Last week was the end of our 18th week of homeschooling and tomorrow is the midpoint of winter. It is hard to believe, but we are halfway through. In some ways it feels like it has been ages to get to this point, but in others it seems like I blinked and here we are….
Author: Gwen Shaneck
Switching Things Up: Finding time to write while homeschooling
My go-to writing time has usually been during our rest-time. I may have older children, but I still have a thirty minute period where they go upstairs and ready or play quietly while I have a little bit of peace and quiet. Truthfully, if I only had older children I don’t think that a rest-time…
The Other Shoe Drops: Homeschooling High School
Never say never. All last week, I felt comfortable saying that I was going to be embarking on homeschooling my youngest three children. Granted, one of them is in 8th grade and taking Geometry, the other in sixth and taking pre-Algebra and the last in first grade, but I thought that I could handle it….
Easing back into a morning routine: creating peace
I am slowly crawling my way back to a routine. I am a person who loves routine and daily rhythms. I don’t do a schedule. I hate time blocks and everything like that. Life is too unpredictable, but I like my routines. This follows that follows that. I think that life is meant to be…
A Great Podcast About Homeschooling or Distance Learning During Covid-19
We started homeschooling this morning and I have to say that it went pretty ok. We’re still ordering books and waiting for deliveries, but I wanted to get going so that we could stop just waiting for school to start. Although I homeschooled before, I have been researching and listening to a bunch of different…
History: Ancient History
We are doing Story of the World Vol 1: Ancient Times for our history curriculum. I bought this for our history when I thought I would only be homeschooling my first grader, but it is a program that is adaptable for all students K-8 and so we are going to go ahead with it. We…
Homeschooling Advanced Middle School Math – What we are doing
I have a 6th grader taking Pre-Algebra and an 8th grader taking Geometry. That is a daunting sentence to write. For my sixth-grader I really considered a lot of options. I do not like most of the standard homeschool curricula when it comes to higher math and (for those not in the know) Pre-Algebra and…
Homeschooling from scratch
I’m going to be homeschooling my three youngest this coming year. Which, quite frankly, is a shock to me. When I hung up my homeschooling yoke four years ago I never thought I would take it up again. But, here we are. 2020, the year of never say never. I’m going to be homeschooling 1st…
School Plans – always up in the air
School starts in two weeks. We have run the gamut of plans from all of them going back full-time, part-time, some-time, no-time. Like everyone else, we are floundering. My three oldest were set to go back until I learned that they would be attending school in “learning pods” on their chromebooks with a “Learning Coach”…
The Lost Family: DNA Testing
Last week I read the amazing book The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland. I also happened to listen to the podcast The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry‘s episode The Viking Code which examines how DNA testing works and whether or not all Britons (is that the…