I have been gardening with my boys since they were very young, and though I'm sure that my love of gardening has influenced them, it hasn't taken much effort on my part to get them to enjoy it. I think all children are drawn toward nature and plants when they have the opportunity to explore … Continue reading The Family Project: Our Yard
If there was one thing I wasn't planning at all when I started homeschooling, it's that we'd become a family of gamers. Well, we may not be gamers according to everyone's definition, but we do play a lot of games. My boys love their digital games, but they also love board games, and this past year, … Continue reading Board Games
If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you may remember that my eight-year-old has loved birds since he was about four-years-old. Well, we all love birds, but he’s the one that has inspired us to pay more attention to them, and birdwatching has turned into a family project. If you’d like to see … Continue reading It’s Still Birds
This is my third year writing about my son’s main interest—classical piano. In fact, I think we can stop calling it a project now. This is his chosen vocation, which, yes, I believe a child his age can have because I've seen it over and over again in my husband, myself, and in the biographies … Continue reading Three Years of Piano
At the end of May, my 10-year-old marked a full two years of taking piano lessons. In less than two years, he advanced to playing late intermediate/early advanced repertoire. This is quite remarkable, and for me, it finally sunk in just how remarkable this is over the past year. Of course, my husband recognized it … Continue reading Our 4th Grade Piano Adventures
As I look back over our school 2016-2017 school year, it's been fun to think about what my boys' major projects were this year. For my eldest, it was pretty much piano and gaming. But for my seven-year-old, he pursued many endeavors, and I had fun pursuing some of them with him. Yet it was … Continue reading My 1st Grader’s Ongoing Projects
Due to several reasons, we had not been getting out for regular day hikes as much as we used to, and this made me sad. But last week we woke up, the weather was good, the time was right, and we decided at the last minute to go to the mountains for the day. (We never … Continue reading Thoughts on Photographs and the Last Ten Years
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. ~ Chinese proverb In past years, I wrote a lot of posts with examples of project-based homeschooling in our home, mostly because my eldest son was always making things. This year I have written only two! This is because both boys … Continue reading Project-based Homeschooling: It’s All for the Birds (in a good way)
I'm long overdue to tell you how my bread baking project is going. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that after watching the documentary Cooked, I decided to try capturing my own wild yeast and learning how to bake bread with it. (See my column Capturing Wild Yeast.) Actually, I had been wanting … Continue reading Update On My Bread Baking Project
If you told me a year ago that my son would be taking piano lessons now, and not only that, but he would be showing talent, dedication and a deep interest in classical music, you could have knocked me over with a feather. This has been the most surprising development in our homeschool for me, … Continue reading Project-based Homeschooling: Piano
