Homeschooling for His Glory

In my previous posts about Middle School I have shared about how I have been blessed with quite independent kids. I had promised a post about how I went about to encourage independence in my children. Here it is finally! First off I have to say that some kids are naturally independent, and in this case it is quite easier to cultivate that. With others, it is a bit more difficult and requires intentionality and being more aggressive about it. When you have kids who have learned to be independent and to own their learning, they end up being kids that do their school work, even if mom forgot to write a subject on the list of to do for that day. Here are a few steps I took in developing independence in the boys. Give them freedom - the first step is to gradually give them freedom in how they want the school day to go. Involve them in the decision making of what subjects to do each day and in the order as well. Build trust - the kids need to know that you trust them and expec...

With an 11th grade and a 9th grader as my homeschool students now, writing has become one of those subjects that I am most anxious to get right. Up to 5th grade, because neither of my boys were big on writing, I had been very relaxed about teaching writing. Grammar, I emphasized, because I believe in having good foundations in grammar, but writing, I thought I could build up to it. Around that time (5th grade for my oldest), I came across a curriculum that I liked but it advances through the topics in a slow and gentle manner. Back then I wanted my boys to get the full benefit, so I started them at the very beginning of the curriculum series. That curriculum was a wonderful addition to our homeschool, but when my oldest reached 9th grade, I realized I needed to get where we are going faster. I also wanted outside evaluation and grading. Came in The Lantern English, Co. which name I had seen floating around on my Facebook homeschool groups and which had been recommended to me by a fri...

Happy New Year to all! After a two year hiatus, I am resurrecting this blog. Life has been such that keeping up with this blog had become a really low priority, but I kind of miss it, so here I am giving it a try again. First I realized I never posted about my kids' curriculum line up for this school year. So, though late, here it is. This year I am homeschooling two high-schoolers. Time has gone so fast. With a 14 year old (9th grade) and a 16 year old (11th grade) I really feel like time is sleeping away; but that is the reality of life. We are but a vapor... So here we are: Humanities: Tapestry of Grace Year 2 - Middle Ages:   History, Literature, Writing, Church History, (hoping: Philosophy) Math: Alpha and Omega  Chemistry: Mr.Q. Science - Advanced Chemistry Electives:  Health - Zach - Alpha & Omega (1st semester), Speech - 7 Sisters Homeschool (2nd semester.) Violin - Zach Piano - Johann French: Duolingo, Breaking the Barrier...

On this second day of the Back to School blog hop hosted by the Schoolhouse Review crew blog , I will finally be sharing with you our plans for this coming year. This year I was later than usual in planning our school year. Like I mentioned yesterday, grade 9 did not go as planned, so I was still getting over the frustration and then we were on Vacation overseas, so waited until we came back earlier this month to work on it. This year I will have a 10th grader finishing some grade 9 stuff and an 8th grader. 10th grade line up ( with the credit in brackets) History (1) /Literature (1) /Philosophy (.25)/Bible survey (1):   Tapestry of grace Year 1 : Ancient times We are circling back on our rotation to year 1. This will be Zach' first time doing Ancient Times at the rhetoric level. Looking forward to it. Both his brother and him will still be doing this in a co-op  setting as the past three years. Math (1 per grade completed): Lifepac. I switched him last year mid-...

The Schoolhouse Review crew is having a Back to School blog hop this week and the topic is Homeschool Encouragement. I am pretty confident that anyone embarked on this homeschooling journey can use a little encouragement. Today, Monday, the blog hop kicks off  the week   with motivational posts . Since I am entering my second year of homeschooling High-school I thought it appropriate to talk about homeschooling the High School years and maybe encourage those dreading it. First, let me tell you that the high school years are nothing like the preschool or elementary years. I recently read an article on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog talking about the loneliness that comes from homeschooling High school , and I could not agree more with many of the points made there: the weird look when people find out you are homeschool high-school, the changing nature of field-trips, how more expensive it all becomes, the waning away of those precious childhood moments and feelings, a...

In this age of computers and digital life, knowledge of computer language, and how this whole world works can be a real asset for kids to have. Computer programming curriculum abound and deciding on which one to use to expose your child to coding or computer science can be a daunting task  That said, the crew was offered one  for review, and I took the opportunity to give it a try. The curriculum in question is Code for Teens: The Awesome Guide to Programming by Code for Teen. We received a digital copy of this program so we were not able to benefit fully from all the aspects offered by the program, but it definitely is very appealing. The book is written by a husband and wife team, Jeremy Moritz, a software engineer, and Christine Moritz, an illustrator. Code for teen teaches kids steps by steps how to write and understand computer language. There are a lot of different computer languages but because Java Script is the most commonly used, this is what Code for teen...