Simple Living, Homeschooling, Faith, Homemaking, & Books
“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” Beatrix Potter
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Newly arrived in my home are the books Curious Unschoolers and Radical Unschool Love written by my online friend, Sue Elvis, of Stories of an Unschooling Family. I’m looking forward to diving into them in the days ahead. Instead of ordering them for myself, I requested that my library system purchase them. Why? So other …
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Last year I wrote about relaxed homeschooling in middle school. I shared our plans for not just last year but the middle school years in general. It was interesting to go back and read it just now to see what worked out and what didn’t. We’re still relaxed homeschoolers in seventh grade. I would still …
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When David was downsized out of his corporate job many years ago, one of our goals was to structure our work life in such a way that we would be freer in the autumn. It is our favorite time of the year and we wanted to travel and enjoy all the unique aspects of the …
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I’m guessing most homeschool parents find two things intimidating about high school – advanced math and science. We’ve discussed math many times on this site since I’m homeschooling a daughter with dyscalculia. We haven’t discussed science as much, mostly because we’ve taken a very relaxed approach to it. But science is a thing as your …
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I attempted to do a wall timeline with Caroline a number of years ago. For a variety of reasons, it did not work for her. I think part of it was her age, part of it was her learning challenges, and part of it was the layout. However, I think timelines can be very valuable …
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When I submitted my name to review Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities, I thought it would be worth checking out as something to maybe refer to from time to time. I thought it would be worth knowing about the book in case it might be helpful for some of my readers either now or …
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There are so many warnings out there to enjoy your children when they are little because the tween years hit and things are never the same again. It’s strongly implied that the years are difficult and the parent-child relationship becomes a constant struggle. I’m here to say this was not the case for us. Our …
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We’ve made the official move to year round homeschooling which I’ll address in another post. Today I wanted to share what we’re doing for Science this summer and the following four months. We’re taking a relaxed, living books approach to this and I think we’ve hit a home run with it. (I’ll share more in …
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Nature study is a very popular topic in homeschooling circles right now, especially thanks to those who follow a Charlotte Mason style of education. And while I think most everyone would agree that the idea of nature study is a great one, it often doesn’t work for some families for any number of reasons. These …
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There are two broad camps regarding teaching children to read – whole language and phonics. When I went through my teacher education program, I was exposed to both teaching phonics and using whole language, but whole language was definitely the thing. If you aren’t familiar with the term, whole language means that children learn words …
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One of the things I am passionate about is helping parents understand their child’s learning and personality needs. I have dozens of posts on this website about tailoring our parenting and homeschooling to our child’s unique bent whether she is right-brained, gifted, twice-exceptional, spirited, highly-sensitive, or wired differently in some other way. But I also …
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One of my blogging friends, Jimmie, wrote What My (Messy) Artist Daughter Has Taught Me. I totally got that post as I had been thinking about the struggles of being a neat person who likes everything in its place when your child isn’t anything like that. It sounds like my Caroline and Jimmie’s Emma are …
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As if homeschooling our children isn’t enough, many of us also decide to add working at home to the mix. I still haven’t decided if we’re blessed to be able to work at home or totally crazy. Probably a bit of both. I began working at home as a writer when I decided to leave …
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What are snowplowed sauce girls? Take a listen to Episode 3 of A Quiet Simple Life with Sallie Borrink. We’re breaking down what this means, where it comes from, and how to avoid it in our homes. As always, please feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! …
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Have you thought about your need to plan ahead for challenging homeschool days by preparing your own version of substitute teacher plans? At the beginning of the school year, every classroom teacher prepares substitute teacher plans. Since she may not know in advance when she’ll need a sub, the teacher has a substitute teacher folder …
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A few years ago, I was a guest blogger for Bright Ideas Press. If you aren’t familiar with Bright Ideas Press, they offer a wide variety of homeschool support such as: extensive and excellent homeschool curriculum live and self-paced online classes through The Academy a card game (I just think this looks neat! LOL!) a …
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Live online high school classes is something the early homeschoolers could have only dreamed of. It’s amazing the opportunities we can bring to our homeschooled children right from the comfort of our own home. It’s equally amazing how these kinds of classes can free up homeschool moms from the weight of preparing, teaching, and grading …
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Like many kids, Caroline finds natural disasters fascinating. So when we had the opportunity to review the Grade 6 Environment Unit featuring Mount St. Helens that is part of Kendall Hunt Pathways 2.0 Reading and Language Arts curriculum, I thought this would be a fun opportunity. The unit is part of an extensive offering of …
