New Notice of Intent Forms 2024

This past year, Ohio experienced significant changes in the field of home education. In Cleveland, a new superintendent named Dr. Warren Morgan assumed his position. Working together with determined homeschooling families in the area and legal experts, HSLDA has developed a straightforward form to ensure compliance with the law. This form also aims to prevent any overreach by the superintendent's office. Moreover, the superintendent's office has switched from sending letters by mail to using convenient email receipts instead.

You can download the copy of the new forms:

 to print from HERE

Editable Version HERE

End of year Narrative Signed By Parent HERE

End of year Assessment Signed by Teacher/Proctor HERE

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balance motherhood and career

WHY DO MOMS GIVE UP THEIR DREAMS. Here are 3 things I think that moms believe that are false:

1. In order to be a good mom, 100% of your time and energy must be given to your children. 

2. There is a belief that motherhood and maintaining your dreams can’t co-exist. I remember in college being taught to be a feminist and I was told that in order to be successful I had to delay motherhood and marriage as long as possible because it would interfere with my ability to climb the corporate ladder and pursue my dreams. 

So when I got pregnant this fear consumed me that my dreams couldn’t co-exist with motherhood (btw when I was young my grandma also told me when you become a mom your dreams get flushed down the toilet so when I heard it in college I thought my grandma was right). 

When I became a mom I tried hard to maintain my dreams but then reason 1 popped in my head and I thought I wasn’t being a good mom. It don’t help that the father of my kids told me I would fail in business and motherhood. So I decided I wouldn’t fail in motherhood so I gave up my dreams to not fail. 

3. I think people have twisted scripture over the years to justify women giving up everything to be a wife and mom. If that’s what women feel God is calling them to do then that’s perfectly fine, but I think some women also receive bad advice that is presented as gospel and it isn’t. 

What do you all think? Why do moms give up their dreams?

We don't know how to balance our dreams and desires with our nature to be good parents. It is done on purpose to crush us and control us. Men can't handle alpha females that can do it all.

I gave up my dream of being a construction manager changing the face of all construction projects in a male oriented profession not only because I wanted to do the one thing that they say I'm supposed to do but because my ex-husband was abusive in that led to emotional and psychological problems that made me feel like I was less than. Along with the fact that all the red tape just sucked all the joy of creating and building anything, but in all intents and purposes I came to the realization that maybe being a construction manager of a global construction company just wasn't meant for me because at one point I didn't think I was ever going to have children and that dream just seemed so possible. But then think about that reasoning I mean I didn't think I was going to have children and I could just sit around the world and do all the things that my cousin does but at what sacrifice I wanted to be in my children's lives I didn't want to forget their birthdays or Miss graduations or things like that, but you also have to think about all those Men who built great industries and institutions and what part of their children's lives did they miss out on but in the same breath what legacies did they leave for their children?

Upon further investigation reflection I've come to the conclusion that maybe that's just not what was meant for me yeah I could have taken my children with me but I also experienced their routiness while I was in networking meetings when they were younger as well it made it very difficult for me to feel comfortable having business meetings and professional communications with people while my children were in tow even though I was modeling for them what it meant to be an entrepreneur and to start a business. Then I came to the realization that maybe my purpose is to build a model for others to be able to be in their children's lives and build a business it doesn't have to be home education because that is honestly what I'm passionate about considering that the educational system has failed millennials horrifically in preparing them to join society and the workforce and be disciplined in whatever it is that they do. So although I might have given up on my dream to be a global construction management mogul, I realized that maybe that was not my true purpose maybe that was not my main dream after all. Working from home and being in my children's lives simultaneously was my actual dream after they were born when I was married I wanted my husband to be the one to be the face of my construction management company and when that fell apart my evolved dream to be at home with my children was the one that was falling away at by the wayside not my construction management dream which I had ultimately passed on to my husband at the time to take that over I mean I enjoy you know looking over the contracts and the architectural plans and making little notes here and there and ordering things but that wasn't really bringing me joy once the red tape came in and all of the licensing and permits and bureaucracy and calling on contracts it was just annoying I just didn't want to do it and I could still get into real estate without having to be in construction to leave a legacy for my children. So we can say that women were not encouraged to be professionals but you know what we could have been professionals in different ways there are women who are doctors and still managed to take care of their children there are lawyers who still manage to take care of their children it all depends on what their dreams actually are so well we can say that women are discouraged from accomplishing their professional dreams my follow-up question is was that really their professional dream or their pride making it seem as though they needed to do those things to show that they were just as good or better than men. Or? That's something to think about no granted we will have some women that are just like yes I wanted to be a doctor I wanted to make sure that I made everyone around me healthy and safe and secure and then I also have my friend who wanted to be a security guard police officer and she also has children and she is a single parent of whom I would love to talk to you about this.

not just chores but home economics

When thinking about chores and what to give to your children give All of them to your children, depending on height and level of maturity. I have educated my children at home since the beginning. I modeled to them how I expected the house to look for seven years with them helping me pick up their toys starting at age four. As soon as the oldest turned seven he started sweeping. Because he was allergic to dust my then five years old got to dust. Nine they made sure their rooms and school boxes where kept tidy. Age ten they started keeping the bathroom clean by eleven they kept the kitchen clean and by twelve they were cooking meals. Now they keep the entire house clean using a zone system. All I do is work, plan lessons, chauffeur and I am the ATM. Make a list of everything you do and everything that needs to be done and give it to them. It is their home economics course. I tell my boys all the time they need to learn to take care of themselves. No one wants to live with someone that doesn't know how to do that. 

Since the very beginning of me keeping my children home I have always said several mantras the main one being my job is to keep you safe keep you healthy and educate you on how to do it yourself. All I have to do is make sure that their basic needs are met I provide them a home I provide them with clothes I provide them with food. I make sure that they are healthy by making sure that they exercise they are mentally healthy by taking them to church and groups to be around their friends of whatever age they are. I make sure that I talk to them about their feelings and helping them to identify what they're feelings are so that they can be emotionally intelligent not just academically intelligent. A lot of people forget that children need to learn these things on how to regulate themselves and be disciplined in not only what they know but how they know it as well as how they feel. So when thinking about chores it's not a chore it's just something that they have to do in order to make sure that their house is clean to make sure that they stay healthy and safe. when I say I gave the children all of the chores I let them fail. I did absolutely nothing except for make sure that I was working and that they had food and that they had clothes and that we did not get evicted or anything in the house was horrifically ruined to the point of catastrophe. There is nothing wrong with having your children maintain the house give them all the chores that they are able to handle I'm not telling them to fix the stove or repair a door or anything like that at a very young age but at the age of 14 my son did help me replace a door in the bathroom at the age of 10 my son did help I have three boys so my middle son did help me in repairing the sink. But I didn't make them do it by themselves but everything else the sweeping the vacuuming the dusting that was all of them cleaning the windows all them. they look at me and they're like oh you do absolutely nothing and then you know what I did considering that I work for myself I stop doing that and I truly did nothing and then they saw that oh my goodness okay we're not getting as much food we can't go anywhere that we want to go we can't do the things that we were doing well mommy was working so while we're taking care of the house she is doing something to make sure that we can do all of those other things that we like to do. Children forget or they're not aware of all the things that parents do. And considering that I'm balancing the burden of all the things you know parenting working educating my children and then of course trying to take care of myself I wasn't doing the self-care I wasn't taking care of myself to the point where I was physically disabled for lack of a better word. So when you show your children that the house needs to be maintained in a certain order and you stop they noticed that all of a sudden oh we've got roaches we've got flies we've got XYZ type of critter vermin that's coming into the house that can ultimately make us sick because we're not keeping the house clean and tidy and in order. If I were to really stop doing the things and everything was to fall apart we wouldn't actually be doing the things that they really want to do we wouldn't be able to find the toys to be able to go out and do fun things at the beach or the park.

