UK Christian Home Education Bloggers-2015 list

My post about UK Christian Home Education Bloggers is the most popular post on the blog but it is time for an overhaul.

This is a list of UK based Christian home education blogs. 

My criteria for inclusion are

• home educating family
• evangelical Christian although inclusion does not imply that we are agreed about doctrine
• posting relatively frequently
• some content about education 
• I've come across the blog-obviously! Please let me know about other relevant blogs and I will add them.

The blogs are in alphabetical order. Do visit them and be inspired!

Angelicscalliwags is written by Claire about her children's history based home education but there is so much more: a pond study, science, Before Five in a Row.

 An Island Family by Grace is a blog which is relatively new to me. Gwen's posts tend to be full of links to resources and frugal ideas.

As He leads is joy is where Beth writes about home educating. She educates her child with Down syndrome and writes about this as well as her trips around England. Beth hails from the US and it is always fascinating to see ourselves as others see us.

Another blog by a Beth is the eponymous Beth Baker's blog. This is subtitled Homemade. Homegrown. HomeEd. Beth covers these three areas in her writing. I love her phrase Like Joseph's coat, home education is many coloured.

Boyschooling, not surprisingly, has an emphasis on teaching boys although this isn't exclusive. This blog has helpful book recommendations and ideas for home education outings. 

Ellie at Create with your hands writes about home education and play based activities.

Delivering Grace, well that is me! And this is about why we home educate.

Helen writes at For His Glory. She features unit studies done by her daughters as well as some resource recommendations.

Gracieschool posts about teaching her young children. I especially like the posts about early writing and art.

Home Education Novice is written by Kondwani, a pen name meaning "for ever rejoicing" about her journey educating her young children. She has thoughtful articles about learning from children and motivations. 

Jenny at Home schooling for a Dozen or more posts about educating her 10 children and often features book reviews which are always refreshing.

Homeschool on the Croft is written by Anne and has the most beautiful pictures of the scenery around her island home. 

Organic Education features Alice's family's home education but is also useful for links to topical and political articles about home education.

Our cup of tea is from Debbie who is an American living in the UK. This is a tremendous resource for geography and a blog I visit when putting together a country unit study.

Sarah at Pyjama School writes about Montessori based home education for her two young children. She has tutorials for making DIY Montessori equipment: a particularly helpful frugal resource for home educators.

The Frog-Academy is about a large family in the North of England. The art ideas are worth exploring and I enjoy reading about another family with teenagers.

Caroline at the Joyful Keeper writes both about the Christian life and about home educating her children. 

Through the Lattice is a blog from an older home educating family. I love the pictures although I dare not show the pony pictures to Younger Daughter. She already has schemes for keeping a pony in the back garden!

Shirley posts at Under an English Sky. She has the most organised and attractive looking planner that I have seen and loves to post about her garden.

Young Hosannas is a blog by Kirsty who home educates her five young children. She has practical ideas for learning with little ones and the learning is naturally and clearly rooted in God's Word.

Please do let me know about other UK Christian home educator blogs. 

You may also enjoy my page about UK home education resources.

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Growing your blog while managing your home-a review

I was delighted to see this e-book advertised on Jacinda Vandenberg's site, Growing Home. Growing your blog while managing your home: The Ultimate Guide for Christian Mommy Bloggers was just what I was looking to read. After all, there is only one of me and a husband, five children, an older relative, home education, church and keeping house that take precedence over blogging but blogging helps keeps me sane, gives me ideas and helps to focus my other tasks. It is the equivalent of my Continuing Professional Development in my previous career. The issue is how to make time and manage that time effectively.

Jacinda has a large and active blog so is an ideal person to write about this subject. Her book has four parts

1. Creating a vision and maintaining a schedule
2. Content and design
3. Growth and monetisation
4. Logistics and legalities

The book is short but packed with information. I'm planning to go back through the book and implement one idea per day. There are so many helpful tips from having a Christian Mummy blogger as a mentor, scheduling status updates, most efficient ways to write and so on. 

Jacinda has thoughts on simplifying home life and a copy of her schedule. My only niggle is that her children are all very young so do helpful things like nap and are all in bed by an early hour. That does create more time but then, I guess, are much more dependent when they are awake. Another person's load can always look easier from the other side of the fence!

I highly recommend this book to all Christian Mummy bloggers. It retails at $7.99 (about £4.82).  I was impressed enough that having bought this book, I decided to become an affiliate so should you buy via the link below or on my sidebar, I will make a small amount from each sale. 

If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+, Facebook, Pinterest or e-mail.

