Mary Hood is a wonderful author and homeschooler. Her website, Archers of the Lord, gives you some wonderful resources in learning how to be relaxed in your own homeschool. Mary wrote the following some years ago, but I have always found it a good "definitive" description of what Relaxed Christian Homeschooling is. Enjoy!

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I believe "Relaxed Christian Home Schooling" should be a category unto itself, characterized by the following:

1. Recognition that the Lord is the One in control, so we can stop trying to do everything ourselves.

2. Viewing ourselves as moms, not teachers; our husbands as dads and heads of households, not principals; and recognizing that we have individual relationships with each of our children, not a classroom.

3. Eliminating some of our assumptions about learning that were built up during our own years in institutional schools, such as the need for a structured curriculum for all subjects; the idea of "grade levels", etc.

4. Developing a lifestyle of learning that employs such techniques as relaxed unit studies; living books, lots of family-style learning experiences, etc., so we have a rich and varied life together (but BALANCED, too.)

5. Carefully delineating our own long range goals for out kids (my categories are Values, Habits, Attitudes, Skills, Talents & Interests, and Knowledge) and letting those drive us, not someone else's ideas of what should be done in a particular grade.

If you are letting your own goals and your kids' individual needs, goals, learning styles, personalities, etc. guide you; SOMETIMES for some child(ren), for a specific reason, you may look much more structured than other times. The key is not to blindly let the selection of ONE CURRICULUM drive you, and not to try to look so much like a school that you all wind up hating it and losing all your flexibility.

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I hope this was as helpful to you as it was to me when I first read it. Thanks to Mary Hood! Check out her books!

Donna Conner lives in Fort Worth, TX with her husband, Glenn, their son, Mike, and their dog, Lucia. Donna and Glenn have been homeschooling their son since the beginning of his education. Mike completes his homeschooling within the next two years. Donna is an artist and has always enjoyed writing. She wrote Homeschooling Only One three years ago, after discovering that there were many other families homeschooling only one child. Her website is devoted to those with only one student in their homeschool, with listings of online resources. You can visit her website at  http://donnac.com and read her blog at: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/DonnaC

copyright © 2007 Donna Conner ~~ All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of author, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles where the title and author are listed.