from Reader’s Digest in Dale Carnegie’s famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  You may have read it before, but it’s worth a read again…

Father Forgets

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you.  I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.  You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby.  Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

I hope that you are encouraged this holiday season to savor every moment with your family as the precious gift that it is and as you begin a new year that you remember one of the greatest gifts that we can give our children is investing our lives in them.  Merry Christmas, and to quote another classic text, “God Bless Us, Every One!”

It’s been a fun year so far turning our vision of encouraging homeschoolers into the reality of a company.  Homeskoolie has been so well received at the conferences that we’ve attended and as we’ve worked to ramp up our on-line presence.  The support of you, the homeschool community, has been so rewarding for us and has been the fuel that has continued to move us forward.  Thank you so much!

As we’ve mentioned in our various postings and info pages on-line, our company is driven by the desire and passion to support and encourage the homeschool community through building identity, creating community, raising awareness and changing culture.  As those of you who have been following us this year know, we’re building our brand through our t-shirt designs and Homeskoolie stickers, but we’ve got lots of plans that we hope to make a reality as growth, resources and time allow.

A couple months ago, we started floating an idea to our followers (locally, on Facebook and on Twitter) about interest in developing a technology curriculum teaching homeschoolers how to create websites.  The initial feedback that we received was really positive and it seems that there’s both the desire to learn and the need for trusted resources for homeschoolers who are technologically inclined.

This is a natural fit since Jeff and I have been building websites and database applications for a number of years and have learned a lot about what to do and what not to do!  Since the internet and websites are not only a thing of interest for technologically minded children but also the way of the future in terms of business, media and social interaction, we believe that educating homeschool students to harness the power of technology will help them develop a valuable skill set that can help them in many ways throughout their future.

But we also feel that when it comes to all things technology, that teaching technical skills should be coupled with teaching prudence and purpose.  The internet is an amazing thing but can also be dangerous and as homeschool dads ourselves, we’re keenly aware of the importance of balancing technology skills with discernment.  Just letting our children wander the web looking for resources to learn how to do things is an invitation for all sorts of problems.

So as we work to complete our first official Homeskoolie Tech course to be available in e-book form early 2012, we are emphasizing practical website building skills that make use of the latest tools available.  However, what makes this a little different is that we’re not just teaching how to create a website, but we’re diving deep into the why and how of creating websites.  We’re using the same tools that we use and showing where to get them and specifically how to use them (we don’t want our children wandering the internet to find a text editor or FTP client and ending up somewhere they shouldn’t be!).

We’re also discussing form and design as well as how websites are used for e-commerce.  Maybe you’re not interested in websites for business and just want to learn how to build a family blog.  That’s fine, of course, but the basic skills that you will learn in this course will enable you to create not only websites to, say, showcase your photography hobby or talk about caring for horses but that can ultimately be turned into family businesses.  Whether you have a budding entrepreneur in the family or simply want a safe alternative to teaching tech skills for the future, we believe that you will find this course to be just right.

We’re putting the final touches on our course and would love your thoughts and feedback as we get ready for our product launch.  Keep tabs on our progress here on our blog, sign up for our newsletter, or like us on Facebook.  And feel free to post a comment or question here!

Since I have a little extra read these days, I recently picked up Daniel Pink‘s book entitled Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

I was interested in this one more from a business perspective, however as with many of the excellent new books addressing education, motivation and trends in business by such authors as Sir Ken Robinson and Lisa Gansky, Pink’s ideas are rife with application for homeschool families.

The thesis of Pink’s book is that the traditional notions of what motivates people, namely a use of external rewards and punishments to achieve results, often do just the opposite and may lead to behaviors that are unhealthy and potentially destructive.  Citing a number of studies in behavioral science (don’t let that scare anyone off!), Pink builds the case that people inherently have intrinsic motivation and that by creating environments that encourage people’s innate desires for autonomy, mastery and purpose, we can tap into and foster that motivation.

Pink makes a distinction in types of work as it relates to motivation and this, in my opinion, is where it gets interesting for homeschoolers.  Bear with me on this.

As our economy is changing, the nature of work is.  There is more job growth in activities that require creativity, experimentation and novel solutions to problems than there is in “algorithmic” work, tasks that are routine, predictable and don’t really require much thinking (and when our children get into the workforce many of those jobs will have already been outsourced somewhere!).

