How far are they away from your home? What of their reputations? What alternative services are available locally for children?

Local isn’t always best though – especially if your child has special needs, is gifted, or you’re attempting to raise your son or daughter differently than the norm. After all, not one of us wants to raise children to grow to be like the average teenager – sassy at the least, exploratory in drugs and alcohol at the moderate, and pregnant by 15 at the worst!

It doesn’t have to be that way, normal, average, you know. You don’t have to suffer with standard services for your child either when you live in the country. There is a viable alternative! Home schooling.

More Reasons To Home School

Perhaps the school bus won’t come within miles of your country home driveway. Or maybe you have become disillusioned with the ’system’ of school. Whatever your reasons might be to further investigate home-schooling, with a little investigation you will quickly discover that many top notch child experts (a large part of them retired school teachers) now agree that home-based education is the most beneficial method for educating children of any age or ability.

One of the most ground-breaking discoveries due to the popularity of home schooling in the last 20 years or so, is the incredible success observed by something called self-directed learning. This is where you allow your child to decide what they want to learn about next, and by doing so, they approach their studies with gusto.

I read a piece a while back about how the parents of a 7 year old boy had not forced reading on the lad but ensured that he had the very basics down. That boy took an interest in flight and airplanes and wanted to learn more – yet the subject was out of the mother and father’s knowledge zone. The child, eager to learn more, gathered books from the library on his topic and spent days pouring over those books until his thirst was quenched. And in the end he had surpassed a Grade 4 level of reading comprehension!

The Viable Alternative

Home-schooling. With the availability of information at your fingertips (Internet, Encyclopedia CD’s, etc) and correspondence courses home-schooling is more than attainable – technology makes it downright simple. And, if you’re worried about bucking the trend and people looking at you strangely when you tell them you home school your child, recent stats say that over 1 million families world-wide are teaching nearly 3 million children at home!

Worried about College Admission for Your Home Schooled Child?

Many home schooling teenagers are breaking the misconception today that many people have. Namely, if you are home schooled you’ll never be accepted into university or college.

Ha! Most home schooled children, upon writing their University admissions test pass with flying colors! Some of them 3-4 years younger than their traditionally schooled counterparts!

Parents are Tutors Too!

Learning at Home – Instilling the love of learning is the greatest gift you could ever give a child. If your child is struggling with reading, math, science, languages, etc. at any level, I suggest clicking this link: (find slightly or never used study materials in our country catalog – check the categories on the right on that page for various subjects and age groups).

Laura Childs
This article on home schooling was originally published on GoodByeCityLife.com in 2000.

Related Posts

• Home Schooling – Elementary Age
• Raising Great Children in the Country

"Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired."
Terri- age 4

Just like John Holt’s books, the needs of children and the public schools that we shove them into haven’t changed one bit.

Now don’t get me wrong here. Public schools are okay, if you have no other alternative, but if you can swing it in any way, shape or form, I urge you to consider home schooling as soon as possible for your child or children.

Anyone Can Home School!

For the first 8 years of my daughter’s life I was a single mom, with no help, time or support from family. To make matters worse I had left my long time friends behind when I said "GoodByeCityLife" so she and I were completely alone and on our own.

Now you may be thinking that this was alright for me, or that I must have had some special trait that you do not possess, but let me assure you that there is nothing special about me – other than determination and spunk.

You can do anything in this world that you set your mind to do. If your children are your priority you will home school them once you’ve learned a little about home schooling and child psychology – all can be obtained within 1/2 hour of reading.

And you don’t need to follow the tough road I traveled – I took a large financial hit, cashed out my pension, moved to a small run-down house, and didn’t buy anything new for myself for 5 years. Plus, I worked all night after spending time with and bonding with my child all day. I averaged 4 hours of sleep a night for those first 8 years.

Is Home Schooling Worth the Work?

You may wonder if it was worth it. My answer was that I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Veronica is now 12 – the age where most girls are getting sassy and rude and pulling away from their parents. On the home schooling side life is much different. Home schooled children are still tightly bonded with their parents, have learned to make educated and smart decisions on their own, and are respectful of persons – peers or not. It’s just natural in the home schooled child.

