2026 Little Easy Bean Network – Plant A Garden, Water Your Soul, Join Our Family

[heirloomgal]

Yes, I have noticed that. My kids have figured out my "trigger subjects" , the things to ask probing questions about to get me talking. They think it's great fun to get me distracted ranting about chicken genetics or nutrition facts everyone should know, I once realized I had just been "teaching" about high level physics for 2 hours because they just kept asking good questions!

And I think it's a pretty universal experience for homeschooling moms who themselves went through institutional education to get to a point where your kids are so lit up with natural curiosity & passion that they wind up teaching you.

 

[Heliena]

It's been busy busy busy waking up the homestead, I just broke ground on our first beds yesterday. There are still places in the yard with snow, but we are well on our way to last frost. It feels so weird that I still have a whole 3/4 weeks before I can plant beans. Thankfully my quail projects and garden expansion have kept me plenty busy. I am going to clean up and put down some green manure in the trellis beds this week, and give the soil plenty of time to "bulk up" before planting. Our littlest is well on his way to being bi-pedal, and a friend of mine came over to make a willow-woven bean tent replacement with his big sister recently! She has been weaving our red elderberry trimmings into it, and I might have a basket weaver on my hands. <3

 

[Heliena]

My daughter is in fifth grade with special needs. This year has mostly been an exercise in unlearning behaviors she picked up in public school and determining where she's at academically. She's very much a hands-on learner and I've been creating curriculum as we go. Math and reading are her two weakneesses and we just started All About Reading and Math With Confidence.

My goal is to provide her with a stable learning environment that welcomes exploration versus constantly putting worksheets in front of her.

It's uplifting to see how many moms are turning to homeschooling. I've been amazed at how much my kids flourished once I got them out of the system; they did well inside of it by their metrics, mostly A's and some B's, but those metrics are relatively inconsequential in the school of life. The approach that children are empty buckets that need to be filled with facts, just so many problems with that. I really experienced it to be true that learning is about lighting a fire, that will burn on its own, as oppose to an emptiness to be filled.

And I think it's a pretty universal experience for homeschooling moms who themselves went through institutional education to get to a point where your kids are so lit up with natural curiosity & passion that they wind up teaching you.

This is almost exactly my experience. I was a single mom for a time and remember thinking there was no way I could do it, having no breaks from my daughter. But turns out, when I pulled her out and started raising her myself without the stress of pre-school (that's as far as we went) I was actually quite fond of her company. Imagine that. I recon I like most people better when they aren't dysregulated and stressed. Once I embraced hands-on and started following her lead, we were golden. We are honestly more un-schooling than anything. I fell through the cracks as a kid, adhd and ocd went undiagnosed and home life was less than wonderful. I ended up dropping out of high school at 15 to train horses and later tested into college with scholarships for those scores, and I was a successful and happy university student. So that told me everything I needed to know.