Do you remember how you started on these boards?

[Spy Car]

When my son (pushing 17) was in utero I started thinking about fatherhood in a different way. While homeschooling was never Plan A or Plan B, I did want to actively home educate as a supplement to public schooling on some level.

I had a particular interest in fostering a creative and playful introduction to mathematics that would be fun and easy for a young child to grasp. The goal was to make mathematics seem like a native language.

The other part was teaching grammar (after reading of course) systematically in a way that wasn't dry, as I felt like grammar might be neglected in the schools.

About the time my son was born, I discovered SWB's book. Later I discovered the old forum (that flipped). I rarely posted. 

I joined when the first new format allowed membership. I've valued the experience.

Bill

Edited April 23, 2021 by Spy Car
Nothing like making a grammar error when talking about grammar. LOL.

[Storygirl]

Thank you so much for hosting this board, Susan! I've received so much friendship here, as well as support for homeschooling and parenting challenges, that my life genuinely has been changed for the better. The WTM boards have been a true blessing for me, and I know that others feel the same.

[Storygirl]

I joined in 2014, but I lurked for a long time before that. I was disappointed when I found the boards -- only because I had been homeschooling since 2005 and so wished I had had access to the hive's wisdom all along.

[Faith-manor]

Way back, on the very very old board. I had kids who were being home schooled, and ones that were to young. Eldest turns 30 in June, and youngest 21 next month. We are talking in the dark ages of online forums, and I was searching for English curriculum reviews and found WTM. I am back briefly now, but will be gone again soon. We have a lot of van camping coming up this summer, and I really do not have anything to offer here. I do enjoy my two grandsons very much, and may help with their homeschooling. However, I just don't want to get sucked into much social media. It has all become so bonkers. I did want to contribute to a few covid threads because some of you are trying to compile data. Very worthwhile endeavor!

[brehon]

I first read the book in 2001-ish and joined the boards in, oh, 2002 or 2003. The boards still flipped back then. So many good conversations then and now. The tenor of the board has certainly changed since then and overall, I think, for the better. 

[Spy Car]

10 minutes ago, brehon said:

I first read the book in 2001-ish and joined the boards in, oh, 2002 or 2003. The boards still flipped back then. So many good conversations then and now. The tenor of the board has certainly changed since then and overall, I think, for the better. 

There has certainly been a profound cultural shift here over the years--to put it mildly.

Bill

[brehon]

7 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

There has certainly been a profound cultural shift here over the years--to put it mildly.

Bill

Absolutely there has been. And like all cultural shifts there have been and will be good and not so good things that accompany that change. 

[Kathy in Richmond]

I joined the boards at their beginning, around 1999 when I pulled my kids out of public school and started homeschooling my 11 year old son and 7 year old daughter.

I'd been part of a local homeschool info group that met in the community room of our local Barnes & Noble. We had different speakers come in, and one week they featured a new book called the Well-Trained Mind. Jessie and Susan came that night to introduce their book and to talk about their methods with us. I bought the book (signed copy!) and soon read it and bookmarked oh-so-many pages. I was very comfortable teaching math and science, but really needed their help with literature, grammar, languages, and history. This was all back in the days of dial-up internet (no cell phones or tablets, lol), so good reference books were my primary resources.

My kids are now 33 and 29, and my son has a little family of his own. He married a homeschooler, & they plan to homeschool their kids!

[Spy Car]

6 minutes ago, Kathy in Richmond said:

I joined the boards at their beginning, around 1999 when I pulled my kids out of public school and started homeschooling my 11 year old son and 7 year old daughter.

I'd been part of a local homeschool info group that met in the community room of our local Barnes & Noble. We had different speakers come in, and one week they featured a new book called the Well-Trained Mind. Jessie and Susan came that night to introduce their book and to talk about their methods with us. I bought the book (signed copy!) and soon read it and bookmarked oh-so-many pages. I was very comfortable teaching math and science, but really needed their help with literature, grammar, languages, and history. This was all back in the days of dial-up internet (no cell phones or tablets, lol), so good reference books were my primary resources.

