Making time for the important things in life
Last year, when I was looking into language arts options for our homeschool, Julie Bogart’s Brave Writer kept cropping up. I snooped around, dithered, and finally (gulp) purchased The Writer’s Jungle to learn for myself what the fuss is about. I made it through the first couple of chapters and shelved it under “impractical” Then [...]
It’s February. Like most homeschoolers, I’m thinking about curricula for next year. (What is it about February that does this to us?) As I plan for next year, I’m reflecting on what we’ve used so far this year. For those of you who may be similarly shopping in February, I’ll share my thoughts on the [...]
I’ve learned something about choosing homeschooling curriculum: its appeal to me is every bit as important as its appeal to my students. If I enjoy opening a set of books, I’ll open them more often. If I find a curriculum boring or confusing or annoying, then I am extremely creative in thinking of reasons not [...]
Since we discovered Singapore Math’s Primary Mathematics a little more than a year ago, this curriculum has become the spine of our math program. We continue to use Miquon Math, conducting math labs on Friday and using Miquon-inspired approaches in our lessons. Singapore, however, is the main program used daily around here. Why Singapore Math? [...]
A year ago I shared our early experiences with All About Spelling. I thought I’d share an update on it; after all, we’ve now used it for over a year. Now in Level 3, our tile board is a lot busier (and messier) these days. And we use the tile board regularly, but not as [...]
Last year, when Tasha was in kindergarten and showed an avid interest in writing stories, I decided that I needed a program to help me support her in her writing. I picked up the first writing program that I found and launched it. It ended up being a poor choice, and we both suffered through [...]
I thought I’d share some of our lessons learned with Miquon here, hoping that they might help someone else who is launching it with their students. Because Miquon is so difficult to define (is it a program? an approach? a methodology?), I’ll begin by sharing how we’ve come to understand Miquon in our home. What [...]
Draw Write Now has been one of the best resources that we’ve added to our homeschooling shelves. The full set of eight books took some work to find in Canada; however, they have been well worth the cost and effort. Draw Write Now was designed by a teacher who empathized with the frustration that her [...]
For months now I’ve had The Story of the World: Ancients on our shelves, just waiting for this school year to start. I’ve been so excited about the program that I wondered if I had unrealistic expectations of it. Nope. Not unrealistic. Story of the World is great. We’re using the Activity Guide that accompanies the [...]
Some of the best “school” memories that we have had over the past year have revolved around the Five in a Row program. (I’ve already written about FIAR, but as a quick recap, the idea is that we read the same picture book together every day for a week and do a different activity each [...]
