Hoooray! It’s finally fall—our all-time favorite season. It’s just cozy! There are so many favorite things that arrive with fall. The crisp, new chill in the air comes with promises of frosty mornings curled up with hot cocoa and the smells of gingerbread, spice cookies, and hot apple cider. The colors, the smells, the cool mornings that finally break through the heavy, muggy hotness of late summer—we love them all! But what beats even that—hands down—is that feeling of overwhelming gratefulness we get when we see the yellow school bus drive right by our house without stopping for our children. They are ours! We know them so well since we’re with them all day, and we can’t even imagine giving up any of the short amount of time that they have left with us while they’re still children. We are truly blessed! Do you not feel the same way?

So what did you do over the summer? Any fun trips? Lots of sightseeing? Barbecues? Play days? Campouts? Yup, us too. It was a great summer (even if it was too hot) and we are so thankful for the new friends we’ve made. We can’t believe it’s been a whole year since we packed up and moved from California to Tennessee. It’s gorgeous out here!

We won’t ramble on too long. We are just glad to be in your home again and are totally excited about this issue. There’s a lot to talk about! If you flip to the very back, you’ll find a very fun, new feature. We are introducing just a handful of the vast number of homeschool graduates out there. We hope to turn this into an ongoing column, so if you are a homeschool grad and would like to have your picture (and 50-100 “graduation speech” words) included in an upcoming issue, go to our new Homeschool Alumni webpage (at our website at www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com and let us know that you’d like to be back there. While we’re on the subject, here is a very special congratulations to our niece, Coie Igarashi; you will see her featured in the back, as well. Coie’s parents, Geoff and Jen Igarashi, are exceptionally proud of her. And our oldest son, Paul Jr. (16), will be graduating in May of next year (’07). Where does the time go?

Hey, make sure you come to our site and vote on your favorite curriculum for all major categories. Let’s award the winning companies in the Spring again—we need your help! The excellent vendors around the homeschool community should be recognized for all their hard work and wonderful service. By casting your vote, you’re essentially saying “thank you” to those whose products have helped you along the way. You can access the survey from our home page, which looks different now, by the way! Guess what you can do there? Click on the magazine graphic and see what happens. Just do it; it’s so neat! Once you get the magazine on your screen, click the upper right corners. See how the pages actually scroll back? Turn each page! Wild, huh?! Technology is so … technologically cool, heh heh.

So what else? Let’s see. Both of us (Paul and Gena) are speaking all over the place lately! It’s such a blast! In fact, it may be a little late for some of you to make plans, but on November 10 and 11 we’ll be out at Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. The convention is called The National Conference on Christian Apologetics. “Timeless Truth for a Truthless Time” is the tagline. Keynote speakers are guys like Josh Mc- Dowell (interviewed by TOS a couple of years ago), Lee Strobel, and Ravi Zacharias. It’s sponsored by Southern Evangelical Seminary in conjunction with Focus on the Family. And we’re speaking there! Yay! Bring your teens and come on out if you can. Both of us are delivering talks, so please, please come keep us company! See the conference website at www.NationalApologeticsConference.com for more information.

Paul’s one-hour talk is called “Homeschooling Is Not an Option” (that’s a head-turner title, huh?), where he discusses various data and facts about what’s going on in today’s public schools, why a Christian child should take not take part in them, and a general message to the church. Very biblically based. And Gena’s one-hour seminar is “The Well-Integrated Homeschool.” She goes over the numerous ways to achieve a relaxed mindset while homeschooling; it should never be a chore! A laid back, joyful homeschool is a realistic, long-lasting homeschool. Long term is the goal, and we want to encourage families to stick with their commitment to home educate their children all the way through. Gena gives a few good strategies to help families lighten up and help their children enjoy learning as much as life itself. You don’t want to miss either of these talks! So, if we’re out your way over the next several months, be sure to come see us, please. We can’t wait to meet you! You can find bios on each seminar at our website, www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com. See you on the road; we bring our four children to almost every engagement, so come and get to know them as well; they’re highly social.