Your home schooling venture does not need to be like mine – only the end of the journey needs to align. You likely can rely on friends and family. You likely have a spouse that will support you. You likely don’t have to learn the hard lessons I did when I was raising my home schooled child because there is just so much more help and assistance available to home schoolers now.

The path has been made for you. Support groups, clubs, free resources, online lesson plans – the list is endless.

If you’d like to read more about home schooling – from my perspective – please continue on and follow the links below. And if you need to ask questions, don’t hesitate to email me. I’d be honored to be involved in a journey that will grow both you and your child in ways you could never have imagined!

Learning can be accomplished through play. Word play, dexterity exercises, and number play are all foundations for higher learning and make home schooling educations fun!

The end result? Children who grow up to be adults that don’t lose their inquisitive nature and who recognize that learning doesn’t stop after university or college!

Here’s a few fun home schooling activities, for the elementary aged child (from 5 to 11 years old).

Word Play for Home Schoolers: How About A Brain Boost? (9 and up)

This will keep their brains working during the it’s-all-about-fun summer months. Boost creativity, vocabulary and have fun with creative thinking puzzles, wordplay, riddles and brain teasers. My favorites? Some of them are showing at the bottom of this page.

All ages love crafting with paper, so be sure to check out our paper crafting projects page.

Not Home Schooling? Here’s some help entertaining and educating, even in the summer months…

Eric and I have been busy entertaining our own and other people’s children for quite some time. We know it’s easy to run out of ideas. We’ve found some valuable resources at great prices for you that we highly recommend. There’s lots of ideas here for you, just browse around and see what strikes your fancy. Products for sale are generally within the $10-20 range, you’ll get a lot of use out of these resources for a small amount of money.

Each one has been hand selected to combine perfectly with stay-at-home moms, home schoolers, day care centers, Sunday School classes, babysitters and camp leaders.

So, get busy, have fun and enjoy those children this summer – without feeling drained and exhausted!

Discount Home School Supplies

• Everything For the Home School
• Alphabet Related
• Art Software
• Early Learning Software
• History & Geography
• Language Skills
• Language Skills Software
• Math
• Math Software
• Music & Art
• Problem Solving Software
• Science & Nature
• Science Software
• Social Studies Software
• Home School Textbooks

Related Posts

• Home School – A Viable Alternative
• Raising Great Children in the Country

You’ll also know that I began the celebration that is my daughter’s life alongside this website. But first I had to leave my fast-paced, high-stress, life in the big city, behind. Hence the name “GoodByeCityLife”.

Although the details of my decision are rather personal, I can tell you this much. She was six days old and in a stroller – I had her out for that token walk of ’scare off the jaundice and get a natural dose of Vitamin D’, took a look around at the world I’d be raising her in and said “No way.”

A month later we were heading for the hills like two country kids en route to the greatest adventure of all time.

Country Children – A Gentler Start

Every so often I’ll spot a newspaper for my old stomping ground and find myself shocked at the headlines. Sometimes, if I have enough time or energy to sit myself down in front of the idiot box (television) I’ll catch a glimpse of the evening news.

Both of these distractions from our normal life make me shudder. I wonder what happened to the once friendly, albeit large, city of Toronto.

What possibly could have happened to turn Toronto the Good, into a city where children are now involved in drive by shootings and gang wars? This isn’t all about Toronto, the trouble is in every major city in North America. (For the record, I’ve been to many large cities in Europe in the last few years and, except for Rome’s trouble with street kids, don’t see the problems there as I do here.)

Moving Your Children Out of the City

I’m not making any judgment calls here. Not everyone can just pack up and get their kids out of Dodge City like we could. In fact, the move itself was rather easy for me as I had a history of moving around a lot when I was young and then in my 20s.

I realized young that I could reinvent myself in every new place and aspire to greater accomplishments with every move. I also realized that a person can make friends anywhere, can make do without your favorite restaurant, and that you can live out of a suitcase for a month if you have to. Essentially you can figure the whole mess out when you arrive and in the meantime make a better life and enjoy the tiniest taste of freedom as you begin to control your own destiny.

