It’s been a whirlwind of activity in our home this month! Our oldest son finished his first year of college, our youngest son finished up second grade, and our two middle sons have wrapped up their seventh and tenth grade years. It usually takes all summer for us to re-set and finalize curriculum selections, but […]
Mission Great Commission Curriculum Overview
Our Mission: Great Commission Curriculum series takes families through a study of the entire world over a three-year period, with… Mission: World Wonders exploring ancient to medieval history along with world cultures, religions, and missions (along with fine arts, biology, and earth science), Mission: Faith Forgers providing an overview of church history in the midst […]
On Memorization: Using Art for Remembering
“How did you remember that?!?” I can’t tell you how many times our children have surprised us by spouting off some seemingly random fact or idea. It’s perplexing to consider that we spent so many years focusing on memorization of facts through songs, chants, and hand motions, only to find that over a period of […]
An introductory course in filmmaking!
One of the great gifts of homeschooling is having the flexibility to pursue a student’s giftings and callings as they trek through their high school years. This has been especially the case with our second son who enjoys drama and storytelling and videography. Out of all of the different curriculum options we’ve considered, Filmmaking from […]
Church History Notebooking Pages
“The Christian life comes down to two simple things: trust and obedience. What does that mean, exactly? We could hold a seminar and talk about it. Visual aids are better. Look at a life.” -Elisabeth Elliot, Missionary to Ecuador For Christians, church history is a family history. As we learn about the “great cloud of […]
Writing through the Wardrobe, Writing with Hobbits
As we drive to church with our teenagers talking nonstop about literary elements, I realize we’ve hit a unique treasure in the realm of homeschool curriculum choices. While we’ve often enjoyed discussing literature as a family, this particular discussion soars far higher and dives far deeper than any discussion I have led. I marvel – […]
Theme-Based Writing Lessons
Years ago, our family participated in a classical homeschool program that introduced us to history-based writing lessons from IEW. It was not until we headed in a new direction that we discovered the vast assortment of excellent resources available from IEW – all the way through high school – even within the narrow category of […]
Learning the Grammar of Poetry
In front of us there is a wall That we must go around. But horror struck upon us all; Alas, the wall is round! It circles us, a loathsome foe; We’ve thought about where we should go, But now -Alas!- we do not know The way to leave this wall we’ve found. -“The Wall” by […]
A Simple Solution for Teaching Writing
Rewind one decade. As we approached the time when our oldest son needed to learn to write paragraphs and essays, I realized I had no idea how to actually teach writing. Although I could write paragraphs and essays myself, I had virtually no recollection of how I learned that skill. At about that time, I […]