Author Archive

How Homeschooling Compares with Public Schooling

While there is no doubt that it is entirely possible to obtain a decently good education in the public school system, when you compare homeschooled kids to public school kids as a whole, homeschoolers consistently outperform their public school counterparts. Also, it doesn’t seem to matter how much parents spend in the process or whether […]

Why we LOVE Classical Conversations

As we began homeschooling several years ago, I looked around at all the different homeschooling methods, and found that the one that resonated with me the most was the classical approach. One of the great programs available to support a classical approach is Classical Conversations. Here’s why we love it: Community It is no fun […]

Use a timer to help dawdlers

Do you have a dawdler?  I think most kids tend to dawdle with schoolwork at some point in their lives. We have found that using a timer is extremely helpful with subjects that are maybe not the most loved and that induce time wasting.

Math Game for Boys

For kids who don’t enjoy practicing math facts, games are often helpful. We discovered a fun way to use the nerf guns and a white board today. We drew a target and put numbers in each section, then after two shots, Big J added up the numbers. Then we changed up the numbers and did […]

Anyone else have days like this?

If you give a mom a muffin, She’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it. So she’ll pour herself some. The coffee will get spilled by her three year old. She’ll wipe it up. Wiping the floor, she will find some dirty socks. She’ll remember she has to do some laundry. When she […]

A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler: JoAnna

Ages of children: kindergarten, 2nd grade, 6th grade Number of Years Homeschooling: 4 years Curriculum: For each of my kiddos, we use Heart of Dakota curriculum, which is an all-in-one curriculum that includes history, science, Bible, language, math…basically everything. It is Charlotte Mason and I have used it for 3 years now and still LOVE it. Each of […]

Use Dice to Practice Math Facts

We’re just finishing up basic addition in our house, and in order to set in some of the basics so that no thought is required to come up with the answer to simple facts like 3+5 or 6+4 for example, we’ve been practicing with dice. It works great and my little guy LOVES it. He’s not […]

Mini Vacation

We’ve only been doing school for a couple of years as my guys are still fairly young, but my preference is still to school year-round. I just don’t see any real reason to arbitrarily stop in the summer, especially since we live in an area where we can fry an egg on the sidewalk in […]

A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler: Candi

Ages of children: 2 boys, ages 5 and 3 Number of Years Homeschooling: 2 years Curriculum: Just this year I’ve started implementing more of a Charlotte Mason style of learning, but I tweak to what fits us, so there’s a little eclectic in there as well. I use Handwriting Without Tears for writing and phonics, […]

Curriculum Review: God’s Design for Science

I have been using God’s Design for Science for over a year now and it has been the perfect science curriculum for my homeschool family. It is intended for grades 1 through 8, which fits well for my girls of grades 1 and 3. Even my three year old will pick up some teachings sometimes […]