I recall reading and being deeply touched by Helen Hegener’s Conversation with Michelle Wilbert: Living life “Close to the Root” in the September-October 2004 of HEM. Michelle Wilbert is a midwife, homeschooler and author of Close to the Root: A Handbook of Simple, Sustainable and Earthy Alternatives for Family and Community Life.

As I said earlier, I think that I started out thinking about the potential for cultural transformation that I found in these ideas. Early thinking about homeschooling and midwifery were located within a value system that was home and community centered, democratically oriented, staunchly independent of any ideas of government or public involvement or oversight and really wedded to concerns about changing society for the better and that was true whether people were Christian homeschoolers, hippies or eclectics. They might have had different societal goals in mind, but changing the world was definitely part of the package.

In addition to Conversation with Michelle Wilbert: Living life “Close to the Root” you can read more about and from Michelle Wilbert here:

• Kneelingwoman ~ Thinking, Living and Writing “Out of the Box
• Close to the Root Family and Community Resources

In An Interview with Cafi Cohen by Marsha Ransom we were given a glimpse into the Cohen household. Cafi wrote:

Jeff adds that he would never trade his homeschooling years for high school. He has commented more than once that he never would have been admitted to the Air Force Academy if he had not homeschooled. He feels homeschooling allowed him time to get a private pilot’s license, to act as commander of his Civil Air Patrol squadron and edit their newsletter, to practice piano, to teach piano, to participate on a world-class diving team, and much more. Eventually, it was all those activities (and close to 30 units of college classes taken concurrently with high school homeschooling) that he feels got him admitted.

My daughter Tamara now says, “I wouldn’t change anything about my homeschooling. Despite our easy-going approach, I have attended four different colleges in three different states and encountered nothing academic that I could not handle.” She adds that she loved the flexibility of homeschooling, graduating “early” and earning money to travel on a student-exchange program to Australia when she was 16.

Here are a few more interviews for your enjoyment:

• Interview with Deborah Stevenson - Judy Aron
• Interview with Linda Dobson - Helen Hegener
• Interview with Mary Griffith - Helen Hegener
• Interview with Patrick Farenga - Helen Hegener
• An Interview Leila Giles and Celeste Land – Mary Nix
• An Interview with John Munson – Mary Nix

There are many more interviews and articles from past issues that offer glimpses into homeschool lives, and you can access them via the HEM Archives. To avoid missing any future issues and interviews, you can subscribe to HEM here.

Below you will find a brief synopsis of Kathy’s past columns(click on the title for those included online) and some links to other resources Kathy has to offer online.

Hands-On Learning Columns by Kathy Ceceri

Magnifying Lenses (January-February/09)
Kathy explores magnifying lenses of all kinds explaining ways you can bend light for a clearer look at the smaller things in life.

Economics and Recycled Crafts (November-December 2008)
Kathy Ceceri shares ideas about how your kids can learn how to make good choices … AND how to get creative when money is tight.

Two-Jar Ant Farm (September-October 2008)
An ant farm is a great way to learn about the lives of insects and ants are real low maintenance pets!

Mancala Board Game (July-August 2008)
There are many ways to play a game of mancala. When you make your own playing board, it gets even more fun.

Geography and Arctic Life (May-June 2008)
There’s much to learn about and from one of the world’s coldest places.

Chemical Crystal Garden (March-April 2008)
Utilizing common household chemicals, you can experiment with and grow your own crystal gardens.

Coil Baskets (January-February 2008)
The humble basket is probably among the earliest human inventions. There are many ways to make a basket, but coiling is a method found around the world.

Archeology (November-December 2007)
Kathy Ceceri suggests how to introduce and involve your kids in the world of Archeology.

Inventions Old and New (September-October 2007)
Kathy tells us how we can get a taste of inventing by making a model of Morse’s telegraph.

The Sport Of Boomerang Throwing (July-August 2007)
Kathy Ceceri explains why boomerangs fly, shares a story about Aborigine tradition, tells the record for keeping a boomerang in the air before catching it, and shows how to help your kids create their own beautiful and far-flying boomerangs – which will really return

Medieval Beasts (May-June 2007)
Kathy’s Hands-On-Learning project looks at the fantastic beasts of the Middle Ages.

Build A Robot Hand (March-April 2007)
Instructions on how to build a simple cardboard robot hand that uses strings as tendons.

Foreign Language: Mexican Yarn Craft (January-February 2007)
Kathy shows how to combine the study of a foreign language with creation of a local handicraft; in this case, studying Spanish while crafting the lovely Ojo de Dios, or “Eye of God.

