A Dad First

Literary Analysis, Critical Thinking, and…Breaking Bad

As the dad of a homeschooling, one-income family, I don’t often get (or take, for the sake of semantics) the opportunity to assign projects. But in my own high school experience, I had an amazing teacher (also was my debate coach) who taught the importance of critical thinking and literary analysis, and taught both exceedingly well with […]

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Rhyme to Read (and Giveaway!)

I originally received an email from the co-author of the reading app Rhyme to Read in April about the possibility of reviewing. It sounded like a great program, but is current available for iPad only, to which I am deathly allergic and morally opposed. (Did you note the sarcastic font and accompanying reverb when reading […]

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Sammy’s First Project Update…

With the exception of this comment and the picture, the post was written by Sammy. My questions and any comments are in italics, below. Link to the Epic Project is here. Which coin and which bill are most interesting to you so far?  Which thing(s) make it interesting to you, and why? The most interesting coin so […]

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Sammy’s Project, Part 1…

We started this project at the beginning of the year as a way to learn about the history, customs, and geography of the countries of the world. You can read more about the initial aims here. We’ve received a couple of very generous submissions via social media, and more coming. But so far, these are […]

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Sammy’s Project: The First Countries…

The background of Sammy’s project is listed above under The Epic Project. He wants to start in South America, so the sovereign countries we’re looking for currencies examples from are: Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruaguay Venezuela Can you help, or do you know of someone in one of these […]

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The Epic Project…

One of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is the ability to tailor learning to the individual student and his/her learning style, as well as incorporate many different areas of learning rather than a single subject (like grammar). Sammy and I have been talking about and planning an epic project to begin in January. It’ll initially […]

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Oscar Wilde on Homeschooling…

Ok, so maybe he wasn’t talking directly about homeschooling…but the quote is quite fitting as to why so many of us homeschool and why the supposed social aspect isn’t nearly as important as the public school system and its supporters make it out to be… “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps […]

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Review: The Good The Bad & The Difference

Now that Maddie is home from the hospital and things are starting to return to normal, thought it’d be a good time to catch up on a review that I’ve been needing to write…for months. Normally, delays in reviews are due to a sense of dread. In this case, however, nothing anywhere near that. But […]

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On Being Critical….

My earlier post about the school sign near our home brought some criticism on Facebook. The particular person disagreed and did not think that the type of criticism was helping, and I’m sure she is not alone. And while she made some generally valid points, and did so without being unpleasant, I respectfully disagree. And […]

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Why Schools Fail: An Illustration

No, I am not going to give a list, or even my opinions as to why schools fail. I’m going to use an illustration… There’s an elementary school near us that has a reader board, and one of the main things that flashes across it is this: All Children are Capable of Success! (then next […]

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