Meet Mary
The HomeSchool FlipHouse helps moms create a homeschool space they love, and a space that inspires their children to learn and to pursue virtue.
Hi, I’m Mary Carmichael, and the HomeSchool FlipHouse is my first blog. I’m a wife to a crop farmer in a small North Carolina town and a mom of 4. I’m a homeschool alumna, and an Ave Maria University alumna (BA in History).
I grew up around my parent’s hobby of house flipping, and after college, I flipped a few of my own houses to pay off my student loans. After I got married and the babies came, house flipping became too much. But I had one house leftover, which I had rented out. It’s a cute, little (1045 square feet!) two-bedroom home built in 1937, and it’s in the heart of our small downtown, just blocks away from my church and our local library. When the renters moved out I began the renovation process in June 2020, thinking I would sell it.
That’s when I began to dream: what if I could transform this last flip house into a dedicated homeschool space for my family?
The more I thought about it, the more advantages I began to see. This will be my last flip house for a while, and I’m delighted to flip it into something for my children and my family — an environment dedicated to educating saints!
Along the way, I will share insights about how to design an amazing homeschool environment: a place where mom loves to be, and a place that also motivates children to learn and helps them to pursue virtue.
I’m convinced of this:
The environment is just as important as the books we choose when we traditionally think of the word “curriculum,” but it has a non-conscious effect on us, making it difficult to grasp how impactful it is.
Where we are effects (with varying intensity, depending on temperament) how we as mothers perceive ourselves and our homeschools. The environment also affects the level of motivation and performance in our children, because it always impacts moods, feelings, and behaviors, it triggers habits and body postures, and even impacts thoughts and memories. For some children who are especially visually sensitive, the impact can be very strong.
As complex as this may initially seem, at its core, the homeschool environment simply consists of the atmosphere created by the mother’s heart, plus the physical arrangement of the homeschool space tailored to suit the unique family.
An optimal homeschool space is an atmosphere created by a mother’s joyful dedication to the task of homeschooling combined with a beautiful and functional physical space.
This isn’t just something we can go out and buy today and be done with! This is something that happens over time, with grace from God, with insights from fascinating data, and through the love we have for our families. Most of all, it is the result of dedicated insights that only the mother can bring, which will deepen with time and prayer.
At the HomeSchool FlipHouse, you can expect to find research topics on questions like these:
- How does my heart as a mother impact the design of my children’s learning environment?
- How does the environment impact my ability as a mother to teach my children?
- How do I make this learning environment beautiful for everyone—a place that I, as a mom, want to teach in and that my children want to learn in?
- Since grace builds on nature, how can I work with my children and with our environment to maximally predispose nature to receive grace?
- How does my personality type and the temperaments of my children affect the design of our learning environment?
- Can I find joy instead of overwhelm in the lifestyle of large family homeschooling?
- How do I organize all this stuff?
If you are inspired by the idea than an environment is a powerful tool to harness in your homeschool…
If you’re interested in the four temperaments and how they can impact your environment design ideas…
If you enjoy watching “homeschool room tours,” and seeing homeschool spaces…
Or if you are tired of feeling overwhelmed in your learning space…
Then you will love the HomeSchool FlipHouse!
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. Sign-up so that you don’t miss my latest ideas.