So glad I found another mama who chooses to minimal homeschool! I’ve got three kids, four and under and we have been taking PreK work very light and doing what we can, when we can. We do math, reading and a Bible story as well as a read out loud book daily
Great video. I've been homeschooling 5 kids at a time for 10+ years. I know I've made the mistake of trying to cram so much in that foundations end up lacking. This past year I've really focused more on foundations . Like you said without that you can't move on to much else.
Got to love a twaddle-free homeschool 😅 this is very much our style! I am homeschooling 4 of my 6 kids 1st-6th this year and we definitely love the approach of get your basics done and go live your life!
So I have enjoyed both of your videos so far. I feel we are both in the same phase of life. I am an American homeschool mom of 5 children ages 8 down to 7 months. I am currently trying to simplify what we do because it is over complicated for my 3 that I currently teach. Thank you for your content.
Ahh so nice to hear from a fellow mamma of 5! its tough some days! so much to do and so many to care for, you can feel stretched no matter how hard you try to keep your life simple, I am glad you found this video helpful and I encourage you on your journey to simplifying, it is very freeing!
I'm a 3 year minimalist homeschooler... I never knew there was a name for what I did but I just could not stand trying to do public school at home. So I bought one grade level workbook for each of my kids that covers 9 different topics... Then we read and do bible study. For social interactions we go to a homeschool co-op with other Christian mamas once a week. They are learning life skills and helping me raise my baby, spending time with grandparents doing farm work and learning that you don't need to fit into a box to have a successful meaningful productive life.
I think this was my issue this year. doing public school at home. then I think duh, took them out why am I trying to model the institution I took them out of. its my first year and I kind of fell on my face but they did learn things. next year will be different. mom guilt
@@brandyjanik66 amazing thank you! I just googled them, have u find the content of the books to be at grade level or perhaps above or below grade level?
@@bribriannita7935 I think right at grade level. My oldest son is autistic and struggles with them he is at a lower grade level book but my daughter who is neurotypical finds them to be just a little bit short for her taste but she is very bookish. So I think it is a good middle of the road curriculum.
Ohh my goodness me! Where have you been all my mother-hood life! Your content is so spot on. You are so encouraging and I love that you are a Christian Aussie mum in regional Aus (like me). Wow - what a blessing you are!
Second gen homeschool mom here, too. I'm homeschooling 2/5 :) I also wasn't consistent with my emerging reader and I ended up putting her in school in January. Her teacher has been consistent and she is now reading and loving school. Hoping to bring her home now that that part is over ha!
You have 777 subscribers right now! Just thought I’d point it out before I messed it up by subscribing and turning it into 778 😋. Love this channel. I have one baby boy that isn’t near school age but I plan on homeschooling so I’m trying to learn as much as I can!
Hi! This is a very encouraging video; thank you for sharing your resources/curricula. Here in the States, there is a lot of pressure to include EVERYthing in your homeschool every day. I'm leaning more towards a Charlotte Mason approach as we go along, but your minimal style seems like much less stress. The key is, as you've said previously, know why you're doing this and what are your goals. Cheers, -Anne
Absolutely love those original primers you have and use. What beautiful books! Looking right now at my overflowing homeschool cart, I can without a doubt see the reasonableness and allure of minimizing our collection 😅 I think it's easy to see what other people have, and fall prey to the urge to buy all of the things. It can become wasteful of time and money and resources. Love love your approach 💛
Quiet time is nonexistent in our home! Neither is read aloud time 😫, it’s the 2 areas that I could never, ever get a grip onto. I look forward to hearing your suggestions! I have also accepted that maybe we are just not that family, even though it kills me! 🤣
I live for quiet time! I am still getting the hang of including filming and editing youtube videos into my weekly schedule but hopefully I'll have it up by Friday next week! thanks for commenting!
A must in our home!!! Depending on the season it is 1-1.5 hours 🤓 You just set the timer after lunch. Kids must do quiet things or sleep in their room.
