Homeschooling Homesteaders: Teaching Self-Reliance Skills


Many of my happiest childhood hours were spent in my grandfather's organic garden.

Many of my happiest childhood hours were spent in my grandfather's organic garden, where roses mingled with lemons, limes, oranges, tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, corn, peaches and kumquats-- all in an urban sliver of land left over from freeway construction.

I’m planning to be at the Self-Reliance Expo in Dallas on Februrary 10-11, 2012, to speak on homeschooling and perhaps micro-business topics, so I’ve been thinking about self-reliance as it fits into the homeschool world.

One of the busiest booths in a homeschool conference is usually the booth with wheat grinders and other aids to feeding your family with fresh, wholesome, homemade goodies. Stop beside that booth for a few moments, and you’ll hear moms, dads, and teens, talking about gardening organically, baking, canning and dehydrating, and more.

Learning to become more self-reliant by developing these old-fashioned skills is one way many home-school families manage to live well on a single income. As a family becomes more self-reliant, it provides students with a living laboratory for learning that will provide them a head start on life. Although it takes work to reach a comfortable state of self-reliance, there is creativity, comfort, and peace in working with the rhythms of nature.

What are the skills of self reliance?

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Winter Poems by Stevenson, Emerson, and Hardy

Thrushes in winter.

Thrushes in winter.

Sometimes a poem evokes the mood of a season more than anything else could. Here are three of my favorites for winter. The first, “Picture-books in Winter” by Robert Louis Stevenson, paints a lyrical picture of the joys of reading in a cozy nursery as the outside world grows frosty. The second poem, “The Snow Storm” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, vividly shares the “tumultuous privacy” and “frolic architecture” of a snow storm. The final poem is “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy, which reveals the power in “the full-hearted evensong / Of joy illimited” from an aging thrush.

Each of these lovely pieces provides a different way of looking at winter and appreciating its beauty. One way to help your students absorb the equisite intricacy of poetic language is to have them copy their favorite poems into a notebook. This is also a good way to begin memorizing a poem for recitations. Enjoy!

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