I am a homeschooling mom of four. My oldest is 9 years old, and we are currently in our 5th year of homeschooling. There are many reasons why my husband and I have decided to homeschool our children. There are secular reasons and biblical convictions; both of those ultimately come back to the glory of God.

How do we know how to raise, or teach, our children? Children do not come with an instruction manual although today we have Google just a click away, happy to answer any question. It seems there is a deep desire within us to want offspring and to want the very best for them. It sort of all just falls in place, and the cycle of life continues. Even with self-help books, coaching webinars, outside opinions, Google, and governed mandates, we are born equipped with all the know-how we will ever need, if we can just trust that our Creator knows us and instils within us natural instincts to nudge us along. “For you formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13 KJV)

One of the easiest gifts you can give your child is the gift of free play in nature. It may not cost any money, but it does seem that it requires effort these days. There are so many things today vying for our kids’ time that oftentimes it requires us as parents to say no to some things to make room for free play.

Summer is coming! Everyone gets restless as they await the end of the school year and the start of summer vacation. Summer is a blast and then… September arrives. The schedules start, and it’s hard to get back into the swing of things. You feel like you have to start all over again. Sound familiar? One solution to this frustration is to continue school right through summer.

So many families across our country enjoy camping during the nice summer months. There are so many beautiful national, provincial, territorial, and private campgrounds all around our country. While not all homeschool families school year round, most would acknowledge that learning can and does happen everywhere. Your family camping trip is no different! Both history and science can easily be touched on naturally while on your camping trip. This is not an attempt to say that you need to be bringing school along on your summer camping trips but instead is an effort to show you that learning happens all around you!

As parents, we naturally want what is best for our children in all aspects of their lives. We want to see them excel, be creative, and explore all possibilities while finding who they are and what their purpose in life will be. This is often why parents decide to take their children out of a government instituted schooling system of conformity and take on the challenge of educating their children at home.

Recognizing that your student has their own learning style will help immensely with how you approach teaching them. There is no one “right way” of teaching; instead there are several possibilities. There are four main categories of learning styles, and different children will excel in different categories. These categories are visual learners, auditory learners, kinesthetic learners, and students with reading or writing preferences.

It has been a little over a year now since we said goodbye to the ‘bricks and sticks’ lifestyle and with a leap of faith, embarked on our new minimalist adventure and RV living. With our children ages 10 and 5, we figured there is still a window of time to try to offer them more of a life of adventure before they hit their teen years and suddenly become adults.