Lacey Parr: What I'm Reading: Home Education Edition 1

I don't know when I started thinking about home education, but when we made the decision last summer, I know it had been on my mind for a few years. We are excited to continue our slow mornings, learn at our own pace and have the freedom to travel, play, run wild and follow the spark!

I've read loads of books and articles, listened to lots of books and podcasts and throughout all this have slowly created our educational philosophy. This will guide our educational endeavors as we go along. Nate and I also created a family vision that will guide our choices as well. In case others are interested or are on a similar path, below I am cataloging various resources that have informed us so far.

Just like when I wanted to do something else a little off the mainstream (natural birth), I feel like I needed to immerse myself in stories of successful families and learn how others do it. I needed research and facts too. When preparing for Colden's birth, I parked myself in front of the birth/motherhood/parenting section at the library until I had all the info I needed. This process has been much similar. More stories and whole lot more books!

My favorite homeschool resources so far:

Wild + Free. This is an online community that supports families who home educate. Their recent Facebook Live was a great primer for their philosophy. I subscribed and received their monthly bundles for a year. My favorite part was getting access to their audio interviews and conference talks. I would listen at night while cleaning up and I felt like I had a kitchen full of veteran homeschool moms cheering me on! Now they post parts of their interviews on their free podcast. This past fall I found myself searching for more resources and I realized I had a giant shelf of resources from their bundles that I had not really touched! So I stopped my subscription and am going through all those resources now and finding some great treasures.

Curriculums
The Peaceful Preschool: We used this last year with a small preschool co-op and we liked it. And I still use some things from it. I really like the resources at the beginning for parents like how to create a family vision and more.
Exploring Nature with Children: This is a fabulous resource and we are using it loosely this year. I think it will be a cornerstone for us going forward.

Books