Posts

Multicultural Thanksgiving

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A new Thanksgiving guide is here! I wanted to create a blog post to share with you some screenshots of the guide and tell you a little more about what you can expect inside the PDF document. I love multicultural learning in our homeschool. Christmas has always been the perfect canvas for focusing on cultures around the world as we study how different countries celebrate. Check out my free Christmas Around the World book study after checking out the new Thanksgiving guide! The Multicultural Thanksgiving guide is geared toward K-5 students through the picture books  Molly’s Pilgrim ,  Duck for Turkey Day , and  Mary’s First Thanksgiving . These 3 picture books are beautiful representations of Americans of different cultures, all learning about the gift and blessing of freedom, family, and friends. In addition to reading the picture books, students have additional learning resources of poetry, copywork, music, and video links.     My prayer for you is that you wil...

2025-2026 Planning Post

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Every year I enjoy blogging what our plans will be for the upcoming school year. Our umbrella school requires me to turn in plans before August and I love sharing what we do - it comes naturally to blog about it each year! I also love encouraging other homeschool families to find delight in a Charlotte Mason homeschool. If you're curious about our plans from past years, here is a collection of our curriculum! 2024-2025 ,  2023-2024 ,  2022-2023 ,  2021-2022 ,  2020-2021 ,  2019-2020 ,  2018-2019 ,  2017-2018 ,  2016-2017 This year we will have 8th grade and 10th grade! We survived our first year of high school! Woo hoo! I found that a practical tip that helped me a lot was to designate a folder to be the "high school folder" for paperwork that I want to keep in one place. That includes his 9th grade transcript/report card, his college credits in American History ( see this post to see how we CLEP'd out of history ), his BETA club certificate and p...

2025-2026 Charlotte Mason Book Club

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  Each year our local Charlotte Mason mamas gather for a book discussion where we talk about what we read in one of the volumes and discuss articles that were written in the PNEU and Parent Review magazines. This year we are discussing Volume 2 (one of my favorites) in the original 6 volume home education series along with Book 3 from the vintage articles. Here is our reading schedule: August - Volume 2 chapters 1-4 Article links: The Art of Storytelling / Imagination as a Powerful Factor / The House of Education September - Volume 2 chapters 5-8 Article links: Teaching of History to Young Children / A Note on the Teaching of School Science / Home Education Under Six October - Volume 2 chapters 9-11 Article links: Jane Austen / The Brontës / What I Owe to the Classics November - Volume 2 chapters 12-15 Article links: Letter to the Children / Early Influences / Citizenship and Literature February - Volume 2 chapters 16-18 Article links: Recitation / Examinations and the PNEU...

Reflections on 2024-2025

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Thanks for stopping by to my corner of the web with this breakdown of our homeschool year! I blog these updates mostly for my own records. I love looking back to see what we've accomplished and I hope that my children will enjoy the saga when they are older! Around this time last year I was posting our plans for the 2024-2025 school year . It's amazing how fast time flies! Several times in the past two semesters I have enjoyed reflecting on that post to see what worked (or didn't work.) Reviewing that post helped me spot my weaknesses as the facilitator of their education. This year was a bit different from past years as I navigate "Form IV" ( Here is a resource on high school with Charlotte Mason. ) In many ways our planning and implementation of the curriculum was the same - we had our subjects in Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe. And we did a lot of family read alouds for these subjects like we have done every year. The way it w...

New Year's Goals

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I have an exciting announcement! I have a special place in my heart for goal setting in the New Year and I'm offering my goal setting bundle for free with the code BREATHE. Over the years I have read many productivity books that have shaped the way I homeschool. Some years seemed too spread thin - thinking about setting a goal brought anxious feelings. I felt more at peace walking day to day in obedience and by the principle of "Do ye the next right thing..." I have grown through each one of those seasons and feel a sense of purpose and enjoyment with the thought of reflecting and goal setting. I hope this resource can be a help to you as you navigate your thoughts, dreams, and goals for the coming year. Download here In my daily walk through life there have been several books and resources that have stood out to me as very helpful. I will share these with you below and hope you get a chance to check some of them out! Reading Challenges This is one of my favorite product...

First Semester of a Charlotte Mason High School

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High school seemed so far off when I began homeschooling in 2015 - it is surreal to be here in what seems like a blink of an eye. I love sharing what we do in our homeschool and wanted to come to the blog to talk about some of the successes I have found with the Charlotte Mason method. First of all, I want to share a phrase that I heard Cindy Rollins say at a Wild + Free conference. This phrase has stuck with me all these years - especially this year as I homeschool a high schooler. Her advice to the homeschool mamas was "inspect what you expect." As mothers it is really easy to let some things go - we're busy planning meals, cleaning the house, taking care of children, etc. Having a high school student requires planning to inspect what you expect. In a lot of homeschool groups on social media I hear advice that our high school children are self learners and everything will turn out just fine as long as you give them great books and have them write narrations. Or maybe b...

Middle and High School Christmas School

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The season of advent is one of my favorite homeschool traditions. In fact, my teenagers yesterday were so excited to see that I moved our regular school books up to the bonus room to prepare for our Christmas decorations and Christmas School - they look forward to it as much as I do! We take a month off of our regular scheduled curriculum and jump into learning that is centered on celebrating the Christmas holiday. In years past we have done something different each December. My first time creating our own December Term was a hodgepodge of different music, literature, and art. We had several years of studying Christmas in other countries through beautiful literature , and last year we focused just on the country of Germany while also adding the literature of Dickens and the science lectures of the Royal Institute . (Follow each hyperlink to see these plans!) I have created a guide this year that stays true to the celebration of the season while also providing a rich literary feast fo...