I just found you on YT.... I really wish I had seen this video a few months ago. I have a 5 yo but I consider this stage preschool still. I pushed too hard and it was not working. Now I know better but I am subscribed now because I love your approach to home education.
I wish I would have stayed more minimal with homeschool. We started kindergarten pretty minimal. Math U See primer, All About Reading and a simple handwriting book was all we did. Throughout that year I kept finding things that my daughter would like so I’d get it. She is a voracious learner! But still, I could definitely scale back a bit. ❤️
This reminds me of the Robinson Curriculum. Reading and math facts first, some writing, that's it.... only then do you move on. With the idea of keeping it sustainablefor mum and mostly independent for kiddos. Lovely video!
That's what we do and we absolutely love it! We follow the RC pretty closely but I take creative license with the book list. It's the best thing I could have ever done for my family and my sanity!
@@Honeyoc did you just wing it with your book list or have another recommendation to go by? I'm honestly not intresin having to print out books and some are just. So. Old. Not a bad thing but might be less then exciting for my students to get into. But I know the RC vocabulary follows the books. Do you just make your own vocan cards for books you've subbed in?
@@juliequates9529 Karen's brilliant, I love her. I wish there were more RC homeschoolers on RU-vid but it seems to be so niche, hardly anyone knows about it and I just want to yell about how awesome it is from the rooftops! Good luck with your RC journey, you're going to absolutely love it! My kids skills have gone through the roof, they enjoy their schoolwork, love experiencing their progress, and thoroughly enjoy their free time which is well earned and completely theirs to do with as they wish (no sneaky scheduled activities by mama)! Focused attention on the core skills of learning and independent learning are really the secret sauce for homeschooling. People think my kids are geniuses and want to know what special magical curricula we use and are always gobsmacked when I say we just read, write, and math haha!
@@juliequates9529 I pulled quite a lot from the Ambleside Online booklist, a bit from Sonlight, and a few books that I feel would be great to read and learn from or a favourite of mine when I was younger. I can email you my list if you like! I don’t know if you can send private messages here? We’re British homeschoolers so I pared down a bit on the American history books and we’ve been doing a separate British history schedule during our breakfast read aloud time (just Our Island Story and historical fiction books). As for vocabulary I treat it as a separate program and don’t try to work in tandem with the books. Mainly because my kids read the books faster than they get through the vocabulary words and I don’t like to hold them back. But also because the RC vocabulary words aren’t exclusive to the RC books lol, there are words in every book! We don’t use the flash cards as shipping to the UK was sooooooo expensive and I can’t imagine printing and laminating the 6000 words 😱 so my kids just use the activity sheets. They spend about a week memorising the words on the sheet with the words and meanings, then they do the crossword one day, word search the next etc, and finish with the word match sheet as a kind of test. Hope that makes sense!
I am so thankful for your videos. You are the first woman I have found that homeschools the way I do! I thought I was all alone. Thank you for your videos. They are an inspiration to me to keep on keepin on. I’ve got four littles and we’ve been homeschooling for four years now. Thank you thank you!
Outstanding 👏 my kids are in high school now and I wish I had the experience you have when my children were younger. We make life difficult but it could be simple and extremely successful. Thank you for sharing with the homeschool community🌸
so glad hearing this ..ill start this journey with zero experience with my both 3 & 4 years old , by the way I even not was schooled in USA , so everything is so unfamiliar to me ..I always use to say ' less is more " , but when it comes researching about homeschooling I feel tired with so much clutter people does in this subject and distract me on what is really important .. tks mama
Great video! Will definitely watch your other videos. It’s so easy to slip into the more, more, more as far as homeschooling resources go and I don’t find it benefits our school but instead puts pressure on.
I wonder if girls are more into the Good and the Beautiful writing style. My girls love them and beg to do them. It's not to hard to get them to write correctly with it. I've only done girls though. When my boy is ready if it doesn't fit him, I'll keep the without tears.
