She prefers documentaries to television shows and thinks that her children do too!

At holidays, while everyone else is decorating and baking, she is researching the origins of the holiday, how the holiday was celebrated in Colonial America, and turning her family celebration into a unit study.

Even though she never took Latin in school, she thinks all children should take at least one year. 

At election time, she asks, "Where does the candidate stand on homeschooling?"

Sneak back into her house. There are burn marks on the kitchen ceiling (chemistry experiments!), stains on her counters (art projects!), rips in her carpeting (sewing class!), and stains on the tablecloth (biology dissections!).

Buying a pet becomes a unit study.

She doesn't have time to read a novel or magazine, but spends hours pouring over homeschooling curriculum catalogs.

When she goes on vacation, she might forget to pack her shoes or her child's clothing, but she remembers to pack an extra-large suitcase full of classic literature for the kids to read when they tire of swimming, sight-seeing, playing games, and relaxing. She also wants to visit museums on vacation. She is convinced that everyone else in the family loves museums. Or, at least they should.

Her overdue library book fine equals the National Debt.

"The cheerful heart has a continuous feast!"  (Proverbs 15:15 NIV).

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones," (Proverbs 17:22 NIV).

Okay! It's time to share my deep dark homeschooling secrets with you! There are many!  Here are my confessions!

I don't fix breakfast for my children. Yep, it's true. As soon as my children leave the high chair, they are on their own for breakfast. If they want a hot meal they have to pull a stool up to the stove and cook it themselves or bribe an older sibling. My children don't even realize that there are mothers in the world who cook breakfast!

I would rather be shot in the head than teach my teenagers to drive. There! I admitted it! My children are all great drivers, but I am a terrible passenger. By the time we have backed out of the driveway, I am ready to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. I beg and plead with my husband to teach the children to drive. They seem to like learning from him better, anyway. Go figure.

There are millions of paper piles around my house. When I get rid of one, ten more take its place. My heart is to keep my home neat and tidy. File folders in the untold millions are labeled and in file cabinets, but still these piles appear! You can tell where I am and where I've been--just follow the paper piles.

A day at the beach by any other name is a field trip. Yes, it's true. I have put away the school books, loaded up the minivan, and driven over to the Florida coast for a day in the sun. Forgetting my cares, and sometimes my name, I have fallen sound asleep while the kids play in the sand and body surf in the waves. Sometimes they look for shells or capture poor innocent sea animals. I will go home, lather on aloe, and convince my husband that we went on a field trip.  "The field trip was a nature study on marine life." I can look my husband straight in the eye and say this. He begins to have doubts after the tenth nature study on marine life in one school year.

Technology is a necessary evil in the world we live in, but it is not my cup of tea. There are too many remotes in my house to understand what each one does, so I can't even turn on the  DVD player by myself.  I don't even like mechanical pencils. My computer can do fifty million things that I can't even comprehend, let alone make them happen. I force myself to learn one new thing each year on my computer. One year I learned that you can hit "reply to all" and respond to EVERYONE at the same time. It was a miracle and changed my life. This year I've already learned three new things--I'm way overwhelmed!

Starting a project is more fun than finishing one. Things are much more fun at the beginning of the adventure than when it is winding down. I have millions of unfinished sewing projects, novels, craft projects, and songs that I have never finished. Likewise, I enjoy the beginning of the school year more than the end. I love the fresh new start when we are eager to begin again after a long break. By February, I'm counting the days until summer.

When I was pregnant, I always fell asleep while homeschooling the other children. I would try so hard to keep my eyes open, but he minute I started reading aloud, I lulled myself right to sleep. Once the baby was born, nursing my new little one would put me to sleep too! It was so amazing when I weaned my youngest son. Two months later, I woke up one morning and, for the first time in twelve years, I had energy! It was wonderful! I don't fall asleep anymore while I homeschool. Now I fall asleep watching movies.

My children would rather play than do their schoolwork. They are not as eager to learn as all the self-motivated children in the homeschool books I've read. My children actually complain about school sometimes and I've had to discipline them for complaining. In the books I've read homeschooled children discover new stars, invent computer software, and rake lawns for all the elderly citizens in the town where they live. My children are just normal children, but I do like them!

I don't use math manipulatives--they are too much trouble. Yes, I own them, but I find that dragging them out of their special box onto the table to show my children a visual demonstration is just too much for me to handle. So, though I believe that hands-on math is the best way to learn, my children use workbooks with brightly colored pictures instead.