When I started having issues with my health and I was trying to explain to my children that I wasn't doing myself care but I was encouraging them to take care of themselves brushing their teeth washing their face taking a shower exercising and all that stuff I asked them have I been exercising have I been eating right what have I been doing for myself care and they literally told me nothing. I asked them to reflect on my actions and let me know how my health has been negatively impacted by me not taking care of myself and I asked them to think about all the time that I tell them to take care of themselves first I always try to model the good and the bad honestly not taking care of myself will simply because I was trying to make sure that they were well taken care of and I was doing all the things but that's the main reason why my blog and everything is centered around balancing the burden. I know it seems bad to call it a burden but honestly I mean it can be even if raising children and being a parent is an honest Joy it is a burden for me to have to work and not be able to actually enjoy the parenting part so when I say balancing the burden I'm not talking about the burden of parenting I'm talking about the burden of adulting working instead of enjoying those small moments more and more working instead of following my true passion of being a builder and an engineer but because I rather be home with my children instead of off traveling to different places building all these different projects it's a burden and a toll to make that sacrifice but it's one that I will always choose to make. So when it comes to dissing out chores I will always have to say give them all to your children teach them early how to balance self-care and responsibility to the family because at some point they're going to have families of their own no matter what those families may look like they're going to have to make sure that they balance taking care of themselves taking care of their home and taking care of their families. And I always hope that they take that extra step and take care of their communities outside the home. Being engaged in community activities is very important to me so that's also another thing that I have to balance and that in and of itself is a burden because I am an introvert and unfortunately when you're self-employed and networking is very important and I'm constantly engaged in conversations with people when I really would rather be at home reading a book. But when it comes to chores and home education don't think of it as a chore tell your children not to think of them is chores think of it as a home economics course and then since I'm self-employed I take it that step further with the family meetings and conduct them as business meetings and they are employees and they're allowance is their paycheck and we constantly discuss how the home could work smoother we tackle concerns and go over complaints that we have with one another to better improve upon everyone's happiness and well-being I talk about the budget how much work I need to do in order to make the money to meet the budget and all of the things that they would like to do. People get away from the fact that a family can be run like a business but that doesn't mean that it needs to be devoid of compassion nurturing and love.

transitioning from school to home

When you pul your child out of school take a break for a period of time, it is called unschooling or deschooling. After you take a break ease back in by reading books together on various topics that might peak his interests to dig deeper, and go from there. When transitioning out of brick and mirror schools you as a parent need to remember not to bring school home. That is what he was trying to get away from. That is why you brought him home, so teach him differently than worksheets and textbooks. 

When I first started homeschooling my son who's now 14 many years ago she decided he wanted to sit on the bed he was very eager to learn and I was going through this book and it had lesson plans and I'm not a teacher I'm an engineer I don't know how to go through lesson plans and do all this other stuff but I do have I do know how to read to my son and have conversations with my son and that is what is natural. Reading to your child is the most natural thing in the world of parenting. When you start when they're infants and you're showing them the pictures and you're making all those funny sounds and noises and voices for each character you're animated and you're making it fun and engaging and that's what your children love. So on a subconscious level honestly I think that's what made me gravitate to the Socratic method and the Charlotte Mason method of the feast of living books. It just made sense yeah you could have worksheets and sit down and write things and notebooks and stuff because you have to reflect on those things you have to get all of those thoughts out of your head and put them on paper and read and read them and reanalyze them as you get older. I'm just now coming to this realization as I'm writing this post after many years of educating my children in this manner I didn't realize how simple and natural it was until I was looking over Facebook posts and it just dawned on me why are we doing worksheets,? Why are we even putting our children through this rigorous work that even we don't want to do as adults when we're sitting in an office for 8 hours a day. Then it also dawned on me that John Taylor got us said it best we're f****** the life out of children we're sucking the creativity the passion the drive we just want them to be mindless drones punching a clock following a bell doing all kinds of mindless things which is why so many people are discontent. They don't follow their passions. I was reading to my oldest child he is full of passion he is animated he is articulate and confident and he shows that in his theater he shows that in his coding he shows that in his painting and his art he is a natural leader because he is confident to raise his voice and ask questions. My middle child he's a little bit shy and introverted like I am but when it matters he raises his voice he speaks up when it matters he makes sure that he is heard when it counts and matters the most he knows when to follow but he definitely knows when to lead or at the very least nominate somebody else. I'm sure if he gets older that will change he is only 11 and he does have an older brother who has a very strong voice and a mother who is just as strong-willed but I'm sure that once he gets out on his own that lion that lays in weight will definitely roar louder than the rest. And I really believe I can attribute it to them have open discussions, making their own decisions, and given the space to make their opinions heard through socratic discourse and family meetings. 

Why I started my podcast

The desire to share my journey as a single homeschool mother of three living in public housing making it work by starting my own business not for the money but for the desire to be home with my children. Then to help others that struggle with balancing the burden of having to work against ones desire to connect and fully be engaged in the education and nurturing of their children.

