About Us
WELCOME TO “LOVE TO HOMESCHOOL!”
Our homeschooling adventure began about nine years ago when we were looking at schooling options for our oldest son. My son learned how to read when he was barely four years old, and it was clear when we visited a local school that his skills had advanced beyond the curriculum that would be covered in a kindergarten classroom. My son was a perfectionist and had very strong emotions about mistakes, and I knew he wasn’t emotionally ready to spend all day away from home. After we left the school, I asked him if he would like to go there. He replied, “Maybe some day.” I could hear the reluctance in his voice. I had been doing a little research into homeschooling, but this experience helped me to seriously consider a future without conventional school. With my help, my son had learned to read and write, and we were happy reading books and learning together. I asked myself, “Can we just keep doing this?”
I knew that homeschoolers in our society are often stigmatized and portrayed as awkward, but the opportunity to custom design our educational plan and the appeal of spending so much time with my children was overwhelming. My husband and I decided that this seemed like the best option for our family. Nine years later, I can say that it was the best parenting decision we ever made. In that nine years, we continued to learn together with our son and then our daughter, who was only two years old when we started this adventure. My son is now a teenager, and our daughter is eleven. We also welcomed another son five years ago. This year we face the challenge of teaching a teenager and a kindergartener at the same time, while not forgetting the child in the middle!
WHY BEGIN A WEBSITE NOW?
I'm a very organized person, so when I decided to homeschool I started looking for a planner that would help me keep track of what we were learning. I looked at many planners, and I liked some aspects they included, but none of them provided what I really wanted. Given that I would be needing a new planner every year, I figured it was worth my time to make my own. It has been tweaked several times over the years until it really reflected what I needed: an easy way to record what we were learning in each subject, a simple page to fill out how many hours we were spending homeschooling, and a minimal number of extra pages to fill out that would sit blank or make me feel overwhelmed.
A couple of years after I began homeschooling, my sister-in-law and brother pulled their son out of conventional school and began homeschooling. A few years after that my sister began homeschooling her son. They both liked my planner and encouraged me to find a way to sell it online. I put it off for many years, partially because I was unsure about trying to set up a website, and partially because my original planner was filled full of clipart I found online. I did not want to sell a planner that included clipart designed by someone else without their permission. I thought, “How do I make clipart?”
Given that I had no expertise with graphic design, I put the idea aside.
My kids love to draw characters and trees and flowers and dragons and…well, just about everything! After many years of creating documents for homeschooling and playing around with different programs, I realized that I could take their drawings and turn them into clipart. The year before I took my planner online, my kids (with some help from their parents) drew images every month on notecards so I could turn them into clipart for my planner. More recently, we are learning how to draw on tablets using an art program. I have been reluctant to use a lot of technology in our homeschooling, but it is time for my older children to learn how to become more familiar with ways we can use technology to our benefit. My teenager created the cover for our kid planner for 2021-2022, and he did an AMAZING job! Over the next year, I expect that we will continue to swap out our notecard clipart for images we create using our art application. The colors are so vibrant!
My original planner had quotes for every week of the year. These quotes were often taken from literature or were words spoken by historical figures. I didn’t want to grapple with figuring out which quotes were in the public domain, so I removed all of my quotes and started inserting quotes from my children that I had collected through the years. My planner has become a shared family project, and now we’d like to share it with you!
DO I HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO OFFER?
This is a question I have been pondering for years. I never envisioned having a website because there is already so much information available online related to homeschooling. Given the rising interest in homeschooling, I have been thinking about this more.
Do I have anything to offer? After nine years of homeschooling, I hope that I have SOMETHING to offer besides a planner. If you are reading this and asking yourself what my website can offer you, then think about what brought you here in the first place. What are YOU looking for? Please email me and tell me what you hope to find as you look for information about homeschooling. Send me your questions and I will post them on the website and try to assist you in finding the information you seek.
I also plan to create a blog that shares some of our homeschooling journey, both past and present. Once I get these aspects of the website up and running, I am hoping to include a podcast, as well. I just need to talk my sister-in-law into doing the podcast with me!
In nine years of homeschooling, I’ve generated a lot of lesson plans and developed some other homeschooling materials. I am hoping to include more of these resources in my store over time. I will keep you posted!
WHO IS BEHIND THIS WEBSITE?
My name is Christina Ahrens and I’m a developmental psychologist turned homeschooling mom of three. After completing my doctoral degree in psychology, I was so fascinated by the development of my own children that I wanted to continue fostering that development full-time.
“C’mon, I need a quote for my planner.”
~ Mommy
“I’m not funny and I’m not profound!”
~ son, age 12