WALDSFE

The Blanding Family welcomes you to their school website. There are many great and wonderful things you will find on these pages. Doreen, head school marm, mother, wife and webmaster, has spent many hours putting these pages together.

On these pages you will get to know her as well as the family. Please be patient as this isn't a finished product--not yet anyway. Some of the pages you will want to visit can be found on the left hand side, but before you begin your journey though this site, please take a moment to read this page as you will get a better understanding of who we are, what we are about and why in the world we would do something so silly as educate our family at home.

The Blanding Family

Who We Are:

Helaman's Academy is what we call our home and school. Why Helaman? Helaman, the son of Alma, was a prophet, general and great man from The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ. He commanded a group of young men, commonly called "The 2000 Stripling Warriors" or "The Army of Helaman," in a major battle in the America's about 63 years before Christ came.

These young men, as told in Alma 57:21 "...did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them." They fought some extremely terrible and well trained armies and through their obedience and faithfulness not one young warrior was lost. Now this was because, "... the faith of these of whom I have spoke; they are young, and their minds are firm, and they do put their trust in God continually." (verse 27.) These are the young saints we want to be like and raise.

"The Generals"

We are Steve and Doreen Blanding and we live in Redmond, Washington. Doreen is the author, owner, operator of this website and is the "I" through out the site (unless otherwise noted).

I'm a "native" Washingtonian (lived my first two year in S. Utah, but that doesn't count <smile>). I grew up in the desert of Eastern Washington as a full blooded Richland Bomber! My parents and some of my siblings still live in the beautiful Columbia Basin. You will find out more about me as you navigate your way through this massive web page or click here for a brief bio. (And to think this started out as a place for me to organize all the web links I keep on my computer.)

If you want to know more about Steve, see his website. I'll let him speak for himself. But I want to add, he is the best thing that ever happened to me. He lets me do crazy things like educate our children at home. One day I asked him why he allowed me to homeschool our children. He replied, "You would do it anyway." See how sweet he is.

He really does help me in educating our children. He is keenly aware of the stuff we are learning and tries to help. He is constantly looking for learning opportunities with our children and is always willing to lend a hand. He is the best! But most importantly he is my support, my rock and my backbone. I love him and am so glad we are walking this path together.

"The Warriors"

We have six wonderful children. They are Kray (1991), Jason (1993), Mike (1995), Matt (1997), Chris (1999) and Jessie (2000). You will learn about them as you tour this website. Each one of them is very unique, has special gifts and is a delight to our family.

The Big Picture

Our basic goal is to have children who know how to find the answers to their questions. We want them to love to learn, to stretch and let their knowledge grow and expand and to be good, faithful missionaries, wonderful parents, loving spouses and honorable citizens. We want our children to want to be in an eternal family unit. We want our children to love each other, learn from each other, be each other's best friend and want to be around each other. We want to have children who call us when they leave the nest, and not just when they are in trouble. We want to have a happy home with happy children. We want love to rebound from the walls of our home.

At our home the motto is "life is school and school is life." We are very basic in our approach to schooling. Learning will happen, you the teacher and parent must help the children find that learning.

The Method

Because of the number of children, each one with unique talents and ways to learn, we believe that the unit study approach works best for our family. But we also try to pull in a bit from all the many methods of homeschooling. We love the philosophies of Charlotte Mason; they are gentle and full of truth. We love to bring great classic literature into our home; there is much to be learned from classic literature and the classical education. We love child led learning because it is easier to learn something you are interested in. We love the mentoring philosophy of the Thomas Jefferson Education. Every one of these methods at some point, fit into our style of homeschooling. We even do unschooling and just let the kids be kids and learn what they want to learn. That's the beauty of homeschooling.

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Last update: March, 2007

Disclaimer: Though WALDSFE, Helaman's Academy and/or Doreen Blanding does its best to thoroughly screen every product, company, website and individual listed on these pages, please note that WALDSFE, Helaman's Academy and/or Doreen Blanding does not endorse any product, company, website or individual listed. If you have a problem with a page, find broken links, or companies that no longer support homeschooling please send email .