This week I’m participating with a homeschool blog link-up called “The Homeschool Mother’s Journal” hosted by The Homeschool Chick. I love that this week The Homeschool Chick Sue’s post is called “My Year of New” because it’s not about your typical “New Year, New You” gonna-fix-everything-that’s-wrong-with-my-life reflection. In fact, Sue’s…
It’s our final week in my “homeschooling Christmas” series! Although we had a full week left before Christmas, things quickly transitioned from busy preparation to vacation mode in our house. I think this was partly due to the fact that two snowstorms moved through Colorado — one on Monday and…
This week I’m participating with a homeschool blog link-up called “The Homeschool Mother’s Journal” hosted by The Homeschool Chick. I’m also continuing my series on “a homeschooling Christmas,” where I’ve been sharing about our new approach to integrating Christmas traditions (some old, some new!) with our homeschool plan for December.…
Last week in My Tango with Traditions, I shared my struggle with establishing and maintaining family Christmas traditions over the years since becoming a mom — and my resolve to change that this year. As a family, we decided which previous traditions were keepers, and what we wanted to do…
I love the idea of traditions just as much as the next person, and the warm and fuzzy feelings that word evokes in my heart. However I’ll admit that try as I might to establish and keep traditions, I’ve really struggled over the years with consistency. Which is a problem…
By Renée Gotcher This week I’m participating with a homeschool blog link-up called “The Homeschool Mother’s Journal” hosted by The Homeschool Chick. It’s been a pretty steady week of “ups” in the homeschooling department thanks to our recent school area “reorg” — which has been really refreshing — but it’s…
This weekend I attended my first board meeting for our local homeschool support group, Homeschoolers of Castle Rock. I recently accepted the board positions of Membership Coordinator and Web Admin (yes, I’m a perpetual volunteer), and with a few other board members besides myself transitioning on and off the board,…
Lately (and more often than I’d like to admit), I have found myself in the midst of trying to gracefully navigate the twists and turns of a homeschool day gone awry, until I finally reach a breaking point where I am asking myself: “Where’s the reboot button?” Seriously. Can I…
Being a homeschool graduate could have turned out one of two ways for me: I could have loved the experience and known from the start that I would want to pass on that same gift to my children, or I could have gone the other way and felt that there…
By Renée Gotcher Last week our homeschool group took an interesting field trip to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It was interesting because although these days most museums, zoos, performance halls, and the like have no problem hosting homeschool groups as they would any other school group, our…
“When I was a kid, I had to walk five miles to school… uphill… in the snow!” We’ve all heard that one before — Grandpa’s way of saying, “Stop complaining! You’ve got it pretty good, kid!” And even though he didn’t actually walk five miles uphill, in the snow, to…
After completing a fairly successful “warm-up to school” agenda the week of Sept. 12, my girls and I were ready to dive into our new curriculum from Heart of Wisdom the very next week. But before I go on, let me back up for a minute and explain what Heart…