Ah, the smell of books, rubbing elbows with thousands of homeschool moms, the hunt of new curricula and vender discounts, it’s a thrill I look forward to each year.  Over the decades of this annual event I’ve gathered many tips such as coming prepared with comfortable walking shoes, bringing an energy bar & bottle of water and even my own address labels for quickly signing up for drawings and newsletters.  Of course I armed myself with well researched shopping lists and a good night’s sleep.  I bring something with wheels to carry all my finds and the myriad of catalogs and information that will be given to me.
I’ve seen most homeschool curricula from Abeka to Zaner-Bloser.  I’ve taught classes on how to pick curricula tailored to children’s unique learning styles and personalities, all in an attempt to find the ‘perfect program’.  Then I’d go looking for a spelling program or math curriculum to find one that fits, like a pair of jeans.  But after all of this effort, what I’ve discovered – and what I wish I’d known before I began homeschooling - is that it’s the skills of teaching which make the difference NOT the books.  If you have the skills of teaching, your students will succeed.
A good teacher, you see, can make do with even poor materials.  You can make any curricula fit any child’s learning style if you know the techniques of good teaching.  Lots of money can be saved while simplifying homeschooling and making the most of the public library, if you know how to teach. 
So rather than hunting books, I propose that we consider this completely different approach of learning great teaching methods.  Not only will it help our own children to reach dramatic improvements academically, it may possibly even change this nation from the epidemic of NON thinking.  Many people today do not think well.  Just look around our society, see who we elect into office, programs aired on TV, and you’ll know what I mean.  But it hasn’t always been that way.  The founders of our nation had some brilliant and original thoughts that are seldom seen today.  Why can’t we raise students like this?
The reason for this is that the current educational system was not intended to teach students how to think.  It was designed by those who wanted to control society and who wanted a compliant workforce who wouldn’t ask questions.  It was set up for students to give a programmed response, not HOW to think but WHAT to think.  If you want to read more about this topic or see for yourself the original source documents, read John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education.  It’s a paradigm buster! 
So we must turn this problem of non thinking around.  One great way to do it is through writing because it requires thinking!  Writing requires focus on the subject.  But everywhere that writing is taught to children, they groan that they don’t know how to write, they don’t know what to say.  This is precisely because they haven’t acquired thinking skills.  Traditional ways of teaching writing are like pushing a child off a cliff. You pick him up when he falls, tell him what works and what needs improvement, then try again. IEW takes the mystery out of what you’re supposed to write about and how to accomplish it.
And I think perhaps our greatest handicap as homeschool teachers is our own public school training.  It is hard to break free from repeating those patterns.  We homeschoolers are still imitating the institution which never trained us to think.
Yet we need help to learn how to change this, we need help to learn what real education is, we need help to know how to teach.  This is far different from following books.  The opportunity to turn it around begins with a wonderful writing program, The Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), designed by a master teacher, Andrew Pudewa.  IEW solves the problem of what to write about so that students can begin to write, begin to learn to think.  It teaches you how to teach writing.  It teaches you what great teaching is.
IEW uses the mastery teaching methodology.  It teaches one skill, has students practice it until it becomes easy and automatic then adds in another skill until that becomes easy.  When you know something so well that you don’t have to think about what to say, then you can think about how to say it well.  This is the essence of IEW.  Another brilliant aspect of it is that because students write about their other subjects, you don’t need to buy any more workbooks.  By working through subject material in this way, it will ensure long term mastery and it will improve intellectual skills.
A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille (TJE) is a marvelous little book that will help you learn how to teach your own children to think.  He will raise your vision of homeschooling as he teaches you how to raise thinkers by providing the type of education which produced great minds such as Thomas Jefferson.  This includes using great books or classics, written by great minds, to get you in contact with those great minds.  Text books are generally written by a committee of mediocre minds.  If we turn to classics in science and math and history we will be engaged with great minds. 
The materials that I recommend will impart teaching skills, and are proven through genuine research* to improve student abilities and the homeschool atmosphere.  If you are hunting for new materials or are struggling in your homeschool, don’t buy one more curricula to kill the love of learning or limit intellectual abilities.  Education should inspire.  Remember good teaching fits ALL types of learning styles and works on primary/strongest learning modality while at same time strengthening the weaker ones. Don’t pursue endless types of curricula which keep weaker modalities weak.  A proverb teaches us, a good teacher makes learning a delight.
Learning to teach is much like learning to cook; once you have the skills, you can make a meal out of the contents of your kitchen and according to your family’s preferences and dietary needs.  Without the skill of cooking you are stuck buying pre-packaged food & take out.
I didn’t know this when I first began homeschooling because like most of us, I was raised in the public school system.  I didn’t learn anything about good teaching and barely had any modeled for me.  So what has taken me years in my homeschool journey to learn, I hope to condense to an easy to learn approach for you in how to begin teaching.
Let’s begin with the foundational subjects also called The Three R’s.