Every parent wants to establish good relationships with their children whether they are homeschooling or not. ~Marty Layne
That line practically jumped off the screen at me as I scrolled through a 1999 interview I did with homeschooling mother Marty Layne, of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Marty had just written an encouraging and thoughtful book on homeschooling, Learning at Home: A Mother’s Guide to Homeschooling (1999, Sea Change Publications), and in our interview she shared her perspectives on homeschooling and mothering.
The quote above came when I asked Marty this question about her book:
The back cover text for your book says it is “as much about establishing good relationships with children as educating them.” Would you discuss that idea a little? Specifically, don’t all caring parents seek to establish good relationships with their children? Isn’t it simply a part of good parenting, or did you have something else in mind?
Marty replied:
“Yes, that’s right, establishing good relationships with children is important to all parents. My hope in putting that quote on the back of my book was to encourage parents who are not considering homeschooling to also read my book. Many of the people who have read my book tell me that it is the parenting, the mothering information that they find the most valuable. One woman said in her review that she almost wished that the title were Learning at Home: A Mother’s Guide without the homeschooling so that more parents would read it whatever their choice of education for their children.
Every parent wants to establish good relationships with their children whether they are homeschooling or not. The things that can make mothering and homeschooling so special is that one has time to spend with one’s children. We get to know our children as they grow. We watch them as they learn to master all kinds of skills from reading to riding bikes or driving a car. There is an intimacy we share that comes from sheer time spent together in everyday things like cooking a meal or raking leaves.
“The more separation there is the more difficult it is to have this opportunity to learn through doing. This is difficult to understand for those who have had a lot of separation from their children. They have no picture of anything else. Of course they interact with their children when they are together, but they often have no way to picture a more extensive amount of time together.
“I think The most difficult issues facing parents is how to make the time to get to know who their children are. Many children have no one who really knows them. For many children, a teacher knows more about them than their own parents. This seems sad to me.
Marty’s words are as true today as they were over ten years ago. There is an intimacy which comes from simply spending time together, and one of the most valuable aspects of homeschooling is the time it affords families to spend in the company of each other.
Read the entire interview with Marty Lane, in which she talks about how John Holt influenced her thinking, how she and her husband came to “the intellectual decision to homeschool,” why she says “original thinkers are in short supply,” and what she means by “mother time.”
Tags: good parenting, Helen Hegener, homeschooling, homeschooling and mothering, intellectual decision to homeschool, John Holt, Learning at Home: A Mother’s Guide to Homeschooling, Marty Layne, mother time, reasons to homeschool, relationships with children, Sea Change Publications, ~ Unschooling, • Home Education Magazine
In another round of going through my inbox of articles submitted to Home Education Magazine, I’m reeling from the number of similarly named articles. Writers have worked hard on their articles for HEM, which we appreciate. But at the moment of truth, when writers “save” or “name” their files, 90% make the same choice: “HEM Article.”
Inside a particular writer’s PC or Mac, “HEM Article” stands out as a particular piece of work. It is not the article written for Catfish Farming Today, and it is not the article written for Cat Fancy.
Unfortunately, in my brain, as well as in the clouds of HEM webmail and in the electrons of my laptop, “HEM Article” is one of 1.6 million articles so designated.
To complete the confusion, many writers submit their work attached to emails with a subject line of, you guessed it: “HEM Article.” I have a bazillion emails from different people, all with the subject line “HEM Article.”
Obviously, this makes distinguishing a particular “HEM Article” difficult.
Please, please have mercy on the articles editor. Name your file – not just your article - something that relates to the title or topic of your article. Curriculum Choice or School Recovery or Waldorf Mornings or Nature Walks. I may have another article in the tank that has a similar name, but I won’t have a million of ‘em.
As to subject lines of emails, use your last name, first initial and the topic of the article: Eillinger, R./Bio Labs, or Roberts, J./Math Texts, or Marshall, D./Environmentally Aware Homeschooling.
I’m sorry if this sounds like persnicketty-ness or a demand to make my life easier. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is I am afraid. I am afraid I am going to miss an article our readers would be inspired by or benefit from, because my feeble brain will mistakenly think I’ve already evaluated the article, which was, of course, named “HEM Article.”
