Ainsley Arment Quotes

A magical childhood isn’t about having the best toys, gadgets, and vacations. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about simplicity. A magical childhood is about freedom. Freedom to explore, discover, and play.

One of the main reasons we homeschool is to foster relationships with our children, so when we prioritize the relationship over the to-do list, we are succeeding.

Let’s stop striving to be good moms by other people’s standards and start becoming the mothers our children need.

Comparison is the thief of joy, but also of a mother’s confidence.

Our children need our time, not our intelligence. They bloom with love, not perfect language skills. They need mercy, not intellectual mastery. And they will learn—indeed, truly learn—when they are given time to explore ideas without constant fact-checking and examination.

Parenting is hard stuff. It builds us up, then beats us down. Swells our pride, then wounds our ego. Fills us up, then exposes our flaws. It defines our future and breaks our bodies. All within the same twenty-four-hour day. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

When children go from one class to the next, followed by extracurricular activities, sports, and then homework all evening, when do they get to experience the wonder of childhood?

Comparison is the thief of joy, but also of a mother’s confidence

At the heart of every child is the need for play. Play is important for creativity, learning, and interacting with peers. But it’s also the way children communicate. If we want to show our children we love them, we need to play with them. Play is the magical portal to connection.

Raising children is hard, full of twists and turns, missteps and mistakes, regrets and trying new things. But even on its most challenging day, homeschooling is really just an extension of parenting. Rest assured, there is no perfect school, classroom, teacher, mother, or homeschool. But we can do the best we can, one day at a time. And that’s good enough.

You are your child’s best teacher because you can lead by example. You can show them how to pursue knowledge by doing so yourself. You can join them on this learning journey as a guide through life and education, and sometimes the other way around.

You can establish a treasured family culture by celebrating the smallest occasions in big ways. All you have to do is identify what your children love, and repeat it. A tradition doesn’t have to be significant in order to be meaningful. It’s important because your family says it is.

But the time we spend together as a family will root them deeply in values that matter and dreams that inspire.

Children, as it turns out, need a childhood.

there is nothing more natural to a mother’s heart than to look after the needs of her own children, to preserve their childhoods, and to give them the chance to be who they were made to be. We need only to keep the voices from convincing us otherwise.

Know this: children will find adventure whether we’re the ones who give it to them or not. If they can’t find it in their families, they’ll look for it elsewhere. They’ll find it with friends, their girlfriends, their boyfriends, and even other families.

research shows that social and emotional readiness in a child produces better academic achievement in the future. In fact, a study conducted by the University of North Florida found that children who attended academically driven preschools had lower grades by the end of fourth grade than those who attended play-based preschools.2

A study of kindergartens in Germany compared fifty play-based classes with fifty early-learning centers and found that the children who played excelled over the others in reading and mathematics and were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They also excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and industry.8

Lori Pickert wrote, “Creative work requires big chunks of unscheduled time. It requires freedom to explore, to try different things, to just think and imagine—and it requires a relaxed mindset. It is impossible to take your time and explore an idea in many different ways if you feel pressured by a lack of time or someone else’s expectations.”4

Dr. Gary Chapman, we know there are five love languages through which every person feels valued and cherished—words of affirmation, quality time, gift giving, physical touch, and acts of service. When people want to express love, they tend to do so in their native “language,” and when they want to feel love, they need to receive it in the same way

Make music. In fact, make your own instruments. See who can make the craziest, most unexpected instrument out of the materials you have lying around the house. Set up a bird-watching station at the front window. Include the necessary bird books and binoculars, of course, but don’t forget the kazoos and party poppers to celebrate the birds’ arrival.

We can’t possibly thrive at homeschooling without understanding how our children are wired. In traditional schools, they are all taught in the same way. But we get to understand how our children are wired and then adapt their education to their personalities. We get to value who they are and meet them where they’re at. So observe them. Study them. Watch how they express themselves, and take note. Go Jane Goodall on your children.

As children grow, what we teach or don’t teach them in the developmental years makes a difference as well. Tough wrote, “What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.

