When I first started to learn French, I was irrationally angry with my mother. “I’m going to fail,” I boldly proclaimed. “All the other moms took French in high school. Everyone is going to be way ahead of me. You didn’t take French. You can’t help me.” Merci?...
On the fourth Thursday in November, the American tradition of Thanksgiving has continued since the early 1600s. This is a special time to reflect on life with a grateful heart and celebrate the provisions given to each family. This gathering has been handed down for...
The Early Years For the first few years, our homeschooling venture seemed to be going well. Our young daughter learned to count and recognize letters. Soon reading, writing, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division followed, and Mom breathed a sigh of...
The future of learning is changing. While the preceding statement is always somewhat truthful, there has been a definite and accelerated shift in the last decade, and it shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Our world sits under the reign of technology, and...
Being a foreign language teacher, I am frequently asked to give my opinion of the many software programs available for foreign language learning. These are my thoughts on the subject. Foreign Language Learning: PACING Yes, it’s true that software programs allow you...
“I can’t do labs! They are messy or scary and I need special equipment.” The good news is that you don’t and you can do it! Science and discovery are all around us. You don’t need special equipment. You can do many labs with items around your house or found at your...
I have been homeschooling for twenty years, and I must say that our world feels more tumultuous, harried, frenetic, and down-right scary than it did when I first started. I have also noticed students in my classroom are stressed and overwhelmed by a variety of...
Can studying a foreign language improve SAT/ACT scores? Jawohl! Klaro! Bien sûr! If you have homeschoolers in middle school, chances are you have the SAT or ACT exams on a back burner. Now is the time to start preparing them by including a foreign language in...
Last summer, one of my German students, Elijah, took and passed the German CLEP exam, albeit on the second try. The first time, he did not tell me he was taking the exam. Otherwise, I would have helped him prepare. His mother tells the story: We have such good news to...
As noted in Part 1, your homeschooled student probably falls well above their peers on the scale of thinking skills and being well-read. The key to scoring highly on essay testing is a matter of harnessing their knowledge quickly and effectively on the page. Synthesis...
I’m continuing the topic of the upcoming solar eclipse known as the Great American Eclipse. The states the eclipse will traverse are, in order: Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and South...
The Total Solar Eclipse of 1919 Today I want to explain how the total solar eclipse in 1919 made Albert Einstein a celebrity. To do that, I must refer to his General Theory of Relativity. And I simply cannot grasp it. I was taught it, I’ve read about it, I’ve watched...