Home education is a lifestyle pt2

I'm very active in homeschool groups on facebook. I am always seeing post about parents so frazzled about making sure that they cover all the activities subjects you know math science reading history. That is so sad the way that I homeschool my children I can't even think of the rest of the subjects that these parents are talking about. It's kind of funny because I was talking about putting all the components together and yes I have all the books but no I don't sit down and do each subject an hour a day they kind of go together seamlessly in like a 2 hour long conversation. We might have a science experiment like once a week maybe once a month it depends on the season honestly. Homeschooling is truly a lifestyle I mean we can't even really call it homeschooling because when you use the word school people seem to think that I'm doing traditional institutional school work at home. That is 100% not the case. The best way that I can put it is that think of a homestead way back long time ago in the 1800s Little House on the prairie style. I think they went to a one room school house but think a little bit before that before they even had school houses and kids were basically just learning by reading the Bible and doing basic math stuff while working on the farm. You know kind of like you know counting eggs and counting how many nails it would take to put up a fence and how many planks it would need to make a fence and someone and so forth stuff like that. So adapt that mentality of farm life into City life living in an apartment. We still have chores the house still needs to be taken care of the rooms still need to be clean the furniture dusted vacuumed floor mop and swept. Now integrate the things that need to be done in the house, with the things that need to be done for yourself you know brushing your teeth washing your face taking a shower, as well as the things that you actually want your children to practice music art you know math and stuff like that. You integrate that into a routine of schedule a work schedule that they kind of had when they were on a farm you wake up and you have certain activities and then you sit down and you have a discussion think about teaching reading while reading to your child before they go to bed at night. That's basically all it is you integrate math into cooking as a family talking about measurements science as you talk about how the mixtures change and steam turns I mean not staying turns into but water turns into steam while it's boiling on the stove or how ice cubes form from a liquid into a solid you know states of matter you know that's science right. It's kind of funny how everyone has gotten away from how we originally learned these things in the first place and have come to believe that you can only teach these things from a book no we have always learned through doing and experiencing things in the real world. I taught my children geography by showing them around the neighborhood they lived in teaching them how to read street signs and acknowledging left and right I of course went further and taught them how to read a map because Google maps sucks and I taught them north south east and west you know the cardinal directions. As well as putting them in boy scouts for a while even though that turned out to be really really creepy. So in all the activities that my children do during the day that is my children's education emphasis on education. I have no idea why people don't take the time to unschool themselves as well as their children when coming into this lifestyle. Granted with classical conversations and school day and all these pods and stuff you do have a social aspect to it where other like minds come together in a community and actually engage with one another. But that's not where the education takes place on a regular basis you're teaching your child with every conversation you have with them. So for me Charlotte Mason and the classical method made more sense so to speak the Socratic method where you have a discussion on various topics. But with the Socratic method I don't just give my children the answer we actually do the scientific method of investigation when searching for the answers to whatever question my child may have. And not only teaches them how to think but it teaches them that their way of getting to the answer might be different from mine but the process is still the same. The scientific method along with questioning through the Socratic method and discussion it's just helpful in teaching my children how to be logical critical thinkers. I have a library of books references that they can use to practice their skills and investigate their questions. I have tools in my disposal to help teach certain things but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're sitting down with those books day to day doing those activities for hours and hours on end, unless they want to. Honestly that is not what they want to do on a regular basis. So be encouraged that when going into home education you don't have to do school at home you don't need a desk and chairs and pencil cases and what not that you would provide for your child if you were taking them to a brick and mortar school. Obviously they're going to need pens and pencils and paper to write on and have their reflective moments but for their daily continuous 8 hour a day schooling experience just get that out of your mind. It's a lifestyle talk to your children read to your children read with your children discuss things with your children and explore things outside the home. Another misconception is that home education only takes place inside the home. Home education is just the root of the education. I miss going to the museums and the parks and everything else that my city provided allowing my children to explore where they live and the world around them. I think that is the main reason why I was even more depressed during this past pandemic because our routine was so drastically impacted and trying to get back to that joyful routine has never returned. Everyone is always so upset and up in arms over a little tiny things. But that's not the point of this blog the point of this blog is to encourage that even though I recommend certain curriculum material to use that is not what I sit my children down and go through for hours and hours on end it is just a backbone or a scaffolding which I place my topics of conversation around. I use it as a scaffolding or starting point for the conversations that I have with my children and it helps me to know what grade level each topic is appropriate for considering I've already covered these topics as an adult I can't have a college level conversation with my five-year-old I kind of have to learn how to dumb it down for him. And I had to do that with all my children because at age 11 he's at a different developmental level and I need to remind myself what that is and how to effectively communicate with him. And my 14-year-old is at a different developmental level and my conversations with him are slightly different from that of my other two children. Although we might be having the same conversations the words that I use differ every time I have a conversation I use different conversations the good part about having multiple children at different age levels is that repetition is key and repeating the same thing with different words that accommodate those different development levels is freaking gold. When it came to language arts I thoroughly needed help learning how to teach that to my children because I struggled with learning how to comprehend what I was reading to the point where I had to go to summer school in the 5th grade. So that is where I needed help in teaching my children how to communicate effectively in written form. Other than that math is easy getting encyclopedia history is easy science experiments are easy. You don't have to do the whole school level stuff because just exposing them to the information through reading books and doing little experiments that are like little teasers it's enough everybody is not going to be a scientist everybody is not going to be a history major or a lawyer or anything like that just showing them everything which is why I love the Charlotte masson method of the feast and exposing your children to every little thing it's good because then once your child is exposed to everything and they tell you what they enjoy you can delve into it deeper and they become experts in those things and that is a much better way to spend your time then the 8 hours of children spend in school. Every adult will tell you that they remember so little about school except for the things that they really enjoy doing. And that's what home education should be a time well spent doing the things that you love and enjoy while still learning the basics of how to be an adult in the society of which you will matriculate into.

Promising Birthday: Rewarded Play

My middle son's birthday is tomorrow. I feel bad because this is the second year that I haven't been able to do all the bells and whistles or throw him a party. Last year I was working so hard by the time his birthday came around I was so exhausted we literally couldn't go. I had the money to take him to the indoor amusement park but I was literally too tired to sit there and watch him, let alone drive. It was a literal hazard how tired I was. I felt bad because I couldn't even find anybody to take him even though I had the money for him to go. This year I don't have the money to go because I have a warrant out for my arrest because of A stupid speeding ticket in a crappy community that thinks that it's okay to issue warrants for people's arrest for a speeding ticket. I will never drive in that area again.  That's aggravating and I'm not paying that ticket because that's just egregious, coercive, unnecessary, over the top behavior. Speed traps need to be outlawed. Why on earth is the speed 25 miles per hour on a car dealership auto mile, literally a mile long strip of car dealerships. I'm contesting the ticket and that's taking time. He agrees with my decision to fight the ticket. I talk to my children at least about things like this, since it impacts him and something important to him. Since I homeschool, everything I do is a teachable moment in forming my children to be informed decision makers. 

In all this drama, the good part is that I do have money to take him to Target and get him a few things it's not what he REALLY wanted, (A gaming chair, new monitor, and controller), but at least it's something. I have to say considering that my attempt to scale my online business has flopped, and Shopify failed me, driving for Lyft to fill in the gaps has gobbled up all my money covering new expenses.  It's just getting to the point that I am not making enough money to do anything. The wear and tear on my car has got me seeking other alternative forms of income and since I've been basically so depressed that I've been playing games on my phone, I started using Rewarded Play which is actually helped us right now. I'm honestly amazed that I've made $75 in the past couple of months.

Granted when I show these screenshots it's going to show the ones still available. I have two accounts since I have two phones. 

The reality of the matter is that I was using those gift cards in between for toiletries. I don't really play a lot of games, so it is nice that you get points for playing a game for as little as 4 minutes a day, and bonus points for reaching level milestones.

I play nine games a day for 4 minutes each, so for 36 minutes I can make about 1000 points alone, but if you play five days in a row you get extra points. There are surveys as well. 