I just do not want to miss looking at any submitted articles; our homeschooler-to-homeschooler approach depends on these stories.
Bottom line: Make your submission distinct by using a descriptive file name and author’s name/title in the email subject line.
Submissions to Home Education Magazine are wide ranging. Most of our content is generated by homeschooling parents, but we also get articles from non-homeschoolers. The article ”Using Writing Contests” by Thursday Bram, a non-homeschooling writer, is coming up in our November-December issue.
Most submissions by non-homeschooling writers don’t get published, usually because the articles don’t reflect an understanding of the ways home education differs from school or because the writer is suffering from expertism. Some submissions I get from non-homeschooling writers have a condescending tone, and some come right out and say homeschoolers obviously need assistance from someone with credentials.
Since a lot of people want to write for Home Education Magazine, I thought sharing Thursday’s approach would be interesting reading for prospective writers. She agreed to answer some questions that provide insight as to why her article was selected for publication, even though she is not a homeschool mom.
Thursday, when I read your article, I was immediately impressed with your idea for the story. How did you think of doing an article about the way writing contests could be helpful to homeschool kids?
In the past, I’ve tutored English, as well as taught test prep for college admissions exams like the SAT. Those experiences have lead me to the conclusion that the only way for a student to improve his or her writing is to actually write. Actually finding things to write about can be the hard part, though: in chatting with a mom who homeschools, the question of where to find writing prompts came up. Since I’ve been suggesting writing contests for students I’ve tutored for years, I thought it would be a good fit for this mom who felt like she could never find writing topics that interested her kids.
What made you think of writing this story for a homeschooling magazine, when the writing contests are open to all students?
The more I thought about the idea of using writing contests as prompts for homeschoolers, the more it seemed like a good fit. As I started looking into it with the families who I know homeschool, I consistently heard that parents would like a good source of writing prompts but most of them hadn’t even considered writing contests. I felt like it was an idea that would be useful and honestly didn’t think that much about the factor that most writing contests are open to any student. I’ve known enough people that either homeschool their kids or were homeschooled themselves that I don’t think I really consider homeschooling that radical of an educational idea compared to a public school.
I wasn’t sure whether you were a homeschool parent yourself. You hit the right tone with me, so I thought “maybe.” I get a lot of submissions from writers who are not homeschooling parents, but most come off as “experts” outside homeschooling who would like to assist homeschoolers who “must be” struggling to manage without the infrastructure of “school.” This is definitely not an approach our readers appreciate, and so those writers don’t get published – and yet our readers do highly value a supportive tone and helpful ideas.
When I asked, you told me you weren’t a homeschool parent. How do you think you managed to get inside the approach that Home Education Magazine is seeking without being a homeschooling parent yourself?
I think one of the biggest factors that lets me write for a magazine like Home Education Magazine without being a homeschooling parent is the fact that I don’t assume anything about homeschooling. I know that I’m definitely not an expert on homeschooling and I know most parents have good reasons for taking the approaches they do. Instead, I sought out homeschooling parents who were willing to talk to me about how they approach planning a curriculum. I think it’s all about keeping an open mind and avoiding assumptions – which may hold true even for parents already homeschooling! I’ve seen an incredible diversity between how different families handle homeschooling: what works for one family may not be an option for another.
Of course, we do occasionally have other articles that are written by nonhomeschooling writers. What are your observations about the content and editorial tone of Home Education Magazine that you would encourage prospective HEM writers to keep in mind?
Practical options seem to be a focal point in Home Education Magazine’s content: just from looking through article titles, you can get the feeling that if an article isn’t about something that a busy mom or dad can read and put to use fast, it’s probably not going to make it into the magazine. The magazine also manages to avoid what I call the ‘expert bias’ – there’s recognition that there are multiple ways to approach any homeschooling question and just because an expert has certain credentials doesn’t make their option more valid than the alternatives.
What other types of writing do you do? Any articles that you think would be of interest to homeschoolers, even though they might be intended for a broader audience?
I write about personal finance on a regular basis, as well as small business and work-at-home topics. A couple of the sites that I write for on a regular basis are www.Wisebread.com and www.Webworkerdaily.com. I like to group the topics I write about under the umbrella of productivity – I’m all about finding easier solutions to problems (like where to come up with a whole stack of writing prompts on short notice) and then making them available to readers.
