Author Archives: LaToya Edwards

About LaToya Edwards

LaToya is a recovering perfectionist and control freak that loves old movies, good books and strawberry Hagen Daas ice cream. She traded in a law degree to homeschool her children and be home full-time to serve her family. Through trials of divorce, depression, death and more she has learned how to find joy in motherhood and God’s purpose and plan in broken circumstances. As a certified life coach it is LaToya’s desire to encourage and equip other women to do the same. You can keep up with LaToya on her blog.

Homeschooling without a Dedicated School Room

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When I first started homeschooling I dreamed of having a dedicated homeschool room. I imagined all the fun and learning that would take place in our little school room each morning. Then reality set in and I realized that I live in a tiny apartment with no extra space and I needed to figure out a way to make do! A few organization pieces go a long way to making everything feel more organized and less cluttered.

Staying Organized without a Dedicated Homeschool Room

I have found that I don’t need much to make school time work without having a dedicated space, but these are three essentials: Continue reading →

Busy Mom’s Favorites {Quiet Time Activities for Kids}

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I remember when my first son was really small and I would look forward to his naptime so that I could have a break and grab a shower. I remember the joy that I felt when he finally settled into 2 naps a day: the glorious 2 hour nap in the morning and the wonderful hour nap right before dinner. I also remember the terror and fear that struck my heart when he switched to one nap a day and then the disappointment when he stopped napping altogether.

When boy #2 arrived it was the same roller coaster of emotions. When he started showing signs of giving up naps I knew that I needed to find something that would let me have a few moments during the day to regain my sanity and something that would help my boys get the rest and downtime they needed. Quiet time activities were the answer!

Quiet Time Activities for Your Non-Napping Children

When my boys stopped napping I knew that they still needed time to rest during the day even if they didn’t need to sleep. I came up with a list of things that they could do in their rooms quietly for an hour while I had some time to get some work done or occasionally get some rest myself.

Audiobooks are our favorite quiet time activity. My boys love listening to the stories and the thing that I love is that I can tell them to listen to X number of chapters or the whole thing before they get up or come out of their room. This keeps them from coming out or yelling down the hall every 5 minutes “Is it time to get up yet?”. Here are some of our favorite audiobooks:

Other activities that work well for quiet time:

Making the Transition to Quiet Time

My boys usually listen to an audiobook in their beds for about and hour and then get up and play quietly in their room for another hour. It took some time to get to this point. If your children are really young or new to quiet time you may need to start in smaller increments and work your way up to your desired amount of time. Use a timer so that you child won’t have to ask you every minute if quiet time is over. Also make sure that everyone has had lunch and some time to run around and burn off some energy before starting quiet time.

Here are a few other tips to help you get started:

A baby gate is a helpful for little ones so that they don’t leave their room. It gives them a safe, structured place to play.
Be consistent: if you are going to transition to quiet time, stick to it. Don’t allow your children to argue or negotiate with you.
Rotate activities so that your children don’t get bored. Have things that only come out during quiet time or maybe have a scheduled rotation.

Do you have any favorite activities or tips to add to this list? What do your non nappers do?

Affording to Homeschool as a Single Mom

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I didn’t know anything about homeschooling until I was pregnant with my first son. I’d always gone to public school and I just figured it was either public or private. My mind was slightly blown when my childbirth educator and doula told me that she homeschooled her children. She was also a single mom at the time and in law school. Over the course of my pregnancy we talked alot about her decision to homeschool.

Fast forward 4 short years and I found myself in almost the exact same position. I was in law-school, with two children and my oldest was getting close to the age of Kindergarten. I had a choice to make about his education. At first I figured that I’d just put him in private school. Then I considered holding him back another year so he could mature emotionally before starting school. Finally one day I heard God clearly tell me that I was to homeschool my boys.

Say what?

It’s been 4 years since I obeyed that call to homeschool my boys. I never imagined that I’d be a single parent homeschooling, but I’m here to tell you that it can be done.

Single Parent Homeschooling: Affording it

The #1 question people ask me all the time is “How do you support yourself?” It’s a hard question to answer because honestly what works for me may not (and probably won’t) work for everyone. When I decided to follow the call to homeschool I also walked away from a legal career. Yep, you read that right. I am not using that legal degree that I worked hard for. And no, I don’t regret it.

