Who does not love the wheel of catechesis first simply signified by Leigh Bortins in her diagrams fringed by circling arrows? The diagram, celebrating knowledge, understanding, and wisdom for the goal to know God and to make Him known, may morph to a more sophisticated design, but the doxology...
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“Mom, when am I ever going to get out of the grammar stage?” my eleven-year-old son asked me while reciting memory work. He wanted me to say, “When you turn twelve, you won’t have to do any more memory work,” but that is not entirely true. Although we say...
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As high school students transition to independent learners and earnestly prepare for adulthood, they must learn self-discipline in addition to a greater volume of information. Their interaction with peers is more direct and ongoing than in their previous school experience as they gather together to research for debate and...
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It started with a dirt hill. The large, unassuming pile of fill dirt occupied the back corner of our church property. To us adults it represented the unfinished nature of our construction efforts. To our children, it represented adventure, strategy, and conquest. Every Sunday after our worship service the...
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At the end of each school year, our community holds a geography fair based upon the current cycle’s Foundations memory work. This event has given students and parents an opportunity to showcase the geography memory work in a unique and creative way at our End-of-Year Performance and Awards Ceremony....
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Yes, we really did. Stay with me… In 1995, Denis John Adams was convicted for sexual assault. The odds against him, regarding a DNA match, were one in 2,000,000. This meant that jurors were two million times more likely to observe the evidence if Adams were guilty than if...
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“What could I say that would matter?” That was all I could think about as I stood before a crowd of 100 Haitians—all homeless, all living in tents. Their brown eyes pierced me—waiting, wondering, and desperately looking to me for something. I had been on a mission trip in...
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Last month, I wrote an article called, “How to Raise a Discoverer.” This month, I want to expand on that idea. Toward the end of the first article, I argued that Dorothy Sayers, Leigh Bortins, and Classical Conversations have equipped parents with the necessary tools that will help them...
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As many of you now know, we are expecting our fifth child this summer. Yay! As amazingly lovely as babies are, pregnancy can be just as strongly terrible for me—at least in the beginning and then again a little at the end. Besides being a physical battle for me...
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Let me state this plainly: the Challenge B tutor has the best position in Classical Conversations. We build mental muscle with logic, we train opinionated kids to argue, and we watch children grow up into young men and women attorneys who go into battle in a courtroom. Yes, I am a...
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And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin. — Genesis 35:18 (KJV) This seemingly inconsequential detail reveals to us the importance of names. With her dying breath, Rachel wanted to name...
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Is there harmony in this world? How does this harmony inform our actions as Christians? How does this harmony inform how we approach simpler, more familiar ideas and how we approach complex, less familiar ideas? Here at Rivendell, we just completed our mathematics module and it was full of...
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