When I started my homeschooling mom career, I initially didn't seek out other homeschooling families. I wanted to get started and find my own way before taking in the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of others on the journey. I didn't want to become confused or discouraged because of information overload. After I got my footing, I slowly started to venture out in seek different ways to interact with other homeschooling families.

It wasn't one thing that led my husband and me to become a home educating family. As I reflect on our earlier days of homeschooling, I know we had the desire to give our daughters more than we had as children of the 80s and 90s. The more wasn't about stuff, but more about the internal that would make an impact on their choices and lives in the future.

Art is one area of our homeschool that didn’t always make the cut when we first started our learning at home journey. I thought it was “wise” to spend our time reading, writing, and computing. Art would be messy and time consuming so it was best if I left it off the list.

In order to get ready for the purchasing of material I write a list of the topics the girls desire to learn and the things I believe are a must to learn.  After writing my list, I list the potential resources I will use to teach the girls the topic. By the time I get to the ordering stage many items have been removed simply because we don't need them.  I appreciate being able to sit with my list before ordering because it keeps me from spending frivolously.

At the top of the year whether it's the beginning of a calendar year or school year, planners and calendars are on display to help us get planned and organized.  New calendars are awesome especially if the have beautiful artwork or gorgeous photographs.

At the beginning of our learning together journey, I knew that I would not be able to keep everything that was created by them nor would I be able to store every single Light Unit that they would complete in the years to come.  I made a choice early on to figure out the things we would keep and those we would let go.