People who are interested in writing for Home Education Magazine might be interested in your background. Tell us a little about yourself and your writing, and how our readers can find out more about you.
I started freelance writing the summer before I went to college and I’ve been doing it ever since. While I enjoy certain aspects of straight journalism, like interviewing interesting people, a short stint at a daily newspaper made it very clear to me that I wouldn’t get to cover most of the stories I wanted to if I didn’t stick with freelancing. I write primarily for online publications at this point and I actually blog about the business side of freelance writing on my personal website, www.ThursdayBram.com.
A lot of homeschool parents and young adults are interested in freelance or work-at-home type pursuits, including writing, graphic design, and other home based businesses. How does this work for you?
I’ve actually had the opportunity to work with quite a few work-at-home parents who have taken up freelancing. For some parents, it’s an ideal option – though freelancing alone can be tough, before you even start thinking about combining homeschooling. Both require self-discipline. Even after years of freelancing, I still occasionally struggle with making sure I get all of my work done when I have something else I’d really rather be doing.
If you can handle that aspect, though, freelancing has a lot to recommend it. There is a certain flexibility to it and the ability to pick and choose projects (and often turn your other interests into new projects) can provide an interesting career path. If you’re interested in freelancing, I’d suggest checking out some of the websites dedicated to freelancing, like FreelanceSwitch.com (disclaimer: I do write for FreelanceSwitch) and start learning about the mechanics of freelancing. I also offer quite a bit of information on freelance writing on my own website and just brought out my first ebook for freelancers just getting started in the business, Market Your Freelance Writing in 31 Days (http://www.thursdaybram.com/marketing-your-freelance-writing-in-31-days-the-ebook).
What do you like to read?
I read a pretty wide variety of blogs, but two of my absolute favorites right now are The Pioneer Woman (http://thepioneerwoman.com/) and The Art of Non-Conformity (http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/).
Thanks, Thursday, for telling us about your freelance writing career and how you manage to customize your writing for Home Education Magazine. Our readers will enjoy your upcoming article in the November-December 2009 issue.
Tags: freelance, homeschooling writers, non-homeschooling writers, publication, Thursday Bram, writing contests, writing prompts
Some of HEM’s best homeschooling articles are about homeschooling methods. Others provide rich resources for learning. Others are personal homeschooling stories that will help other parents overcome challenges. We also cover legal and political issues. But none are more important to our general readership than the articles that are simply reflective and encouraging. I love to have at least one of these articles in each issue of the magazine, a piece that provides perspective and support for continuing the homeschooling journey.
You’ve enjoyed other articles in Home Education Magazine by Agnes Penny, like “Raising Art Critics” and “Family Time All Day Long.” In the November-December 2009 issue of HEM, this warm writer and experienced homeschool mom shares her understanding that special times keep coming even though our children are growing up fast.
Children who are getting a little older can enjoy more grown-up experiences with their homeschooling parents, from special concerts to lively discussions about books. This encouraging article tells us how homeschooling and caring for children of different ages provide variety and interest for Mom as well as kids. Make sure you look for Agnes Penny’s upcoming article, “Magic Moments at Every Age.”
You can read about the rest of the articles we’re working on for November-December at our upcoming issue page.
Writer Carron Armstrong explored resources and ideas to help younger kids learn “money smarts” in her article in the September-October 2009 issue of Home Education Magazine. Coming up in the November-December 2009 issue, Carron Armstrong tells HEM readers about great strategies, websites, books, programs, magazines, and other resources that we can use to help our older kids and young adults learn about financial management.
You won’t want to miss “Teaching Money Smarts to Older Children and Teens.” Carron brings her wisdom as a homeschool mom and a lawyer on bankruptcy and consumer issues to the article, which is so rich in ideas it alone is worth the price of a whole subscription to Home Education Magazine!
You can see what else the magazine has planned for the November-December 2009 issue by visiting our Upcoming Issue page.
Tags: Carron Armstrong, financial management, financial responsibility, money management, Money Smarts, older kids, teens
Advocating for home education is aplenty for me. A decade ago, I decided to make home education my focus rather than “school reform.” However, I still pay attention to efforts to reform public education. One of the latest is the high profile campaign, Get Schooled.
