One of the best parts of blogging is, of course, the comments one receives. On days that I don’t receive comments, I have to satisfy myself with reading my blog stats. On WordPress, there’s a very handy, easy-to-read, single-page stat report. And one section of that report lists “search engine terms”–the phrases that people type [...]

I’ve been rearranging the furniture here on the blog, so to speak. You may have noticed some new color in the sidebar in the form of photo buttons. I’m trying to organize some of my posts to make them more accessible. You can’t imagine how long it took to link all those posts–and to thumbnail [...]

I found this line while re-reading Calkins’ classic The Art of Teaching Writing. Calkins uses it as a lead-in to the story of a kindergartener whose teacher worried over how he seemed to draw the same thing, day after day. “When I looked at the child’s most recent book, I found that the teacher was [...]

In which we trek into the mind of my youngest and once again get sidetracked. Over the past few weeks, Mr. T and I have been listening to the first volume of The Story of the World, narrated by Jim Weiss. T has requested that we not only listen in the kitchen, but that we [...]

October is a good time for wondering. September can be such a flurry. Such a transition time. Even if your kids don’t go to school, all the regular activities start back up. This year I purposely conjured up a handful of new projects in September, to focus me on a new life homeschooling with just [...]

Taking dictation isn’t a tool just for little kids. Read this recent comment from Caroline to see what I mean: “I just want to attest to the wonders of dictation for older students as well. I teach introductory college composition. Today in office hours, as I was laboring to explain to a student how to [...]