Today, (as I write this), Veronica is 13.

I wonder about my friends’ daughters and who they’ve grown up to be.

I wonder about the differences between our children and if the city vs. country life has made all the difference.

Surely with television, satellite, cell phones, and the internet they are equally be bombarded with the same messages and be affected in the same way. Or are they?

Perhaps the lesson isn’t in where you raise them, but how you raise them. Certainly the stresses and values of city parents vs. country parents are much different. I know for a fact that I could not have afforded to spend as much one-on-one time with my girl as I have if we were still living in the city. I also know there are a lot of parents in my community that barely spend any time with their children – and wouldn’t, even if they could afford it.

It is troublesome and it causes hurt. The children hurt and look for ways to mask or dull it. They hurt and are left with no recourse, no tools for coping, but to hurt others in return. Personally I think it is a large part of what is wrong in our society today and why our crime rate is on the rise, why our kids are thugs.

On the other hand, in our tiny world of 3,500, the children of the house are top priority in (a guess) 70% of the families. You make ‘em, you raise ‘em and that doesn’t mean shoving them out the door steady or propping them up in front of a television set.

It does means sitting down with them. It means taking a hike with them. It means going fishing together. Skating. Whatever – something – time.

I used to think that raising my daughter in the country would mean that she’d have a chance to extend the glory days of youth, but being raised in the country hasn’t afforded her the luxury of ‘being a kid longer’.

I still had to prepare her for the ‘real world’, but in the country we have time for compassion and age appropriate teaching. Furthermore the lessons in themselves make more sense (I can’t tell you how many adults I’ve talked to that don’t have a clue where their grocery store meats come from.)

This country child was:

• Street smart by 5.
• World traveled by 12.
• She’s had to deal with death, and has had to help with birth.
• She knows first-hand the animals that gave their lives for her as she sits down to dinner.
• And she understands the work involved in growing her own salads.
• The only stress she’s been spared is to not need to fear for her safety at the hands of society every time she heads out the door.

Country Kids Aren’t Immature or Ignorant of How the World Works…

Thirteen years ago I was chastised in my social circle. “You can’t take her out to the country! She’ll turn out dumb as a stump, without culture, and easy prey should she ever leave that small town…”

In retrospect I’m not entirely certain why I counted those people as ‘friends’.

As for Veronica, now nearly an adult at 13: Nicely mannered. Great social skills. Two percentage points shy of being an honor student (and that’s after being home schooled for the first part of her education). Traveled and touched by the cultures of Africa, Puerto Rico, France, Italy, Spain and, of course, the USA. She’s been to a ballet, symphonies, live theatre and more. Avid reader of many genres.

Culture? I wouldn’t have been able to take her on those trips had I continued living in the city with my high mortgage payments.

Dumb? I wouldn’t have been able to give her those years of home schooling (which I fully believe in) had I stayed in the city.

Easy prey? I think not. You’d just have to meet her to know how laughable that one is! She’s a strong and fiercely minded young woman, loaded with confidence and determination. Traits I may not have been capable of instilling had I raised her in the city.

Is There Really A Difference Between City and Country Kids?

I’m not certain I could make that distinction, although I do feel incredibly blessed to have raised her here. Had I stayed in the city I would not have had the time or finances (too busy going to work and spending my pay checks on high mortgage payments) to devote to her and her education.

On the other hand there are certainly our fair share of ignored and obnoxious children and teens in our country town. You can’t blame that on the kids though, they haven’t been parented. The smart ones will try to give you the excuse that they’re a ‘product of their environment’ – it is their cop out and sadly they can’t even spell what they’re saying.

When it comes right down to it, this is more about how you raise them, than where you raise them. If you can’t give your children the time and energy required to turn out responsible, compassionate adults, then perhaps you need to do what I did – say “Good Bye City Life”!

Related Posts

• Home School – A Viable Alternative
• Home Schooling – Elementary Age