If you sign up here I get a $5 gift card, and that helps me make more money in the future, hopefully making my son's 13th birthday better. I want his 13th birthday to be epic because he's no longer going to be a tween. He will officially be a teenager and that is more important to me than 11 or 12. Although 11 and 12 is important to him, and he expects awesome for his birthday, this year I failed to make it epic. I give myself grace, granted I did make 10 his first double digit birthday freaking awesome it sucks because I was able to do better for my oldest son's birthday because his birthday is in May December birthdays suck so close to Christmas. I know well because mine is in January. I'm turning 40 and I can't even have a big to do for my own birthday so it's like I feel bad for him, I remember how crappy my birthday parties were. My 40th is a big birthday and I can't even afford to take myself to dinner yay car note. Honestly, I feel worse letting my son down. I work so hard to give all my children the world, but when it matters most to them I fail. Thankfully, Rewarded Play gift cards can make this 12 year olds birthday promising with a set of themed holiday PJs for him and his brothers. That is what he said he wanted. 

Adulting 10: Setting up Systems and Routines

Mastering Adulting: Simplifying Responsibilities for a Fulfilling Life

The Art of Adulting: A Few Simple Steps

Adulting—while daunting—need not be overwhelming. By breaking it down into manageable tasks, anyone can become a proficient adult. From managing home care to juggling work responsibilities and prioritizing self-care, setting up a structured system is key to achieving clarity amidst life's complexities.

 Navigating Responsibilities as a Parent

As a single parent of three children, my responsibilities are manifold. First and foremost, ensuring the smooth functioning of my household entails handling essential bills such as utilities, rent or mortgage payments, and other recurring expenses. From internet and phone bills to grocery shopping and toiletry supplies, every detail must be accounted for.

 Budgeting: A Cornerstone of Adulting

Budgeting is paramount in maintaining financial stability. With a limited income, prudent allocation of funds is crucial. Balancing the needs of my children—providing for their clothing, activities, and education—requires meticulous planning and adherence to a budgetary framework. I will be honest I was lost until I started using YNAB. 

Balancing Work and Home Education

In my case, work extends beyond the confines of a traditional job. As a home-based worker and educator, I undertake the dual responsibilities of earning an income and homeschooling my children. This demands a well-organized system to seamlessly integrate home education into my daily routine, alongside essential adulting tasks. Covid through me and a lot of families for a loop that has yet to resolve itself. Although our routines were disrupted, we still had a framework to fall back into. By documenting everything in my planner pages I created, it was only a matter of unearthing my archived notebooks. 

Structuring Home Management

Maintaining a clean and functional household is essential. While I could shoulder all household chores myself, instilling a sense of responsibility in my children through assigned tasks and routines not only lightens my load but also fosters their independence and accountability. The FlyLady saved my life. Looking back at my childhood my parents didn't teach me anything about how to be an adult. Teaching me only about right and wrong doesn't always lead to making the best financial decisions. knowing how to cook and clean is not the end of the task list of a parent or a school. I know how to knit and sew, so what?

Personal Systems for Individual Living

Even for those living alone, establishing personal systems is vital. From meal planning to household upkeep, having structured routines ensures efficiency and reduces stress. It's about finding a balance between managing responsibilities and nurturing personal well-being. You don't have to be neurodivergent to appreciate the adage "everything has a place and everything in its place".

Conclusion: Thriving in Adulthood

By implementing systematic approaches to adulting, one can navigate life's challenges with confidence and grace. Whether as a parent juggling multiple roles or an individual living independently, the key lies in embracing structure, fostering resilience, and finding joy in the journey of self-discovery and growth.

Turn Passion to Profits

Starting a business online on 2024 is really not going to be that difficult. With the help of this lovely book that I acquired several years ago when I had originally started my blog it has continuously helped me hone my main purpose and my passion. This is a workbook so working on my passion is an active endeavor.

I got it bound at FedEx because originally it has a hard spine and for this to be a workbook I don't even know why it came that way but hey I spent a couple extra bucks to get it done at FedEx and it has served its purpose very well. I keep it open on my desk when I'm working on a new projects or I'm working on my computer and I go through the workbook and update it as I go.

granted I am adding pictures before I actually started working on it because I don't want to give it away too much information I mean this is basically a fleshed out business plan type of setup thing. This book takes you from nothing to profit and it is well worth it.

Starting Over: Getting healthy

Starting over is not easy. Homeschooling and working from home as a single parent is a daunting task. Sometimes it is easier to talk than it is to type. I started my podcast BalanceBurden while I was pregnant five years ago. I was vegan for two years and I never felt better. I have since fallen back into comforting bad habits and need to start over yet again in the area of physical  health. I have learned that as adults we start over so many times for so many reasons. My sister was going through a renewal as well and wrote a book Wake Up and Workout. It was in line with my health journey and made so much sense. The recipes were a nice addition to my vegan routine. 

I find myself looking to her books as I start getting back to my healthy routines. I will be honest I might be 227lbs right now but I don't want to loose 100lbs. I would not look cute at 127lbs. I would look sickly as all get out. 

Yes I am up for the Challenge. I might be turning forty at 227 but when I turn 41 I am going to look like I did when I was 27. Oh wait I was pregnant so 28. 😂 No 32 wait 25 was completely before kids. 170-185 is my sweet spot clothes look good. 😊

On topic of starting over...

Although I already had my podcast, I started using the Stereo App as soon as I could because clubhouse seemed like fun but I am thoroughly against iPhones and Apple products. The only apple product I use is Apple TV because Severence is too good to ignore. When running a blog and podcast you have to build links and keep people engaged and I agree with what stereo is trying to do. A live podcast that engages people in real time. Schedule talks and share the link with listeners so that I am not just talking to myself. I think that is why I was so bad at keeping a regular posting schedule. Couple new tech with my mommy schedule and I was lucky to form coherent thoughts at all to post 12 times a year. Now that my children are older, I have a little more free time and someone to occupy my now five year old long enough for me to start over from scratch. 

Oddball homeschooler

I am a member of many homeschool communities on various social media sites and it's kind of interesting how I see all of the blogs and links all talking about Christmas and I don't do any of that. In my house it's a time for the family to get together yes but the whole presence and whatnot it's not as big of a deal in my house because I have a child with a birthday in December. It has never been a big deal in my house we put up the tree and do all those normal things but it's not as big as everybody makes it out to be. At this point in time I'm usually trying to reassess my business, make plans for the next year and create benchmarks. I had said before that this is basically the time that I do most of my planning considering that this is when we spend most of the time in the house. All of the things that I do during the winter most people are doing during the summer so considering that a lot of people are talking about unschooling world schooling and all of that I wanted to have my blog be a little bit different while everyone's talking about Christmas I'll be talking about planning.

 That works best because that is what comes naturally to me. I've never really been one to follow the crowd I've always been the oddball. Conformity has never been my thing because then what makes you stand out if you're just like everyone else.

My home school year doesn't look like everybody else's homeschool year. So why on earth would I blog like them. Following blogs that post about the same thing at the same time messes with algorithms if people like myself want to plan when I do, they are searching for something different. 