The challenge with parenting and, to an even greater degree, with homeschooling is making sure that each of our children knows he’s loved. Adding to the complexity, each child gives and receives love differently. Thanks to the insightful work of Dr. Gary Chapman, we know there are five love languages through which every person feels valued and cherished—words of affirmation, quality time, gift giving, physical touch, and acts of service. When people want to express love, they tend to do so in their native “language,” and when they want to feel love, they need to receive it in the same way

Nature journaling doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need artistic skills, fancy pens, or expensive journals to get started. All you need is a curious spirit, a pencil, and a notebook. Call them nature journals, field guides, or whatever you like. But go into the fields, walk into the woods, and sit by the streams. Listen, watch, and sketch what you see. Include the date, time, and location. Include lists, quotes, or pressed flowers in your pages if you’d like. And fill them with the observations of your outings. In time, the habit of nature journaling will nurture a love for nature in both you and your children.

At the heart of every child is the need for play. Play is important for creativity, learning, and interacting with peers. But it’s also the way children communicate. If we want to show our children we love them, we need to play with them. Play is the magical portal to connection. Playing with our children isn’t about enjoying the activity as much as it is about connecting with them. Much as with love languages or personality types, understanding how our children play is critical. Author and psychologist Lawrence J. Cohen, the author of Playful Parenting, wrote, “Play is important, not just because children do so much of it, but because there are layers and layers of meaning to even the most casual play.” He pointed out the various layers of a father and son playing catch—from developing hand-eye coordination and the joy of learning a new skill to the bonding time the two are sharing. “The rhythm of the ball flying back and forth is a bridge,” Cohen wrote, “reestablishing a deep connection between adult and child; and comments like ‘good try’ and ‘nice catch’ build confidence and trust.

In his book How Children Succeed, Paul Tough wrote, “Babies whose parents responded readily and fully to their cries in the first months of life were, at one year, more independent and intrepid than babies whose parents had ignored their cries. In preschool, the pattern continued—the children whose parents had responded most sensitively to their emotional needs as infants were the most self-reliant. Warm, sensitive parental care, [the study] contended, created a ‘secure base’ from which a child could explore the world.”5

Instead of raising children who turn out okay despite their childhood, let’s raise children who turn out extraordinary because of their childhood.” —L. R. KNOST

You can watch them, study them, learn their quirks and eccentricities. You can discover what makes them tick, what makes them frustrated, and what lights them up. And you can love them and believe in them like no one else ever could. Because you know them best.

The “start them early” mentality has replaced the mind-set that “late is okay” on social development, relational connections, and stress-reducing environments for children to fully develop. Not just for their brains, but their whole beings—body, mind, and soul.

the time we spend together as a family will root them deeply in values that matter and dreams that inspire.

I want to take a moment and tell you the meaning of your name. It means Brave One. (Just do me a favor and don’t look it up.) The next time you look in the mirror, remember these words: Brave One. And when you hit a wall with homeschooling a month or a year from now and wonder if you can go on, you’re going to hear a whisper. Brave One. You might try to ignore it, even laugh it off, but trust me, these words will haunt you. From this day forward, your name means Brave One. Courage, dear heart. You are brave. And don’t ever forget it.

Wild + Free family camps at Trail West Lodge in Buena Vista, Colorado,

Make story stones with prompts and symbols for telling great stories. Build boats and float them down the gutter

Learning is life, and life is learning.

It is years of soul work in the trenches of daily trial and error. But we're not building a house in two weeks. We're laying the foundation for a fortress that will withstand the harshest winds and the fiercest storms. We are building an estate of love that will serve as a safe haven for years to come.

We don’t homeschool in order to replicate the classroom at home. We homeschool in order to make the world our classroom, to do more than what the classroom can provide, to go beyond what the conventional institutions of education can offer us.

Oh childhood, where did you go? We sped up the process, thinking that’s how you’d grow. Gave up fort building and climbing trees. To avoid muddy hands and skinned-up knees. Enrolled you in things you were expected to do. Not stopping to realize it was for us more than you. Remind me—giving up daydreams was better for who? When did we quit dreaming, to notice or care? Stop looking at stars or remembering they’re there? We put you on buses and shipped you away. To preschools and programs and preceptors for pay. Who said the experts know better than us, anyway? You were made for summers that go on forever. Getting lost in good books in inclement weather. Making up stories and writing new songs.

