Question: “I have just spent the morning pouring over
your site, and it seems all the ideas I have and have wanted
for my children are being put into practice by you and your
children. I am wondering how do you fit it all in? I find we
don't have time for all the best, like the nature journals,
making books, and reading poetry because I keep filling the
schedule with [other things]… I feel we rush too much to get
it done and are not "enjoying the journey". Any words of
advice for someone like me?
My Answer: I don’t do EVERYTHING on our website ALL the
time. The things on the website are a combination of things
we've done in past years or currently. Choose a few
things at a time to focus on.
Question: How do you choose what to study with the
children?
“The trouble is there are so many good things to choose
from ! I feel like a little kid in a bakery; there are
jelly-filled, cream-filled, cream cheese danishes, on and
on…all so good but too much is unhealthy! Too much of
anything crammed in our day is unhealthy for the kids and
me.”
My answer:
I agree that choosing what to do with our time is hard to
know, and it is different for every family, every year. I
often choose things to study with the children that I want
to learn about, and many times that works because my
enthusiasm in a subject will spill over to the children. It
doesn’t always work that way, and I find I need to be
flexible to allow the children, especially those of high
school age, to follow their interests.
We plan for, and encourage the children to choose, real
life educating which is why we use things like
1. writing in journals to record our life, this
includes 
our country diaries which records our
observations of creation
2. writing a family newsletter every month to
put those journal entries into polished writing
3. copybooks for keeping track of those quotes,
paragraphs from good books, poems, prayers, etc. that we may
want to find later
4.
entrepreneurial ideas for the older
children They list and sell books and other items through
our family's eBay store. The little boys write out the
shipping labels and package the items for a certain amount
per item. Here is our store link.
http://stores.ebay.com/A-Plus-Google-Family?refid=store
5. making books and
notebooks to keep instead
of using workbooks and curriculum for the most part
Question: "Why do you like ebooks instead of real
books? I will think about the e-books a bit, but I will say I am
a bit of a book-a-holic (my library has taken over every
room of my house and my closet. too) and my children are
rarely on the computer (once a month, perhaps, to use a
music program I bought them) and I would never have
them reading books on the computer. Call me
traditional, we never even had a tv in the house until I
wanted to do some science and history videos with the
children…
I don't want them coming to the computer for comfort,
entertainment or enlightenment, because I feel real books,
real conversations, real hand written letters, real people
provide all of those things better."
Let me know if you have any questions, I love to try to
answer them.