Applying for review opportunity

I wrote recently about the opportunity to apply for the Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2014. The application form is now up! I've been a member of the Crew for a year now and it has allowed us to try new curricular materials including on-line programmes, books for me and the children, a physical maths programme, lapbooks, unit studies, historical fiction, a cook book and more. Other Crew members have reviewed different items. Reading their reviews has been helpful and we are now using a writing curriculum which I learnt about from other Crew members' reviews.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew will be taking applications for the 2014 Review year from October 24 - November 8!

Are you a homeschool blogger?
Do you enjoy writing reviews?

Then you might be perfect for the Crew! 

Some requirements for being a part of the Crew include the following: 

• First of all you must be a homeschool mum or dad. You don’t have to home educate all of your children, but you must home educate at least one. 

• You must be willing to use the review products for about six weeks in your home, before writing your review. Review periods have deadlines and requirements for the reviews. You must be willing to follow these requirements. No, that doesn’t mean you must write a positive review. But it does mean that there are certain elements that are required. And the deadlines are firm. If you are often late for deadlines, the Crew is probably not for you. 

• You must have a blog on which to publish your reviews. Your blog needs to be active with a following. By active blog, I mean that you should be blogging regularly, at least weekly, about your family and homeschool (in addition to your reviews). Your blog should have followers — RSS feed or email subscribers, as well as in social media. The Crew does not accept brand new bloggers who just set up their blogs for the purposes of applying to the team. 

• Are you using social media to promote your blog? Activity on at least one social media platform is a requirement to serve on the Crew. Which one is up to you — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google Plus are the options. You will need to be willing to promote your reviews there and post a widget or plug-in publicly on your blog, indicating how many followers you have in social media. 

• You must be willing to check into the Crew's Review Management forum. This is where information is disseminated to the team. The leadership does everything possible to make things easy for us, outside of writing the actual review, but you need to be willing to participate by checking in almost daily. 

• Sample reviews are helpful. If you’ve never written a review on your blog, go ahead and write one for curriculum you are currently using in your homeschool. This will help the leaders see how you approach writing reviews. 

Why should you want to be a part? 
The Crew has over 250 review bloggers and has been running for over five years.
It takes the job of reviewing seriously but the leadership team are supportive and provide guidance on writing reviews in a professional way as well as clear deadlines and reminders about this. There is a mentoring programme for new members provided by established members of the Crew,a social media networking group, many blog and social media tutorials, and lots of incredible opportunities for our team, including blog carnivals, the opportunity to guest post on the Crew blog, and the blessing of some incredible friendships.


How can you apply? 
After making sure you meet all of the requirements, if you believe you would to an asset to the Schoolhouse Review Crew and wish to join us, please click over to the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to apply.

Come be a part of The Old Schoolhouse family!

The Crew isn't just for bloggers in the US. It would be good if other UK home education bloggers applied! 

Christmas thoughts

This week was when I wanted to catch up but it hasn't worked quite like that. Plenty to do and then, being a carer, unexpected illness can and does intervene. I've spent my first Sunday morning in a supermarket, collecting a prescription, and have made acquaintance again with the time waiting to get a simple answer about equipment from Social Services. The thought of filling in a multi-page carers' questionnaire made my heart sink and stuff it back in the envelope.

Anyway, it has been good to have other food for thought.

One of my favourite bloggers produced a lovely piece about their simple family giving, Se7en +1 stockings to fill. There are links at the end of the post to posts about the handmade gifts that her children make for one another. So good to keep Christmas in perspective.

Another piece for perspective comes from The Wanderer;  looking at Christ or Christmas whether our first aim should be to celebrate Christmas or the Lord's Day. It will be good to have the solid joys of Reformed worship after some of the froth of the season or is my name Scrooge?

Not about Christmas but refreshing and good for mulling over is this post from HSBA- 30 truths about Home Schooling. Lots of sense and nuggets of wisdom:

 No one ever said homeschooling was easy.


You will doubt yourself. That shows that you’re human, not a failure.


It doesn't say that home education is bad for the housework but it is! Probably because training and teaching the children is so much more interesting than housework perhaps a cleaning slot after English, next term.

Home school Blog Awards 2011

Do pop over to the HSBA page where it is now possible to vote for this year's nominees.

There are so many blogs to look through, in twenty different categories and you can vote once in each group.

I'm looking forward to exploring some different blogs and picking up ideas.

I'm nominted in the Favorite homeschool Mom Blog category. Of course, I would like votes but even if you don't vote for me, do pop over and explore the blog-richness!