One of the most frequent questions I see homeschool parents asking in our official Essentials in Writing and Essentials in Literature Facebook groups (check them out, if you haven’t already—they’re great for additional resources, help with questions, and camaraderie with others who use the curriculum!) is the following: “How do I know which level is…
Essential Conversations
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Homeschooling Tips: The Joys of Writing in a Journal
In my June blog post about the summer scaries, I talked briefly about different types of writing “assignments” that you could give your homeschool student over the summer. In this post, I want to focus on one type of summer (or year-round) writing for your student: journaling. Journals—the hip, gender-neutral cousin of the diary—have risen…
“But When Will I Use This in Real Life?”: Why Writing Matters After Homeschool
“But When Will I Use This in Real Life?”: Why Writing Matters After Homeschool Summertime (when the living is easy) is an excellent span in which to reflect on the past year of schooling and the coming year as well. What subjects were successfully learned? Which topics caused troubles and struggles? If your homeschool…
For the Homeschool Parent: Dealing with the “Summer Scaries”
As homeschool parents enter the month of June, they may also encounter a phenomenon that I like to call the “summer scaries.” This is the few months in which they worry that their homeschool students will promptly forget everything they learned over the past school year, especially in more practice-based subjects like math and writing….
Is It “Than” or “Then”? Helping Your Homeschool Student Figure Out Common Homophone Mixups
In the age of smartphones, computers, and technology, the subject of spelling may not seem all that important thanks to a certain ever-helpful invention—spellcheck. Gone are the days of proofing papers for spelling mistakes! Banished are the never-ending lists of spelling words in homeschool curriculum! Dictionaries? Who needs them? Just rely on the squiggly…
Writing Well: Why Homeschool Students Have an Edge
In his groundbreaking book Amusing Ourselves to Death, critic and educator Neil Postman discusses society’s shift from what he deems the Age of Typography to the Age of Show Business—that is, a change from the importance of words to the importance of television and other visual media. According to Postman, the decline of writing…