Fairy tales, parables, and other true stories I have been thinking about fairy tales this week after coming across a bowdlerized (to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content) version that appears on a third grade Common Core...
There are many ways to learn – books, blogs, classes, lectures, online videos, podcasts, and more. You can even learn by jumping in and trying something, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the experiential method with brain surgery or alligator wrestling....
Want to know what homeschooling is really like? No matter what curriculum you use, homeschooling is a deeply personalized journey. What it looks like and how it feels will be based on each family’s unique blend of talents, interests, knowledge,...
Reading and teaching literature in context is a bit like studying a map before you set out for a walk in a strange city. Context helps you find significant intersections, decipher archaic language, and find a path through old-fashioned rhetoric. Here’s how to do it.
Here is a playlist of a dozen interesting TED talks on education, mostly reflecting on the nature of education and traditional schooling and considering how it could be done better.
Today’s Carnival shares posts on the state of education and leaving a homeschooling legacy, helpful articles on planning and organizing your school year and day, and a few extras on things such as how to whistle, whether homeschoolers can redeem BoxTops for Education, and more
One of the most important prerequisites for doing what matters (and making it pay) is planning. Although I do most of my work on the computer, I’ve used paper-based planners ever since I was in middle school. I prefer to...
Washington Irving by Petri Liukkonen (1783-1859) – pseudonyms: Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, Geoffrey Crayon American author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist. Irving has been called the father of the American short story. He is best … Continue reading
Robert Louis Stevenson poetry ranges from children’s nursery rhymes to poems of travel and adventure. Here are a few samples for your enjoyment. From A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) This collection was one of my childhood favorites, and I … Continue reading
William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an English poet, was born at Cockermouth, on the Derwent, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April 1770. Wordsworth’s family and childhood He was the son of John Wordsworth (1741-1783), an attorney, law agent to … Continue reading
As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad … Continue reading
In Hilaire Belloc’s humorous book of More Beasts (for Worse Children), a companion volume to The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, you will find poetic descriptions of real and imaginary beasts. Many like “The Vulture” offer a tongue-in-cheek moral. The … Continue reading
