How We Feed and Homeschool 10 Kids Without Burnout

By normal standards, this life shouldn't be possible. Ten kids, homeschooling, growing our own food, raising animals, running a household. Most people assume this kind of life leads to burnout and chaos. But we've found that when God calls you to something, according to his word, he gives grace for it. Not all at once, just enough for the next faithful step. The voting party. So the one we're going to do next is called a woman and a girl driving. If you live outside the norm, if you go beyond the default and decide to homeschool your kids instead of sending them to school, or have more than the average size family, maybe you've heard some of the comments we've heard. Good for you, but I could never do that. You're going to spread yourself too thin. You can't do it all. Aren't you overwhelmed all the time? How do you afford that many kids? It sounds exhausting. You must never get a break. There's no way you can homeschool that many. Do you have time for yourself? You're brave, but I could never. And to be honest, from the outside, it does look impossible. My husband and I come from families of just four children. So to us, that was a big family. If you would have told us when we first got married that someday we'd be homeschooling 10 kids, we would both have laughed at you. But over the years, the Lord has changed our hearts. We've realized that kids really are a blessing and we enjoy having them with us, bringing them alongside, learning along with us in everything that we're doing. So yes, 10 children homeschooling. We grow a lot of our own food here on our small property. We raise animals in the summer, have a huge garden. We cook meals from scratch. By the world's standards, this should probably be chaos. And truthfully, sometimes it is. But what we've learned over the years is when God calls you to something that aligns with his word, he gives you grace for it. Not all at once and not in advance, but enough grace for today. In this video, I want to talk to you about what it's like taking that step of faith, but also just share practically how we feed and homeschool our family of 12. If you're new here, hi, my name is Sherry. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom, married to my high school sweetheart, Nelson. We've been married for 25 years. This is, we're wrapping up our 16th year of homeschooling and I love encouraging other families here on my channel and on the blog, ourlifehomeschooling.com. On my channel, I share weekly encouragement to help you keep homeschooling over the long haul. But if you want to know exactly how I homeschool our 10 kids, my practical four-step routine, our family first framework, this is exactly what I teach step-by-step in my brand new course, beyond school, the home education breakthrough. This is a course for new and current homeschooling families. It's a mom mentorship where I tell you everything I've learned in my 16 years of homeschooling. One mom who bought the course said, this is an incredible resource you've provided for the homeschool community. I only wish I had access to this when I started out. The modules are so well organized. There are lists, so you don't forget about anything. You have truly touched on all the topics anyone just starting homeschool or a seasoned homeschool mom could possibly want. Click on the link in the description box to learn how you too can give your kids an excellent education that brings your family closer together instead of pulling you in separate directions. So it's not easy living outside the norm. It's not easy to go against the flow, but I have found that God's grace is enough when he's called you to do something, when it goes along with his word, he will equip you. And it may feel at times like more than you can handle, but one verse I read recently from second Corinthians in my personal devotions has really encouraged me so many times over the years. This is second Corinthians nine verse eight, and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. That verse has become so true in our lives because the truth is there have been many moments where my husband and I have looked at each other and thought, how are we going to do this? How do you homeschool this many children? How do you feed this many people? How do you keep up with laundry and dishes, the constant needs? And the answer is in our own strength, we can't. People say the Lord will never give you more than you can handle, but this job has always felt like more than I can handle. I can't do this in my own strength, but God is faithful. Whatever you place in his hands, whether it's your marriage, your finances, your children, your future, when you trust him and walk in obedience, he has a way of making the impossible possible. We are almost finished with our school year. We have one more week to go and one of the books I'm finishing up with my eight-year-old and my five-year-old has been sitting in on it too, is an Ingrid and Edgar Dallaire book. This is the Benjamin Franklin one. I've done Abraham Lincoln and George Washington with them and we're finishing with Benjamin Franklin. So I've created some copywork to go along with it and you can see our eight-year-old is doing it right there. This has been the perfect accompaniment for him to do along with the book. You can find it on the blog, ourlifehomeschooling.com and I'll also link it below. I do want to get into some practical strategies that we use that have helped us homeschool and feed our large family. People assume large families equal chaos, but this kind of thinking comes from a mentality that sees children as a burden. Children are not the problem. The disconnect is not having a purpose or not having a plan. When a family works together, serves, learns together, it changes everything. When we first started out having children, we had no idea where this road would lead. We didn't have a master plan. We were not experts. We were just ordinary parents just trying to figure it out one step at a time. Little by little, year by year, God expanded our capacity. So you have one child, you learn how to adjust to that. Honestly, having our first child was a huge milestone for us. There was so much to learn and it got easier with our second and then easier with our third. Then our kids had siblings to play with and that made it even easier. But I think sometimes people imagine that they see a large family and they think like, Oh, how do you do all that? But really you just have one child at a time and you learn how to adjust to a new normal with each new family member. We slowly simplified more and more. We realized that we didn't need half of the baby items we bought with our first child. We didn't need half of the toys we had. Kids play with simple things like boxes. They love to play outside. They love to build forts with blankets. So we have some basic play toys, but none of the flashy stuff that you find, um, drawing your attention when you walk into the toy store. We learned to