One of the most intimidating parts of starting homeschool is the mysterious process of teaching a child to read. In our generation, literacy has been an affair handed over to professional teachers. It’s a process that most of us know little about, aside from our own childhood experience. So when our five-year-old isn’t reading Fox […]
Do you ever look around at your homeschool and wonder where it all went wrong? We stand in our kitchen stumped because we know we did this right. We have classical books, hand-lettered planning sheets, tea times, nature hikes and co-op days all slated out. We have market baskets and mini chalk boards. This afternoon […]
With the change of season and all of the unsettling events of this year, I’m just craving some solace and a little something to soothe my heart. There’s nothing that comforts and brings perspective like a great book. This list is designed to contain something for everyone, from devotional to memoir. They will inspire you, challenge […]
Hey friends, it’s countdown to baby time over here, but I really wanted to get this post up before things get too crunched! It’s fun to look back on the year and see how much things have grown and changed in our homeschooling life. And how different our homeschool space looks now! Wrapping up a […]
This book list is a labor of love—fitting for the month of February, don’t you think? It took me two years to work through the potential candidates for this list! I abandoned many novels either for inappropriate content or being just a tad too cheesy. It’s hard to find romance that embodies the old-fashioned values […]
Do you know what the broken window theory is? It’s a theory that says “visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment lead to further order and misbehavior and eventually to serious crimes.” I have a “broken window” in my daily routine. Guess what it is? Lunch. Yes, years of poor planning and eating […]
Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Is it the most important? I don’t know, but it’s the coziest and it has the coffee. Hot, un-rushed family breakfasts are by far my favorite perk of a homeschooling day. I hope our family will always have warm memories of hearty pots of oatmeal and eggs […]
Welcome to my Christmas home tour! Even though I’m calling it a home tour, the only places that are really decorated are our living room, dining room, and entry. (Decorating isn’t cheap and it takes time to build a collection!) If you’re thinking my house looks exactly like it did last year, well, you’d be […]
I once heard an organization and productivity expert say that before she starts her work for the day, she first makes sure that her machines and systems are running. Brilliant, isn’t it? It made me think about what kinds of things I could have doing work for me while I read aloud or take a […]
Throughout most of my time as a mother, laundry has always loomed in the background of my life. I dreaded gathering it from four corners of the house. I procrastinated sorting it. As for folding and putting it away, I chased the ever-elusive mirage of “catching up” on laundry. I just had in my head […]
This is a tour of my girls’ room and bath in our rental home in the Kansas City suburbs. There was a time when I decorated their rooms with many sweet and precious things like wooden dollhouses and vintage alphabet posters. (You can see some of that here.) Those were fun days. Now dolls and […]
Homeschooling is unique in that we don’t conduct learning in a separate, sterile environment. It happens in our homes, right in the middle of laundry piles, phone calls and babies who are not on our day time schedules yet. When you add in rabbit trails and sunny spring afternoons, a day could hold just about […]
While you’re doing your homeschool planning this year, may I recommend putting a dinner plan in there? Whatever style of homeschool you do, one thing is for sure: you will be feeding people all the day long. Let’s not pretend that food isn’t a significant part of our homeschooling day! In fact, let’s go ahead […]