Do you have a teen who is filling out college applications? If so, there’s one more application to add to the list. It’s the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, informally known as the FAFSA, and if your teen wants...
Essay writing is not the only tool for studying literature. Students can benefit from the occasional opportunity to approach the great books in a fresh way, so here are a few alternatives to writing a literary analysis.
Connie Schenkelberg, my friend and colleague, stepped from this life to the next on Sunday morning (12/1/13), and I will miss her. I first met Connie at an HEAV homeschool conference in the 1990s. Her table was tucked into a...
Enjoy a poem (Gratefulnesse by George Herbert); a recipe (cranberry-orange relish), and a Thanksgiving sale, aka Homeschool Black Friday).
Some of the ideas in the last post’s video seem reminiscent of classical Christian ideas of how believers should live in the world. These Christian ideas are drawn from the whole of scripture and tradition, but the best known source...
Have you ever been inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater? This architectural gem offers contrasting spaces that feel spacious yet intimate. Its beauty and fame lies not in the fact that it’s an enormous, costly monstrosity that dominates its site, but...
When I started this blog, I planned to focus strictly on entrepreneurship and microbusiness because those things can make it possible to live a doing-what-matters life. The problem was, with a URL like DoingWhatMatters.com, it’s been hard not to write...
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...
Outline of American Literature: Chapter 4 The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets By Kathryn VanSpanckeren TRANSCENDENTALISM Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Walt Whitman (1819-1892) THE BRAHMIN POETS Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)...
Cinderella OR A Little Glass Slipper This rags-to-riches folk tale of unjust oppression and triumphant reward features Cinderella, a young woman living in difficult circumstances. Through the intervention of a fairy godmother, she is...
William Cowper (1731–1800), an English poet, was born in the rectory (now rebuilt) of Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, on the 26th of November (O.S. 15th) 1731, his father the Rev. John Cowper being rector of...
A story is not a problem to be solved, but a continent to be explored. Dr. Randy Laist Using the Cinderella story, Dr. Randy Laist of Goodwin College discusses some approaches to literary interpretation,...
Poets write about so much more than landscapes, lovers, and flowers — they write about war, conflict, justice, and striving for virtue. One quote that I have heard many times is “Once to every...
