About Us

Despite the title of the page, there isn't an “us” behind this site, just me.  I'm Ellen Crain, homeschooling mother of three great kids.  I live with my husband, kids and dog in the Eastern suburbs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area.  I run a local homeschooling e-newsletter called “The Western Wisconsin Homeschool News” and am the contact person for my homeschool group, East Metro Eclectic Homeschoolers. 

Why do we homeschool?

I always find it easier to explain why we started homeschooling than why we homeschool now.  We started down the path of homeschooling when we moved to a new home in the suburbs of Washington DC, and couldn't find a preschool with space for our oldest daughter.  Although it seems silly now, at the time I was very worried that she would fall behind if she weren't in school, and so I began researching what we could do together at home.  We liked learning together so much, we decided to keep going when she reached kindergarten age.  Now homeschooling seems like such a natural choice, it's hard for me to articulate why we do it.  It's how we live, and although we are open to making another educational choice if one of our kids needs it, I have trouble imagining our becoming a school family (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

What is HomeschoolRecess.com?

A virtual community for homeschooling parents which gives each member a range of tools to use on the website.  These tools include:

• An event calendar that lets you easily see what's going on near your home,
• Flexible networking options that allow you to communicate with homeschoolers you know either by adding them to your “friend list” or through groups, similar to yahoogroups,
• Free classified ads to buy and sell curriculum,
• We make it easy to list books, websites, and places that help with your homeschooling and share them with your friends or the entire community.

Why did I build HomeschoolRecess.com?

I wanted there to be an inclusive online community for homeschoolers that is easy to find and use. It's just too hard to find other homeschoolers in your community, especially if you're new to homeschooling and the tools homeschoolers have available to communicate online don't work very well for our purposes-- it's too hard to plan and promote a fieldtrip or find that book that someone mentioned on an email list last month or last year that you've suddenly found a need for.  I've tried to make a website that is a tool, not a timesink, because, hey, I know you've got better things to do than sit in front of the computer-- I'm busy too!