Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool

This post is for the Christians.

I wrote a post on this topic a little over three and a half years ago, but it’s been on my mind again. This is NOT a repost. I’m writing it fresh from my heart to yours.

I have a prayer binder that’s over two inches thick. It weighs almost four pounds. I pray for you, your children, your families. One of the things I pray against is this homeschooling lifestyle becoming an idol. I don’t want you pursuing an ideal of what a homeschool family should look like. I want you pursuing Jesus and loving Him with your all. Homeschooling is not the goal, just something the Lord might use to help you along to the goal.

If you are imitating other families in how they school, dress, have family devotions, order their day, spend their free time, etc., then you are headed the wrong way. I highly recommend burning, shredding, destroying in any manner you can, all Christian books that instruct in how to do something. A Christian book should only point you to the Bible to seek from God what He wants from you. He is creative and can lead each family uniquely.

It doesn’t matter if the person you are learning from is successful and blessed in what they are doing. They may very well be following the Lord’s leading in what they are doing, but if you start following them, you are going after the wrong thing. We are disciples of Christ, no one else. And I say this as someone who teaches and disciples people. While I try to share the stories of God working in my life to give an example of how God can work in your life, I hope I always point everyone to Christ to seek after their own relationship and never encourage anyone to just copy me.

Think about what your heart is set on. It needs to be set on God alone. You goal is knowing and loving and serving Him alone. Has any other desire crept in? Has any other goal been directing your decisions?

If you find something other than the Holy Spirit and God’s word directing your steps, confess. Ask for help refocusing. We have a beautiful promise from God. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

“All these things” are everything the Lord knows we need. He can take care of them for us. What does it mean to seek His kingdom? In August I will be releasing the September Study for the year. It’s called The Kingdom. I am also planning on releasing Disciples of Christ, an EP course to disciple you through teachings on the foundations of faith, who God is, and who we are in Christ. As with all my stuff, I usually recommend ages 11 through adult and that if you want to use it with younger kids, do it together.

But in the meantime, seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness is seeking to know and obey God. I have tons of teaching on the site to help you along with reading through the Bible. Read His word. Talk to Him. He’s a good Father, able and ready to help.

Amazon is raising their book printing prices in June. I’m not sure when/how it will all work, but I wanted to give you the heads up so that if you were planning on buying books, you could do it now before the end of May.

We will not be getting any extra money from the increase. This is just on Amazon’s end. Actually, I have been impressed with them keeping their prices the same over the last two years when we’ve seen such an increase in other things. It was pretty inevitable. The general idea is that the price is going about $1.20 for every 100 pages, so some books, like readers, will be affected more than parent guides, which would just go up cents.

When I’ve looked into other places to publish, I always end up back at Amazon as the cheapest option. One of our core values at EP is availability; having low-cost books is part of our striving to do that.

We have a new high school math course. It’s a full 180-day course. The focus is consumer math, but also covers many practical, real-world math applications.

Although the course is mainly based on online textbooks, there are some fun extras mixed in. They will spend one lesson playing a game as an Uber driver, trying to actually get the bills paid. In another lesson they will run a magic show and try to make a profit as they work to make it to Vegas. There are some mini-units on cryptocurrency, economics, philanthropy and more.

This is intended for high school. The daily lessons are expected to take 40 minutes on average. There is a note a couple of weeks into the course about how to adapt lessons if they are taking longer than an hour. This is a new course, so we’d be happy for feedback on the experience.

Check out the course. There is no offline version of the course at this time.

In other news, as of yesterday I have three adult children! He was born on Mother’s Day 18 years ago. I still have three being homeschooled, ages 10 – 15.

Do you remember ever having the experience of being asked for directions as a kid and having no idea, but then after you got your driver’s license you knew your way around? The difference was that you didn’t have to know for yourself until you were responsible for knowing it for yourself.

When you are helping your child with their work, try to remember that principle. If they are independent readers, have them try before you even look at anything. Have them try to figure it out on their own. It’s my policy to not step in until they’ve tried on their own first.

If they need help figuring it out, talk through what they need to do, but then let them do it. If they need redirecting, go ahead and point out what they need to be doing for the first one. Look ahead and see where they will need to do something different and maybe circle the first one that might be different to alert them. But then walk away. They need to figure it out for themselves. Just because they can do it with you talking them through the steps, doesn’t mean they are learning the steps they need to do.

You can ask your child to check their first answer, or to come to you to check, so they can make sure they are on the right track. If they got it wrong, see if they can figure out where they messed up. You should have them redo it to make sure they get it right. You can ask questions to guide them along, but don’t just tell them what to write. Then let them try on their own again. Then check again, and so on, until they are completing them correctly independently. They need to do it on their own to be able to do it on their own. If they keep coming for help, you can start a policy of having to do four on their own before they can be done, and you can just make up more for them to do, so they can’t get away with just always asking for help.

I have a child with special needs, and he’s used to having someone sit next to him for when he needs help. I have to distract myself and even walk away to leave him to try things on his own. Otherwise, it’s too easy for him to ask for help if I’m right there or for me to jump in too quickly. It’s an important skill to figure things out for yourself.

I can see in my adult son how helpful it was to him that I couldn’t help him with his computer design work he does. He would come to me with a problem, and I had no clue, and I would always just send him back with, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He perseveres and figures it out. Now he has companies contacting him regularly because he’s someone who figured out what others haven’t. This isn’t just about borrowing in subtraction or changing the Y to an I. This is a life skill. It’s problem solving and perseverance, and they will serve your children well for the rest of their lives.

One definition of revival is that of being in a state where nothing matters but Jesus. One way to think about living in a revived state is “All Jesus All the Time.” He’s your all and everything. That’s how you can live now and always. You don’t have to wait for something to happen. You can give your life to Jesus today and let go of everything that is keeping you from living in His constant loving, full-of-joy presence.

The world today talks about living in the present. That’s not the key. It’s living in His Presence. That’s the goal, living in consistent fellowship with God. That looks like knowing Jesus is with you always. It’s keeping your eyes on Jesus. It’s setting Him always before you. It’s acknowledging Him in all your ways. It’s abiding in His love.

How can you do that? You can let go of every other love. He needs to be your one and only. The greatest commandments are to love God and love others. All of God’s laws are summed up in those commands to love. We are able to be forgiven because of Jesus’ love sacrifice to take the punishment for our sins. We continue in that blameless state before Him because we receive the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and let Christ live that love out through us.

We need to obey that greatest commandment and love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. You can be revived by giving up all other loves so that your life is consumed with the only love that matters. Yes, there will still be work to do, but you do it with Jesus right there with you. You can fellowship with Jesus when you wash the dishes, turning it into a sweet time instead of a chore. 🙂

Ask the Lord to shine His light on your life and reveal where you’ve given yourself to other loves. Give them up. If you feel like you can’t or don’t want to, then ask God for help. Ask Him to change your heart so that you love Him alone. Walk in His light, as 1 John 1:7 says, and you will have love for others and He will be working to remove all that’s not from Him. It’s a continual state, not of perfection, but of blamelessness because you are ever giving yourself over to His purifying process, walking in the light of His love.

Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Eph. 5:14 NKJV)