This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up over at The Voice of Experience. Grab a cup of coffee and head on over to see what’s going on with us unsocialized, withdrawn from the world and weak of faith homeschoolers 😛 Kidding. Kidding. Thanks to Eric for putting it together. Continue reading The Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up!
I came across a great quote today from Pope Benedict which presents a way of thinking about living an authentic Christian life in our modern, western world:
We do not know what the future of Europe will be. Here we must agree with Toynbee, that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and thereby to place itself at the service of all humankind. (See the whole article by Benedict here.)
Toynbee was a British historian who looked at history as a series of rising and falling cultures. In his understanding, cultures are shaped by the particular challenges their culture faced. The role of the “creative minority” was to offer solutions which addressed the challenges of the times. There’s a very interesting and long discussion to be had regarding how this works, however, I have kids to take care of so I’m going to cut it as short as I can. Continue reading “Christians as a “Creative Minority””
If you are homeschooling or interested in homeschooling, be sure to stop by the Carnival of Homeschooling hosted at Life on the Road. It’s a trip around the homeschool blogosphere without having to spend hour searching for something interesting. Of particular interest to me was a review of the latest Caldecott award winner – The Invention of Hugo Cabret. These sorts of awards have gotten … Continue reading The Carnival of Homeschooling Is Up!
A while back at Why Homeschool, Henry Cate mentioned that your satisfaction with curriculum seems to have an inverse relationship to how much you paid for it. What you shell out big bucks for rarely works, but what you get for free is usually just what you needed. I completely agree! My oldest son Noah is moving into high school level work, and truth to … Continue reading Free is good!
I got to do something today which I had once planned on spending much of my life doing, but never really got the chance to do after getting waylaid by children and life and my own insecurities. I got to take a kid who thinks poetry is boring and meaningless and show them the magic which is present in those short, truncated lines with the … Continue reading There are elves in the fire
Someone seems to have erased all the cookies on our computer and it took me 2 days to remember my user name and password for blogger – so I’ve had an extra long break from blogging. I’ve had some really big ups and really big downs in the past week and a half. However, dwelling on the ups is almost always better for a gal … Continue reading Ups and downs
Since my 11 year wants to be a herpetologist (reptile scientist), he decided he needed to get more serious about his science so we’re studying biology right now. We’ve been looking at taxonomy (the classification of living things) and I came up with a fun activity I thought I’d share with you. It’s basically just a worksheet on a wall, but my son enjoyed it. … Continue reading The Wall of Taxonomy
Earlier today I was reading the very good “Crunch Cons” blog over at beliefnet and the author, Rod Dreher was responding to a reader question about preparing to homeschool his daughter in a few years (the child in question was under 1 year). Mr. Dreher responded first by explaining that he and his wife were no longer homeschooling their son who is now six. Then … Continue reading 5 year old boys and “A Well Trained Mind”
Earlier today I was reading the very good “Crunch Cons” blog over at beliefnet and the author, Rod Dreher was responding to a reader question about preparing to homeschool his daughter in a few years (the child in question was under 1 year). Mr. Dreher responded first by explaining that he and his wife were no longer homeschooling their son who is now six. Then … Continue reading 5 year old boys and "A Well Trained Mind"
Here’s a cool website for those seeking to identify unknown bugs: http://whatsthatbug.com/ FYI, there is a picture of wheelbugs mating which prompts a comment about “bug pornography” by the site authors. Nothing major, but I thought I’d give a heads-up in case that sort of thing bugs you. (Get it – bugs you! Harhar.) Continue reading Bugs galore!
The Upside Down World 