The state of Ohio is a notification state and they expect you to send a notice of intent to homeschool at the beginning of the school year but they failed to consider that when homeschoolers might consider themselves year-round homeschoolers there final semester, as it were, doesn't fall in line with their supposed due date. In Ohio they say that they want your notice of intent by the beginning of the school year which is like August or September but for me that is the beginning of my final semester. And my final semester doesn't end until October 31st or Nov 2 . So, I don't usually send my notice of intent to homeschool for the next year until the first week full week of November. We do have to have a review notice signed for completed work and it didn't feel right to prematurely sign one. It's kind of funny to think about because I have all of my notice of intents all the way up until the final year of my now 5-year-olds School year already created ready to print I have a few of them printed out. I actually printed out 3 years in advance just to make sure I don't forget. This year we have a new superintendent so printing them all out to the end of my little ones school age span would have been a waste of paper. I actually don't have to notify the school district about my 5-year-old until 2025 because his birthday is long after the cut off. It's even more perfect that I don't send it in until November because my 5-year-old's birthday is at the end of September anyway and the cutoff is the beginning of September. The best place to look to verify that information is the the state's website as well as hslda.or

I love homeschooling in Ohio because it is so easy and it is the most accommodating for a single parent working from home and homeschooling their child at the same time. The requirements are enough for me because obviously I'm going to give them the best education and there are still ramifications for those who do absolutely nothing and are using their children for child labor. I have to admit though the people that work in the home school office are pretty ignorant to the actual homeschooling laws so although I'm going to put a link to the Ohio education website I wouldn't recommend using any of their paperwork because it is not compliant with the law at all. It's an overreach.

I am a firm believer in a parent's right to educate their children as they see fit. The state of Ohio website is a bit misleading and the paperwork asks for way more than you are legally required to provide. It can be confusing for new parents and unnecessarily overwhelming. I became an HSLDA MEMBER and found a reference to the Ohio homeschooling parents Facebook group which provides the templates HSLDA AGREE WITH and I use. I prefer to use their templates and files and I recommend that you do the same. They are as passionate about parents rights as I am, they keep the templates updated and compliant with the law. I will put a link to the updated templates here because they are free. This year we have a new superintendent in my district and the laws have changed. 

Mind, body, spirt: Body and Mind

I am starting to regain normal feeling in my left hand again. I have been doing my stretches, and drinking my water. My eating habits are horrible, but I am overweight so I like to think I have enough reserves as well as insulation for the winter. Keeping a positive attitude definitely makes a difference. 

Focusing on what I am doing to improve and move forward, no matter how small, help stave off depression and get me out of my rut. As soon as I get things back on track juggling the big rocks, I can focus on the things that will keep me in balance.

tapestry of grace I prefer my own

There was a time that I really really really wanted to use tapestry of grace. But it was too expensive. And I had no idea how to use it. I even found a YouTube video that tried to teach you how to plan out tapestry of Grace but you know what it ended up helping me figure out how to plan all of my components that I had sourced. It was so intense it literally took her like 6 hours to go through all of the materials for tapestry of Grace. To come up with her plan for her children it took her 6 hours can you believe that. And although I spend about the same amount of time creating my own. In all honesty I rather create my own instead of trying to pick and choose out of already provided things when in all honesty all I'm doing is looking at the books that I have and seeing how they go together. So if you'd like to go through other people's stuff by all mean I recommend tapestry of Grace if you want to look at encyclopedias and history books to come up with your own I can show you how to do that.

agenda 52.

I thought my planner stickers that replaced happy planner were notebook 360 or something but they are agenda 52. 

these colors are my life.

large planner collections: routines.

i love Webster pages dividers. This happy planner page flag says it all. When it comes to routines they leave anyone exhausted when you have all the things on your plate. Being a single parent isn't easy. 

School routine

that changes yearly as the boys take different classes like karate and boxing and sports or 4h events .

momies chores around the house has it own section and I included self care time. To do my polygel nails, and pedicures, and hair. 

I have a master routine for the boys so if they fight over whose supposed to do what I can tell them and easily assess reevaluate and reassign during family meetings. 

Daily routine, weekly routines, monthly, and quarterly routines per fly lady recommendations so the house doesn't fall apart. The routines collection is a savior beyond any other. 

on the go planning.

Well on the go I cannot take my large half letter size planner with me I do sometimes because it's necessary but most of the time I just have my little moterm quarter size paper. Quarter size to some people is an A7 size. I love it and moterm with its pockets and it's utility oh my God.

when dealing with a smaller planner I didn't know how to format my pages so that I could put them inside this lovely little thing but Rider Carol the guy who came up with the bullet journal I use everything he said to do because in this little book that I found on Amazon of course it's easy to set up I have everything that I need and at the end of the day I transfer it into my larger planner. It is awesome it works out and like I said you take different tools and you make them work for you. Still covers everything but it's beyond the go size. Moterm has planners that are better than happy planner.

Bullet journal is awesome. I am so happy that I found it on my planner journey. Although I will credit to DIY fish for having an A7 size version of her half letter size it is too small for me to use the grid. Plain line paper is best for jotting down thoughts on the go. 

moterm planners vs happy planners?

I know I know I know I titled this motor and planners versus happy planners but the reality of it is I put my happy planner discs inside my motor cover oh my goodness let me show you this beautiful thing again.

yeah no term is awesome that pocket you can't you just can't I tried to love happy planner I really did but I need to have everything in one place and you can't have everything in one place with a stupid happy planner cover because it's nothing but a laminate. On my YouTube channel books binders and beliefs I wanted to cover all of my philosophy books that I use in my home school I wanted to cover these mode turn planners and the planner stickers that I got so obsessed with and I wanted to talk about my beliefs about how I don't know politics and spirituality I can't remember but I couldn't keep up with it because my son broke my camera and I got upset and depressed about spending $400 on a camera that got broken in 3 weeks. It seemed like every time I try to do something it just failed miserably and the money that I was spending to try and advance my business just was getting flushed down the toilet and I didn't know how to deal with it and then go over it just made it so much worse because I couldn't get out the house to do anything else except wallow in the fact that everything was falling apart. 

I was obsessed with happy planners and I did get a lot of the sticker books but then I fell in love with I think it's notebook 360 they had some planner stickers that came in just like the most beautiful colors of gold and black and peach I think. I still like the stickers because they really do come in handy when it comes to organizing things but you know what knockout print shop is my jam. I don't know what else to say knock out print shop is awesome and it fits in my planner pages I just I can't. Moterm planners I love how they feel I love the colors I love the utility of them I love that I can have a disc planner as well as a ring planner because sometimes I just get sick and tired of having to slowly close my planner whereas a ring planner I can just close it a disciplinary I have to like hold the pages a certain way and lift them up just right in order to close them smoothly. But you can't get mad at the utility of a Moterm planner.

But Webster's pages ring planners are awesome. 

Mel Webster's pages planner is dirty but you know what she still pretty with her rose gold hexagons. Needless to say I am obsessed with planners and considering that I redid happy planners kids planners because they discontinued them I am all about that and the best part is I can create them in whatever size I want I can put them in a ring binder or I can put them on discs it all depends on what my children like at the time. I hope you stay here for those I can't wait.

