Mining for Nuggets

Nuggets are incredibly valuable and can transform your homeschool.

How do you go about mining for nuggets, and where do you find the things that change your homeschool? I am reminded of Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the words of which I have changed slightly.

Maze “How do I find thee? Let me count the ways. I find thee in the depth and breadth and height the world can reach.”

That about sums up where you might find some serious, life-changing nuggets relating to homeschooling, but even further abroad to other areas of your life.

While there is no perfect homeschool curriculum, or at least not one that I have found, even the worst options can offer nuggets of information, insight or something to learn. In order to see and hear ideas that you might choose to add into your school year, you need to be open to hearing and seeing them, open to chatting with other homeschoolers or teachers or people in a particular field.

When I meet others who homeschool, I like to ask them what they use for different subjects. I often make notes of things to research at a later time while talking with them. I have come to find that people often have good ideas that I can also use. I also have no problem sharing the things we have done perchance someone else may be blessed by them, or find their own nugget in some of my experience.

star fish
Finding treasures…

When mining for nuggets, one thing you have to be willing to realize is that although something worked before, it may not be the answer anymore.  Because it worked for one child, it doesn’t mean it will for another. Most importantly you must be willing to realize you need help and you need to be willing to receive it from anyone, anywhere, anytime.

You are likely to find something online that you’d like to download. This begins the growth explosion of your email’s inbox. There are many different emails that come to my inbox and with most of them, I simply hit the delete button. But every now and then, the title captures my interest as it is related to something we’re working on. I may open it, and if I don’t find anything to draw me further in, I will delete it then and there.

emailOn only a very few occasions do I then go to the website to read the entire article to find a gem, which sometimes isn’t there. For me, anyway. We will all find different gems that we find particularly helpful. You will come to find them in surprising places, and develop an eye for glancing over things to find them if they’re there. For example, one of those little bombshells of an explosion in my inbox included a reference to Notebooking Pages. I looked it up, and it is now one of my 5 most invaluable items to use in homeschooling! You don’t know where they will turn up. Go mining!

Remember:

  • Make notes of ideas
  • Talk to people
  • Scan emails
  • Listen
  • Be engaged in your child’s life to know what interests them
  • Have your eyes open
Start running
Start Somewhere. You never know where it will lead you.