-
Bear Grylls Survival Camp: A Timberdoodle Review
This is a sponsored post. I received this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts and words and opinions are, as always on this page and in real and regular life, all completely and totally my own. _________________________________ Since they watched the first show with this guy, they’ve been hooked. My boys love Bear Grylls. They’ve watched lots of iterations of his show and they’ve read a handful of books by this guy. (They even share the animal name in common with him. Although I don’t think Bear is his given name, my boys’ actual middle names are Fox and Hawkeye. Well, I guess technically Hawkeye…
Keep Reading . . .
that musical everyone loves.
The July Grove Collaborative Giveaway
Otto Meets a Hawk
-
Should I Stop Homeschooling?
For years I’ve said a handful of absolutes about my homeschooling experience. (I do like to speak in absolutes, although I am working hard to remove them from my vernacular. I know they are not helpful, generally speaking.) Two of those absolutes are this: I will make a decision for each homeschool year for each kid on a case by case year by year basis. No homeschooling parent (and no teacher, maybe no human) should make life changing decisions in February. And yet. Here I am, having just spent most of February pondering and thinking and researching and looking into a wide variety of Other Options beside homeschooling for one,…
-
Marie’s Words: A Timberdoodle Review
This game is certainly an educational game and it’s not really disguised as anything else. But it’s not a drudgery or a bore, by any means. Marie’s Words is a vocabulary building game that can be played in several different ways. It can be used alone or it can be played as a game with several variations. I’m literally just now seeing that the website suggests this as a part of their fourth grade curriculum set. Maybe your fourth graders would be ready for these words, but I know my fourth graders would not have been. Honestly, the majority of the words listed on the cards are…
-
Studying Longfellow: A Poetry Study Tutorial
We tend to choose a poet to study for a term (or a season, or a few weeks or month – whatever fits your routine). During that time I basically repeat this same general format, substituting a new poem for each session together. Generally – this style of poetry study would be done a few times each month – weekly or bi-weekly. I do this routine with my own kids individually, but it also the format I use to teach a small co-op of sorts that Jo and I do together weekly. Step One: Choose your poet. I chose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Step Two: Gather your biographical information. (I used…
-
(the first annual?) Autumn Poet Tea
Turns out it wasn’t enough to just enjoy our Poet Tea with the family. This week we welcomed with open arms the perfect loveliness of the autumn season. With open arms, sweet friends and thoughtful words from celebrated poets. And – with desserts! And tea too, of course. Oh my word, you guys. The cuteness was intoxicating. We invited a few friends and set out some fall treats in the moderate fall weather. (Pumpkin muffins and hand pies and scones and lemon curd and tea served in my mother’s tea pots.) Each of the guests were asked to come prepared to share an autumn poem. That was the best part.…
-
now starring …
Do you remember a boy named Bergen who was painfully shy in public? This kid who doesn’t even desire to read his poetry out loud to his classmates at the safety of his friend’s dining room table? Yes. That fella. Imagine this. Our co-op has been working on a simple play entitled How Birds Fly for the past term. At the beginning of the theatre class I asked all of the kids questions to gage their comfort level in being on stage for the performance. Every child except Bergen wanted a role – some wanted only minor speaking parts – but everyone wanted to participate on stage. I allowed the…
-
this might be a rant. or it might be the truth. or it could be both.
I’m not anti-higher education. I’m really not. (Although I think you already know how I feel about a system.) Shoot, I loved college. It was a good time. (Which promotes my point exactly.) I love learning. I mean, I’m dedicating my very life to the process, you know. But the more I teach, the more I learn, the more I realize that what I want to produce in our homeschool is not educated adults, per se. Not diploma-holding citizens. Not specific-abbreviations-past-your-given-name people. I want to produce learners. Thinkers. Imaginers. People who know how to find information and who want to get to that information. People who can think. And I’m…
-
Wildwood Academy: Group Study
Homeschool is proceeding differently this year. A true statement I can make every year. Even though I waited in line a loooong time to get into a fabulous homeschool co-op last year, we’re not all doing the same co-op this year. (And it still is fabulous, mind you – just not what our house needs this year.) Riley is attending classes there but my younger crowd is heading in a different direction. I mentioned being excited (I might have said “wildly optimistic”) about an upcoming joint homeschooling venture with several other families. We’re two weeks in and it seems to be going swimmingly. The idea was born of thus: Four…
Keep Reading . . .
what day is it? a day late weekend ramble. I guess.
hello out there.
parenting blues
-
Wildwood Academy, established . . . uh, I’m bad with numbers
A few of our school supplies have not yet arrived in brown cardboard boxes at our door. However, we have officially begun the 2012-2013 school year. (I never have liked the fact that we tag on the next year’s date with this year’s date when we describe the school year. It makes the current year seem to go by so quickly. Why didn’t the inventor of the school year calendar just have school run from February to November or something? Anything more chronologically appealing than mashing two perfectly good years into one.) Like every parent out there, I am still in shock that I have a senior in high school…
-
masterly inactivity
Masterly Inactivity. Almost an oxymoron. It’s a hard one for sure. Another Charlotte Mason tenet I try to figure out the balance of what she says and what I know and what we’re actually doing and how I can misuse even the beautiful intentions of my own heart. Masterly Inactivity. It’s the idea that our children need time. They need large quantities of time when they are not being shuffled from class to piano to karate to dinner to homework to bath to bed. They need time regularly. And in abundance. Time to begin and finish that wooden block village that looks exactly like Jamestown. Time to spend so long…
-
let them play
Sometimes I feel so guilty when I don’t “do” school. When hours creep by and we haven’t read a book, drawn imitation Picassos, blown up a volcano, mapped out the radius of the Mayflower in our front yard, explored geography, performed interpretive dance movements to Mozart’s compositions, crafted an afghan from the hair of goats .. . Ha – like we’re doing any of those things! But still, I feel guilty for all that I should be doing. (And sometimes it’s the exact right kind of guilt that I should feel. I know that.) But sometimes, sometimes, it’s not. And a friend reminded me, a friend who has seven lovely…
-
Outdoor Hour Challenge. V.
We’re up to lesson number seven in our Outdoor Hour Challenge. Despite the picture that may imply otherwise, the kids are still completely engaged. And – equally exciting – are coming to expect this Nature Walk as part of our Tuesday routine. This week we took our stroll through the woods surrounding our house. We practiced being quiet and listening. We looked for signs of birds. We spotted another bird’s nest and witnessed quite a few birds enjoying our new feeder. And then we headed in with a handful of items for our collecting mantle – a pair of pine cones and some conjoined acorn lids. Our assignment was to begin…
-
The Bean Store
I don’t do a lot of sticker charts. I can’t remember to keep up with them. I’m not all that great at rewards systems. But sometime last year I found myself answering the same question one trillion and two times each day. “Can I play a game on the computer?” And I was always making up and then breaking various rules and guidelines. I’d try to time the kids but then forget to see how many minutes they’d actually been on that day. What eventually developed out of my frustration was a counting system of sorts. The kids could earn beans for various tasks – chores, completing schoolwork without being…
