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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Writing well is an undisputed goal of excellent education. However, as with all things rich in character, the process of good writing bequeaths an even greater blessing. When we study formal writing using the five canons of rhetoric, we are also teaching our students to be proficient problem solvers....
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We engage in the art of rhetoric in order to persuade others to the true, the good, or the beautiful. Any act of persuasion that seeks to move someone toward the false, the bad, or the ugly—intentional or not—is an act of sophistry. What often moves or persuades someone...
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It isn’t news that video games are increasingly a part of our culture. But there’s been a surprising lack of thoughtful consideration regarding something so influential, and into which so much time is being invested. I don’t only mean that there aren’t enough parents saying “video games are bad”...
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Chapters Four and Five – Reading and Writing Three Big Ideas about the Three Rs by Cara McLauchlan “As parents and teachers, we can form intimate bonds with children by loving the books they love and listening carefully to their ideas.” – Leigh Bortins, The Question (pg. 76) Legend has it...
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Were you classically educated? Me neither! I have so much to learn! And I have been doing it through reading about classical education. I finished reading Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin by Tracy Lee Simmons today. Yay! This book was handed out at my local...
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The Scriptures state, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”1 including “a time to keep, and a time to cast away.”2 Clearly, we are exhorted to consider our time and actions carefully. In daily life as home educators, we are bombarded to get everything...
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It has become taboo today to mention anything relating to Christianity in the same sentence with anything regarding law or public policy. If you mention anything that even remotely sounds like Christian theology in a public policy context, you are immediately met with cries of “Separation of church and...
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Although copywork, dictation, and narration are not difficult concepts, I struggled with how to implement them effectively during our first years of homeschooling. I offer here what I have learned about these valuable tools of learning—not as an expert, but as a beginner who is still learning how to...
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