When thinking about my own family, there’s a level of education that is algorithmic: things like basic obedience, doing chores, being kind to one another, consistently completing their assignments without arguing and complaining, and a host of things that are non-negotiables.

But I have also found, particularly as my own children have gotten older, that the real hard part of parenting is more heuristic (how’s that for a word!), things like teaching children to think independently and creatively, to take all of the stuff we’ve been learning and apply it in order to solve problems and accomplish things in the world.

And that’s where learning about motivation gets important.

As a homeschool dad that spends a lot of time at the office, ingrained in old school corporate ideas of motivation, it’s easy for me to carry the carrot and stick philosophy home and apply it across the board.  Did you do your chores this morning?  Yes = reward, No = discipline.  No-brainer, right?

But does that always work?  I know from experience that one of the biggest frustrations that dads have is how do we get our children motivated.  Sure, we totally get behavioral modification, and at one level that’s fine and good.  But we don’t want to raise robots, we want to train sons to be men and daughters to be ladies, and to that end, the carrot and the stick will only work as long as the environment is adequately controlled.  But the older our children get, that harder that becomes.

We want our children to think for themselves, to think critically when they do, and engage in productive things that they are passionate about.  Sometimes we have a tendency to believe that our children won’t do a thing unless they are prodded along with a whole host of carrots and sticks, and at times that’s true.  Laziness is certainly a character issue many parents have to deal with.  But then there’s our boy with whom we struggle to get to do the dishes on Thursday nights, but will immerse himself in figuring out how to build websites and stay up all night doing it if he could.  Or our daughter who won’t clean up after herself to save her life, but will work on crafts for hours on end.  Or the other child who will choose to figure out puzzles instead of watch TV?

I certainly agree with Pink that children are born with an innate sense of wonder, curiosity and creativity, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  Not to mention the hard-wiring of personality.  It’s our job as parents (a job that intensifies as we take on the responsibility of homeschooling) to create an environment that stimulates our children’s unique personality and intrinsic motivation.

That’s a major challenge in today’s culture.  Not only must we work hard to be perceptive enough to understand what kind of environment our children thrive in, but we also need to be aware of what gets in the way.  We need to think critically of how computers, televisions, iPods and Pads, media, gaming systems, extracurricular activities, family commitments, etc. impact that environment.

This is where traditional educational models that apply a one-size-fits-all methodology to everyone fail us.  They tend to fall into error on either side of the motivation spectrum, that is they use the carrot and stick for everything or if they are particularly progressive, they do nothing more than placate children, offering no guidance or accountability whatsoever.

And if we’re honest, we homeschoolers may find that the traditional models in which many of us were raised exert a strong influence on how we approach educating and motivating our children.  If my homeschool experience is anything like yours, we spend as much time unlearning old habits as we do implementing new ones.  And this is where books like Drive can help us.

This is something we talk about and then talk about and then talk about some more.  It is definitely a balancing act at the beginning.  If you have read about us then you know we are committed to helping the homeschool community change the world.  Of course we love our t-shirts and want everyone to wear them, but we also desire to be supportive of homeschooling in other ways.

That is why we are happy to be a gold sponsor for the Plants & Pillars Film Festival.  This is a film festival created by a homeschool family of ten, who has a passion for not only film making, but for sharing that passion so others can participate as well.   We hope this is the first of many homeschool endeavors that we will be able to support!

On the other hand, for us to be able to support these types of activities we must receive support ourselves.  In saying this, we are very thankful for everyone who has purchased our t-shirts and are excited about the road ahead of us.  The only way we can continue to grow, besides producing a good product, is for our name to spread throughout the homeschooling community.  We started out doing a few conferences, where we received great support from many homeschooling families.  We then launched our Facebook and Twitter campaigns, which again has resulted in growing support (if you haven’t stopped by to like or follow us, please do!).

Now we are very thankful that two kind ladies have allowed us to be highlighted on their blogs.  Alicia Stunkel , of Confessions Of A Snowflake, gave us the privilege of doing this guest post, as well as a shirt give away, and Anna Molder of Molding Minds Homeschool was kind enough to do a review of one of our shirts along with another shirt give away.  Click on the links above and take a look.  We are thankful for the support and are hopeful of more opportunities in this area.  If you have any ideas, don’t be shy, let us know.

Like any business, we can’t exist without customers, so we’re asking you to help spread the word about us.  At Homeskoolie, supporting homeschoolers is what we do, but being supported by homeschoolers is how we exist.