Speaking of “social,” if you are anything like us, your eyes probably glaze over a little every time you hear the same old question about “socialization” come your way (for the billionth time). Perhaps you’ve developed a small twitch over it. Well, twitch no longer. It’s kinda become obvious, to us anyway, that those doing the asking don’t really know the definition of the word. Think about it. What is socialization? It has to do with society, of course, but more specifically, community. Look it up. To have good socialization abilities, one must understand and function within COMMUNITY. In a homeschooled child, this boils down to the continual positive influences (and thus relationship-building effect) over the child by his or her parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, pastors, church family, community leaders, those with whom them buy, sell, and trade, people from sports teams and outside curricular activities (such as the librarian or piano tutor)—anyone newborn to elderly and everything in between, certainly not a stewpot of a one-aged group as that primary community of influence. Yuck. Within a child’s society, he finds his own identity, so it’s important that Christ rule that society, yes? Naturally, the parents are going to direct the socialization processes if they care about their children’s spiritual, physical, and overall well-being.

By the way, a hundred years ago and back, this was everyone’s idea of society (family, township, church), or socialization. The age segregation experiment is very modern. But all that socialization is, is the learning of and interacting within the surrounding culture. Homeschool parents have determined which parts of the culture to expose their kids to—and which to shelter them from. So are homeschool kids lacking? Not from what we’ve seen. In fact, they seem to be able to function better. They look you in the eye, love to interact with people (no matter what the age or class “differences”), and have confidence in themselves. They don’t perform education tricks for treats; they simply live life and soak in knowledge as a part of living. In the public school system, kids often find themselves compartmentalizing learning, which is crippling (many of you know what we mean, from your own public school experience). Teachers unintentionally send the message that learning is a chore, or boring, because from kindergarten they’re already bribing kids to read with lollipops, stickers, and other prizes. Some kids deliberately choose the “easy books” so they get the reward faster. That’s backwards. We don’t give treats to kids for living life, do we? The living is the treat. So is the learning! They go hand in hand. To compartmentalize is to cripple.

So when someone brings up socialization (again), ask them what they mean. Tell them first to define that word, and when they attempt to do so off the top of their head, let them know that what they’re probably trying to say is “social-lifing” and that your kids do too much of that already. Besides, in the schools, teachers don’t want kids talking and messing around in class throughout the day. Why put them there to gain any sort of social life? Home is where they belong.

Check out the sidebars at the end of this column. You’ll note two exciting CONTESTS that The Old Schoolhouse is doing right now. Participate!

The Homeschool Minute™ is a new enewsletter put out by TOS. It is supposed to eventually morph into a podcast and hopefully syndicated radio spot sometime down the road, Lord willing. So be sure to hit the home page of our site and sign up. It’s short but packed with homeschooling information, and it often features contests and prizes. Sign up! On our home page, you’ll see a new box prompting you to do so.

Homeschoolopoly! Of course, we should have known it was coming, huh? TOS Mag is there, and so is HomeschoolBlogger.com and TheSchoolhouseStore.com. HSLDA, Rosetta Stone, CLASS, Christian Liberty Press, KONOS, Sonlight, Greek ’n’ Stuff, WriteShop, WORLD Magazine—all kinds of great companies are gracing the board. They have Grace and Mercy cards in lieu of Chance and Community Chest. You have to pay “public school tax” if you land on the wrong square. And instead of going to jail, HSLDA lets you get out of court for free. Pretty funny. We love this game! Oh, and there are 500 silver tickets and one gold ticket in random boxes, all sponsored by TOS Mag. Go see what you might win just by buying a game (the gold ticket winner is going to be JOLLY—we’re planning to feature them in the magazine, too). Every homeschool family needs Homeschoolopoly, definitely! Buy one for your kids right now; Christmas is right around the corner. www.Homeschoolopoly.com is where to go. Tell them TOS sent you!

Okay, well, this issue is very cool. We have Amanda Bennett here talking about the history of medicine, which is so interesting. Lost arts stuff is covered as well, just in time for the holidays (CHRISTmas). And check out all the higher education articles this issue. High school is FUN. It’s not hard to homeschool your high schooler. Parents all over the world are doing it, and it’s wonderful. We have two kids in high school, and not only is it a delight, it’s actually easy to homeschoool them. Credits, transcripts, life skills—it’s all a breeze. Be sure to visit our Schoolhouse Store, where shipping is always free (even if you order only one item). The discounts in there are incredible, too. We have an e-book that details exactly how to educate the high schooler “From Transcripts to Graduation.” Come take a look! www.TheSchoolhouseStore.com.

Shall we quit gabbing now and let you get to readin’? Fine. We’re zippin’ it. Thanks for being here; we sure love you guys.

—The Suarez Clan
Publisher@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com