The Get Schooled website is snappy and well-edited. There’s no chance of getting lost in a sea of position papers. The highly produced video on the site (“Watch the Show!”) features basketball star LeBron James, American Idol Kelly Clarkson, and United States President Barack Obama. The angle seems to be drop-out prevention and prep for college and a competitive labor market. It all seems very noble, but my decade of home educating has apparently made me cynical. The website emphasizes getting drop-outs to finish school and getting students to value education but seems to offer little opening for examining why school is so irrelevant for so many.
From the Get Schooled Press Room:
Every school day seven thousand students walk out on their education. One-third of all students fail to graduate high school. (Read More)
Call me a crazy homeschool mom, but when faced with having created educational opportunities that didn’t work for my kids and that they weren’t willing to participate in, I did major examination and restructuring of what I was offering them. I adjusted and still adjust (two of my kids are in college; one is still in the thick of home education). I don’t presume that my agenda is more important than theirs, and I allow them to learn at their own pace and through the lens of their interests. I encourage them to do a lot of physical work and hands-on projects. We split wood; we make art; we study crayfish; we debate today’s news; we cook; we dance; we write; we read. We discuss emerging goals and how to prepare for them. I’m honest about the work they need to do to reach their goals, and I provide resources, encouragement, and opportunities for changing directions.
I understand that this kind of customization either seems or truly is impossible in the current approach to public education, but I can’t quite see how a system that has seven thousand more students walk out each day can address its dropout problem from the “encourage kids to stay in school” and “parents should be cheerleaders” angles. If one third of the customers you serve walk out on you in the middle of your serving them, shouldn’t something far more radical be under consideration? Like major examination and restructuring of what school offers students? Including examining the presumption that school’s agenda is more important than students’ agendas? Including allowing students to truly work at their own pace and through the lens of their interests? Including allowing students to do physical work and hands-on projects?
The thing is, it’s so radical that we’d have to admit that a lot of what schools are doing can’t work. We’d have to admit that the emperor has no clothes, despite our paying a tremendous amount for them with our tax dollars. We’d have to admit that public education, rather than treating homeschoolers warily, should be looking to home education for insight and ideas for meeting kids’ needs.
And one more thing. “Get Schooled” as a pro-education theme sounds off-key to my ear. I mean, I get the pop culture atmospherics and edgy feel, but “Get Schooled” is far too accurate in encouraging kids to passively submit to a system that is failing so many. We could signal a real intent to serve students, including the 1/3 of students who don’t graduate, if we were creating a system that deserved a theme like “Figure out Where You Want to Go and Learn What You Need to Get There. We’ll Help.”
Alas, this would make kids more important than the status quo.
I didn’t find the political will existed to make kids more important than the status quo back when my sons began their educational journies, which explains why I first began homeschooling. I continue to doubt that the political will exists to make kids more important than the status quo, which explains why other parents will continue to begin homeschooling.
We’re not looking for our kids to “get schooled;” we’re looking for them to become educated.
Tags: customized education, dropouts, Get Schooled, homeschooling, public education, school reform
In honor of Labor Day, I thought I’d write a homeschooling-related Labor Day post. It’s always nice if you can come up with a clear thesis, one really good link that supports it, and a way to tie it all to home education. For several days I worked toward this, but the result persisted: no clear thesis would evolve. Instead, I spun around and around in the years of talk our homeschooling family has experienced about labor laws, management, and work.
My family talks about “Labor” a lot. My husband is a factory manager in a non-union manufacturing facility, though he’s also worked in union environments. He’s definitely “management,” not ”Labor,” even though he’s found himself able to work well in both unionized and non-unionized environments. He’s worked as “Labor” himself, as a production operator during his school years. And our history includes having lived and worked in textile mill towns; we’ve shown our kids the old pictures of nine-year olds standing on boxes to run dangerous textile equipment for a fraction of the pay an adult would receive.