I do work, but not a full-time job. I do a little free lance writing, I work as a virtual assistant and I’m in the process of starting a life coaching business. All of these I can do from home and it works around homeschooling and my boys’ schedule. Here are some other tips for affording to homeschool as a single parent:

Keep it simple: Homeschooling does not have to cost an arm and a leg. There are many options out there for teaching our children that are affordable and sometimes even free!
Choose a Curriculum that works best for your family: When I’m looking for curriculum I have a few requirements that must be met before I buy anything. My #1 requirement is that it must be something that I can use with both my boys at some point. I don’t have the budget to buy new stuff every year so I look for things that we can either use at the same time or that can be passed down once my oldest is done with it.
Always look for ways to teach a subject for free before you buy a curriculum: The library is a homeschooler’s best resource. You can teach many subjects with your library card and some really great books. Some libraries even have homeschool texts that you can check out to use for a while.
Look for free or discounted days at museums and parks. Many museums, zoos and parks have one annual free day, days where you can donate cans of food for a discounted ticket or other deals of that sort. Don’t hesitate to call a place you want to go and ask if they have a homeschool week!
Barter if there is something you need. Is there an older person in your life who would love to teach your children woodworking? Maybe you can make a crock pot of soup once a week while he shares his skill. Or maybe you’re a fabulous bread baker and your friend loves to teach science. Make a plan to trade services!
Choose what is most important, and let the rest go. Don’t feel pressured to make your homeschool look like your friend’s. Your friend may use a $500 boxed curriculum or do every Pinterest craft she can find… you don’t have to do that! Spending hours on (free) nature walks together will afford your children as many delightful memories as theirs. I promise!

Those are just a few of the practical ways that I can afford to homeschool as a single parent. Practicality aside, however, I rely on God to provide for me to do what He has called me to do! He has called me to homeschool my boys, and He has been faithful in providing the means for me to do so. If He asks you do homeschool, He will provide for it!

Do you have any questions about single parent homeschooling?? Leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them or write another post about it.

Family Fun at the Beach

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Summer is here and many families are spending time at the beach. I’m not a fan of the beach myself, but my boys are beach bums! Living in Florida means that it’s beach weather for most of the year, and I try to get my boys out as often as I can. I had so much fun sharing things to do at the park with your kids that I thought I’d do a list for the beach.

5 Things to do with your Family at the Beach

1. Nature walk: Yep can do this at the beach as well. Walk along the shore and the sand and look for animals. Consider doing a morning walk, an afternoon walk and an evening walk and notice the difference in what you find. Or a high tide walk and a low tide walk! We usually find hermit crabs, small fish and seagulls on our walks. And every now and then we are blessed with a dolphin or manatee sighting. Just be sure to watch out for jellyfish, they sting! (Take pics of what you find if you can’t collect it, then identify it in a nature book when you’re back home!)

2. Collect sea shells: There are many different kinds of shells at the beach. Take some time to collect some as you hang out on the shore. You can start a collection, or use the shells to decorate by filling glass containers, scattering them on window sills or decorating picture frames. You can also make charts and graphs of the different animals, sizes, colors and shapes of shells you collected.

3. Build a sand castle: Every year around summer time I take my boys to the dollar store to stock up on buckets and shovels for the beach. We are not very skilled at sand castle construction, but we have a lot of fun trying. I learned that the trick to getting your castle to stand is to use wet sand. My boys have fun collecting buckets of sand that we pile in rows and columns to build our kingdom. We also use some of our sea shell collection as decorations.

4. Pick up trash: Sadly, the beach can be covered with litter. I like to take a few minutes before we head home to pick up any garbage that we see on the sand and near the water. Especially be on the lookout for those plastic soda rings those are very deadly for the sea animals.

5. Have fun! Get out there and splash in the water with your children. The waves can be a ton of fun. My boys like to be thrown into the big waves when we are at the beach. I can’t pick them up anymore, but I can gently push them into the water. Be willing to do something you might not enjoy for the sake of making a memory with your children. It’s worth it!

