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Written by Kara S. Anderson.

During the summer, my daughter came to me and told me that she wanted to buy a computer.

She’s a writer and poet, and she wanted a laptop.

And she wanted to buy it herself.

My kids have always wanted jobs. They’ve asked to do lemonade stands, and they’ve asked to do dog walking, which was a little outside of my comfort zone because I don’t let them go beyond our block.

A child becoming a dog walker basically meant I was becoming a dog walker supervisor, and I already have a job that I love, thankyouverymuch.

But this time, my daughter had another, bigger idea.

She wanted to start a candle company.

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Written by Kara S. Anderson

Join me in an experiment:

While reading this post, I want you to open up Instagram. And I want you to scroll …

I want you to think about how you feel as you see the images go past. Are you jealous? Are you sad you didn’t do that thing, whatever it is, when your kids were younger?

Do you feel less-than?

How often are you able to be genuinely happy for the people you see in your feed without adding something to your mental to-do list, or feeling bad?

Now, I want you to look around your home. I want you to think about your kids, and your circumstances.

Because today I want to talk about what I think is one of the keys to successful homeschooling – living your actual reality.

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure statement for more information.

Written by Kara Anderson

Sometimes I get kind of crazy ideas, and then later freak out about those ideas.

In the first episode of this season, I shared how we were doing a camping/survival/outdoors unit study – it seemed like such a good idea because my kids were so into it.

But then one night I woke up around 4 a.m. thinking to myself that camping is not school, and maybe I needed to scrap the whole thing and buy some math textbooks and finally learn the Timeline Song.

Luckily, what I’ve learned about kid-related -4 a.m.-panic-wake-ups is that the next day, my kids usually do something great that reminds me that we’re OK; and that probably my kids will not end up as Baby Drivers.

That happened – and so I decided to double-down and we booked a cabin for our first-ever Anderson Family Camping Expedition.

We didn’t get crazy – there was a gas station 2 minutes away from the campground, and our cabin had an air conditioner.

BUT, it was the perfect start for us and guess what – it showed me that kids (and adults, ahem … ) really can learn a lot from camping.

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