One of our home educated sons has worked full-time at the dreaded Wal-Mart. Only he didn’t dread it. He excelled, and he came to a personal conclusion that the jobs Wal-Mart provided to some of his co-workers were the only jobs to be had in our economically depressed region – and that was before the Great Recession. He understood that in his case, the oft-reported low wages of Wal-Mart were subsidized by his ability to live in his parents’ middle class home, yet his Wal-Mart experience stoked him with ambition and possibility. He moved rapidly from unloading trucks to a high-responsibility, high-integrity position, though he was never a manager during his just-less-than-a-year there. He talked daily with us about how some of his co-workers were benefiting from their Wal-Mart work, saving money for college or future entrepreneurial plans. He noted that some people who had apparently missed the lessons at home and school were learning entry level job expectations (be on time, follow instructions) as well as learning about customer service and computers. He saw people who were building or rebuilding lives on Wal-Mart wages – hurricane victims, former inmates, newly-divorced, recently laid off, back from the military, rejoining the work force after time at home with children, taking college classes, supporting a family.
Meanwhile, he did a lot of research and brought to our kitchen table discussion of the criticisms that have been levelled at Wal-Mart. We’ve heard them all. He tried to work out the complexity of Wal-Mart’s impact on U.S. manufacturers and mom & pop hardware stores. We discussed his research and our perceptions of Wal-Mart’s impact on the environment, health insurance, consumerism, discrimination, competition, globalization, and local economic development.
Other kitchen table Labor discussions have seen us recalling the good old health care days for our family, when my husband worked in the automotive industry, and we luxuriated in a generous health care plan, available to us because of the plant’s need to stay competitive benefits-wise with union plants. On the other hand, we’ve also discussed the fact that the plant that once “ran wide open three shifts per day, seven days per week,” was closed — not competitive on the global market.
Our middle son’s work in a grocery store brought up other labor issues. Why were all the baggers male? Why were the males asked to mop up the messes (“Clean-up on Aisle Three”) and clear the parking lot of carts? Why were all the cashiers and assistant managers female but the managers male? Are gender roles at work more prevalent here in the South? More prevalent in grocery stores than in other businesses?
The youngest son is 11 and wants to work. He wants to know why he can’t legally do some jobs; we’re well aware of the laws to protect children, and yet he willingly and ably splits wood for us even if he does fuss about emptying the dishwasher. We try to explain the morass of labor laws (no, you can’t pump gas or deliver papers or work in fast food right now); we explain about work permits. He frets and shifts his thinking to something entrepreneurial.
We discuss the relationship of work, labor laws and compulsory attendance. Our kids venture that one of the reasons kids are kept in school is to delay their cheap entry into the full-time labor market; they think that this creates an unhealthy situation for many in school.
“Guys need to work, Mom. A lot and hard. And they need money,” one of my sons asserts. We agree. Oh boy, do we agree.
At the kitchen table on college break, middle son reports on his classes, among them, macro-economics. I wonder aloud if it’s hard for him, since he never officially studied economics as a homeschooler. Financial management yes; macro-economics, not that we’d realized.
“Well, it’s generally pretty familiar actually, Mom.”
Oldest son, the one with Wal-Mart experience, turns aspects of his kitchen table discussions into a semester of college study, exploring competing theories on the globalization of business. We hear from him about the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and trade groups.
And as our homeschooling family of five embarks on a Labor Day weekend canoeing on Virginia’s James River, we discuss the economic viability of the river company that has provided us with our equipment, and we find out that one of the guys who works there works as an Alaska king crab fisherman during Virginia’s off-season.
“You make a lot of money doing that, right?”
“I make a lot of money if I don’t get killed doing it,” he says of one of the world’s most dangerous jobs.
And thus, our family, launched into the river, is launched into another discussion of Labor.
Tags: college, economics, homeschool to college, homeschooling, Labor, Labor Day, macro-economics, ~ Higher Education, ~ Unschooling
I’ve heard a few non-homeschoolers doubt that homeschoolers can get prepared for college. They wonder if their parents have the chops and connections to assist their high school age children. Besides knowing a ton of homeschooled-to-college kids who disprove their presumption, I’ve also been fortunate to see the valuable opportunities homeschoolers provide for one another. One such opportunity is coming up– the VaHomeschoolers Seminar on Homeschooling and College Entrance, to be held Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.
In addition to editing for Home Education Magazine, I edit VaHomeschoolers Voice, so I’m fortunate to know and work with the wonderful volunteer who’s organizing this seminar. Leslie Nathaniel, seminar coordinator, is making sure homeschoolers can get all the information needed to plan a successful high school experience and negotiate the college admissions process.
