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A Year in Cloth
WARNING: POST CONTAINS MAMA TALK AND GIRLIE TMI You’re grouchy and weepy. Your back is aching. Your stomach is swollen and you’re exhausted. You don’t have to check an app or a calendar to know what time of the month it is. Dashing through the store, you toss the familiar plastic package or cardboard box into your cart. You hate their embarrassing crinkle and ignore the health warnings on the side of the box. What choice do you have? Aunt Flo is on the way and you need to stock up. Worse, you’ve been too busy to notice your usual monthly aches and pains. You chuck up your insomnia to…
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Questions about Dyslexia
AKA THINGS I’M ASKED ALL THE TIME After publishing Diary of a Dyslexic Homeschooler, more and more of my acquaintances and friends are asking me about dyslexia. And not just the surface skipping question. Oh, No. They’re asking deep, nitty-gritty, open the underwear drawer, getting personal questions. Though I’m not shy to share my family drama, this story is not all mine to share. Yes, my book was inspired by family experiences but I’m not trekking the journey on my own. Though I do have permission to share, I will not divulge anything I believe may come back to haunt my loved ones. That and I am no expert. I am…
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Keys to Free your Struggling Learner
My struggling learner was different from birth. She has, this mystifying and mysterious form of eye contact. It is nearly its own language. She’d spend hours talking to me without words. She studied everything from the comfort of my lap, snuggled and sedate. She smiled and twinkled, as her brother performed for her infant eyes. When she did begin to speak, she talked in an accent and often flipped syllables in her words. Turing words like magazine into mazageen. She’d work for long minutes, explaining and describing simple objects, like broccoli, instead of using their names because you could not remember what to call them. Friends at church or at…
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Family Service
As a Christian Homeschooler my goal, for my children, has never been intellectual greatness. Sure, there are times I get wrapped up in the right now and push my kiddos harder than I should. There are days I get too focused on checking off boxes, mastering Latin, being the best debater or writer, and keeping up with the other schoolers. It makes me look and feel good when people mention how smart my kids are and how much they know. This mama can morph into a pride-fueled puffer fish, in an instant. But she can also jab and poke at her students like no one else. However, it doesn’t take…
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Our Classically Mason Day
Let me say first off if you haven’t yet read the post Classically Charlotte Mason you may be a bit lost. Second, I’ll add, we don’t have a true schedule. What follows is our routine. Subjects shift in order from day to day and their instruction times flex as needed. The schedule below is using our Jr. High curriculum. This is just our basic every ordinary homeschool day. I hope it encourages you to make your family homeschool your own. Bible and Reasoning We try to do this in the evenings as a family and so it doesn’t’ feel like actual “school work” even though it is. It takes about 15 minutes…
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Classically Charlotte Mason
Our family homeschools. For the last few years, we’ve also belonged to a community of homeschoolers who educate using a classical approach. We love our community. We love the conversations. We love our curriculum. What we don’t love, so much, is the unrelenting workload. Teachers, aka Parents, are encouraged to scale back the lesson plans to meet the needs of their individual children. We’ve done that with great success. Even though some of our community’s celebration seems solely focused on perfection, our family makes a deliberate choice to hone in on progress. This is no easy task when everyone (at least it feels like everyone) but your family goes home with a…
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Dyslexia and
Your student learns differently. You’ve studied and trained and adapted your homeschool to help your little one shine. There’s only so long you can protect them. But there comes a time when things like reading and writing take over the educational spotlight. This happened to our family last year. We belong to a community of classical learners and at nine our students are asked to migrate from clapping and chanting into discussing and asking questions. While a totally optional part of the program, my student watched her peers merge into this writing and grammar intensive course. She counted up their birthdays and noticed she was a year older than…
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Just Released
A writer’s life is never boring. Mostly because we stuff every peaceful moment with imaginary drama. Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever the reason I’ve got a new book to share with you. My first Christian cozy mystery just released on Kindle, with the paperback soon to follow. Based in a small town called Honey Pot, the mystery follows three homeschool mommas as they deal with Christmas drama while searching for a missing teenager. Though all the characters are fictitious I hope you can spot a bit of your life in one of theirs. Thanks for checking it out. I aim to make this new book a series. So, come back…
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Blue’s Clues,Together Time, and the Challenge Years
Keep Together Time Alive Long before I considered teaching my children from home our family had adopted the habit of morning time. We’d come together, open God’s word, pray, read, play and discover the world before separating into our individual routines. How did this begin? I didn’t have an epiphany as I read the scriptures. There was no correlation between how Jesus bonded with and taught the 12 that brought about our quaint routine. At the time, I had never heard of Pam Barnhill, Sarah Mackenzie, Charlotte Mason, or any other homeschool savant. I hadn’t even read a single book on child education. No, Bean, my then 3-year-old, came…
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Our School’s Stuff
Every homeschooling family runs differently. Each child within each family learns differently. As a Christian homeschooler, I do my utmost to put Christ at the center and leave the rest up to Him. Our family curriculum has changed and changed again. Our routines are in flux from season to season. But with our core fixed on the Lord, we can’t go too far off the deep end. Here’s a peek into our year. (DISCLAIMER: I am an affiliate of some of the following but not all. I refuse to promote products I don’t believe in!) 2019-2019 What we’re using: For most of our needs, we participate in Classical…
