HomeSchooling
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not alone and isolated from anyone. You belong. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Five Finds Friday (it used to be a quarter and strong backs)
Whew. It has been a full – but also a really good – week. I want to watch a movie Friday night. What’s something great that I’ll love? I want to watch it at home. I want it to be slightly meaningful but not an all out drama – less Still Alice and more Walter Mitty. I’d love to laugh and I don’t mind crying but I don’t want a romance that only glorifies lust and unfaithfulness, although a love story would not be a terrible choice. Hmm. I think I probably won’t be finding that perfect film. My expectations might be a little too high. But – anything…
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how a year round schedule is saving our homeschool. (and me.)
Two years ago the Wildwood Halls of Ivy (that’s our fancy registered homeschool name) switched it up. We started doing school year round. I’d say the year round aspect of school has been a complete success. I’m so glad we made the shift. I only wish I had done year round school always. The first year we tried year round our schedule (and our life) was in quite a bit more upheaval than it currently is and our weeks off were wildly flexible. God was gracious and that free time fit our needs more organically and fluidly when the occasion called for it. It worked, but I wouldn’t call…
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what bok choy can do . . .
Bok Choy. Until a few weeks ago I don’t think I had ever heard of it. London and I took a cooking class together and it was one of the foods we learned to prepare. It’s leafy (kind of) and green and we learned to prepare it simply by basically wilting it with olive oil and salt over heat. We served it up alongside our Chinese meal of potstickers and meatballs at our class. Following our class I’ve been seeing bok choy everywhere. I picked up some last week when we reinvented our Chinese meal at home with everyone and Piper and Otto were in charge of the “wilting”.…
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Five Finds Friday (a word you may have to look up to define & a tiny ax)
“… it just seemed as if she were marking time while life rocketed past.” ― Soheir Khashoggi, Nadia’s Song FUNNY There are a lot of homeschool days that don’t shine like stars in the universe. There’s plenty of mundane and must get done and should have done better and how can you not already know this. I don’t feel like writing about those days today though. I’ll keep having to live them, of course, but I just don’t, at this second, care to write about them. Instead, this week at the dining room table, we had a genuinely funny homeschool moment. (And it was sorely needed…
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Marie’s Words: A Timberdoodle Review
This game is certainly an educational game and it’s not really disguised as anything else. But it’s not a drudgery or a bore, by any means. Marie’s Words is a vocabulary building game that can be played in several different ways. It can be used alone or it can be played as a game with several variations. I’m literally just now seeing that the website suggests this as a part of their fourth grade curriculum set. Maybe your fourth graders would be ready for these words, but I know my fourth graders would not have been. Honestly, the majority of the words listed on the cards are…
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Uncle Sam and You: A Timberdoodle Review
I’ve always enjoyed our Ambleside and Charlotte Mason inspired history “curriculum”, which is actually not a traditional curriculum at all, but a guided list of non text book readings about history and historical characters. The past two years we have enjoyed the whole family approach of the Simply Charlotte Mason history guides. I admit, I did find myself a little nervous when I found myself staring at the trio of middle schoolers and wondering if we had studied history “enough”. Pretty sure this is a common homeschooling parent’s fear and, although it plagues me from time to time, it is not one that rests too heavily for too long…
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The Fallacy Detective: A Timberdoodle Review
I can’t believe my year working with Timberdoodle is drawing to a close. A year? I mean, we aren’t quite there yet – but almost! Every item I’ve received from Timberdoodle has been a new-to-me choice. Until this review. The Fallacy Detective was a logic book that I purchased and worked through wth Riley back in the day. I held on to that book actually – when I let most of her curriculum go as I quickly morphed into primarily using exclusively Charlotte Mason methods with the younger kids. My copy is an older version and this edition from Timberdoodle has a workbook inside the book itself,…
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Aquarelle: A Timberdoodle Review
Watercolor is one of those artistic endeavors that both intimidates and frustrates me. The intimidation part stems from the fact that I find blending colors and controlling the amount of water vs. the amount of color difficult. That color wheel graphic just doesn’t live icy mind as vividly as it does in an artist’s mind. The frustrating part comes from the mess watercolor can cause. The drippy paintbrushes on the kitchen table. The soggy paper that sticks to the table if I forget to put something else down first. Some place to dry the art for a few days. You know, all those details. But – lest…
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Kid Coder: A Timberdoodle Review
KidCoder is a complete program sold by Timberdoodle that offers an online web design course. The target age for KidCoder is 4th grade and up and it comes as part of the 8th grade curriculum if you prefer to order your curriculum whole. This summer I had London, my eighth grader, begin the KidCoder course, knowing that this review would come due in the fall and I wanted to be able to have given it a good go before I commented on it. Just like Bloxels, I really handed this one over to London because the point for me was to have a web design program that…
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two days. two stories.
Yesterday I dropped my phone. On a rock. Without a case. It’s my own fault. I like the phone case-less. I’ve been warned. One bazillion and three times by friends and family and strangers. “Get a case,” they said. “It’s too big of a risk,” they said. I’ve had a case handed to me actually. I put it on my phone in their presence to appease their concern. (Sorry Sarah and Brian.) And then I removed it. It’s been just fine for a good long run. A really good long run. But yesterday I was helping my son carry water out for the chickens. I was about to run…
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Doodle Your Day: A Timberdoodle Review
I have always been a fan of journals and notebooks that encourage you to record some memory or some thought daily. I like them for me, personally. And – I like them for the kids as students. Sometimes I create journal topics myself for the kids to use in their school work and some years I know it will be much more productive to purchase an already planned journal for the kids to use. This Timberdoodle journal – Doodle Your Day – was given to my family in exchange for a review and it is one of the items in the box that the kids almost fought over. In…
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The Puzzleball Globe: A Timberdoodle Review
Our family loves puzzles. Every year for Christmas there will be a puzzle under the Christmas tree. Actually, I prefer to leave the puzzle under the tree, all wrapped up, until the day after Christmas. And then, on that quiet day-after morning, there’s one present left to open. Perfect for the after Christmas crash, we can just hang around the kitchen table, eat holiday leftovers and work lazily on a puzzle together. The last wrapped gift is a puzzle – and we all know it – but no one knows what the subject of the puzzle will be. (I like to match the puzzle’s theme to the previous year…
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today was a good day.
Some days are brighter than other days. And on those days you collect all that good sunshine for the days that you know won’t be as bright. For the days you know you’ll need to tap back into to silence the voices telling you about all that you’re missing and about what your kids are missing. Days when the sun is hidden behind the clouds and the clouds are all gray. But today. Today was not a gray day. It was full of color and blue skies and crisp air and warm scones and cold cider. Filled up with memorized poems and pretty words and nature walks…
