Sparse Funds Spawn Creative Kids

By Jessica Hulcy
Before homeschooling, Wade and I were living from paycheck to paycheck. Forget
budgeting . . . we just went until the money ran out, and then we ate peanut butter
sandwiches three meals a day! nce, at the store, we were down to our last dollars
and our !"year"old son #ason wanted a pair of flip"flops, but we needed a bo$ of
%heerios. &nowing a paycheck was coming at the end of the week, I bought the flip"
flops. 'ater, I noticed that #ason had taken a bite out of one of his flip"flops! %learly,
I should have bought the more nutritious %heerios.
Necessity . . . the Mother of Invention
KONOS the first curriculum written for homeschoolers, was written with a low
budget in mind, because we were trying to add homeschooling to the low budget
lives we were already living. (ioneer homeschoolers who attempted to buy te$tbooks
and teacher)s te$ts from publishers were told they had to be a bona fide school in
order to make those purchases. *mall wonder pioneer homeschoolers used what
they had or could find to create their own curriculum.
ur oldest, #ason, was a little alley scavenger. +iding his bike up and down our alley
netted a lawn mower, an old pump organ, and a washing machine that #ason
dragged back to our garage, where he and his brothers took everything apart.
*ometimes Wade supervised their hands"on lessons in the garage, and books that
e$plained how something worked were often checked out of the library.
When we moved to the country, this organic way of teaching, i.e., using what you
had on hand, had been deeply ingrained in our children, and the new setting
provided many wonderful new e$periences. , tree house was built out of scrap wood
in a -.."year"old pecan tree, a raft that took weeks to build and drag to the creek
before it promptly sank, and a destructive herd of wild boars all provided new
additions to our curriculum.
/0hat is not curriculum!1 you say, to which I answer with the definition of the word
curriculum, which is /a course of study.1 When we built our house in the country, my
husband was the general contractor, and our four boys were his apprentices. For a
year we did no formal school e$cept for math and reading library books, plus work
on the house. ,fter construction of the house had been completed, I tested
everyone, from the 2"year"old to the -3"year"old, to see how much damage had
been done during the year. ,ll four boys had advanced two to four years in every
subject! It seemed what I had been telling homeschoolers in workshops around the
country was true4 hands"on e$periences actually grow the si5e of a child)s brain by
creating more and new neuron pathways!
0his type of teaching also instills incredible confidence. I remember finding my
youngest changing the hydraulic fluid on the tractor)s front"end loader. When I asked
if he knew what he was doing, he answered4 /I know how hydraulics work. *hould I
know anything else61 I went back in the house with the reali5ation that 7od is an
incredible curriculum provider.
!rustin" #od
0he 8ellow (ages and the Internet are wonderful resource locators for budget"
minded families, but the ultimate provider of all needs is the 'ord. While doing the
&9* /0rust1 unit, in which we studied sheep and shepherding, I wanted the kids
to observe sheep being sheared, but where does one find sheep in the middle of a
metropolis6 I began praying about this on the way to soccer practice, when I
discovered that smack in the middle of suburbia was a farm with sheep!
0he same thing happened when doing the &9* /%ooperation1 unit as we studied
states and regions. +ather than memori5ing the bird, flower, and tree of each state,
we chose to study what was indigenous to a region and how each region cooperated
with the other regions.
0he ,mish are indigenous to the 9ortheast, and like the ,mish, we wanted to co-
operate and build a small barn, or what turned out to be a large doghouse, with only
hand tools. :owever, the lumber cost was prohibitive, so I began to pray about it on
my daily walk, and lo and behold, I soon discovered that our neighbor had a pickup
truck full of used - $ ;)s and < $ !)s left over from a concrete job. 0he only problem
was the presence of nails and dried concrete on the boards. When I asked my
neighbor for the lumber and told him what it was for, he cleaned the boards,
removed the nails, delivered the redeemed lumber, and even stacked all the boards
at our building site!
In this day of shrink"wrapped curriculum costing huge bucks for tons of reading
books and moms who are seeking a curriculum that tells kids what to do every
minute, count your blessings=including a skimpy budget. 8our children)s creativity
and your reliance on the 'ord, two precious commodities, may just have been
spared.
Jessica Hulcy, co-author of KONOS urriculum, the first curriculum written for
homeschool, is an educator, author, and formerly popular national homeschool
spea!er prior to her near-fatal wrec! in "##$. % graduate of the &niversity of 'e(as,
mom to four grown sons, and )*randear+ to grandchildren, Jessica lives with her
husband ,ade on acreage in 'e(as. -ecently Jessica and ,ade started the ultimate
online help for homeschooling moms called Homeschool .entor. /isit www.home
schoolmentor.com and www.!onos.com.
%opyright <.-<, used with permission. ,ll rights reserved by author. riginally
appeared in the ,ugust <.-< issue of 'he Old Schoolhouse0 .aga1ine, the family
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