Jug Band Music and Invented Instruments (November-December 2006)
Hands-On Learning editor Kathy Ceceri explains how to make and play jug band instruments

Flipbooks (September-October 2006)
Kathy introduces her readers to flip books as a great way for beginning animators to create instant movies.
This article originally appeared in the issue of Home Education Magazine.

Solar S’mores and Other Sun-Powered Crafts
Kathy Ceceri describes how to make a solar cooker from simple materials and use it to create tasty S’mores.
This article originally appeared in the July-August 2006 issue of Home Education Magazine.

Early American Paper Quilling (May-June 2006)
Kathy Ceceri shows how quillwork can be used to make greeting cards, earrings, mobiles and holiday ornaments.

Ice Age Animal Cave Paintings (March-April 2006)
Kathy Ceceri describes the wonders of Ice Age Animal Cave Paintings, and shares ideas and tips for helping your homeschooled kids create their own “prehistoric” masterpieces using everyday resources found in the home.

Make a Wooden Abacus (January-February 2006)
Kathy Ceceri explains how to build your own abacus, and offers tips for using your new math tool.

World History Crafts (November-December 2005)
Kathy Ceceri explains the history and traditions of the unique Tibetan Sand Mandala – and provides instructions for helping your child create a beautiful replica of this ancient art form.

Other Resources from Kathy Ceceri

Kathy Ceceri’s Crafts for Learning

Around the World Crafts by Kathy Ceceri offers 30 plus projects that includes step-by-step photographs. In addition to the crafts, Ms. Ceceri includes resources and facts about the people who originally made the craft an how they would have used it. At the site you can read a sample chapter or peruse the Table of Contents. There are also things to make, things to read, and links to explore.

Home Chemistry
Making science fun for my homeschooled kids

Kathy does make science fun for her kids and more in this chemistry blog. You will find many interesting science resources within her posts along with some great resources as well.

Home Biology

Kathy’s blog tag reads: For Homeschoolers-And Anyone- Who wants to learn about life science without a lab.

Here are a few more excellent Kathy Ceceri resources on the World Wide Web:

• The one-stop world of Webcams
• 10 Cartoon Classics to Share with Your Kids
• What Makes Kids Love Math: Community and Playfulness
  

Also available online:
Around the World Crafts: Great Activities for Kids who Like History, Math, Art, Science and More! by “Hands-On Learning” columnist Kathy Ceceri

I discovered, “Feed the Birds” from Rebecca Rupp’s Good Stuff column in the January – February 1997 Issue of Home Education Magazine and as always I found enough resources to create a unit study.

She writes:

It’s fine to feed the birds all year round, but a wonderful time to start is right now, in the heart of winter, when seeds are sparse and those birds who didn’t hightail it south in September really need a helping hand.

She then shares some books for potential bird feeders that I was able to find online or at my local library:

• Birdfeeders, Shelters, and Baths by Edward Baldwin
• Invite a Bird to Dinner: Simple Feeders You Can Make by Beverly Courtney Crook
• The Bird Book & Feeder by Neil Dawe
• Susan Bosnak Science Is… by Susan Bosnak

She also shared these great field guides:

• Peterson guides -A Field Guide to Western Birds and A Field Guide to Birds East of the Rockies by Roger Tory Peterson
• Audubon guides – The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Vol. I by John Bull and John Farrand, Jr. and Vol. II by Miklos D.F. Udvardy
• Everybody’s Everywhere Backyard Bird Book

She also suggests some Dover Publications Coloring Books. These include:

• State Birds and Flowers Coloring Book (Annika Bernhard)
• Fifty Favorite Birds Coloring Book (Lisa Bonforte)
• Tropical Birds Coloring Book (Lucia DeLeiris)
• Birds of Prey Coloring Book (John Green)
• Audubon’s Birds of America Coloring Book
• Audubon sticker book (Audubon Bird Stickers in Full Color)
• 50 full-color bird stickers in an eight-page booklet

She then shared these real life books about kids and their bird experiences all of which I was able to find at our local library.

