At DIYHomeschooler we provide encouragement and resources to those homeschool handy-moms paving their own way — solutions to help you “do-it-yourself” when it comes to tutoring your children. Our readers include those who tutor, teach, and/or mentor children all over the world.
Table of Contents
- Our History
- Beliefs
- Purpose
- How to Use This Site
- What You Will Find Here
- Latest Books
- Our Encouragement
- Social Media
- Contact us
Our History
We started DIYHomeschooler.com in January 2011, as an outgrowth of our original site, HomeHearts, which went online in 2001!
Our own children were educated at home from the beginning to the end — end of our homeschool career in any case. We believe that learning is a lifelong endeavor! Our now adult children continue to be lifelong learners.
Beliefs
We believe that each child has been gifted by his or her Creator with a purpose and plan.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
A do-it-yourself education means we listen and watch for those gifts. We give our students the time and space to learn things on their own — to own them.
A learning lifestyle means providing a unique education for your children — bending education to fit your child. But when you’re in the trenches it can be hard to find time to pull together the resources you need. We have been there, done that! Oftentimes “flying by the seat of our pants” when we left a standard published curriculum, and yet always being dissatisfied following the book instead of the child!
Purpose
When you’re in the middle of things, there simply isn’t enough time to pull together all of those nifty learning ideas that beg for an implementation — or at least not to the extent that you wish you could. By the time you have time, the need has evaporated — after all, these guys are learning for themselves.
Then there are those things you learn along the way — what is important and what is really not so important, where you wish you would have invested more time and where you could have redeemed time, strategies that worked and those that you wish you had never come across in the first place.
At this point in our lives, we have the time and love sharing ideas — old, new, implemented, original, how we did it, what we used, our reading lists, things that worked, and those that simply got left on the wish list. And we want to pass along those quality resources to other educators and tutors blazing their own trails.
How to Use This Site
What qualifies as a “quality resource” will vary from family to family. It is our intention to stick with those resources that might be classified as “reputable” when listed as footnoted sources.
Obviously, we are not advocating all content from any particular site that we may link to. You may wish to install an ad blocker before turning your children loose on any web site.
In addition, the internet changes very quickly. When we first started, the web was a very different place. And there was no social media. While we do our best to stay on top of anything we link to, we are not responsible for the content of sites other than our own. Please read our Terms of Use.
We will link to archived material if we think it sill reflects “the best.” We do try to note when a resource has been archived.
What You Will Find Here
To that end, here is what you’ll find at DIYHomeschooler:
The Library
We started reading to our oldest when she was days old. Reading is the basis of the content of our learning. Our list is endless. Your reading list will probably look very different. That’s fine. Take what you need and leave the rest. Oh, and we love to include go-along activities!
Free Unit Studies
These are units we have written and pulled together. Units make it easy to learn together as a family, dig in deep, and spur individual interests. We also offer book studies where we take a book, divide it out into lessons, and provide all of the go-along material to make a study as cursory or in-depth as you need.
Activities
Sometimes you need a new way to present a concept or encourage an interest or simply keep little hands busy.
How-To
Practical ideas for teaching concepts, covering the subjects, using the tools, and practicing the art of homeschooling!
The Finds
Sites, printables, notebooking helps, free units, and all types of great finds from around the web.
If you are just getting started check out our Get Started page for more on natural learning methods, ways to simplify, and tutor helps:
If you are having a difficult time finding what you are looking for try our Find It Index. We hope to refine the index as time allows.
Latest Books
Our most recent endeavor is beginning a series of books that can come alongside those who decide to educate at home. The second title has been published and covers writing:
Learn to Write, Write!: A DIY Writer’s Companion
Ready to get started writing? Learn to Write: Write! is your guide to discovering and practicing the art of writing. Cover the basics, such as finding something to write and overcoming fears, to more advanced topics like revising your work and cultivating your voice and style. The book gets out of the way as great writers and their writing encourage you to apply their ideas to your own writing. Put pencil to paper and stretch your abilities as you learn by doing. Learn more.
Our Encouragement
Finally, the greatest thing to remember when it comes to educating at home is that success will not be measured by how much our children know, but by who they are. As was so beautifully pointed out recently, none of us really “do-it-ourselves.” All is grace.
We hope you’ll find DIYHomeschooler a great resource for helping you educate children!
Social Media
Other than a mostly inactive Twitter account with our branding (now deleted), we have never been on social media. You can still follow us by signing up to receive updates:
Contact us
Have an idea you’d like to pass along? Have a site you’d like to recommend? Have a suggestion on how we can better serve you? Have you found a broken link? Just want to send us a comment? Your feedback keeps us going! Contact us!