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…
In our homeschool, we have made it a tradition in the past that between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, we stop our regular school schedule and lessons, and we focus on fun seasonal subjects. We take extra time to learn about the birth of Jesus and his gift of salvation.…
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…
When I was 16 and soon to be a homeschool graduate, my dad planned the ultimate homeschool traveling “field trip” for our family. He planned it for months and had every minute of the trip planned out, literally. When it was time, our family of five loaded up in a…
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…
By Rosanna Ward When I was homeschooled, I remember having a lot of free time. After our school work was done, Dad would pretty much leave us on our own. We didn’t have cable TV, the Internet, cell phones, or other forms of electronic entertainment to distract us, and I…
“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…
By Rosanna Ward Most of the time when you go to homeschool activities or see homeschoolers out and about during the day, children are with their mothers. Typically, dad is at work — which is a wonderful blessing. I know I am particularly blessed to have a hard-working husband who…
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…