Grief is a tsunami. Sometimes you have a warning, and other times, it’s a shock. Either way, the typical landscape of your life is suddenly underwater and rearranged. Everything is messy, and recovery seems distant. After a near-drowning, a person vomits up the water she struggled in and then just lays there and breathes. At … Continue reading Homeschooling through Heartbreak
Mom! Where’s my (insert book or supply here)? Is your homeschool day continually delayed because everything isn’t prepared and at hand? Sometimes the problem is that someone didn’t return an item to its home; other times, I haven’t prepared. Either way, a little time spent getting things together will improve the situation. Schedule Time In … Continue reading Preparing to Teach: Homeschool Edition
I struggle with perfectionism. I keep things tidy and craft meals and sentences with care. I like correct answers, excellent grades, and jobs done all the way. So, as you can imagine, my sinful heart needed teaching about which things are important and which are not. So, God gifted me a husband who is my … Continue reading Done is Good Enough
Since homeschooling happens in the real world while our real lives are going on around us, we often face disruptive events which throw us off stride and threaten to derail our entire educational process for a time. Younger siblings, home-based businesses, and household emergencies all can disrupt our planned school day. However, we know that … Continue reading Dealing with Disruptions
While we want our teens to move toward self-regulation and independence, it’s important to remember that executive function is not always at a consistent level in the maturing human. Teens are in a constant state of growth and development, and sometimes certain areas will fall back while others surge ahead. The child who efficiently managed … Continue reading Goal Setting For Teens
Many students hate trigonometry, and for understandable reasons. It is hard for students to figure out what triangles, sines, and cosines have to do with anything else. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when they push back a little bit on learning it. While some trigonometry has real-life usage, the most significant benefit to trig … Continue reading What We Learn When We Learn Trigonometry
Everyone, at some point in their life, will take a leadership position of some sort. Parents lead their homes and children. Rookies eventually become leaders. Even when someone is the low man on the totem pole, understanding leadership can improve their work within an organization. Additionally, many leadership skills are helpful even for managing oneself … Continue reading Leadership Training: Ownership
It’s a well-known fact that most abandon New Year’s resolutions by the end of the day on January 2. If we didn’t follow through today, we definitely can’t make it for 363 more days, so we should just give up. No doubt, many of us have seen that same concept sneaking into our homeschool goals … Continue reading Goal Setting in Your Homeschool
As home educators, we want our children to use their childhood years of education to gain knowledge and skill and prepare their minds for the future. To that end, we research, purchase, print, and present various materials, supplies, and curricula. We study and write lesson plans. We sit down with our children, we show what … Continue reading Teaching vs. Learning
As humans, we naturally break things up into pieces. We separate work time and playtime. We separate reading from watching movies, and we separate art from science. These separations are good and help us make sense of the world. However, in another sense, these separations are artificial. It is good to find joy in your … Continue reading Teaching the Theological Truths at the Heart of Science
