There are many moms on Squidoo who stay at home, create home based businesses, become entrepreneurial, and also home school their children.
Home schooling lenses abound on Squidoo and this niche has become one of the most popular. Rocket Moms have embraced this niche as well.
What are the secrets to making such great home schooling lenses? How popular are these lenses outside of Squidoo?
How successful have these lenses been in attracting home schoolers to Squidoo?
Susan52 joined us and said that homeschooling used to be so much more controversial when she first home schooled her sons over 20 years ago.
Carma or Tandememom came on the line and Joan expressed great admiration for the quality of lenses made by the home schooler moms. Carma joked that these superpowers are all outlined in the Mom Home Schooler Handbook.
Carma has 4 children. We discussed how she gets her children to listen to her, especially since mothers have a different kind of authority. Moms tell their children to make their beds and brush their teeth, but when moms begin to teach their own children, kids tend to say "You're just the mom, what do you know?"
After this challenge is overcome, then the real work (and play) of learning begins.
Carma discussed creating a Blog and said she felt overwhelmed by having to update it all the time. But lens making has a different flow. She says she has nine lenses specifically about home schooling, now, and this number is growing.
Susan discussed how she kept hearing the most common objections regarding home schooling over and over such as: "Your boys will never fit in." Or: "Your boys will never adjust to society."
Susan said that home schooled children are often involved with the larger home schooling community of families and their home schooled children. These children mix with each other, and their ages span from younger to older children. The older children help the younger ones and are not in age constrained environments, a form of age segregation.
Instead of, for example, being in the fourth grade and having 4th graders socialize each other
and being thrown into situations of aggression and competition, these children go to parks, travel
to museums and historical locations, and socialize with a wide range of people of all ages.
Co-ops are growing in the home schooling communities, where the children gather together as a
home school family, and different parents come and teach them.
Carma runs the Home Schooler Group on Squidoo. Moms who are WAHM need some adult interaction, which is why this group is so popular, as well as a place to exchange information and tips.
Lenses can be created as a teaching tool for home schooled children. Kids can learn to make lenses.
A Book Report lens would be a perfect venue for a lens. The grandparent would be able to go and see what their grand child is doing in school!
Lenses are wonderful resources, too!
Squidoo no longer has X Rated lenses, so the site is safe for children.
Our friend Charly Leetham's daughter RhiannonL makes beautiful lenses and may very well be the first child to ever reach Giant. Her greatest lens is My Dog Phoebe, a must see lens!
Unschooling is a topic Carma discussed. This means that there is no enforced sit-down learning. Whenever a child is struck with something that interests her, then that topic is explored in depth.
By cooking with Mom in the kitchen, for instance, a child learns how to double a recipe or how to
cut the ingredients in half.
Both Carma and Susan said that their children learned to read unbeknownst to both of them.
Suddenly, they were able to read, and they did it in their own time. One of the children had an
older sibling read comic books to him, and without fanfare or boring hours sitting in a classroom,
the child could read.
Homeschooling is nothing more than living with your children and allowing the learning to evolve,
as it will. Both women advised never to stop reading to your children.
In older times, children learned to read by reading the Bible. Biblical verses were memorized, something that no one does anymore.
Susan's one son is a police officer. All of his fellow police officers bring their reports to him to look over because he can write so well. Her youngest boy at 21 years of age was head of an important platoon in Iraq and now is a straight A college student.
What these women tried to impart to their children is a love for learning. They concede that gaps exist in the home schooling education, but since when DON'T gaps exist in all forms of education?
You learn something, then you forget what it is that you learned. Facts are important, but not as important as empowering children to do what they want to do in the world.
If I want to learn something, I will find it in a book, or take a course of study or hire a tutor to teach me.
Susan runs a Yahoo group for home schoolers! http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LearnToSquidoo/
She says that her goal as a home schooler was always to develop well rounded children who become
citizens of the world.
She also has a plan to teach Squidoo to interested people in the future!
Our guest next week on Giant Squid Open Mike Monday on 9/28 is Pot Pie Girl.
Our guest next week on Moon, Moo & You: The Collective Wisdom on 9/29 is Gracefullady, Polio
survivor who ran the Boston Marathon this year! A wonderfully resilient woman!
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The New Age Of Internet Marketing may actually be going back to ancient teachings
such as the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated and then step that up
about 100 notches.
Do what you love and what you are passionate about and the money will follow. 
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