Feeling Like A Failure
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 13 comments
I’ve felt like a failure lately. We had a new baby in November, a move in August, and now the house is piled with boxes and laundry. Almost every day something happens to derail school, the dishes pile up, someone is hurt or crying or needs a clean diaper, kiss, or a pencil. For two years, I managed a GFCF diet for my...
Creating Boundaries at the Homeschool Table
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 4 comments
Like many, we homeschool at the dining table. Every day I’m amazed at the speed with which it is covered—books, papers, folders, colored pencils, and sometimes a bowl or a cup is squeezed in there, too. Worse, I’ve seen a kid fill one spot up with books and papers and then sit at a fresh spot for lunch, leaving one of my...
ABCs of Homeschool
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 1 comment
Amazon, and especially Amazon Mom. Books. Lots of them. Cuddling by the fire on a school day. Dirty–science experiments with earthworms and plants and owl pellets, or Dishes piled up in the kitchen sink. Explaining–why we homeschool, how to add, who speaks Latin, where the International Dateline is, when...
Entertainment History 1890-1919
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
One of the things I enjoy about teaching modern history is the chance to introduce my kids to the entertainment of the time. We can read Shakespeare’s plays and Greek tragedies, but the dawn of the 20th century is the first time we can really see what made the people of that time laugh. Some might argue that it’s...
The “Gift” Beneath the Bow
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 1 comment
I have a secret passion for gifted studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and education, but standing in a Barnes & Noble one day about ten years ago, waiting for my husband who was about to meet me for lunch, I found a coffee table book about giftedness. Having grown up in gifted programs, I’ve always been...
Songs for a Mother’s Heart
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
On Having it All You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose The job, the spouse, the babies: Every mother has to choose. I drop my daughter off among the twos, Come back, and find she’s been lost among the keys. You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose. I watch my son, he’s changing...
The Ultimate School Project
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
I have realized a sordid thing about homeschooling: I am not the student. As much as I hated public school growing up, it has been astonishing to me to realize how much there was to enjoy…about learning, about being the one who gets to have the ideas, make the projects, choose the colors and the deeper points of study for...
Eschewing Obfuscation in Academia via Kinesthetic Jargon-Elimination
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
…. or Learning Vocabulary Sometimes when I’m writing lesson plans, I have an epiphany, and I realize that my kids’ attention spans are no longer or deeper than my own. If I have not managed to retain the definitions of stomata, xylem, and chloroplasts from our reading…they probably haven’t, either. And if a...
Should School Be Fun?
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
Some homeschooling friends are debating this question right now, vacillating between guilt that their kids aren’t having enough “fun” homeschooling and conviction that too much fun in the early years will lead to an inability to concentrate and work hard later on. I did what any responsible educator would do: I asked my...
The Value of a Frozen Pizza
Posted by Aubrey Lively | 0 comments
For the last several months, I have disappeared. We’ve gotten most of our schoolwork done, but everything else from cooking to cleaning and sometimes answering the phone, has dropped off my radar. I’ve been reading. I’m an odd bird when it comes to reading. Although I’d never say so in front of my children, I...
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