I know moterm verse happy planner. There is no question Moterm planners are the best, happy planner stickers are an addiction. Happy planner kids edition, a godsend. 

planning and planners

The planners I fell in love with until I realized I needed one that integrated them all. 1)Maksie life. 2) power sheets. 3) inkwell press.4) DIY fish. 5) Mind your business book 6) happy planner. They say you save the best for last but happy planner was mine doing oh my God the stickers I wasted so much money on stickers. They had the best child planner that had color and accessories and they discontinued it they're evil. But you know I took their idea and I ran with it and I made my own. My children still love their happy planner planners that I've created with my own pages and I just use their concept and just kept it going. I don't know why they discontinued it I don't know what they were thinking that was the best thing on the planet. I took their concept and I added philosophy and little sayings and they love it. Only problem is that I needed to hire somebody to do the designs because I am not that kind of artist. Hence the planner page is necessary for business I hired my son. Which is where the mind your business book came into play it helped me create my business plan in the early years. Now my business plan has been integrated into an AI program and life plan. Moxie life I loved their compass. Inkwell press I loved their business financial planning thing. Power sheets I just love how it took my entire year into focus and broke it down into quarters I was missing that I was so stuck on planning the entire year that I forgot how to break it down into small executable steps. DIY fish gave me the template on how to integrate everything together and put them into fold-outs. I think it was the YouTuber KB Chronicles that showed me how she put everything into the DIY fish inserts in 2015 that made me just like oh my God that's that's how the pages need to be I literally had notebooks similarly set up that way but I didn't have the design the way DIY fish did so even though I've designed my own pages I must give credit to DIY fish the only reason why I do not continue with DIY fish is because she started making other designs I just need one design. So if you get my pages great if you want to know somebody that has a similar style she's it honestly the only reason why I remade mind is because I liked her 2015 version and she basically discontinued it that's honestly all and I had integrated the different parts of moxie life inkwell press that were just beautiful the quarterly break down the review I even integrated a vision board a financial section that I got from I think it was cloth and paper they have an entire financial thing that helped me break down my investments and all the little parts financial planning that I just didn't have together when I was 25. So I've tried all of those different planners and I came up with a system that works and I think that people that think like I do and ultimately want to have one planner that does everything instead of carrying around six different planners this could help you especially if you have your own business you homeschool your children and you want to have space to integrate your fly lady calendars your meal plans and all of that stuff in one place and not have it overwhelm you.

I originally liked how Moxie life had its compass and it broke everything down into different scenarios like spiritual physical relational nutritional intellectual recreational financial and environmental but then I recently read a book about the four burner theory and instead of having those eight things and I think what was it another planner had 10 sections I thought that was too much the four burners is good you've got yourself your social life your work and your family and in all honestly you can't take care of all four at the same time. So when I was looking at your level oh the level 10 life where it had all 10 of those things that's too much it's too much you can't do all those things so in this original iteration I really like having those things together because it separated the spiritual with the intellectual when it came to the mind and then you had nutritional for what you ate and so on and so forth but with the four burner theory is like me my family my friends my house you can't do them all you can't even go into the community without missing something. So I still have that in there and I still like to assess what is my priority and working on that during a certain period in time but honestly after reading about the four burner theory I realized that some things just get left behind. I mean like right now it's a prime example I forgot about myself care and I almost went crazy. And it's very common that as you become older and you have families something gets forgotten there's countless stories of women forgetting about self care and they're walking around and sweatpants and pajamas. It happens it's a part of adulthood honestly and then you have some people that they overindulge in self-care but then they don't have food in their fridge. You don't always hear about those cases but the few that I have heard I think they're kind of sad or you'll hear about people who spend so much time on their work as social influencers and then you're like everything in their house is fake. It's so sad how we don't maintain a balance. And the whole point of my blog initially was how I maintain that balance and I was doing awesome before covid everything was on fire and then it it collapsed because I didn't have that one burner that allowed me to go outside the house. Once I was trapped inside the house and we couldn't go on our regular field trips to the museum the park and everywhere else that we would go I didn't know what to do it was like how do I feel that space what do I put on that burner. What do I replace when everything was working seamlessly together. I got thrown off and I didn't know what to do. And right now everything is so out of whack I'm trying to figure out how to get back to what I know was awesome. And in doing so I'm trying to go back and pick up where I got those pieces from. Like the savers from miracle morning and the fly lady and the zones and Andrea Mills with her sage and acd. Without those things I wouldn't have been able to be on fire with everything that needed to get done. My children would not have known how spoiled they are if covid hadn't come along and throw me off my game. They would not understand how to appreciate the reality that we rode bikes everywhere we played at the park all the time we went to the museum and everything was flowing in abundance and we had the money to do things and it just fell apart because I didn't know how to deal with being the house. If it hadn't been for Andrea Mills and AC to create my sage program or the savers to help me get all of the clutter out of my head and on paper to make sure that nothing got missed or forgotten. If I hadn't found all of the tools I needed to be able to be at my best I don't know if I would be able to at this point go back and pick up what was so important. I hate that I'm recording this because the first time I had said that it sounded perfect and it stopped recording so I'm trying to go back and remember what I said so I apologize if this kind of sounds weird but that's what happened. My point was that I want to be able to explain and show how to get back to where I was. I had this concept where I would have a different website that was just talking about my personal development to get me back to that optimal state of firing all cylinders. But acknowledging the fact that even though I had a system in place to make sure that everything was taken care of that does not mean necessarily that they were all being taken care of at the same time. In the winter time I focused on the family as a unit because it was Winter we weren't going out as much and it's the holiday season obviously that's family time. Then in the springtime I would focus on myself because you know after the new year after my birthday I want to start getting back into being fly mommy. Then in the summertime it would be focused on making sure that work was at its most optimal because at the end of spring around May that's when all the homeschool conferences would be going on and then after those homeschool conferences the summer time would be the time for me to reassess reevaluate and rebuild upon my lesson plans planner pages and the next item that I would be offering or product. It was just awesome how in Autumn I'd be focusing on the house and getting it ready for the holiday season and making sure that it was starting to feel cozy again so although some people would do spring cleaning and decluttering the spring that is not when I would declutter because at around Halloween that is when our school year was coming to an end so that would be the natural time for us to start decluttering and getting rid of all the old stuff and all of that. So taking care of myself taking care of my family taking care of my home and taking care of my business and the education of my children it all flowed it might not have been your flow but it was a flow that worked for us. And I need to get back to that and right now I'm 227 lb and that is not cool.

how to organize to educate?

