Our Story Part 3- “Through the Years”

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As I said in Part 2 of this series, homeschooling really took off and began to grow. We had a meeting in our basement helping others get started, but all over the country the same thing was happening. It wasn’t long before groups formed and homeschooling conventions, though really small at first started to spring up.

We had a lot of people asking us questions. We began to get some speaking engagements. People wanted to know why we focused on character building in training our kids and how we did it. “What about socialization?” was a big concern for many. We tried to answer questions, but soon forgot what we had told to who. Hence, our first book was The Socialization Trap.  We wrote it because of the growing concern in the country.

State homeschooling groups continued to emerge, and we started getting more requests for speaking. It wasn’t easy to travel with so many little ones still at home and more on the way, but we really felt God was calling us to encourage other parents. Hence, The Learning Parent was born- our ministry of parent encouragement.

We told others how we taught our kids, and as the years went by people asked if we could make materials available so they could glean from our experience and teach character to their kids as well. So we began producing character curriculum. Now, The Learning Parent, has produced a whole line of character curriculum and we call ourselves Character Concepts and provide curriculum from preschool through high school.

Anyway, I thought it might be kind of fun to give you a visual picture of how things developed through the years through a timeline.

I’m sure I’ll leave out some important details, but I hope you enjoy taking a peak at the Boyer family – then and now.

So here we go…..

Continue reading Our Story Part 3- “Through the Years”

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Our Story- Part 2 “Truant Officers, Fear, and a Summons to Court”

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I’ve been sharing with you how we began to homeschool. That was 37 years ago!

But, I stopped in the middle of the story, so let me continue…

You see, back in the early ’80s, “Homeschooling” was a foreign concept. We didn’t personally know anyone who had done it. There was no internet, so no way to “ask Facebook” if anyone else out there was homeschooling. It was so very different than it is now.

We had loved our first year homeschooling our 2 oldest boys. What began as a desire to teach my kids for just 1 year, quickly turned into a burning desire, that we believe God gave us, to continue. But, the following year, we were blindsided with an experience I would never want to repeat

Continue reading Our Story- Part 2 “Truant Officers, Fear, and a Summons to Court”

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Our Story- Part 1 “A Beginning in Home Education”

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Many of you who follow this blog, know us- The Boyers.  Maybe you’ve heard us speak at homeschooling conventions in your state (perhaps we’ve met you there!) or maybe you have used some of our Homeschooling Character Curriculum or listened to an Uncle Rick audiobook. Or maybe you just know us as ‘that family with 14 kids who were all homeschooled.’

But, I suspect many of you don’t know the story of how we got started in home education, which eventually led to us having a chance to know many of you!

Nowadays, the fact that we chose to homeschool our kids doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary. Happily, lots of people do it.

But, in the early years- back in the 80’s- it definitely wasn’t viewed as ordinary!  So, why did we do it?  Just what got us started on this crazy 37 year journey of homeschooling?

Well, here’s our story…

Back in 1979, we were attending a small church that was just starting a wonderful Christian school. We had 4 kids at the time. Our two oldest were 5 years and 3 years old. Preschool was just starting up and we had a sweet teacher who focused on teaching character as well as academics to the kids. We placed Rickey and Timmy in preschool that year and were delighted with how they were being taught.

By the second half of the year however, God pricked my heart, impressing upon me that little Nathan and Josh, who were 2 years and 5 months old had to spend a large part of their day strapped into their car seats to make the journey to drop the boys off in the morning and then pick them up around noon. We lived a half-hour from church, so basically we were home for only an hour before we had to load up and pick up their big brothers. We were travelling 2 hours a day just to transport them to and fro.

Continue reading Our Story- Part 1 “A Beginning in Home Education”

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