The Growing Homeschool: Integrating Babies and Toddlers into Your Already Busy Schedule is an uplifting read for homeschooling mamas with very little ones. Cindy Carrier’s transparency is a tremendous encouragement. (You mean I’m not the only one who gets sidetracked? Whew!)

The most significant thing I took away from this was focus. While being assured that I am not alone in my struggle to balance all the demands of home management, motherhood, and homeschooling, I was also reminded that homeschooling is not, first and foremost, about academics. Academics are important, but the most important thing is the discipleship of our children. Cindy suggests that the thing for which we should be striving is not really balance, but integration. Wow! How true! Our lives cannot be compartmentalized, with faith in this box and life in these various other boxes; homeschooling is no exception. When homeschooling is an integrated part of the lives of faith we are already living, things go much more smoothly! I found myself continually directed back to a proper focus.

Helping me to restore my focus to the proper things (and Person!) would have been enough to make this book a benefit to me; that alone is restful and re-energizing. But that’s not all that’s here! There are suggestions for specific activities to keep little ones, of several different age groups, constructively occupied. There is help for training small ones in basic integrating-the-family skills. (This emphasis on keeping the family together as a family is something I greatly appreciated about the book. There is no “divide-and-conquer” mentality here.)

Finally, there are recommendations of very practical ways to teach important character qualities to our older children as they serve their younger siblings (and as we give their youngest siblings the extra attention required for their care). Based on twelve “core values” (see The Values-Driven Family for more information), these activities and emphases help us focus on building positive character, rather than simply correcting negative behavior. (Proactive is good!)

The Growing Homeschool left me refreshed and renewed – and interested in learning more about these “Twelve Core Values”!