I grew up in a big house that had its own library. I live in a two-bedroom apartment without a library. The first question that came to mind after I collected all of this curriculum for children that are going to be educated in my home from kindergarten to 12th grade... Yeah it took me a minute to figure out how to organize all this stuff. How do I get my children to do chores to keep all this stuff clean. How do I integrate education and keeping the house clean? Thank you YouTube thank you fly lady love you to death. So first I had to come up with a chore chart Lord have mercy I didn't have a chore chart my grandma said clean this clean that it's a child's place to keep the house clean I'm not paying for what is it it's not a nanny what am I thinking of what's the word oh yeah a housekeeper. As an adult living on my own I knew what needed to be done to keep the house clean but now I have to deal with three other people who make their own messes. What in the world am I going to do? Chore chart organizing for other people in the house. it didn't come naturally to me because being the type of person that I am I knew what needed to be done and it was very easy for me to do it in small chunks but when you're teaching a child how to do it a chore chart is like a must. How do you incentivize a child to do chores? But at the same time I need to teach them accountability and get them excited to do work because when they become adults they're going to have to do work they're going to have to clean the house they're going to have to take care of themselves it's a process. So I broke it down self-care be it your physical outward appearance your inward so eating healthy exercising and then taking care of the home keeping your space clean and organized making sure that the kitchen and bathroom were clean because that goes into your inward health because when you're preparing food you want to make sure that it's clean so that you don't get sick. And then once we take care of ourselves in words and outwards and we take care of our homes in words and outwards the next step is to take that care into the world. Once you take care of your body inside and out with food stretching and exercise we cannot neglect the mind both the logical and the spiritual. When I came up with my concept for my chore chart I wanted to make sure that their chores included all of those areas. Once they got older I also had to integrate a pet because I wanted them to take care of something else besides themselves and obviously as a parent they're not taking care of me so but that was the natural thing for them. I landed on cats because that was the easiest thing to think of and I really like cats so you know that was a selfish thing but you can pick whatever pet you want. 

When it came time for me to start designing my chore chart I wanted to make sure that I included their school work into their chores so it kind of gave them a framework on how things should go how the day was going to progress how they would work on certain things like handwriting typing their music classes there are classes those external things. That way since their children they have their consistency they know what's coming so they feel comfortable and secure about how the day is going to go which is the natural development of children they want to feel secure and they want to know what's coming so that there's no surprise or anxiety about what's coming up I learned that by reading a child development book because I wanted to make sure that I raised healthy confident mature adults. That goes into the concept of what was the end in mind when I started doing everything that I was doing. So I had to start off with how I needed the house to be organized in order to allow me to integrate the education portion seamlessly. The fly lady has a homeschooling thing I don't even know what to call it but a scenario of how to keep the house clean and organized and tidy while you're home schooling your children. Then I found another YouTuber Andrea Mills who unfortunately passed away too soon when she gave birth to her last child and she had all kinds of things that would help me integrate the educational portion into keeping the house clean. Andrea Mills used a c e and I liked how they had their educational charts to keep track of the lessons that they were doing the pages they were doing and gave points accordingly I love that whole demerit and I'm star system but I didn't like AC because it was religious based she herself didn't enjoy it and she actually said just forget about it but I didn't even want it to be presented to my children I didn't want that to be a distraction. So I simply just made my own. Not hard to do in Excel I mean it's literally a box with some words in it so stick that in their folders put their little worksheets in there and they can just work on their handwriting and their math concepts and whatever science notebooking they needed to do. So I came up with the sage program satisfactory average good exceptional it's not the exceptional that you would think as in oh my gosh it's great it's just like okay I'll accept that. And I wanted it to be like the demerits were four things like lying stealing things that you're not supposed to do. And they got points for completing all of their lessons doing all of their chores and whatever else extra that they did they got bonuses. I created an entire sage system that I was going to try to develop an app for but I got sidetracked and life just got away from me but I will get back to that at some point I have a coupon system that I got from another YouTuber and I have a tile system that doesn't have words for when they were little from another youtuber. It integrated the learning chores as well as the cleaning chores beautifully. That led me into understanding occupational therapy and learning about children that had disabilities that probably couldn't read into their older ages and I discovered I can't remember the name of it it was a star kids program or something like that and it had Stars and magnets that you could put up so that the child would know what's going on that's also when I started looking into child development and how children wanted to feel safe and secure and know what's going on to limit anxiety in their lives. So that fit in perfectly as well. So between fly lady helping me keep my house clean and Andrea Mills giving me the idea for the incentives and demerits program I was good to go. Well I should say for the kids point of view but for me I had to go to Christy clover to figure out how I was going to organize all of my curriculum from the teaching perspective organizing things by color and making sure that everything was in boxes that could be easily stored and moved when I needed to get it for different subjects and organize my materials so that while I'm piecing all this stuff together I can have it for the next child like my 5 year old thank you so it makes a little bit easier for me to start over because of Christy clover I was able to have all of this stuff organized ahead of time. Organizing the house is not that hard once you get all the pieces together especially when you're in a small apartment. Having the shelves organized by subject having a shelf dedicated to the current years curriculum even though I have curriculum for basically all the years right now. It's amazing how comfortable your environment is when it's organized and you know where things are. The problem with me is that after covid my 11 year old decided that he wanted to reorganize everything by color that's another thing that kind of threw me for a loop because my personality does not look kindly on things that I'm not organized the way that I organize them that's me problem. I wish I could put a picture of my stage program let me see I think I can find it I had to also print out their report cards because some of the programs that I had signed them up for wanted those programs so they could get additional things like lunch packs and food and toys and stuff like that so I kind of had fun doing it coming up with a progress report that actually talked about what it is that they had been doing reviewing some of the stuff that we had gone to the programs we had participated in it was nice looking bad so this is my first iteration of my school calendar.

I had mentioned before that our year starts in January and ends in October that simply because I wanted to start after my birthday my oldest son has his birthday around Easter or spring break so that was a natural way to take a break. Then my middle child's birthday is in December and my ex-husband's birthday is in November and then of course that starts off the whole you know Thanksgiving Christmas New Year's extravaganza of just way too much to be doing anything else at the time so it was an easy transition to just have a break from November to after my birthday and then having a break for my oldest son's birthday when everybody else was taking off for spring break anyway. Then I decided that it would be nice to have little intermittent breaks in between because I didn't have everything together at the same time back then. So I can't remember the YouTube channel that I had discovered but they had six weeks on one week off for planning and then 6 weeks back on and then everything was broken up into three or four 13-week blocks which I absolutely loved and then it kind of naturally fell into where we had 13 weeks off from November to January it was like it was creepy so it was like oh my God how did that happen so from the November to January it seems like it's only like 8 weeks but it's not because even though in school you know how you start school but you don't really start school it's kind of like we're easing our way back in that's naturally how it fell off so the first two weeks of school it's kind of like just easing our way back in and just setting it up to where we're like okay we're going to start doing written things again let's get it together and then by the end of that 13th week that's when I'm officially planning the next 13 blocks I mean the 13 week block. But this is how I had set up my sage program.