My kids are now 33 and 29, and my son has a little family of his own. He married a homeschooler, & they plan to homeschool their kids!

How nice to see you! 

I'm happy this thread has brought out some of the veterans.

Bill

[Kareni]

3 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

The Denim Jumper.... Vegsource

I spent time on both of those boards, but this is the one that became home!

Regards,

Kareni

[matrips]

My first post looks like it was in 2009 when my kids were 4.  At the time we were just doing preschool at home and learning. I ended up homeschooling until high school, 2 years ago. We had a blast in the younger years, but middle school got hard.  Well, one of my three middle schoolers made it really hard and stressful.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, matrips said:

My first post looks like it was in 2009 when my kids were 4.  At the time we were just doing preschool at home and learning. I ended up homeschooling until high school, 2 years ago. We had a blast in the younger years, but middle school got hard.  Well, one of my three middle schoolers made it really hard and stressful.

Oh, I'm sorry... how did they make it hard? 

[teachermom2834]

All you babies that have only been here since 2008 or 2009...haha...newbies! 😉

[matrips]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

Oh, I'm sorry... how did they make it hard? 

Just one.  So many complaints!  So much cause of drama in our little homeschool.  This one could set the tone for the whole day. The amount of work picked up in middle school, so that was part of it.  Less free time I guess.  Even though they still had more time than if they went to school.  Assuming you didn’t procrastinate all day 😂. Two were fine and easy to school.  One was not. 

[Ausmumof3]

I came looking for math curriculum and yes we’re still using Singapore for at least one child.  I was just a lurker for a long time.  Part of the reason I used it I think was because you didn’t have to sign up to read stuff.  I didn’t actually buy or read the well trained mind until ds was going into grade 3 and Sonlight wasn’t really affordable for us that year. So glad I got to it eventually.  I think it was around 2011 because we used Singapore from kindergarten.  One of the early threads I remember was one about how being a stay at home mum was easy.  At the time I was drowning in babies and toddlers and being a stay at home mum felt anything but easy.  I think I felt quite upset until a couple of people were sympathetic.  I think Melissa Louise and maybe Murphy under their former names.

[BlsdMama]

I found TWTM (book) circa 2001. I think I came here around the same time as another board that I remember my “anniversary,” so I’d guess October/November 2001. 
 

i never used to spend any time in Chat. That’s changed significantly in the last several years. 

[Ausmumof3]

I have to say it really says something for what kind of space this is that so many posters have been here for so long.  I’ve been here 10 years but there are many who have been around much much longer.  That really says a lot.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Ausmumof3

[Spy Car]

5 hours ago, Matryoshka said:

I found my way here from a flash-in-the-pan spin-off board of this one for secular homeschoolers dubbed The Denim Jumper.  Not sure how I'd found that - probably somebody mentioned it on one of the other hsing boards I was on back then - Vegsource (I remember Ellie and Jann in TX from there!) and another one I don't even remember the name of.  

Anyway... people at the DJ kept referring to 'that other board' and I literally had no idea what they were talking about, but then there was a board glitch there and someone linked here, and I joined up and never looked back.  I think the DJ never recovered from that glitch... I'd peek in from time to time but almost no one was posting.  I stopped bothering to look at the other boards I had been on too.  I'm fairly certain Vegsource is long defunct?

That was in 2008 when my older ones were 8 - my youngest is now 20 and I'm done homeschooling but apparently not with this board!  😂❤️

LOL. I was actually a very non-active member of the Denim Jumper--which tickled my funny bone.

I looked at Vegsource and ran away scared. I was not crunchy enough to survive there--I think.

Bill

 

[Not_a_Number]

7 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I have to say it really says something for what kind of space this is that so many posters have been here for so long.  I’ve been here 10 years but there are many who have been around much much longer.  That really says a lot.

And I'm a total n00b, lol. 

