It’d be silly if I asked you if your home school ever got off track, so I won’t ask. But, since I’ve obviously been out of the loop for two weeks now, I’ll just tell you that being knocked out off schedule never stops happening, with or without the kids at home. Besides refocusing on […]
9 Great Hooks for Memorable Writing
Everybody knows that the first line of a piece, the hook, is the most important part of any essay, story, or article. If you don’t catch your reader’s interest in that first moment, they may never read what you say after that. Trouble is, the first line is also the hardest to write. To keep […]
How to Strengthen Relationships by Not Using “I”
One day, my boss and mentor, Dave Marks, said something to me that changed my life and the way I viewed all relationships: “Cathy, one of the most important things you need to teach your kids is to not use the word ‘I’ when they speak with people. Saying ‘I’ makes you the center of […]
How To Teach Writing Without Writing
Imagine your kids’ reaction if you said, “today’s writing lesson has no writing.” You’d definitely have their attention. When you remember that writing is just thinking on paper, this makes total sense! You can teach basic composition by having what I call “observation conversations” – by helping kids organize what they see around them and […]
4 Questions to Determine Home School Essentials
When you’re teaching your kids at home, you know that the same things that challenged you the first year of homeschooling are the same ones that challenge you every year after that. But you can sort through the big picture by asking the same four questions every time you plan your child’s curriculum: 4 Questions […]
Using the Socratic Method with High Schoolers
Using the Socratic Method with High Schoolers Using the Socratic Method to teach high schoolers may be uncommon, but it deserves a place in every student’s education. You’ll find it in universities around the world but rarely in a high school classroom. That’s a shame, because it teaches students how to think, not what to […]
The Socratic Method for Elementary Students
The great thinkers of the world have used the Socratic method for centuries as a way to think about great things, but can that kind of reasoning also be as “elementary” as Sherlock Holmes said? Yes, it’s very possible, and in fact, elementary-aged students need to learn to think Socratically now more than ever. Over […]
13 Non-Traditional Ways to Test Your Child
A lot of children don’t test well. In fact, there are so many kids who get test anxiety that there is an organization devoted to studying the problem, The American Association of Test Anxiety. On their website, they write, “About 16-20% of students have high test anxiety, making this the most prevalent scholastic impairment in […]
How Being in Israel Changed Christmas
Today Cathy Canen of VCLD Network shares with us how a trip to Israel changed her perspective and her holidays. It was this past October actually, when I visited Israel, but it changed my Christmases forever. The God of Christmas The most remarkable thing about visiting Israel was seeing the places where Jehovah God proved […]
