Do Your Research: 10 books you should read if you're thinking about homeschooling

When I was trying to decide if I was going to homeschool I read a lot of books. I feel like that process really prepared me for what was coming. I talked with a few people I know who are homeschooling, and read a few blogs, but I felt like I needed to know a lot more in order to make the best decision for me and my family. Each family is different, each child is different, and each homeschooling parent is different so coming to a conclusion is a very individual process.

If you want to understand more about homeschooling I recommend taking a look at the following books:

1. Dumbing us Down by John Taylor Gatto
2. To the Shore of a Child's Ocean series by Chris Manning
3. How Children Learn by John Caldwell Holt
4. The Homeschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith
5. Learning All the Time by John Holt
6. The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith
7. Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich
8. The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Raymond S. Moore
9. Homegrown Kids by Raymond S. Moore
10. The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling by Rachel Gathercole

First 30 Days of Homeschooling

I'm not going to lie, I'm loving homeschooling. In the first 30 days of this experiment our life and family have taken on a whole new rhythm. Here is what our typical homeschool day looks like.

Up at 7.
Breakfast and Religious Studies around 8.
Gym at 9:15, Mommy time and kids work on writing and french assignments
10:45 Home for Reading, Art and Lunch
12 Riding bikes and taking a walk together
1:30 Quiet reading time
2:30 Piano or Unit Studies (for example Jellyfish or Washington State or Yoga)

After that everyone kinda does their own thing for a while until it is time to make dinner, which the girls help me with so they can learn to cook.

Each day is a little different, but usually awesome. In the last 30 days my biggest challenge has been homeschooling in spite of my teething baby. But even that hasn't been too terrible.

For me, homeschooling rocks because:

My kids are gaining knowledge and experience in a variety of subject areas.
I've had more opportunities to shape their character than I did when they were gone for eight hours a day.
It feels like we're making the most of everyday.
We spend time doing things that we enjoy, activities that bring us joy everyday.

I'm not saying every minute of every day is blissful, but it is satisfying and fun. I'm adding a few highlight photos from our first month as home schoolers.