I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh, and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead—it’s said like bed not bead—
And for goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
My daughter Louisa has kept her school journals since she was 4 years old. What a treasure they are now! A whole childhood recorded.
I would like to share with you some of the things we’ve done in our homeschool that have really worked so well over the years. Teaching my children to write has been a joy to teach, and any mother can easily do it without any expensive program.
Aren’t babies the greatest? They don’t give a smidgen of care to what you dress them up in. It can be on inside-out and backwards, and they don’t complain. They don’t mind if their hair isn’t combed just so. They aren’t self-conscious if they burp. Tummy gurgling in public doesn’t bother them a bit. They think they are wonderful! And they are right, too.
Rebekah
The usefulness of reading charts and library games has always escaped me. “You get a prize for reading 6 books” sounds about the same to me as getting a prize for every 6 brownies I eat. Who needs motivation? Reading is delicious!
Parenting is a big deal!
In the eternal scheme of things, what a parent does, or does not do, is crucial! No, it is more than that: it is life-threatening! Even more—it is civilization-threatening!
Did you realize you had so much power?
Who does God trust? In Genesis 18: 19, God is speaking to Abraham telling him he can trust him to raise his children to honor God, and to live true to the values Abraham holds dear.
“For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him” (which was, that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through his seed).
Campfire building is good stuff! My son Ammon enjoys.
Why did you decide to homeschool?
I decided to keep a list of the reasons I have heard from other mothers for taking children out of the public school system: [Read more…]
Toys are the tools of little ones! I learned in college how stimulating a child’s brain led to higher intelligence, so I always wanted to have as many as good toys as possible at my house, feeling like they would help my kids brain develop. I was on the lookout at yard sales when I was a young mother, and pretty soon, the house was littered with toys. And the kids got bored of them. I got a big toy chest thinking I could lasso the toy mess but it just became a black hole—it seemed toys from the bottom were irretrievable! And you could break them just trying to yank them out.
“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, my mother used to say.
Grumble, grumble. I wanted to do it the easy way (by force)—not the right way (by persuasion)!
You can chase the animals all over the field trying to catch them, but rattle the feed bowl and they’ll come runnin’! I often think of this when trying to get a child to do a chore, to do their math, or complete some other less desirable task. How do I lace this job with honey? How do I get them to “come running”? That takes some creative thinking on mom’s part to keep homelife happy and pleasant.
Respect for the aged. It seems to be going extinct these days in America, and yet it makes such a difference in society. It is a basic, important part of training children to teach them to honor those who are older and wiser. Gray hair is a sign of wisdom, and endurance through life’s trials. […]