[Guest]

I lurked here from time to time from around 2002-3, but I never posted; my active posting was all on a different board. Well, there was a prominent board member there who also had a presence here, so I started reading here more often. At the time I was becoming increasingly structured, up from something closer to unschooling, which I was finding not to be all its proponents imagined. (Unschooling itself was moving more in the direction of Radical Unschooling and the “unschooling” model I originally jibed with - the Colefax type - was increasingly spurned.) At first, I was pretty freaked out by some of the serious schoolers here. There were all these people doing two math curriculums because one was bound to be missing something. And tons of Latin devotees, which I never could really make stick for my kids. 

But it was around 2008 when I decided I did not philosophically match the people on the other forum and it was silly to continue there. So my posting energy transferred here, almost always in the General board. I was there when the kilt thread happened and the tea thread was recent and the carpet-removal thread, and cupcakes sticking in a poster’s craw...and we had the best trolls, which I saw unfold, like the one looking for the sixteen-bedroom house or whatever it was, and the Carol lady, whose (admittedly prescient) idea was to use her car as a taxi service. Man, we had good trolls back in the day...

I agree that the overall culture here has shifted seismically since those early days. This board has shaped my life tremendously. Never was that more evident than since early last year, when people here were discussing this “novel coronavirus” taking hold in Wuhan, China. It seems so amazing but I felt i had accurate information about COVID-19 about ninety percent of the time, unlike the vast majority of people who have told me how jerked around they have felt throughout the pandemic. I rarely felt jerked around because the consensus here was almost always correct regarding the pandemic. (For example, I have friends who thought schools would be closed for two weeks only. Or who thought college would be normal by August 2020. I never thought that, because we all discussed that thoroughly here.) 

[BlsdMama]

You know what’s interesting? There hasn’t been a homeschooling year in the past twenty that I haven’t cracked open TWTM and used the information within. 

♥️ 

[KeriJ]

7 hours ago, Susan Wise Bauer said:

Aww, you guys, I'm so enjoying reading this thread. Thank you.

These boards were as much of a help to me as we were to you. Now that my kids are 29, 27, 24, and 20, I'm happily retired from boots-on-the-ground home schooling (hey, we get to be FINISHED at some point, people), so I have a whole different perspective now.

Nothing stays the same, as the sages point out. And change always brings some decay. But there's also ALWAYS  good in the newest phase as well...whether it's the newest phase of the boards, or the newest phase of your life as a family.

swb

❤❤❤

[KeriJ]

I so didn't want to be the one to ask, but what does it mean that the board flipped!?!

[math teacher]

I'm another old timer from when the board flipped, but I can't remember if I posted then or just lurked. I learned about WTM through VegSource. I learned about VS through a fellow homeschooler who used it to buy curricula. If just one of those pieces had not fallen into place, I might never have found this wonderful place and all you wonderful people.

I started homeschooling Ds when he was around 8. He went to a Christian school some in the high school years and has now graduated from college with a degree in Computer Information Systems. I used to spend a lot of time on some of the other boards, but now I only come to Chat. 

One thing I miss-the kilt pictures. All you newbies, that isn't in the board description just to take up space. We really used to have kilt pictures.

Love ya'll.

[Susan Wise Bauer]

58 minutes ago, KeriJ said:

I so didn't want to be the one to ask, but what does it mean that the board flipped!?!

HAH! So, back in the day when the boards were a super simple script that even *I* could program, they were a set of threaded topics that eventually would get to around 2,000 posts...at which point they were SO slow to load that I would go on, close the script, archive it, and start a new script. Posters knew this would come and they would wait around to be the first to post on the new board once it was "flipped."

Yeah, we're not that old but we're about seven generations on in technology...

[Faith-manor]

4 minutes ago, Susan Wise Bauer said:

HAH! So, back in the day when the boards were a super simple script that even *I* could program, they were a set of threaded topics that eventually would get to around 2,000 posts...at which point they were SO slow to load that I would go on, close the script, archive it, and start a new script. Posters knew this would come and they would wait around to be the first to post on the new board once it was "flipped."

Yeah, we're not that old but we're about seven generations on in technology...

I remember waiting anxiously fro the chance to post. I never got first no matter how hard I pounced.

