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Tag: Science

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What’s In Our Morning Basket?

A few of our favorite things in our morning basket.

 

I can’t stop raving about the way that loop scheduling and a morning basket have completely changed our home school mornings around here. It’s only been two weeks since we made this change and already I know that this is IT. This is what works for us.

So what is IN our morning basket? It’s not a simple answer of a particular curriculum or collection. I pulled from all different places but mostly I pulled from my curriculum shelf. I looked at all the things I purchased with such good intentions that we’d FOR SURE use that and then life gets crazy and schedules go off course and we’d quit. But that’s why loop scheduling is helping us now, because when you loop, you are never behind. You just pick up where you left off and keep on rolling. Continue reading “What’s In Our Morning Basket?”

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How Morning Baskets & Loop Schedules Are Saving Our Home School Day

Home school mamas, I think I’ve finally done it. I think I’ve finally figured out THE method that is going to work for our home school.

But let’s back up a little. While I know my kids are learning and growing and covering material, our home school has not looked the way I really want it to the past few years… or maybe ever. I have tried many different methods for making it work.

The first couple of years, I lesson planned the entire year before we began. I had a page for every school day for the year and exactly what we needed to do that day, including art supplies, library books, and everything else we might need.

That worked for about two weeks each year. Because what would happen is we’d get through half a day and something would come up–a phone call, a headache, an unplanned doctor’s visit–and then that day wasn’t finished and so we’d pick up where we left off the next day and try to do 1.5 days of work and then before you know it we are a whole week behind and feel like we are drowning and once you reach that point, it’s over.

Continue reading “How Morning Baskets & Loop Schedules Are Saving Our Home School Day”

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Memory Work: The Foundation of a Classical Education

Confession: Although I’ve considered myself a classical educator for eight years now, I did not come around to the full importance of memory work in elementary school until three years ago. Finally, the light bulb went off and I got it. You can’t skip the memory work and call it Classical.  We did SOME memorization but not enough and honestly, I was overwhelmed with figuring out what to memorize.

Why? Because the very foundation of a classical education involves working with a child’s abilities at each stage. And young children are especially good at memorizing facts. When we wait until high school to ask a student to memorize the countries involved in a war, it’s a lot harder than when ask the same of a seven year old.

Continue reading “Memory Work: The Foundation of a Classical Education”