Making homeschool decisions easy
Once Thanksgiving has come and gone, we enter the rush toward Christmas. With family, church, and homeschooling obligations it can seem like we are always a little bit behind during the month of December. Why not consciously plan ahead and choose to create a little margin? Homeschooling offers us that kind of flexibility. In our homeschool, we will be setting aside the bulk of our
Morning Time goes by many names: circle time, morning basket, even symposium. In our home this time is anchored by our history study. We read aloud from our spine book, look at maps, and have rollicking discussions. From this firm foundation, we move into individual skill work in language arts and math. But our time learning together anchors and defines our homeschool. My oldest was
Nature studies. Outside time. Looking. Investigating. These are the things we love! I ran across something called Exploring Nature with Children and was really curious about it – it looked like something we would really enjoy – and I was right! Exploring Nature with Children, a Charlotte Mason Method This Charlotte Mason type study consists of a 240 page pdf file by Lynn Seddon of Raising
On any ordinary day, after we have put in a good share of work, you can find us gathered at the table sharing a pot of tea. After everyone is settled with tea and cinnamon toast, I open a book of poems and read one. We might return to the poem again in the coming days. But that’s the heart of our simple practice–tea and
The words “creative homeschool” can conjure up images of arts, crafts, music, writing, and drama. It can also, however, refer to creatively fostering learning, to thinking outside the box and developing new approaches to the actual process of learning. Both of these aspects are vital parts of happy homeschools, so sit back, relax, and read about all kinds of homeschool creativity. We hope your family
Planning for art appreciation is one way to make sure it happens. Many times we leave the planning to chance and then when our busy week hits, we find ourselves dropping this important and fun subject from the schedule. Art and music appreciation is the counter-balance to all your academic subjects and for certain kinds of learners it is the breath of fresh air they
When we first began home educating our eldest son we began with the Five In A Row Curriculum. I was smitten with the fact that it used many beloved picture books and would introduce us to some new ones we weren’t quite familiar with. We used the Five In A Row (FIAR) Curriculum for five beautiful years with our children before it was, sadly, time
So now your children know how to read. Congratulations! That’s a major step, but does it mean that their reading instruction finished? Not at all, we’ve found. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading teaches the average reader how to understand, analyze, and learn from books. It takes students beyond the basics of reading to become scholars. It is, I think,