[KeriJ]

4 minutes ago, Susan Wise Bauer said:

HAH! So, back in the day when the boards were a super simple script that even *I* could program, they were a set of threaded topics that eventually would get to around 2,000 posts...at which point they were SO slow to load that I would go on, close the script, archive it, and start a new script. Posters knew this would come and they would wait around to be the first to post on the new board once it was "flipped."

Yeah, we're not that old but we're about seven generations on in technology...

I am sad to have missed it!😄

[Starr]

I started homeschooling in 2002 and found The Well Trained Mind sometime that school year. Thanks @Susan Wise Bauer! I read the book, we loved Story of the World and eventually I found the boards. We call it, 'The Site of All Things!'

[Halftime Hope]

5 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

Way back, on the very very old board. I had kids who were being home schooled, and ones that were to young. Eldest turns 30 in June, and youngest 21 next month. We are talking in the dark ages of online forums, and I was searching for English curriculum reviews and found WTM. I am back briefly now, but will be gone again soon. We have a lot of van camping coming up this summer, and I really do not have anything to offer here. I do enjoy my two grandsons very much, and may help with their homeschooling. However, I just don't want to get sucked into much social media. It has all become so bonkers. I did want to contribute to a few covid threads because some of you are trying to compile data. Very worthwhile endeavor!

Well, hi!  It's good to see you!  Hope you all are doing well and have a fun summer!

[Tenaj]

Is it possible I've been here since 1999?  Maybe 2000?  My oldest is 29 this year and we started homeschooling when he was 7 almost 8.  Back in those days I had 3 kids and WTM was the first book I read about homeschooling along with Mary Pride's Big Book of Homeschooling?  (I think that was the title).  So I've been homeschooling for 22 years this year and still have 7 to go if my youngest stays home.

Makes me a little tearful to think of what life would have been like without the encouragement of all of you  here over the years.  There were times where I didn't know any homeschoolers in "real" life but I could always come here and find others who were having similar experiences and who had great advice.

[mathnerd]

I have been here since 2007ish. I changed my account name and started a new one around 2012. I came here for the discussions on teaching math to elementary aged students - everything about cuisinaire rods, Miquon, SM, CWP etc etc, I know because of these forums! I got the WTM from the library then and realized that I could not finish reading it in a few weeks and ordered my own copy of it and also SOTW. I remember reading SOTW aloud to my young son as if it was yesterday! and my child studies high school level Latin because I spent a lot of time on the WTM forums!

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, JanOH said:

Is it possible I've been here since 1999?  Maybe 2000?  My oldest is 29 this year and we started homeschooling when he was 7 almost 8.  Back in those days I had 3 kids and WTM was the first book I read about homeschooling along with Mary Pride's Big Book of Homeschooling?  (I think that was the title).  So I've been homeschooling for 22 years this year and still have 7 to go if my youngest stays home.

Makes me a little tearful to think of what life would have been like without the encouragement of all of you  here over the years.  There were times where I didn't know any homeschoolers in "real" life but I could always come here and find others who were having similar experiences and who had great advice.

Mary Pride’s Big Book of Home Learning. That was the book that first made me go, “Wait a minute! Maybe that homeschooling thing actually makes sense...” My eldest child was 18 months old and, up until I read the idea in that book, homeschooling was just some kooky thing for strange religious people! 😄

[Not_a_Number]

3 hours ago, Quill said:

Never was that more evident than since early last year, when people here were discussing this “novel coronavirus” taking hold in Wuhan, China. It seems so amazing but I felt i had accurate information about COVID-19 about ninety percent of the time, unlike the vast majority of people who have told me how jerked around they have felt throughout the pandemic. I rarely felt jerked around because the consensus here was almost always correct regarding the pandemic. (For example, I have friends who thought schools would be closed for two weeks only. Or who thought college would be normal by August 2020. I never thought that, because we all discussed that thoroughly here.) 

This was the BEST place for COVID information. I was assiduously ignoring this information up until early March, lol, but ever since I've started paying attention, this place has been amazing. So many people actually looking at the data... 

[Carol in Cal.]

On 4/22/2021 at 6:59 PM, Halftime Hope said:

I'm pretty sure mine went back to 1998 or 1999.  I had a different board name and it's so much fun to go see the things we were discussing back then.  I know a bunch of us really enjoyed having the boards flip and then the annual date did something wonky when it should have said, "2000."   

