Rhetoric: the art of using words effectively in speaking or writing (Webster’s New World Dictionary) When we first started homeschooling, we read Debra Bell’s Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling and felt compelled to write down our vision for homeschooling our children. Among other things, our family vision stated that at the end of fifteen...
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Formal writing may be a dying art. Today, written communication is so easily produced that many forms of it are disposable. In previous generations, one might jot down a list for shopping and discard it when completed. However, today’s texts, tweets, emails, and posts cause the inboxes of contemporary...
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Chapter Three – Frequently Asked Questions The Extraordinary FAQs by Cara McLauchlan “The next time you meet someone new (any adult) don’t ask what he does for a living; instead, ask what he likes to do in his free time. You’ll either make him speechless or he won’t stop...
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I would postulate that any school teacher in the country would agree that teaching Truth is important. However, in today’s culture, “Truth” and “fact” have been confused. And for the past few generations, “fact” and “opinion” have been confused, leading to our current cultural confusion of “Truth” and “opinion.”...
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I never thought I would find myself teaching my daughter to cheat. We spend our time as parents teaching wholesome lessons like kindness to siblings, respect of elders, and honesty in all things. What place could “cheating” have among those lesson plans? I have been contemplating this “lesson” for...
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What is the purpose of education? Are we educating our children for heaven or Harvard? What is our ultimate goal? We are called to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and that means more than just training them to perform a task or understand...
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My dog is getting old. When I visited my family at Christmastime he ran up to me, unsteadily, as if somehow the back half of him was drunk, and I saw the hair in his ears had turned white. I was raised around dogs and it is always sad...
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I help high school students find colleges that suit them well. That is what I do and I like doing it. It is especially rewarding when I feel that I have assisted a student who is a family member or close friend of mine. I had the opportunity to...
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I just had a conversation with my fourteen year old daughter. She has been in Classical Conversations since she was six years old. She has heard me talk about the phases of learning for nine years now. She has heard me explain that whenever you learn something, you first...
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If you have read The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education, you will quickly understand how The Question: Teaching Your Child the Essentials of Classical Education is the follow-up. As Leigh Bortins introduced us to the grammar stage in The Core, she now introduces us to the dialectic stage in The...
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“Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15, KJV). How do we, as homeschooling parents, prepare our children to be ready? For some, they are inclined to give...
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At Classical Conversations, we believe that parents are the very best teachers for their children. This is at the core of everything we do. This is why we firmly believe in equipping parents, and why we have parents attend Foundations and Essentials with their students. This is why we...
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