make simpler meals. Um, I don't experiment with a whole lot of meals. We make some of the same things that we love over and over again. This also makes it really easy for grocery shopping because I always know what to get. We get most of the same things every time we go. Occasionally we'll need something special, but that's more the exception than the norm. One of the biggest things we did was make our family the priority, not the schoolwork, um, not checking off everything on the to-do list or things that might look impressive to people on the outside. We decided early on that relationships mattered the most. We want our kids to have opportunities and they really do. They go to birthday parties. Um, they've been able to take specialized classes and lessons over the years as we've been able to fit it in, but these things can quickly clutter your schedule and really leave very little time for family. Extracurricular activities are fun, but it's really surprising how quickly things can add up and you can realize, you look back on your week and you think, I don't know if we even had one night at home where we were all here just enjoying a peaceful night. So our family comes first. If our kids are able to do some of these special things for fun, then we make it happen. But if it takes away from our family life, that is a huge loss we don't want our kids to miss out on. You need to really weigh the pros and cons when it comes to how busy your family is, because missing out on family life is also a great loss. Another thing we have worked at doing is to encourage our kids to be independent. I thought this was taking a step back. I thought that I need to teach every single thing to each of my kids individually. I have a public school background and so that was just my mentality. But I learned very quickly that kids thrive when they take ownership of their work and when someone is keeping them accountable. So we work really hard to encourage independence. Our kids are capable. Even when they're young, give them a job that they can do. It may be small. As soon as you're changing your two-year-old's diaper, they can take the diaper and put it in the trash. They can learn when they're three how to make their bed. Everyone is contributing to family life. Everyone has chores and we are all doing whatever it takes to help make the family run. This changes the atmosphere of the home. Instead of one exhausted parent trying to do everything alone, the family learns to work together as a team. Another huge part of our life is teaching our kids to work hard and we do this especially through life skills. This is something that really kicks into high gear about this time of year. We raise all the meat we eat on our property here. We have just about three acres. We have some broiler hens. Actually the chicks just came this week and so they're in the brooder. We have four pigs that came last week and two of those we exchange with a friend of ours for beef. They raise beef. We raise their pork and we exchange it. We also have a huge garden and our kids are involved in helping us plant and especially when harvest time comes, they all go out there. They're picking the vegetables, bringing them in. They help cut the beans. They help with all the canning, the pickles, the strawberry jam. They're a part of all of it. We've even given each of our kids a section of the yard or the garden to weed and so I'll set a timer and we all have our spots. We'll go out. We'll weed in our respective spots for that amount of time. When families work all together like this, kids see their work as a contribution. They are literally helping to grow and raise the food that we eat for dinner every day and I really think this makes work more meaningful for kids when they see how much they're able to be a part of something so big. We haven't always lived at this property. For many years we lived on a third of an acre closer to the city but even when we were there, we may not have raised our own chicken or pork but we had a huge garden right in our front yard. Our backyard was completely shaded. You couldn't grow anything back there so we decided to just make our whole front yard a garden and it gave our kids something to go out and look at every day. It's something that really gave us, helped us to see that kids like being a part of meaningful work, of work that contributes. Some of the best lessons our kids have learned have not happened sitting at a table or even listening to me read a textbook. They've learned hard work, discipline, patience, responsibility. They've learned that work when you, especially when you work together, it's a good thing. It's not like a punishment. They see the rewards of raising their own food and that is just something that is a skill we really want all of our kids to know. And actually most of our kids have asked if they can have their own section of the garden so to make their own, to grow their own things. So my husband has a little spot in the garden for each of them that want to try this and I love to see that initiative in them. Now it's not all hard work around here. We like to have fun too. We've really tried to encourage a love of learning in our kids and I think this is best modeled when you're an interesting person yourself, you're always trying to learn something new, trying a new skill, your kids just naturally gravitate toward that. So when we're not doing work, our kids spend a lot of time just exploring their interests, reading, trying different things, learning through experimentation, sometimes failing, and our kids help with a lot of the cooking around here for fun because they like doing it. I've been spending the last couple weeks working on my kids' portfolios here and there as I have time and sometimes it'll be about lunchtime and I'm behind and more than once one of my kids has come up and asked if they can make lunch for that day. And you know sometimes it is messier when kids help out but it's so worth it as they grow older and they know how to cook from scratch and clean up after themselves. And as I mentioned, we've simplified our meals so our kids really know how to make everything that I normally make. Whenever we have a potluck or a birthday coming up, our kids usually ask if they can make the birthday cake or whatever we're taking. So one thing we had to learn as new parents with a growing family was to teach our kids responsibility and to realize that kids don't need to be entertained constantly. They actually thrive when you give them work to do, give them something meaningful, train them to solve their own problems, give them age-appropriate jobs. A capable child is a confident child. We're just ordinary parents but we serve an extraordinary God. By normal standards, this shouldn't work. But by God's grace, here we are. He's been faithful. He'll be faithful for you. Thanks for watching. Remember to click the link in the description box to see the new course, Beyond School, The Home Education Breakthrough. I'll see you next week.