Probably a few boardies remember when PW was releasing the chapters of her book, one installment at a time.  Anyone besides me remember that?  

Totally!  

This is roughly my story.  I vaguely recall the millenium change so I must have been here by 1999.  I loved Ree and her installments!  And playing FIRST was always fun.

I wish that I had copy pasted and saved my first post.  I recall thinking that this was a much more sophisticated group of writers and thinkers than most of the other online groups I was familiar with, and I thought about it a lot and honed it quite a bit before posting it.  It had to do with why to study world history early, and with world history studies as preparation for the Christian life.

[Starr]

4 hours ago, Quill said:

I agree that the overall culture here has shifted seismically since those early days. This board has shaped my life tremendously. Never was that more evident than since early last year, when people here were discussing this “novel coronavirus” taking hold in Wuhan, China. It seems so amazing but I felt i had accurate information about COVID-19 about ninety percent of the time, unlike the vast majority of people who have told me how jerked around they have felt throughout the pandemic. I rarely felt jerked around because the consensus here was almost always correct regarding the pandemic.

This.  People around me didn't want to believe it but what I learned here was true.

[Sk8ermaiden]

My profile says I joined in 2012. But it's hard to believe that's true, I know I was all over these boards from at least when I was pregnant with my first (in 2008/2009.) Knowing me (and knowing the very harsh feelings this board used to have on "preschooling,") maybe I really just did wait to register until she was approaching kindergarten...

[BakersDozen]

5 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I have to say it really says something for what kind of space this is that so many posters have been here for so long.  I’ve been here 10 years but there are many who have been around much much longer.  That really says a lot.

I don't post much but continue here because it is where I know I can find the most intelligent, insightful, (mostly) common sense conversation with a great variety of topics. If something big happens in the news, I head to this board to follow the thread I'm certain will be started. I don't agree with everything posted but do (mostly) respect how the discussion goes. It's a refreshing place to be and I'm so grateful for those who have stayed after all these years.

It's also way fun to see those who had little ones the same age as mine were back in 2000/2001 and now those littles are grown, some with kids of their own. I learn just as much from these ladies now as I did 20 years ago. 

[Not_a_Number]

40 minutes ago, BakersDozen said:

I don't post much but continue here because it is where I know I can find the most intelligent, insightful, (mostly) common sense conversation with a great variety of topics. If something big happens in the news, I head to this board to follow the thread I'm certain will be started. I don't agree with everything posted but do (mostly) respect how the discussion goes. It's a refreshing place to be and I'm so grateful for those who have stayed after all these years.

It's also way fun to see those who had little ones the same age as mine were back in 2000/2001 and now those littles are grown, some with kids of their own. I learn just as much from these ladies now as I did 20 years ago. 

The discussions here are great. 

[Eos]

I lurked for years.  Came for the excellence, stayed for community.

[cabercro]

I'm pretty sure I got here through a Pinterest image of all things. Maybe 2012/2013?

I was a teacher (with no knowledge of homeschooling and no kids at the time) looking for storage solutions for my classroom. I found some pictures of those 10 drawer carts that were popular for workboxes at the time and thought they might be helpful for paperwork. That led me to some blog posts where I realized it was a homeschool thing, which led me down the rabbit hole of researching homeschooling in general. Somewhere along that trail I stumbled onto these boards. I lurked for years and years, gathering information for my own classroom teaching, teaching my own future children, and just life in general.

Because of this board, I use The Writing Revolution and REWARDS in my classroom with my students. I understand why my 7th graders come to me so low in reading (shout out to our whole-language-and-balanced-literacy school district) and I have the skills to diagnose their needs and attempt to remediate them. This board led me to The Explosive Child/Ross Greene's work, which has fundamentally changed the way I work with my students.

Because of this board, my 3 year old daughter plays with Cuisenaire rods and is starting to sound out CVC words. We'll probably never officially homeschool (I love my job and financially, quitting probably won't ever be an option), but I feel prepared to teach her at home alongside what she gets at school. 

