Morning Time and Family Learning Plans
I’m super excited to share our plans for Morning Time and our Family Learning (which we are calling our Family Loop this year). It has been about 2 months now that I’ve been really in the reflecting, thinking, and planning process for the upcoming year. It is a lot of fun, but, as many of you know – a lot of hard work! I think I’m on information and decision making overload… but I’ll recover. *wink* I’m thankful to God for His guidance and the undeserved grace He continues to pour on me as I plan. I feel I have a good vision for the upcoming year and I’m…
Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty – here is a FREE Download for you… to make printing this classic a little easier!
I love that so many classic (and old school!) books are available online for free. These are Public Domain books that are no longer copyrighted and are accessible to anyone and everyone by download. The problem is, so often the download versions only really work on Kindle or some screen-based reader. Or, they just don’t print well at all when you try to print them out and have them bound. This is a problem for me because I don’t love reading books on the iPad and when I print, I’m picky about how it looks. *sigh* This has motivated me to take the time to make certain downloads more…
Choosing Great Books for your Living Literature List – Help for creating an awesome read-aloud list and a FREE download.
Hello, dear friends!!! So, I have the privilege of talking to countless homeschool Moms. Especially Mamas who are all nervous and stressed out and just beginning their homeschool journey. Yep, just like I was 6 years ago… They talk about when to teach reading, how soon kids should write, how to do math, and if they are covering enough at age 4 (snicker). And I listen, smile, and try my hardest to be an encourager. I’m afraid though that I sound pretty much a broken record. Every single time I encourage a new homeschool Mama (or one who is overwhelmed!), I say, “take a deep breath and just READ…
Homeschool Planning – What’s in my Planning and Records Binder? (And a whole bunch of FREE downloads for planning!)
Only awesomely geeky homeschool Moms will ever read this post with interest, so let’s just all geek-out together and I’ll get all excited to share my organizational binder with you and you can at least pretend to be all excited along with me. *chuckle* No, honestly though, there are actually quite a few of you lovely Mamas who ask me about organizing our year and how I do it. Well, some of my organization changes over time but one thing remains – I ALWAYS have a Planning and Records Binder. In fact, I’ve saved mine from every year of our homeschool journey and they are such cool reminders of all…
Spiral Bound Notebooks VS. the Binder System
An entire post comparing Spiral Bound Notebooks to Binders might be a bit homeschool-geek-ish (at best) but, hey, it IS relevant. If you are going to commit to Notebooking, the style of Notebooking you use will make a huge difference on your year and potentially even on the success of the Notebooking itself. Often times methods gone wrong can kill the overall philosophy. (You know what I mean?) So, for those of you who have asked me what style of Notebooks I think is best – this post is for you. Well, actually, I don’t think I’ll answer which is best – I just plan to chat about the…
How we incorporated Notebooking into our Homeschool Year
I’m plugging away (just like so many of you, I’m sure) at planning for this coming year of homeschooling. *smile* And a BIG part of my planning has been contemplating how we will approach Notebooking this year. Notebooking has always been a part of our homeschool but in the past few years we have been much more intentional about it. Especially this past school year when we starting using Notebooking for a lot more of our ‘work’. To see what got us started last year, check out these – Here are some of my past Notebooking Posts: Simplifying and Enriching our Homeschool with Notebooking -Part 1 Simplifying…
Read the World – Living Books for Europe {a few suggestions}
Oh boy, is it EVER Summer in our home. We went swimming SIX out of seven days this week. Yep… I’m exhausted! Truth be told – we aren’t reading nearly as much as I’d like this July. It has been a unique month filled with LOTS of kids at our home, in our van, and in our lives – and busy, busy days with little to no room for reading aloud. (I can’t believe I’m saying that!) But, it is true. It is different, but still meaningful and blessed – in different ways. I’m trying to have grace with myself but BOY am I missing our regular routine. I…
Classical Academic Press’s Writing & Rhetoric – A Review
Recently, I was given the opportunity to use and review Writing and Rhetoric by Classical Academic Press for HipHomeschoolMoms.com. Below is part of that review – to read the full review, access a coupon code, and enter a give-away, CLICK HERE. Writing has been one of the most challenging subjects for me to implement into our homeschool. I find this a bit funny, considering I love to write and have been an avid writer since I was very young. For this reason (and because it just looked so great!), I was thrilled to review Writing & Rhetoric Book 1 and Book 2 from Classical Academic Press. Using Writing & Rhetoric with a…
When it becomes all about the checklist
A few weeks ago my son said something that stopped me in my tracks. I was in the middle of introducing a new task he would be working on as part of his Nature Studies and encouraging him to think about what he could write as a narration. He stopped me and asked: “What is this for?” “What do you mean?” I responded, a bit confused. “What is this for?” he repeated. “Like, what do I get to check off my list when I’m done this?” I chuckled and stammered. Truth is, this task wasn’t actually on his list for individual work and it suddenly dawned on me. My heart sank…
{Homeschool Planning} The Importance of Starting with your OWN Bookshelves
Are you familiar with Scotia Bank’s slogan? You know, the whole, ‘You’re Richer Than You Think’ thing? They say it is one of the most successful branding strategies any bank has ever launched. Maybe its because we all want to be richer than we think. I never understood it personally, because I’m almost always poorer than I thought. *chuckle* Anyways, I digress. The point I’m getting at is this – think of your personal bookshelves with this slogan in mind. You may not think you have what you need for next year – or that you have to research and order a whole pile of new curriculum, books, etc… but…
