A 12 Question Checklist Every Curriculum Seller Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life As summer draws to an end I am amazed with the inundation of emails I receive advertising curriculum kits; each of which claims that their package will solve all your problems and leave you with a magical, happy school year. Your children will skip out of their room every day and beg to do their school work. You will never be confused about what to teach next. Messes will clean themselves up, and the dog will probably learn to read too! If you believe all the...

Catering to the Learning Style of Your Baby PART 2 OF 2 ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1993, SHORTLY AFTER THE ADDITION OF PEARL, BABY #5. As a teaching mom, my first assignment is to study my baby and learn how he learns best. Keep in mind that many babies are a blend of styles, but all babies will have a decided preference. When you are the parent of a visual baby, the road ahead of you will be fairly smooth. For whatever reason, nearly all canned curriculum is geared to the visual learner. Moreover, visual children who attend school have the greatest opportunity...

Learning Styles PART 1 OF 2 ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1993, SHORTLY AFTER THE ADDITION OF PEARL, BABY #5. Having a newborn has reminded us again of why we teach our children at home. Teaching your child does not begin with kindergarten curriculum, nor does it begin with a preschool program, or even with your baby’s first step. Home education begins shortly after birth; it can begin with a cuddle. Doesn’t it seem that after you have your baby, friends and foes alike will rush to hold her? Our baby Pearl is no exception. She loves all the attention and seems...

Would you like to supplement your curriculum with a program that simultaneously improves your child’s visual perception, fine-motor skills, patience, problem solving, spatial perception, creativity, ability to follow directions, pre-reading skills, grasp of physics concepts and engineering ability? Better yet, what if your child could actually enjoy this curriculum and choose to do it whenever they could? No, this isn’t some mythical homeschool product guaranteed to solve all your problems for a large fee – we are talking about the Legos already strewn through your house, the ThinkPlay sets in our preschool curriculum and the Fischertechnic sets designed for older kids. Construction kits just might be the most underrated curriculum...

One of Our Family Christmas Traditions One of the Christmas traditions our family has done for over 20 years now is reenacting the Nativity story.  Our reenactments have taken many different twists over the years. Beginning in the early years we toddled door-to-door amongst homes of relatives asking for lodging and of course being turned away, "No room. Sorry." As we grew older we used puppets which we took to the homes of older relatives and retold the Story again. But when Pearl was almost a year old we began reenacting the Story ourselves "authentically" arrayed in various sheets, oversized...