I love homeschooling and being with my kids. Once in a while, though, I wish that I could do something I did in public school: get a sub. Prior to kids, I just had to write a lesson plan, call the administrator in charge of subs, and climb back...
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Have you ever been surprised by something? Most of us have: a slamming door, unexpected news, an old idea you suddenly see in a new light. In Dorothy Sayers’s essay “The Mind of the Maker,” she writes about the experience of a student who is surprised by a new...
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I have had the pleasure of meeting so many homeschool parents who want to learn Latin prior to or during their child’s Latin education. However, I have also met many people who recoil at the idea of learning Latin with their students. They think that it would be a waste...
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There are not a lot of reasons we could say not to plan. It is kind of like housework—you know the plan is going to get messed up quickly. You know that you will not always get it all done and that sometimes you will have to start over....
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Three months ago I ran my last collegiate 5k race. It was at the University of Kentucky on a big, beautiful, blue track. I’d always wanted to run on a blue track. I spent eight hours in the van with my teammates for the last time. We joked and...
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West End, North Carolina — When Leigh Bortins started Classical Conversations® in 1997 in the basement of her Winston-Salem, North Carolina, home with 11 students, little did she know that her creation would grow to more than 100,000 students in less than 20 years. Leigh’s oldest son, Robert Bortins, now...
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I recently had an aha moment about what it means to enter the dialectic stage. I have three children ages thirteen, ten, and seven. My oldest son Caleb was down at the lake trying out a net he made while I wanted to do a science experiment with the...
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When I first sat down to write this article, I had a specific message I intended to get across. As I was writing the final paragraph however, I realized my struggle to compose wasn’t because I had writer’s block; it was because I wasn’t writing what was on my...
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“Memory is the scribe of the soul.” – Aristotle Are you making some family memories this summer? Around our home this week we have been sharing some of our favorite memories from summer and homeschooling. With the long evenings that seem to be made for lingering conversations, summer is...
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I have been sitting in chairs for over forty years. During those forty years, I have sat my posterior down in many different chairs. All those many years of sitting, and you know what? I cannot remember breaking one chair. Well, maybe one of those cheap resin chairs that...
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I’ve been in the homeschooling community for quite some time. I was educated at home from kindergarten until I graduated high school in 2011, and this upcoming school year will be my third year as a Challenge director. I’ve seen the best and worst of homeschooling through the years....
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I have just finished three days of speaking at one of our Parent Practicums in Georgia, and once again, my own heart has come away enriched and grappling with deeper truth and greater insight. We spent the past three days analyzing and sharing with one another about the arts...
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