Until long past your bedtime and the porch light comes on. No need to rush childhood; it goes by too fast. What you need is the time to make it all last. You belong out in nature, staring up at the sky. Blowing dandelion puffs and watching them fly. Turning clouds into shapes that you want them to be. Fending off dragons if that’s what you see. If only there were a way to be wild + free. We read the great books but ignore their wisdom. Go our own way instead of trusting what’s in them. Childhood is a treasure, a gift to behold. I’m sorry to say you’ve been traded and sold. Oh childhood, where did you go? Oh childhood, say it ain’t so. We’ll bring you back home if it’s the last thing we do. We’ll reclaim the wonder; that’s my promise to you.

The beauty of homeschooling is that it gives our children something no other school can offer. It gives them time. Time to explore, play, experiment, think their own thoughts, and pursue their own passions. It gives them more time to go more deeply into subjects, to study topics for longer times, and to be bored by inactivity, which leads to creative ideas.

Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Einstein, wrote, “Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature’s phenomena—magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams—which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. ‘People like you and me never grow old,’ he wrote a friend later in life. ‘We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.’”7 May we keep childhood forever alive in our kids.

The subjects of a child’s curiosity are not “electives” or “extracurricular activities” but the guiding foundation of their education.

his book of essays called The Defendant, G. K. Chesterton observed, “The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them, all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads—three times too big for the body—we ought always to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation.

Let’s release our children back into the wild where they belong. Giving them time to be kids does not detract from their potential, not at all. It gives them roots with which to drink from the deep springs of knowledge. Not the kind of knowledge that shows up on achievement tests but the sort that shapes their futures and enables them to make an indelible mark on the world.

Seize the opportunities when their imaginations are wandering, and give them the freedom to chase them. The books and projects are patient. The question is, are you? The world is your classroom. Your curiosity is the course. Get a degree in the life lessons that intrigue you, and print out your own diploma acknowledging the work that you’ve done. Wonder is waiting. Afterword WHEN I DECIDED TO HOMESCHOOL, THE FIRST BOOK I read to my children was The Call of the Wild by Jack London.

We Believe WE BELIEVE that childhood is a time to foster wonder, creativity, and discovery through play and exploration. WE BELIEVE that children learn because they want to, not because they’re forced to. And WE BELIEVE in letting them learn at their own pace. WE BELIEVE in giving children an abundance of opportunities, time, and access to beauty—like art, music, literature, nature, and their own imaginations. WE BELIEVE this path isn’t just for childhood but for a lifetime of pursuing their own interests, responding to life and not bells, and building a life based on purpose, not perfection. We are the misfits, the renegades, the square pegs in round holes. But we are not alone. We have each other. And we are in this TOGETHER.

Further Reading For the Children’s Sake: Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life by Julie Bogart The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids by Sarah Mackenzie Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child’s Education by Susan Wise Bauer A Gracious Space: Daily Reflections to Sustain Your Homeschooling Commitment by Julie Bogart Teaching from Rest: A Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakable Peace by Sarah Mackenzie Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life by Peter Gray Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature by Scott D. Sampson Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World by Ben Hewitt Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners by Lori Pickert Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It by Denise Gaskins The Art of Self-Directed Learning: 23 Tips for Giving Yourself an Unconventional Education by Blake Boles Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Meyers and Peter B. Myers

The trouble with our modern version of childhood is that it strongly resembles the lifestyle of adults and comes at the expense of play.

The same study reported that countries such as Sweden and Finland have “better academic achievement and child well-being, despite children not starting school until age 7.

As homeschooling mothers, this is our opportunity, our mandate, to make work meaningful. Learning is a natural desire within every child.

Meaningless work stops when the lesson is over or the school day is done. But meaningful work is the starting point for curiosity and discovery.

As you become a student of your child, you will see their unique gifts and passions bloom.

The practice of handiwork isn’t about any one particular skill but is meant to instill a curious confidence in learning new things.

