You know that one book? That one curriculum that was all-important? That one that was going to be the foundation for your child’s education?

That one that’s still on the shelf — unopened…

Throw it away.

You heard me. Or give it away! Sell it! Get it out of your house so it stops haunting you like the ring in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Some of us hold on to curriculum like Gollum and the ring. Your child(ren) will be fine.

Bringthestanleykidshome

Rethinking Foster Care: Molly McGrath Tierney at TEDxBaltimore 2014

The astonishing amount of data being collected about your children

Is Government Data being Used to Deliver Drug Company Profits?

Does God have a plan for the education of children? The prevailing wisdom among the education gurus seems to be that the government should educate our children from 3 years old to well into their adult years. What do you think?

Is Pre-K Broken?

5 Surprising Ways Homeschooling Prepared Me for College (Plus 5 Ways it Didn’t)

NUMBER OF HOMESCHOOLED CHILDREN SOARS IN AMERICA: UP 61.8% OVER 10 YEARS

What do you need to homeschool successfully?

A computer?

A white board?

A custom-made Homeschool sign on your house?

Here are my five essentials for homeschooling successfully…

10 Homeschool Essentials (Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers)

My Top 10 Homeschool Essentials (Happiness Is Homemade)

Top 10: Essentials For Homeschooling Successfully (Do Life Right)

There are a variety of reasons people quit homeschooling – some good, some not so good. These are my top five.

Do you ever feel like throwing in the towel on homeschooling? Which reason hits you the hardest?

Lies Homeschoolers Believe – Todd and Debbie Wilson

Do you know your child’s learning style(s)? I have a couple children that fit fairly well into a category of learning style, though they sometimes overlap with the others. I also have a couple of children that seem to resist labels and defy boundaries of all kinds. And that’s okay. It’s helpful to know about different learning styles, personality styles, love languages, birth order, and other ingredients that make up your children. Just know that as soon as you think you have them figured out, they’ll change or confound you in some way.

On today’s episode, I talk about three different learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic – as highlighted in the article Three Types of Smart: Identifying Your Child’s Learning Style. I also take up the challenging topic of foster care and government intervention in families. Let me know what you think.

Three Types of Smart: Identifying Your Child’s Learning Style

Rethinking foster care: Molly McGrath Tierney at TEDxBaltimore 2014

It’s back-to-school time! Are you ready?

Here are my 3 tips for getting back to school without losing your mind:

How do you get back to school without going crazy?

The Frightening Power of the Home-Schooling Lobby

50 Fabulous electives for homeschooled high schoolers

A baby’s crying out, but no one hears her scream

What about their choice? The ones without a voice

We slaughter our own daughters and sons in sacrifice

What about their choice? The ones without a voice

Whatever you have done to the least of these

What is being done can no longer be denied

What about their choice? The ones without a voice

My kids are bored — and that’s good!

Why? I’ve noticed that my kids are becoming addicted to entertainment. I hesitate to use that word, “addicted,” because we seem to throw it around a lot nowadays, but it fits, at least in a small way. When I was a kid, I remember getting bored in the summer, quite often, actually. When I whined to my mom, “Mom, I’m bored!” she shooed me away. If she replied at all, it was to say that it wasn’t her job to entertain me. If she was feeling extremely patient with me, she might suggest that I use my imagination or go outside and play, but that was about it. It usually took me a while to get to the point of whining to my mom about being bored, though.

My kids are different. If they have “nothing to do” for more than a minute or two, they start to panic (not in a ‘Quick-get-them-to-the-psychiatrist’ way, more of a ‘I’ve-never-known-life-without-iStuff’ kind of way). It’s a little scary. I’ve realized that they don’t know how to handle boredom. It’s like they don’t remember that they have an imagination. Is that what we’re doing to our children? Are we literally shutting down their imaginations?

We took a month-long break from media last year. Maybe it’s time to take another break to reactivate their minds. Maybe it’s good for our kids to be bored sometimes. A little boredom shouldn’t be a cause for panic in a child’s life. I think I’m going to start engineering a little boredom into my kids’ lives. What about you? Is it time for your kids to be a little bored?

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On today’s episode, I talk with Steve Demme about homeschool conventions and homeschooling in general. Steve is a pioneer of the modern homeschooling movement, as well as a great math teacher. He created the popular math program, Math-U-See through his family-owned company, Demme Learning.

Check out the podcast Steve and I do together at BuildingFaithFamilies.org.