by Donna | Oct 1, 2018
An Introduction to Readability Levels
I began homeschooling over thirty years ago when Ray and I taught my younger sister (who was in eighth grade at the time) in our home. During my first several years of homeschooling, I used early readers when my children were first learning to read, but I did not care for “readers” for older children. I always felt that abridged or excerpted stories were inferior—and that children should read whole books.
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by Donna | Sep 11, 2018
“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” ~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves”
During my graduate studies (in Reading Specialist) at Ball State University, I did a master’s thesis about children who learn to read without any reading instruction. That is, the kids just suddenly started reading books without ever having phonics lessons, basal readers, or other “formal instruction.” It was a challenging thesis simply because there is so little data about it because of our “early school attendance age.” Seldom does a child learn to read “naturally” before age six or seven, and with kids going to school at age five (and often beginning reading instruction in kindergarten), the research was sparse concerning these “instruction-less” readers.
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by Donna | May 21, 2016
“One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.” -Unknown
Summer is here! Whether our children attend preschool, private school, public school, or homeschool, there are things that we can all do during the summer to make it an enjoyable, growing time in our children’s lives.
Summer truly proves the quote above–that one good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. We have our children home all summer–either with us if we work at home or stay home with younger children or at home while we are working. Either way, we have all summer to be their “schoolmasters.”
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by Donna | Sep 19, 2015
A couple of days ago I wrote about how to teach your kids NOT to apologize based on The View’s apology to the beauty pageant nurse. In going through the steps to teach your kids what to do and not do in apologizing, it was uncanny how many things the co-hosts on that program did in the “what not to do when you apologize” list.
There are many formulae out there for teaching the apology, and most of them are correct as they focus on the basics:
(Download this poster here)
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by Donna | Sep 18, 2015
How many times have we heard “It isn’t my fault”?
Or “He did it first”?
Or “I only did that because he did this to me…”?
While some of that will always be a part of raising more than one child in a home, as parents our focus should be on getting the whole “never my fault” mentality out of our children by the time they are grown. And replace it with responsibility for actions, empathy towards those they might hurt, and humility in admitting guilt. (more…)