POSITIVE WAYS TO TALK TO KIDS ABOUT THE WEATHER By Josée Bergeron9 If it’s COLD try saying . . . Come and look out the front door! Can you see your breath? That means we need to wear our warm clothing today. If it’s WINDY try saying . . . Can you see the trees swaying in the wind? Today would be a great day to fly a kite. If it’s SNOWING try saying . . . Wow! Look at all those beautiful snowflakes. Let’s go outside and see if we can catch some on our tongues. If it’s RAINING try saying . . . Rain is wonderful for plants and animals. It’s a perfect day to jump in some puddles. If it’s CLOUDY try saying . . . The clouds are hiding the sun. Today would be a great day to look for shapes in the clouds.

When we focus on instilling a love of learning over a list of requirements, we can almost guarantee that our children's education won't end when they leave our homes.

HOME-BASED EDUCATION ISN’T ABOUT “DOING school at home.” It’s about freeing our children to learn in their own way, at their own pace, within the most natural conditions.

I’m just going to say it. Childhood has been lost. To video games, to sports leagues, to after-school programs, to day care, to mobile devices, to peer pressure, to Netflix, to “gifted” classes, to extracurricular activities, to homework, to being carted between split homes every other weekend, and to busy schedules, just like their parents.

But remember this: you cannot ruin your children any more than you can perfect them.

During busy seasons, mixed-up days, or downright hard times, focus on the activities that breed connection over getting the work done. One of the main reasons we homeschool is to foster relationships with our children, so when we prioritize the relationship over the to-do list, we are succeeding. Those seemingly small but meaningful moments will go much further in your children’s hearts and minds than simply staying consistent in lessons.

The magic of this life isn’t found in the hustle and bustle of constant activity but in the intentional, ordinary decisions of our days.

It’s a constant beckoning to rise up to our level. But children feel cherished only at their own level.

The magic of this life isn't found in the hustle and bustle of constant activity but in the intentional, ordinary decisions of our days.

We sacrifice their childhood on the altar of preparing them for adulthood. But what if childhood was the preparation? What if having a whole childhood was the key to a healthy adulthood?

We create a safe family culture, first of all, by letting our children express their range of emotions without consequence. To crack down on frustration or sadness or even anger creates a policy that “true emotions will not be tolerated here,” no matter what they are.

If anything can be said of our homes, may it be that they are safe places for our children. Places where they can be encouraged in their gifts and comforted in their struggles. Places where they can share their fears and express their sorrows. Places where they can be heard and known and taken seriously. We create a safe haven for our family because children thrive when they feel safe, but also because this is love.

Babies whose parents responded readily and fully to their cries in the first months of life were, at one year, more independent and intrepid than babies whose parents had ignored their cries. In preschool, the pattern continued—the children whose parents had responded most sensitively to their emotional needs as infants were the most self-reliant. Warm, sensitive parental care, [the study] contended, created a ‘secure base’ from which a child could explore the world.”5

How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature by Scott D. Sampson Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World by Ben Hewitt Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners by Lori Pickert Let’s Play Math: How Families Can Learn Math Together—and Enjoy It by Denise Gaskins The Art of Self-Directed Learning: 23 Tips for Giving Yourself an Unconventional Education by Blake Boles Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Meyers and Peter B. Myers

The picture of education is not standing at the top of the mountain calling our children to climb up to us, but rather grabbing a pickax and climbing along with them.

You get questions at every stage. Mothers can’t help themselves. Some want to judge, but I’ve come to see that mostly they just want to know they’re not alone, that their baby is normal.

A teaching degree is to homeschooling as a culinary degree is to grandma’s cooking. It just can’t touch the care and personal standard that only she can stir in.

The unschooling approach is guided by the belief that learning happens all the time and that it cannot and should not be forced. Likewise,

Another principle of unschooling is that learning must be meaningful.

What a gift to be able to put down the books and say, “Let’s try again later.” A pot of tea and honey, some warm scones, and a good read-aloud just might do the trick. Or a hike in nature. Or an art project on the back porch. But certainly not a school bell.