It could be! I have found my boys start leaening later and they really arent interested, my one girl is super keen! She is almost 4 and loves to sit and participate and learn, something my boys would never have done at that age!
I know it might be a touchy subject but I would love to know what you exclude and why. I haven’t considered myself a minimalist homeschooler but your schedule and curriculum seems very similar to my own. I’m wondering what the biggest changes (exclusions) are from when you started homeschooling.
A fellow Aussie Homeschool Mum here. My current homeschool kiddos are 6-9 years old. Trying to simplify homeschool this year, as I have added too much in over the years. I love the McGuffey series, I use both the original series and the revised, I also have used Free and Treadwell readers too. My grade 4 student loves them and is finishing off the 3rd readers (in all 3) this year. My 8 year old is a struggling reader and is doing the primers. We also use progressive phonics for learning to read, and have just started doing treasure hunt reading aswell (both free). For read alouds, I tend to do The child's history of the World, missionary stories, bible stories, science books, poetry/fables, and classics mostly. I love both of your videos and am looking forward to future ones.
I am always interested in what everyone is using for reading! I keep mine super simple, but I have another reader starting the learning journey and its slow! I know this time to embrace the journey and not try and speed it up for my mental benefit, thanks for the comment!
Thank you for your insights. I do value minimalism in all areas of life, simplicity is so good, but as a homeschool mom of 8, one graduated , I struggle with the abundance of really great reading material in the world and my childrens different passions , so although I do consider my home very minimal, Our homeschool library is still abundant.
I agree that a reading library should be abundant! And as your children age and grow into learning more you do need to cater to interests and personalities.
Love your wisdom here! Such good advice! You don't need "all the things". In fact too much gets overwhelming and for me it gets overlooked and forgotten about. I am curious about the building writing series. Do you start at book 1 no matter the age? My oldest is a 10yo boy also. Thanks!
I started at book one for ny ten yr old, though he is a late reader. If you dont have ANY experience with learning grammar then you could start with book 1 and he will build confidence quickly. Otherwise if he is a strong reader I would start at book 2. 😀
One of the best videos I have watched. My daughter is 3 and we have been easing her into home education in a simple way. I love your videos; please make more when time allows. Question - where can I get the flash cards?
Thank you so much I'm a mama of 6 kids too and homeschool. Though I have been researching how to be a minimal homeschooling family! Thank you so much I will be looking for the curriculum you suggested.
I’m currently binging everything that Was sent to me during the school closure… all my in laws sent so much and I fell out the minimalist path and trying to get back on it! ❤️
Isn't McGuffies religious ? (it's a good idea to point out if something is religious or Secular just to prevent someone investing in something they won't use) My 5 are aged between nearly 10, and nearly 28, I'm down to one child left at home and still learning - his much younger and is more like an only child. I think reading is one of the most important gifts, but can be a major struggle for many for various reasons - I didn't read til I was 16 to 18, yet my oldest who I had just after turning 18 was reading by 3, reading car manuals and encyclopedias by 5 - without a single lesson, I have others with varying special needs that weren't reading until much, much later. One style of learning will never fit all kids, irrelevant of how persistently you present it = it's the same thing that already didn't work for that child, and maybe never will which risks creating an issue, a block for that child with reading. If you're into minimalism, or just something that doesn't take up too much space, approaches learning to read (and write) from multiple angles - and is cheap, and Aussie, Fitzroy word Families is great, especially for special needs kids. They also have a reading program - we ended up going with Decodable Readers Australia instead, also Explode the Code is awesome. The BEarth Institutes Earthschooling program has a similar approach to reading to the Fitzroy word Families within its program - but that's a much higher cost (because you are getting an entire primary program) With Fitzroy word Families you can also incorporate them reading their own sentences as part of their reading program, my youngest had severe Dyspraxia and wasn't talking until he was over 5.5 years old - so language and sounds are a big issue for him, and reading naturally was going to be a struggle but we've made amazing progress using these - his speech therapist has been so amazed that she is now using these products with some of her other clients.