BONUS: Many of us like to gather books to read before we go to the beach, so you’ll be familiar with what you see while you’re there. Here are some of our favorites:

North American Wildlife: An Illustrated Guide (perfect for identifying just about everything you’ll find at the beach – or elsewhere)
Let’s Read and Find Out Science Starfish
Let’s Read and Find Out Science “What Lives in a Shell?”
Seashells, Crabs and Sea Stars: A Take-Along Book
The Seaside Switch (a book about the tides)

Those are just a few ideas of ways to have fun with your family at the beach. We usually spend an entire afternoon/late evening in the sun. I pack lunch/dinner, snacks and lots of water.

What are some of your favorite things to do at the beach?

10 Things to Do At the Park

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One of my favorite places to hang out with my boys is the park. Living in Florida means that it’s usually warm enough to go outside all the time. While the playground equipment provides a lot of fun for my boys, I have found that there are many other things to do at the park that are just as fun {and sometimes educational}.

10 Things to Do with Your Kids at the Park

1. Have a picnic: On a really nice day pack up lunch and head to the park. I have an old comforter in my trunk that we use for our picnics at the park. One days when we just need to get out and get some fresh air a picnic can be just what we need.

2. Read a book: This one goes well with #1. When we have a picnic at the park I always take something to read. I will read to my boys while they eat their lunches. Sometimes it’s something for school (a history book) and sometimes it’s whatever read aloud we are working on. I also take something to read by myself while my boys play.

3. Take a nature walk: My boys love to explore and this year we are taking more time for nature walks. When we are at a park I try to take a 10-15 minutes when we first get there or right before we leave to go on a nature walk. We walk around the park and observe nature. We look for plants and animals. One year we visited the same park every week and we got to watch as ducklings hatched and grew. My boys also found a tadpole pond and we were able to watch the transformation from tadpole to frog.

4. Art: My boys love to paint and create and make messes. The park is a great place for this because there’s no mess in your house to clean up. My boys love watercolors and chalk pastels so these are usually what we take with us to the park. They get to draw or paint things that they see at the park or whatever pops into their heads. This can also be a great tie in with nature walks. Sometimes my boys will draw something that we found on our walk.

5. Fly a kite: My boys love to fly kites! Sadly I take after Charlie Brown when it comes to kite flying. But the park is a great place for kite flying. There’s lots of open space and grass to run. And if you need some help there’s usually someone there to help you out.

6. Target practice: My boys love to shoot things. We have cap guns, swords, nerf guns and archery sets everywhere. There really isn’t much room in our tiny apartment for my boys to really have fun with these toys so from time to time we take our armory to the playground.

7. Games: Re-live your childhood by playing some of your favorite games (hide-n-seek, red rover, tag, etc). My boys love to play hide and seek at the park because there are so many places to hide. If you have a big group of people red rover can be a lot of fun. My boys are always asking me for new games to play with kids at the park.

8. Ball Game: Grab those soccer balls, footballs and baseballs when you head to the park. Take advantage of the extra space to run and play and the extra kids to add to the fun!

9. Climb Trees: My boys love to climb trees. Every time that we go to a new park they run around looking for trees to climb. I love watching them climb like monkeys. Our favorite park has many trees and I love watching as my boys get older and are able to climb more trees.

10. Have fun: Get out there and play with your kids! My boys love it when I slide and climb and run around with them at the park.

What are some of your favorite things to do at the park?

Busy mom, take a nap!

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January was a rough month for me. My youngest son broke his arm the first weekend of the year. The following week a slightly romantic relationship ended. Then I was really sick for a while and just when I started to feel better, my mom was in an accident in my car. Thankfully no one was hurt, but my car was out of commission for a while. I remember lying down in my bed one night with the weight of stress on my shoulders and realized that I was exhausted. So I did something that I don’t do often: I slept.

And I don’t mean that I went to bed for the night. I slept. I went to bed early and woke up late. My boys made themselves cereal and watched cartoons when I went back to bed a few hours later. I stayed in my jammies for a few days because I just didn’t have the energy to get dressed. I was exhausted. And I’d learned that sometimes when life gets to busy I need to take a nap.