Lurking on this board has helped me pick out a baby carrier, wrestle with my faith, deal with bullying in my classroom, and prepare for COVID. More than anything it's helped me internalize the idea that there's ALWAYS an alternative out there to the way we think things 'have to' be done. 

So that's how I got here, but more importantly a huge THANK YOU that I've been meaning to say to all of you for building a place that even non-homeschoolers can benefit from. 🙂

[KidsHappen]

On 4/22/2021 at 7:47 PM, Garga said:

I found my first post!!! I remember the thread sooo well! A single WTMer had a man doing nice things for her and she wanted to make him dinner. We were all convinced wedding bells were in the future, but it turned out he wasn’t interested after all. 

No wait!!!  I re-read to the end. He was interested, and they were setting a date for dinner and then the thread died and I don’t know what happened.  Drat.  

The OP hasn’t posted in 5 years, so now I’ll never know. (She was going to make him lasagna.)

I remember that thread!

[KidsHappen]

On 4/22/2021 at 8:59 PM, Halftime Hope said:

I'm pretty sure mine went back to 1998 or 1999.  I had a different board name and it's so much fun to go see the things we were discussing back then.  I know a bunch of us really enjoyed having the boards flip and then the annual date did something wonky when it should have said, "2000."   

Probably a few boardies remember when PW was releasing the chapters of her book, one installment at a time.  Anyone besides me remember that?  

I remember. It's  so weird to see her everywhere now.

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, KidsHappen said:

I remember. It's  so weird to see her everywhere now.

Who's PW? 

[KidsHappen]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

Who's PW? 

Pioneer Woman. She used to post here as Ree.

[Carol in Cal.]

There have been some stellar posts.

The kilts were good, but the new toilet rant and the hoo hah waxing story were classic.  

[KidsHappen]

On 4/22/2021 at 7:47 PM, Garga said:

I don't know why this is here.

I was already homeschooling but I read the first edition in about 2001. It had a website so I came and checked it out. I lurked for about a year before I started posting. I think I first posted in about 2002. I don't really know because I can't find my posts from the old board. This board only has my posts from this board. Anyhow, I really liked the old boards and was reluctant to make the change. I think I was even first once. I remember a lot of old posters that aren't here anymore and a lot of contentious threads about shoes on vs. shoes off, shopping carts, crockpots, many math wars and was even an active contributor to the tea thread. My children have long since graduated but this is my community and now I am helping with homeschooling my grandchildren. My 3 year old grandson is learning to read from the same book his momma used. To this day if the family is discussing something that we don't know the answer to instead of "google it" I hear "ask your board".  I don't post as much as I used to but I still read everyday. This feels like home and I am the old granny in the rocking chair taking it all in.

[Faith-manor]

I remember when Ree was in that process. Man it has been a long time!!

[Laurel-in-CA]

I heard Gene Vieth talk about TWTM at our homeschool convention the first year it came out -- and I was sold! First I tweaked my Sonlight and then I went entirely eclectically classical. I think I've been on these boards since they started, though I'm more of a reader and less of a chatter. I actually wrote an article on our mom-run mini-co-op, which met for 4-5 years at a park (or crammed into my house) for an Academy Day, and that was up on the web site for awhile. Not sure if it still is. All those kids are grown and busy adulting now and my last is a senior in high school.

Time flies! Now I'm writing about "back to work" in my 60s, pandemic unemployment, and the discoveries of linkedin. LOL

[Halftime Hope]

So I went back and looked, and as near as I can tell, Susan set up the boards in early November of 1999.  

It's been fun to go back and see what I was writing about my kids at that time, and to remember that I led a local Charlotte Mason interest group for a few months.  It was hard because we were quite far away from each other, so it really never took off.  And then 9/11 happened...it was a bit sad to go read the posts on that. 

I'd sure give a nickel to know how some of the old boardies are doing how their lives have changed and how their kids are doing, raising families of their own.

 

[Amy Gen]

I found some of my posts going back to 2008, but that was when we got the “new” board format. I know I joined originally in 2000 when I first started homeschooling.