8/11/2019 Sparse Funds Spawn Creative Kids

1/2

Sparse Funds Spawn Creative Kids

By Jessica Hulcy

Before homeschooling, Wade and I were living from paycheck to paycheck. Forget

budgeting . . . we just went until the money ran out, and then we ate peanut buttersandwiches three meals a day! nce, at the store, we were down to our last dollarsand our "year"old son #ason wanteda pair of flip"flops, but we neededa bo$ of

%heerios. &nowing a paycheck was coming at the end of the week, I bought the flip"flops. 'ater, I noticed that #ason had taken a bite out of one of his flip"flops! %learly,

I should have bought the more nutritious %heerios.

Necessity . . . the Mother of Invention

KONOSthe first curriculum written for homeschoolers, was written with a low

budget in mind, because we were trying to add homeschooling to the low budget

lives we were already living.(ioneer homeschoolers who attempted to buy te$tbooksand teacher)s te$ts from publishers were told they had to be a bona fide school in

order to make those purchases. *mall wonder pioneer homeschoolers used whatthey had or could find to create their own curriculum.

ur oldest, #ason, was a little alley scavenger. +iding his bike up and down our alley

netted a lawn mower, an old pump organ, and a washing machine that #asondragged back to our garage, where he and his brothers took everything apart.

*ometimes Wade supervised their hands"on lessons in the garage, and books thate$plained how something worked were often checked out of the library.

When we moved to the country, this organic way of teaching, i.e., using what you

had on hand, had been deeply ingrained in our children, and the new settingprovided many wonderful new e$periences. tree house was built out of scrap wood

in a -"year"old pecan tree, a raft that took weeks to build and drag to the creekbefore it promptly sank, and a destructive herd of wild boars all provided new

additions to our curriculum.

/0hat is not curriculum!1 you say, to which I answer with the definition of the wordcurriculum, which is /a course of study.1 When we built our house in the country, my

husband was the general contractor, and our four boys were his apprentices. For ayear we did no formal school e$cept for math and reading library books, plus work

on the house. fter construction of the house had been completed, I tested

everyone, from the 2"year"old to the -3"year"old, to see how much damage hadbeen done during the year. ll four boys had advanced two to four years in every

subject! It seemed what I had been telling homeschoolers in workshops around the

country was true4 hands"on e$periences actually grow the si5e of a child)s brain by

creating more and new neuron pathways!

0his type of teaching also instills incredible confidence. I remember finding my

youngest changing the hydraulic fluid on the tractor)s front"end loader. When I askedif he knew what he was doing, he answered4 /I know how hydraulics work. *hould I

know anything else61 I went back in the house with the reali5ation that 7od is anincredible curriculum provider.

!rustin" #od

8/11/2019 Sparse Funds Spawn Creative Kids

2/2