What do you do when your homeschooled adult daughters and you dream about working together and sharing their passions with other homeschoolers? You create a space that fosters community, creativity and exploration and invite others to join in the fun.

 

Handmade House is the creation of Marguerita, Forrest & Fiona, built from their journey in homeschooling in Southern California. Marguerita has been working with and teaching children throughout her life. Her most prominent work being the founding Director of The Edible Schoolyard Project in Los Angeles. There she fostered community through gardening, cooking, and a farm to table lunch program. When her family's homeschooling journey began in 2016 Marguerita pivoted to share her love of teaching with the homeschool community, first at Burbank Homeschool Campus & later in her very cozy home kitchen & garden. Here in these early days of homeschooling Forrest and Fiona began assisting in Marguerita's classroom and their love for working as a collective continued to grow. The beauty of homeschooling is the opportunity to fall back to simpler times with apprenticing and we took full advantage of this.

 

Forrest's journey as an educator started in her teens as she explored the continents through food and helped build curriculum around the silk road as well as a deep dive into Latin America. Forrest's work with children spans working at Almost Home Childcare in her early teens to supporting other homeschool families in her late teens and twenties. Her work with homeschoolers includes lesson planning, math and writing instruction, executive functioning support for middle school & highschool learners and more recently movement & yoga classes. 

 

Fiona is a lifelong artist who happily follows the direction of her students and creates endlessly always following new passions. Fiona's journey as an educator started while apprenticing at Drawn2Art studio in Sherman Oaks and later as a small group art instructor with homeschoolers in our home. Fiona's artistry is also reflected in her baking skills and at any time can be found creating the perfect book club & tea party with the most beautiful book themed decorations, tablescapes and delightful bites. More recently Fiona completed her Esthetician Training and has been creating mini lessons for teens on skin care & skin health.