Archive for the 'Education' Category

Counterprogramming

As I mentioned last year, Anthony now attends a private high school that suits his intellect and his interests and immerses him in an environment filled with kids much like him. We’re very happy with the experience so far–the kids want to learn, the teachers want to help them learn, and the facilities are top-notch. […]

A Comprehensive American History Book That Doesn’t Suck

I really, really wish that Wilfred F. McClay’s Land of Hope had been available when I started homeschooling my son, or a couple of years ago, or a year ago, but it wasn’t. This well-written and comprehensive treatment of American history was published in May, so while we’re certainly getting some use from it, it […]

New Developments In Our Educational Adventure

Well, our long educational adventure soon takes another interesting, and very welcome, turn. A few months ago, we found out about the Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy, a private middle and high school associated with Arizona State University. Herberger uses the Cambridge curriculum, and offers a challenging deep-dive into sciences and humanities alike. We […]

Homeschooling Resources That You Can Use!

Over the years, I’ve been asked a few times about our homeschooling experiences, and about resources we’ve come across. Originally for my own purposes, but later to share, I compiled what we’ve found into a handout, which I continually update. I’ve put that handout on Dropbox to share, and here it is. I hope somebody […]

Wandering History Lessons

How does a homeschooling lesson go? If done right, it sometimes wanders in unexpected directions. We’re currently studying the early women’s rights movement, including the early suffragists, the 19th Amendment, and the fight for equality before the law. We started with good, rather conventional material from the National Endowment for the Humanities Edsitement site, History.com, […]

From the Horse’s Mouth (and That of His Rider)

This year we’ve switched from having Anthony enrolled in an online private school to homeschooling him in a more do-it-yourself manner. We’re still using K12’s Grammar and Vocabulary lessons (I bought the full Language Skills package, but I’m ignoring their take on Literature and Composition). That let’s us address some of the kid’s complaints about […]

Shooting Lessons

Not every class with mom and dad involves diagramming sentences, the history of North American settlement, or (deep breaths, de-e-e-e-p breaths) long division. Sometimes the focus of the day can be the care and feeding of the boomstick. You may know this better as gun safety and good, old-fashioned shooting. Much fun was had by […]

How Not to Balance Homeschooling and a Full-Time Job

It’s been six weeks since I woke up with a crushing headache and essentially blind in one eye. I thought it was a visual migraine, of which I’ve had a few over the years. The weird geometric shapes obstructing the vision in my left eye, pain, and exhaustion all suggested that I was starting my […]

The mad archer is loose

Prized possessions that they are, the bow and arrow we built together are locked away in Tony’s room, so I don’t have a photograph to offer. But he’s very proud of them, and damned if the arrow doesn’t travel quite a distance, despite being fired from a homemade weapon of green wood strung with mason’s […]

A little bit ahead of the pack

As it turns out, Tony is well-advanced over most of the other kids in his kindergarten class — possibly all of them, though I’m not exactly running the little tykes through a skill appraisal just to see where my own son ranks. I expected him to excel at reading, and in fact he’s doing extremely […]

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