Why You Should Learn to Rest

Being a single, homeschooling mama of two boys is a lot of hard work. Add the fact that my oldest is all over the autism spectrum and that both my boys are in a limit-testing stage and I’m just overwhelmed. Usually I would just go and go until I crashed. After years of crashing and burning I decided to try something different. I decided to learn to rest and to take a nap when I needed it. Here’s what I’ve learned:

When we rest we give God room to work in our lives. I am very good at trying to fix everything and everyone around me. Basically I’m good at getting in God’s way. In January when I was sleeping a lot I had the chance to see God work some wonderful miracles in my life. Things that I know would not have happened if I’d been up running around making a mess of things.
Resting gives other people a chance to help you out. The control freak in me always wants to be in control. I’m sure can’t relate to that right? Being too tired to move. And being without a car forced me to lean on the people in my life that are always trying to help me out.
I took some time to heal. The reason that stress hits me so hard often is because I’m not given my body time to heal. One year I walked around with a serious sinus infection for 3 months because I was just too busy to take care of myself. In the end I was in so much pain that I was screaming every 5 minutes. I ended up having to take double doses of super strong antibiotics and pain pills to get better. When I start to feel sick I’ve learned to rest a little bit more.
Resting also gave me a chance to get my priorities in order. When I stopped being able to do everything, I realized how much I was trying to do that wasn’t really important. Once I was {finally} well rested I was able to focus on what was really important. I spent more time with my boys, relaxed a little on our schoolwork and cut way back on how often we were away from home.

The next time you feel a little overwhelmed busy mom, try taking a nap. even if it doesn’t sort things out you’ll have gotten some extra sleep.

~LaToya , Learning to Let HIM Lead

When Valentine’s Day is Hard

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Valentine’s Day has always been a hard day for me. When my marriage started to crumble it became almost unbearable. Even now almost 4 years later the day is still hard. Watching couples gush over each other is hard. Seeing beautiful pregnant ladies is hard. Watching families playing together at the playground is hard. It’s hard all year round but there’s something about a day that supposed to be all about love that makes it harder.

Feel the pain but don’t wallow in self pity

What are we to do when our homes and hearts are broken and there’s love all around? Feel the pain. Anytime that you try to ignore that ache in your heart you are at risk of making some poor choices. I don’t know about you, but when I start trying to ignore the fact that I’m hurting I usually find myself in a sticky situation. A situation that always ends up with me in more pain than before I started.

You’ve got to feel the pain to get to the healing. But don’t throw yourself a pity party.

Forgive the person that’s causing you pain

Yes I know it’s the last thing that you want to do but you have to. The hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do was to forgive my ex for walking out on our family. But I had to do it or I was going to be no good to my children, my friends or anyone else that came across my path.

If you are at the point where you are in new relationships it may be a little tricky. You get your hopes tied up that maybe this man is the one, that maybe you’ll get it right this time. And then it doesn’t work out the way you expected. Maybe you both realize that it’s not a good fit. Maybe you decide that you just aren’t ready for a commitment yet. Or maybe, dear sister you find yourself ready to commit to someone else and they reject you.

Whatever the situation forgive. Every single time you think about that hurt they caused, forgive. Forgive them and then forgive yourself.

Remember that He loves you

My last piece of encouragement for you is to remember that He loves you. God loves you all the time no matter what. When your husband tells you that you aren’t pretty anymore, God says you are beautiful. When you feel worthless and unwanted remember that Jesus loved you so much that He died on the cross for you. When that person that you care about so much decides to betray and hurt you, God loves you. He loves you and will be there to pick up the pieces of your broken heart and make you whole again.

Have some fun

I know that getting through Valentine’s Day is hard, but one of the best ways to avoid overfocusing on our own pain is to focus on others. I do that by having fun with my boys on February 14th. Here are some suggestions for you:

Watch A Charlie Brown Valentine
Bake and decorate some heart shaped cookies
Spend the day with some good friends
Make some cards with your children and take an hour or so to deliver them personally
Get all dressed up and take your children out for a meal or let them take you out (even you have to give them the money to do it)

If you are hurting today please leave a comment so I can pray with you. You don’t have to leave any details a simple “pray for me” will do.

~LaToya, Learning to Let HIM Lead

Heidi St. John

Speaking the Truth in Love