• The Birdwatcher by Felice Holman’s Elisabeth
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
• Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat
• That Quail, Robert Margaret Stanger (a favorite at our house)

For legendary birds she recommended:

• The Long-Tailed Bear and Other Indian Legends by Natalia Belting
• How the Guinea Fowl Got Her Spots: A Swahili Tale of Friendship by Barbara Knudson
• The Hummingbird King: A Guatemalan Legend by Agentina Palacios
• How the Birds Changed Their Feathers: A South American Indian Folk Tale by Joanna Troughton
• The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks by Katherine Paterson
• Ka-ha-si and the Loon by Terry Cohlene

Continuing down the bird investigation trail, Rupp suggests posting a checklist on the fridge to record the birds that visit. Also in this article she shared Bethump’d With Words, How Math Works by Carol Vorderman, XIT(could not find this one), Catchpenny and Duo.

You can read the entire column here.

Here are some more of my favorite bird resources from around the web:

• Celebrate Urban Birds
• What Bird the Ultimate Bird Guide
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• The Life of Birds- Sir David Attenborough
• Wildbirds.com
• Journey North
• Funschool Bird Watcher
• Natural History Notebooks(Birds)

Not only is Cafi the author of several homeschool books, she was also a columnist for Home Education Magazine for a few years and many of her excellent articles can be accessed online.

One great sample of her Older Kids column was featured in the July-August 1997 issue of Home Education Magazine. In this column Cohen wrote about Less being More. Although the column is over ten years old, the information remains relevant today. She writes this about the vendors’ area of a homeschool conference she had attended:

Hundreds of exhibitors lined the aisles at the last homeschooling conference I attended. There were educational games; nifty self- instructional computer math programs; complete lab science kits; history and art and music videos; all the “basics” of K-12 education on CD-ROM; even some wonderful books.

It all beckoned, promising to make my life easier by selling me the tools for The Perfect Homeschool Program. With unlimited funds, I would have had no trouble spending thousands of dollars. Good thing, with both kids in college, we are no longer in the homeschool shopping mode.

She also writes:

With adulthood around the corner, those parents want to do the right thing, the right thing often defined by the statement: “I don’t want to do anything that will wreck his chances of…..” You fill in the blank: getting into college, finding employment, joining the military, living on his own, etc. It is easy to be scared into trading big bucks for the assurance that you are doing the right thing.

What I learned from homeschooling in the old days, when large conferences, indeed any conferences, were unheard-of and when finding resources was like pulling teeth, is that you really don’t need the glitzy stuff to succeed. In fact, avoiding glitz may be the key to more productive home education.

How is it that Less Is More? Could refusing to spend $500 to $1,000 on new instructional materials not only save you money but also result in a better homeschooling experience for your family? The short answer is “Yes.”

Cohen suggests looking to community models to find great resources for your children. Here are some of the models and resources she suggests. Please note that some of the resources might be gone, but I’ve updated some and added a few of my own.

Public Library

Reference librarians, Books (including any text) not on the shelves I can order inter-library loan and generally have within two weeks, tapes, instructional videos, (dvds) for everything from algebra to zoology, historical documentary films, Internet access, science project idea books, announcements about cultural events in town, reading groups for all ages, magazines

Other Homeschooling Families

Generally you will find these individuals through support groups. You can explore Home Education Magazine’s Support Group Listings to find a group near you.

Community Groups

It seems there are special interest groups for everything. Some my teenagers liked were church sports teams (basketball and volleyball and softball), skiing clubs, ballooning groups in Albuquerque, drama groups, special interest groups for environmental and other political causes.

Catalogs

And resource number four is catalogs from homeschooling suppliers. Some catalogs are full of information for beginners, most notably the catalog from The Elijah Company . It describes various homeschooling approaches and coordinates them to resources. It also has outstanding age-appropriate reading list recommendations.

Other catalogs I like for their reading list and alternative learning materials recommendations are Holt Associates (617 864-3100), The Drinking Gourd (800 TDG 5487), and Grace Llewellyn’s Genius Tribe (541-686-2315).

What to do with all the money you save from using the library, talking to experienced homeschooling parents, joining community groups, and reading catalogs? Here it is, the exception that proves the rule, Less Is More: buy a computer and join us online! The computer is the key to information access, and information can save you frustration, money, and time.

Here are a few more resources I’d like to add:

Community Groups

I did a google search with “my town + community groups” and found a few organizations, but I found many more by visiting my city’s chamber of commerce and again by visiting my local library. These days, the Internet allows us to find almost anything instantaneously, but I think when it comes to taking my kids to meet a group of people, I proceed with caution and appreciate a face to face meeting with the adults first.
In addition to support group listings, HEM offers some online community opportunities at HEM NEWS and Commentary and their Editorial Blog.

