The world is preparing for yet another Christmas. My family enjoys a lot of things about Christmas—the lights, the food, the special family time, the gift-giving—but I don’t want us to become preoccupied with those things to the extent that we forget about why we celebrate the holiday in the first place. I want my […]
Curriculum That Works Together
It happened for the first time during our second week of homeschooling this fall. After finishing her English lesson, my second-grade daughter pulled out her spelling book to look at the day’s assigned worktext page. “Mom,” she yelled excitedly, “alphabetical order! I just learned this in English. It’s like I’m doing English and spelling at […]
Does My Advanced Reader Need a Reading Curriculum?
Last spring, my daughter’s first-grade class took the Iowa Assessments®. The test confirmed what my husband and I already knew—my daughter excels at reading. At that point she was already reading at a third-grade level, and I have no doubt that her reading skills have only increased since then, considering that she reads during almost […]
5 Field Trip Tips for Fun and Learning
Ask any child what he or she remembers most about the school year, and the answer will probably not include desks, worktext pages, or textbooks. I know my own memories as a homeschooled child don’t involve a lot of those things. Instead, I remember the extraordinary days—the day we took off school in the middle […]
Make Your Kindergarten Curriculum Work for You
Quite a few homeschoolers attend my church. Several months ago, I had nursery duty with three other homeschool moms. The topic of conversation? Homeschool curriculum. Even in that small group, everyone had an opinion about what curriculum worked best for certain types of learners. There are a lot of curriculum choices out there, and each […]
3 Ways to Enjoy Kindergarten
Both my school-age daughters love to learn. I knew my firstborn would; she was the child that could sit and listen to me read for hours. But I was a little more nervous when I sent my second daughter off to K4 last fall. As my active child, she never stops moving (or talking) all day. […]
3 Organizational Tips for Your Homeschool Space
My husband and I are getting ready to homeschool for the very first time. There’s a lot to think through, but perhaps the most pressing question recently had to do with how to organize all our stuff. My husband and I just unboxed five boxes of textbooks and distance learning materials (check out the unboxing […]