Don’t Kiss Summer Good-Bye Just Yet

It’s mid-July. If you’re like many homeschooling parents, that means you’ve already bid adieu to “summer vacation” in your mind and are right now at this very minute singing the “what curriculum am I going to use this year” blues. I get it. Even I – a year-round unschooler of sorts – sang that ditty now and then as my girls grew and matured and transitioned from one season of life to another.

I’m hoping, though, that I can help you, this year and going forward.

You see, through a series of circumstances only God could have orchestrated, I was led and empowered last fall to write a book – 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers – that Moody will release on Tuesday, August 3. And it was my prayer as I penned every phrase that my words would be God’s and that those words would bless the socks off every parent who reads them.

Is 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers “gospel?” Of course not. But I do believe God can use its ideas to revolutionize your homeschooling experience. I say that because Kathy Koch's general-audience parenting book, 8 Great Smarts – first published when my girls were toddlers – became one of the pillars upon which my husband and I successfully built their educational endeavors. We, of course, experienced inevitable ups and downs on our home-learning journey. But our road was observably smoother and more enjoyable than that of many of my peers, a reality I’ve always attributed to the fact that we’d been blessed to learn from the time my kids were young how the Lord had hard-wired them in terms of each one’s “smarts” strengths. So, when Kathy asked me to write a treatment of “the smarts” concept just for my beloved homeschooling community, I set aside other projects, pulled out the crockpot for my family’s dinners for a few weeks, and went all-in.

If you haven’t already read the original 8 Great Smarts, please do so – either before or after reading 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers. You can glean much from my book without having read Kathy’s, but the applications I make – specific to the home-learning environment – will resonate more deeply if you also understand Kathy’s theoretical framework.

In writing 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers, I seek to empower homeschooling parents. I want those who read it to feel capable of intentionally choosing learning materials and methods with confidence, knowing that the tools you utilize on your kids’ homeschooling journey truly match the ways in which God has specifically designed each of them. So, don’t kiss summer good-bye just yet! Wait, instead, to read 8 Great Smarts for Homeschoolers. Then use its ideas to help you make wise, logical, strategic curricular choices.

CK