Just the other night I discovered a new to me blog thanks to my friend Jennifer Mull. She’s a homeschooling mom of eight that I go to church with and I love bouncing by her facebook page because I never know what kind of links she’ll have up there. Often they get me thinking. Don’t you love friends like that?

So Wednesday she posted a link to an article on Simple Homeschooling. The article was titled I want to Homeschool, but I don’t want the Responsibility. Ouch! I think we can all admit we know homeschoolers who do a fantastic job. We know others that we don’t quite understand how they do it, but it seems to work. And then there are others that probably don’t want the responsibility. This article made me step back and reexamine how I’m doing. Always a good thing…especially when my kids’ futures are at stake.

What do you think? Does cuddling on the bed with my three-year-old and reading to her and then having her read the letters in words to me count as schooling? You bet…those are the building blocks of reading. She knows her letters and now she’s getting an understanding that those individual letters to together to form words. Key learning steps. She also wants to do flashcards. Does it matter that I’m showing her how the numbers translate to her fingers? Nope…because again that’s giving her concrete ways to translate something that’s written to real life.

Then that first article led me to another. Isn’t that the way blogs go? This post caught my eye because it was titled I refuse to Steal My Kids Dreams. It referenced a Seth Godin e-book Stop Stealing Dreams (that you can download for free at the link). In it he addresses the breakdown in the education system and also talks about homeschoolers. I’ve downloaded his book — but haven’t read it yet. But I found the ideas and her counter-points engaging — engaging enough for me to go grab his book.

This last post on Exploring Online Learning was simply interesting as I begin to consider possible online classes for my 11 year-old.

So what’s a blog you’ve encountered lately that kept you reading? What about its content made it so engaging?