Fourteen years ago, a fresh English major graduate, I was hired by a group of homeschool moms to teach their middle schoolers how to write and tutor writing with them one-on-one. They gave me the original IEW teacher-training VHS tapes and 3-ring binder, and I gave it a shot. A couple weeks later I had…
My husband and I were both homeschooled and both read many books. My husband has many WWII facts memorized not from drilling or from chanting, but from reading and rereading and rereading his favorite books as a child. I read mostly Christian romance twaddle with a side of cookbooks and everything L.M. Montgomery. But after…
At long last, here is the post I promised back when I wrote about how I teach writing on how I teach grammar. Grammar and diagramming is not something that has always come easily for me. I remember 7th or 8th grade when diagramming was introduced in my Bob Jones Language Arts workbook. My mom…
Writing, I believe, is one of the most vital skills we can teach our kids, whether we homeschool or not. It is so poorly taught in modern education, yet in modern society written communication is necessary & unavoidable. Teaching our kids to write well is one of the best ways to set them apart from…
If you missed it, check out my review of Kathy’s wonderful language arts materials and Book of Centuries. This is a guest post by Kathy Weitz. The Schole Sisters have done a fabulous job of telling y’all what a commonplace book is and why you should do it. I have also written about my own…
It’s time to be browsing curriculum materials for next year, and I am excited to share a few resources with you that you may not have heard about before. Kathy Weitz, owner of Cottage Press and keeper of The Reading Mother blog, produces some fabulous language arts resources. Yes, there are numerous writing programs out…
In “How We Homeschool Latin“, I said that there are generally three reasons given for the study of Latin: It helps with vocabulary and thus with high test scores. It helps with logical thinking, because it’s grammar study that actually makes sense. It is the language of Virgil and much of the literature of Christendom,…
Because we are following the classical model of education in our homeschool, we have added Latin to our average days. I have zero background in Latin and only 2 barely-passed years of Spanish under my belt. Yet, I agreed with the principles of classical education so much that I decided we’d take the practice of…
I am almost done reading The Liberal Arts Tradition, but I know I have at least two more posts in me for this one. I feel like I understand the liberal arts aspect of classical education so much better now, and that foundational understanding makes it easier to make choices come spring curriculum-planning time. I…
I recently finished Laurie Bestvater’s The Living Page: Keeping Notebooks with Charlotte Mason, and I loved it. I bought it based on Brandy’s reviews, and I’m glad I made the leap-of-faith, even though I am only a Charlotte Mason admirer and not a strict adherer. I think this book, with the history behind commonplace books…