Leslie has set up a variety of sessions, including:
• Homeschooling the High School Years
• Transcripts without Tears
• College Admissions Q & A
• Investigating Opportunities for Financial Aid
• Community College Education for Homeschoolers.
The seminar will feature the wisdom of experienced homeschool parents as well as up-to-date admissions information and advice from college representatives. College reps will attend from University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, Shenandoah University, Old Dominion University, Virginia Tech, and the Virginia Community College System.
The assistant director for financial aid for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia will also be on hand to provide information about financial aid.
Two of my three sons are currently in college, having been homeschooled since second and fourth grades. I look forward to participating in the seminar, and I’m sure hoping to pick up some financial aid tips!
I’ve heard that space for the seminar is limited, so if you want to go, I urge you to register now.
Tags: college, college admissions, College Entrance Seminar, Financial Aid, high school, High School Transcripts, homeschool to college, Leslie Nathaniel, Old Dominion University, Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers, Science Museum of Virginia, Shenandoah University, University of Richmond, VaHomeschoolers, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Community College, Virginia Tech, ~ Higher Education
Preparing homeschooled kids who plan to attend college can be challenging, and some of us have occasional doubts about whether we’re doing well enough. I was happy to receive this text message from our middle son last night: “I just got out of my western culture class. I’m glad you had me do The Odyssey because we’re starting with reading the book.”
A fist pumping “Yes!” on my part was followed by some reminiscing. I first introduced the boys to The Odyssey with an audio recording by story teller Odds Bodkin. It’s an epic telling of the story, which Bodkin’s website describes this way:
Crouched in the dark belly of the Trojan Horse, you wait. Nervous warriors breathe quietly, swords wrapped for silence. Suddenly someone’s mind is speaking. . . . Prepare to meet Odysseus of Ithaca, grasped by fate and hurled to the ends of the earth.
Nice to know that as my son continues his educational odyssey, something we started learning about a decade ago is valuable and familiar.
Tags: audio books. story tellers, homeschool to college, Odds Bodkin, The Odyssey, ~ Higher Education
Helen
mark
david
Watercolor Children
Watercolor Children
by Helen Hegener – July/August, 2002
In his introduction MacKenzie writes “…Watercolors are not recommended for those who are unwilling to relinquish the role of ‘master.’” He counsels that the would-be artist become, instead, “a partner in the process” of creating a painting. Hmm. That seems true of homeschooling. He goes on: “In this medium you must be willing to play the role of both patient director and alert stagehand, while the pigment and water are free to perform their magic. Try to push this medium around, and it quickly loses its charm, its transparent radiance and its life.”
I’ve often written that homeschooling is based on common sense, parental perception, and one’s own innate sense of what one’s children need. MacKenzie goes on: “We all embrace an individual sense of what ‘feels right’ that also seems to reflect an unconscious universal consensus.” This made sense to me when I thought about how new homeschooling parents almost instinctively know how to teach their kids to read, or how little advanced mathematics is really necessary.
How many times have I written those very words to parents worried about whether or not their children will ever learn to read? It takes courage to step into the unknown. And yet just as MacKenzie advises me to let go and trust the process of water and paint and paper, so I’ve often advised parents to let go and trust the process of children and exploring and learning. If letting go of a little paint and water takes courage, how much more courage must be involved when one knows the letting go will affect their child’s future?
In painting, as in homeschooling, there’s no reason to set off unprepared, and MacKenzie advises planning ahead, having a general idea where you want to go, and wisely counsels that you must “accept destinations that are not quite the way the brochure describes them but nevertheless quite acceptable.” In other words, be aware that your darling daughter might decide to become the captain of a charter fishing boat!
Gordon MacKenzie writes that it always amazes him how people will travel great distances to his workshops and pay hard-earned money for materials and instruction “…just so they can study the effects of drying water.” He continues, “Along with a little pigment and manipulation, that’s about all that’s happening with watercolor. Think about it.”
©2002 Helen Hegener and Home Education Magazine
Tags: children learning, Gordon MacKenzie, Helen Hegener, HEM editorials, homeschooling commentary, reasons to homeschool, Watercolor Children, watercolor painting, watercolors, writing about homeschooling, ~ Homeschooled Kids, • Home Education Magazine