FF It was a long time coming when I decided last week to unplug my family from our various forms of electronic entertainment – TV, Internet, video games (XBOX, Wii, 3DS). It was an experiment born from frustration, and you’ll be interested to know that it was mostly successful. I say mostly because of [...]
FF I‘ve gotten sufficiently annoyed recently by one of my sons (and I’m not going to say which one) and his dependence on electronic entertainment that I’ve decided to run a family experiment. This morning I unplugged the television, took away the Nintendo DS’s, and banned them from the Internet. To be completely fair to [...]
I was skeptical of smart phone technology before I got one for myself. I’m not a Luddite (who is these days?), but I have been a slow adopter of new technology on the grounds that much of it is pointless. Humans, though, are evolved to be innovators, and thus, I can’t be totally anti-technology. When it [...]
I got a great comment yesterday from an internet friend of mine. Jörg was commenting about my desire to learn German, and he mentioned that it will be good for the kids to see me studying along with them as they do their own school work. Families that study together, in his estimation, as [...]
One of the best homeschooling investments I’ve made recently has been in a microscope. You remember middle school, when your science teacher made you peel the skin from an onion and look at it under various magnifications. She taught you how to dissect plants (my teacher wouldn’t let me cut up bugs), place them [...]
My homeschooling schedule looks nothing like the class schedules to which I was subject in elementary school. In elementary school I had one teacher all day, and we studied the same subjects every day. It wasn’t until 5th grade that we had to switch class rooms (2 teachers instead of 1). Even still I had [...]
My neighbor came to my door a few days ago carrying a box full of encyclopedias that belonged to her when she was a girl. She decided that, since I homeschool, I could put them to good use. I don’t really want any more books, but she had that expectant look on her face [...]
Is your kid too young to start reading classics like The Iliad, but you want to introduce them anyway? That’s the position in which I find myself. Neil has been interested in ancient Rome for a while now, and we’ve done our fair share of research together. But, and this is a vital point about studying [...]
We know, as adults, that reading can be both educational and fun. Over the years, I’ve discovered the subjects I want to learn and the books I want to read. I remember being a kid and reading, for example, The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne is not a favorite), [...]
My 7 year old has been trying a variety of reading comprehension programs. His reading ability is roughly at the 6th grade level, but his comprehension level is 3rd grade. It’s my fault. We focused on reading for 4 years and I neglected comprehension skills. Nevertheless, we’re catching up. Thus, we’ve been trying comprehension [...]
It took 4 years, and we had fun along the way, but yesterday marked the end of our Hooked on Phonics journey. Neil completed the Master Reader program last year, and Alan finished yesterday. Hooked on Phonics has been a pillar of our homeschooling since the beginning. We started with the kindergarten level and [...]
