Amy SaundersYou know how you want your homeschool to look, but getting there is tough…

You are a supermom. Not only do you work 24/7, organizing and cleaning your home, feeding and clothing your family, and just being generally indispensable — but you also assume complete and total responsibility for your children’s educations.

That’s huge! You have voluntarily assumed the role of the sole administrator and instructor of an exclusive multi-grade academy designed to enhance genius and maximize potential in a select group of creative individuals.

Boy are you impacting and changing lives!

You put everything into your home and children — your heart, your time, your energy, your money, your very best.

You’re a CFO, CEO, motivational speaker, spiritual guide, curriculum creator, healer, janitor, chauffeur and chef. 

You are the heart and the mind of your homeschoolEverything is riding on your success. 

 

And yet, despite all of your hard work,

your homeschool is not what you imagined.

 

When you began this journey, you imagined giving your kids an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

You imagined your kiddos bringing home things from nature to study under the microscope.

You imagined visiting museums together and being inspired to paint masterpieces of your own. 

You imagined cuddling together and laughing over your favorite read-aloud books.

You imagined your children, voluntarily immersing themselves in delight-driven, creative, deep, intense learning. 

You imagined pixie dust and sparkles and rainbows and unicorns.

But those moments are few and far between.

 

You desperately want to meet your child’s unique learning needs

and to foster a love of learning…

… but what you’ve created is FAR from what you imagined.

Your kiddos are as tired of the nagging as you are, there are daily tears, and you’re not sure where things went awry.

There is no love for learning. It just isn’t joyful!

You need to find a better way before you drive each other crazy.

 

There is a better way.

Too many of us make the mistake of trying to re-create public school at home. It’s what we grew up with and what we know.

I’m giving you permission to do it differently… and to love the journey! You can create whatever you want!

 

Hi, there. I’m Amy.

As a product of the public education system, homeschooling was never on my radar.

I always planned to send my kids to school because that’s what people do.

​But the joke was on me!

My oldest was born October 2, just a few weeks after the kindergarten deadline. And our neighborhood was full of little girls (13 of them!) who made that deadline.

She was distraught that all of her little friends were headed off to kindergarten without her. I had to do something to end the flood of tears. So I promised her we’d have our own little school at home.

And so I found myself suddenly, unexpectedly, serendipitously homeschooling.

At the time, I didn’t plan to continue. I was too concerned that she would miss out on riding the bus, ha, ha! But that kindergarten year was so great that I couldn’t bring myself to send her to school the next year. 

I never thought we’d have so much fun! 

Luckily, she wanted to continue school at home, too.

We have never looked back.

And it worked!
 

Amy Saunders

 

​Homeschooling works beautifully!

My oldest is now attending a prestigious university on full scholarship. My second is at that same university with 4 different full-tuition scholarships, so his room and board is also covered. Both of them earned their associates degrees from a local university during ‘high school’.

My third is on the same track. My 13-year-old just started Calculus. My 6-year-old reads classics. The world would say they are all academically successful, and would bestow accolades on homeschooling based on their impressive data.

But the most impressive academic (stronger family relationships are an immeasurable benefit) benefit of homeschooling, in my opinion, is that my children love learning! They know how to learn what they need to know, and they know how to use what they learn.

My children are thriving and yours can, too!

Here are some resources to get you started:

 

Homeschooling Resources

Resources for cultivating a joyful homeschool                           

 

Worldschooling Resources                                                                                           

When the whole, wide world is your school

 

Frugal Living Resources

You gotta be able to pay for it all, right?

 

 

A Little About Me

I’m married to my best friend, Kendel, and we have a farm in Utah where our main crop is children. We homeschool our eight beautiful children. Our kiddos are 21, 20, 18, 16, 13, 12, 9 and 6. We’ve homeschooled exclusively since our oldest was 4-years-old, so seventeen years. Time flies!

A few random facts:

  • I’m an expert at frugality. Seriously, I can feed my family of 10 nutritious meals for under $100 a week. I also really enjoy budgeting, saving money and investing. Is that weird?
  • Math and science are my favorite subjects. Mostly math. 
  • I have a Mechanical Engineering degree that I’ve never used.
  • We (okay, just me!) are avid DIYers and have completely remodeled every home we’ve owned.
  • I love to sew, paint, build, plant things and create! 
  • We all love to read! So much so that I have to reign it in.
  • We have bookcases in every room in our house,  in addition to a large library (built by Amy and the kids, including the finish carpentry!) with floor-to-ceiling shelves on all four walls.
  • We travel frequently and don’t feel at all guilty about leaving the school books at home.
  • My homeschooling style is best described as relaxed, delight-directed eclectic. I love so many things about the various methods, I couldn’t possibly pick one. I began homeschooling, seventeen years ago, as a classical homeschooler, but evolved over the years, changing things up according to my children’s needs and interests, and the state of our family. We’ve become a hodgepodge of styles, sometimes favoring unit studies and other times ignoring everything in favor of John-Holt style unschooling. Most of all, I’ve learned that we’re happiest adapting our homeschool to our family, and not the other way around.

 

 

 

Are we friends on social media yet? If not, we should be! You can find Orison Orchards on FacebookPinterestInstagram and Twitter!