They also offer several discussion groups:

• HEM New Homeschoolers
• HEM Unschooling
• HEM Writers
• HEM Recipes
• HEM Networking

Catalogs

I love the catalogs that Cafi shared, but some of them are no longer available. John Holt’s site still exists , but the bookstore is now a part of Fun Books. By doing a simple, “curriculum +homeschool ” search you will find more resource companies now than were available when Cohen first wrote Less is More. Additionally, there are many sites where you can buy gently used resources as well.

Does this mean you should not use a curriculum, nor find as many resources that you can? Of course not, but what it does mean is that you must make sure that any resource you might find serves your child and that you or your child do not become a slave to a program that you paid a lot of money for, but might not be a good fit.

I picked this particular column for Closer Look because I believe the additional pressure to buy, buy, buy to make sure your child excels causes more stress to our homeschool community than it helps. Mark Hegener, HEM Publisher and homeschool Dad once said that all you need to homeschool is love and a library card. That continues to remain true as well and I hope you will read and take to heart Cafi Cohen’s sage advice in Less is More.

I thought I’d show you just what I mean by looking at one of the earliest Good Stuff columns that HEM shares online, All Aboard! The article was published in 1997, but I was still able to find many of the resources she listed today that I’m sharing below. I hope you see how you could easily do the same.

In this March-April 1997Good Stuff Column she wets our whistle by writing:

Almost everybody loves a train, from small-sized admirers of television’s Thomas the Tank Engine to teen-aged students of American history, who want to know what happened to the much-talked-about Golden Spike that completed the Transcontinental Railroad. (For those who have rosy visions of driving to Promontory Point and extracting it, forget it: it’s in the Smithsonian.) Our kids were first introduced to the appealing train through Watty Piper’s classic The Little Engine That Could (Platt & Munk, 1930), now available in any number of editions, but all starring the determined little pale-blue train who finally (“I think I can; I think I can…”) made it over the mountain with a load of toys. It’s supposed to instill the virtues of courage and persistence in the very small; parents can quote bits of it comfortingly to frustrated five-year-olds, who have thrown a failed project on the floor and are stomping upon it.

So beginning with the Transcontinental Railroad’s Golden Spike and the beloved Little Engine that could, she begins to share resource after resource and I always feel as if I’m in a candy store and don’t know which one to pick first. Let’s look at these she refers to in the first paragraph:

This is America, Charlie Brown,Volume 3: The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad. I found a copy of it at the Railroad Bookstore and was also able to reserve it at my local library, along with Watty Piper’s Little Engine that Could.

Next she reviews the following books, all of which I was able to find at my local library. I’ve also added a few resources that I discovered as well to illustrate what great jumping off points Becky provides:

• Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express (Margaret K. Wetterer; Carolrhoda, 1991
  1. Hero Book from Crayola
  2. Reading Rainbow

• The Boxcar Children (Gertrude Warner; Albert Whitman & Co., 1989)
  1. Boxcar Children Website
  2. About Gertrude Warner

• The Death of the Iron Horse (Paul Goble, Bradbury, 1987)
  1. Other books by Paul Goble

• The Transcontinental Railroad by Peter Anderson (Childrens Press, 1996)
  1. Other books by Peter Anderson
• Great Trains to Cut Out and Assemble, Bellerophon Books (I didn’t find this one at my library, but is still available for purchase here
• Jackdaw Publications, “James Watt and Steam Power” portfolio which is still available, but the price has gone up.
  1. Steam Engine History
  2. James Watt

Then she offers up some games. (Again, some of the prices have gone up, but the resources still look like interesting finds.)

• Uncle Happy’s Train Game - I couldn’t find this game for sale at Mayfair, Inc. any longer, but
  I did find several new railroad games that you can look at here.
• The Game of Railroads and Robber Barons (If anyone has a copy of this game, it was going for a mighty high price on Ebay. The link that I share is a free download, but I can’t vouch for the site that offers it.)
  

• Music for Little People offered a train whistle which they didn’t seem to have any longer, but I found one at Windy City Novelties, Inc. along with more whistles than I’ve ever seen.

In this column Becky goes on to review ElementO, Gumshoe Geography, PBS Home Video/The West, Dino Math Tracks, My Best Math Puzzles. This certainly seems as if it would be more than enough, but she shares more that you can explore at Home Education Magazine Content Archives here.

HEM columnist Rebecca has a Ph.D. in cell biology, has written for many magazines, and has published several books. She lives in Vermont with her husband and three sons.