flynn011

I've read a couple of really rubbish books about boys and spirituality this past year.  They were badly researched, full of anecdote rather than evidence, difficult to work out which age range they were talking about, and finally, not always very Godly in their attitudes, much less, it would seem, in a position to dispense advice. Hopefully, I won't repeat the same mistake when I make some suggestions about how a parent might go about teaching a son about God. Busy Timmy visits a Synagogue What follows is a short burst of suggestions that I've tried. Admittedly, they include some anecdotal evidence as well, but my observations are also put in the context of how boys learn in general, and how the Bible guides us to teach our children. Here it is in a nutshell: First of all, I applaud you for thinking about this issue at all, and I want to encourage you to make a life-long quest about how to best serve your family in terms of passing on your faith to them.  Second, I encourag...

"I may be some time" Legend has it that these were the last words of Captain Scott during his ill-fated Antarctic expedition.  Right now, they're going to be mine, as I embark on National Novel Writing Month. In order to produce a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, I think I will have to put my nose to the writing grindstone. In the meantime, have a look at the NaNoWriMo site for its free writing workbooks for kids . See you in December. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a snapshot from our trip to Stonehenge yesterday.

Just a fun "Wordle" Gosh, it's a steep learning curve on the Internet!

I've just decided to update the photo of my Boyschoolers, "Killer" and "Busy Timmy", after having the same photo for over a year, which was already about a year old. So instead of highlighting a child of 2 and another of 6, you've now got the current cast, who are 4 and 8 instead. Killer and Busy Timmy Air Guitar at the Skate Park This picture also highlights the beautiful Indian Summer we've been having in England since the beginning of September.  The autumn colours are just stunning, the skies a brilliant blue, and the apples are teeming on the trees. Yesterday, we met some friends at a natural rope-swing clearing in a forest near us.  One thing about England: its footpath system, where the public can roam freely on a criss-crossing system of free paths throughout the countryside, is one of the country's greatest assets. The "Phoenix" is flying! Finally, don't forget the ShillerMath discount code.  The offer ends at the end of Octob...

I've had a cold and laryngitis for the past ten days.  This severely cramps one's homeschooling style, especially when following the Charlotte Mason method with all its reading aloud. So what to do instead? We found a lot of alternatives to sitting at the tables with our books: here are just a few.  (By the way, it helps that England was having one of its hottest Septembers on record, swapping some summer weather for the usual dull-and-grey, just in time!). "Making ice cream" Who needs computers to play a cool game with your brother?? Wow!  Look at all the snails! Taking an awesome walk in the country Playing in the mud Clay men need toothpicks like humans need skeletons (idea courtesy of Apologia Science) Harvesting potatoes I'll be glad when my illness is finally finished and I can get my voice back, but in the meantime, it's been a really fun week. Thanks guys for all your imagination and your creative ways of learning.  Let's do it more often!

One of my favourite homeschooling gurus is Robin Sampson from Heart of Wisdom.  She wrote something about lapbooking which I recently read, and I thought she hit the nail on the head about why they work for boys when she described how they integrate both halves of the brain. Why is it important to get both halves working?  Research shows that the male brain is more prone to stick with the left-half of the brain, whereas the female brain is more likely to use two halves in conjunction.  It may be one of the reasons that girls are more verbal at an earlier age than boys.  It's also one of the reasons that women seem to recover better from strokes than men. Research aside, it just seems to me a good idea to make sure the whole brain is being exercised, and Robin clarifies this in her sixth point of seven in her blog post  "Seven Reasons Lap Booking Works" We have two halves to our brains which think in different ways. The left side thinks linearly, following direct...

I recently bought a book by Berlitz Kids called "Help Your Child with a Foreign Language."  Imagine my surprise when the first chapter lists all the reasons that a family environment is the optimum when it comes to how a child learns. "Personal relationships -- the keystone of language learning"                                         --Berlitz Here's the book's argument about why the parent is the best teacher for a child when learning a foreign language.  I find it so easy to translate this to homeschooling, so if you're a newbie out there, wondering whether or not you can really hack it, or whether it's a good idea to teach your children at home, or perhaps needing some ammunition to all those naysayers who are getting you down, then here it is straight from a trusted source with no axe to grind. ( I have chosen to remove those comments which are specifically about learning a...