since I work from home as an engineer doing construction management before I started home schooling I needed to make sure that the children were aware what was going on so once they were old enough to sit down and be still and listen and understand what we were doing especially when we started talking about divorce. I had to initiate family meetings and as time went on I realized that I needed to integrate the business portion into the family meetings so it wasn't just talking about what the children want communicating grievances and so on and so forth we initially naturally transitioned into talking about what was wrong and how we could fix it and I don't understand how people and families don't have family meetings it just doesn't make any sense to me so when I was developing my planner for both the kids and myself I made sure that it naturally had a place for them to document their family meeting notes what they wanted to talk about the next meeting and so on and so forth.

this is my homeschool planner page set I had made it so that I could track both of my children considering that they're not exactly the same ones a little bit older than the other they weren't always doing the exact same things I wanted to make sure that I kept track of everything that they were doing make sure I didn't forget anything even if they were learning the same concepts it might not be the same level of concept. This was my earlier copy where I was teetering between philosophy and theology and then I ultimately decided that I just wanted to go with philosophy because theology was not something that we really went into we kind of just kept it abstract so that they could later go into whatever spiritual path they themselves gravitated to I just wanted them to have the foundation I didn't want to tell them that Baptist or Protestants of any kind were better than the other when in all honesty I think all religions lead to the same place. But I wanted to make sure that I focused on making sure that I covered all the subjects one because the state requires 900 hours of you know math science history and language arts but of course I wanted to make sure that I included fine arts and computer sciences.

this is my current iteration of the planner pages that I designed that include my family meeting on the fold out over there that includes the weekly action steps so whatever we decide in our family meeting we write down what it is that we need to accomplish during the week and we write it down. I didn't include a completed family meeting page because like I said we include business topics as well as personal topics and I didn't want to show that so this is just a blank copy of one of the weeks that we had that was basically just chore and school stuff related like well now it is drop off notice of intent and find a daycare and pay the bills and check the balances nothing too specific I guess. But basically I had found a guide on how to run a family meeting and if it is something that you would think about including I will happily link to them if asked but I think family meetings are kind of personal but you have to figure out what works best for you but the basic concept is you figure out what's wrong you figure out how to address it and then you write down the steps to fix it. Organizing that mentally is very helpful when running a homeschool because there are so many things going on especially when you're a single parent your self-employed and your educating your children all at the same time it can be come overwhelming and if you don't get all of those thoughts out of your head I am the prime example of how you will become a depressed mess and lose 3 years of your life. I'm being overdramatic but it's kind of a reality where if you don't get everything out of your head you can become overwhelmed and things will fall through the cracks that should not fall through the cracks simply because you didn't have a place for them. Oh and therapy helps to.

What do I want my children to know?

After covid I noticed that a lot of people started homeschooling because they realized that school in the brick and mortar context was pretty much a daycare or it was full of busy work because the teachers were spread out among 30 children Plus in a class. I didn't want my children to be burdened by busy work and unimportant concepts. I want to my children to know exactly who they are. I wanted my children to know exactly the world they live in how it works and why we live the way that we do. I didn't want them to be stuck in a bubble and I definitely didn't want them to think that the way that we live in America is the only way to live. So while studying all the other countries of the world and their political systems their economic systems as well as their philosophies I wanted them to understand why through cultural and social situations those economies political systems work for them. I want my children to appreciate other ways of thinking I don't want them to always agree but through appreciation they understand the others point of view. Right now politics is talking about communism socialism blah blah blah and a lot of people are acting like capitalism is the most abysmal thing on the planet right now. But from my point of view capitalism has been the greatest thing for a society on a global level. The problem is crony capitalism nepotism greed. Capitalism in its purest form is not the problem capitalism could incorporate some things of socialism as well as communism but let me be very clear we do have social programs we do have communal programs but at the heart of it all capitalism allows the consumer to choose. If a person has a bad year when it comes to business work or even a medical issue that makes their income go down we have safety nets and things in place to make sure that they do not fall through the cracks. That's in capitalism's purest form the cracks are formed when greedy people try to make sure that they only accommodate people with money. That's what I don't agree with we all live on this planet together we should all be taking care of everyone we have all the resources we need to make sure that happens. The elderly need to be taken care of at a certain point that's where the social programs come in that's where the communal programs come in because at a certain point you're going to have to be taken care of because you can't take care of yourself. Children can't take care of themselves until they reach a certain age but there are people that want to take advantage of children which is why we came up with child labor laws. Children need to grow and develop. If we don't nurture children or future is lost we are left with adults that cannot innovate the next big thing that will propel our futures forward we get stuck reliant on the old way of thinking. We get strapped with old concepts that are outdated and have reached their expiration for the discoveries that we have discovered as of late. So I want my children to know when to let the old go but I also need my children to understand that you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. You can let old concepts go without letting go of everything. We wouldn't get rid of let's say how a fan works to replace it with how an air conditioner works. It might seem a little absurd but some people might not even realize that there is a fan inside of an air conditioner. To try and make it clear that the old concept of cooling oneself down was the fan but the new version of cooling oneself down with a coolant to make the fans air cooler took a new concept of cooling but did not get rid of the old concept of the fan. So I want my children to understand where things came from originally so that they will not have the misguided perspective that America is the best has always been the best and neglects the fact that America is and will always be a melting pot. English itself as I had noted before when covering language arts is a collaboration for lack of a better word of many languages. We still have koreatown Chinatown Little Italy Jewish neighborhoods we even have Amish country sadly we even have native Americans on reservations. America is where the world congregates in my opinion. But like so many good ideas has become correct corrupted by greed manipulation power struggles that in all honesty were unnecessary. The idea of America was beautiful in its founding we can try to forget that so many people were displaced killed and we can ignore so many things if we like but I don't want my children to forget those things because here's a shocker I am both native American and African American. I don't think it is fair for any country to overlook the bad parts because those bad parts took place to pave the way for the good. There is a right way to teach about the bad parts of History and there is a right way. There are a lot of people arguing about this as they introduced the concept of CRT and what is this equity instead of equality I'm sorry equity is so stupid everyone is not equal we have people that are smarter than each other than others we have people that are more creative than others we have people that are more logical in others I am the person who appreciates the individual excellence to make the whole excellent. It's not one person that makes something good it is they collaboration of many that makes something good. We need all perspectives in order to make the whole beautiful. I don't agree with equity everyone does not want to have the same as everyone else. I don't want to live in a mcmansion I would rather live on a homestead. That is what has been forgotten equality allows for everyone to have an opportunity to have what it is that they truly want. the problem with society now is that everyone is so busy in a rat race that they don't even have the time to think about what it is that they really want they are so stuck so tired that they are easily manipulated in being told what they want. That is sad. I do not want that for my children I want my children to be able to know what they want understand why they want it and how they are going to get it. I don't want them to be easily manipulated by fear or power or any other thing other than their own true desires. I want them to see how their actions impact the world. Even if their actions are negative I want them to be able to minimize that negative impact as much as possible and maximize any possible positive impact they might have on the world. The way that I teach them history I want them to learn the beautiful parts as well as the ugly parts and appreciate them as equally as possible. I don't know what else to say on the matter I want them to be well-rounded I want them to know why they do what they do and I want them to know how to do it effectively efficiently and peacefully.