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Homeschooling a Special Needs Child

Homeschooling a Special Needs Child I am a huge advocate for families homeschooling their children with special needs. I believe schools are high stress, low engagement, and very punishing environments for children who learn out of the box. Parents are vested in the overall well-being of their children and know their children the best. This makes parents who can manage it, the best educators for these children. It is easy to become overwhelmed, though, when your job extends from parenting to include educating. In the years I have worked in education, I have applied the following methods in both home and …

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Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Custer State Park

Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Custer State Park I think the year you study geology and environmental science, you should spend time outside looking at the subject of your studies, so we did. I did not keep a daily journal, because I had writer’s block. Something I had never experienced before. It gave me insight into what happens for kids who have good ideas but can’t get them onto a page. My writer’s block made me feel like my brain was constipated. I had so many ideas running around in my head I had trouble getting anything out at all. …

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Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Month 1: Re-member

Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Month 1: Re-member I’m going to depart a bit and tell you about what we learned. I think it is the best way for you to get a feel for the profound benefits of exposing young people to this sort of service project where there is service directly to a community, field trips in the community, and talks from members of the community. Talks given by members of this community, while you are volunteering in it, that focus on issues the community is dealing with and has dealt with, are educational in a way no other academic …

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Homeschooling the Twice-Exceptional Student – There Will Be Gaps and That’s OK

This young man is incredibly creative and he is twice-exceptional. He makes movies, writes stories, animates, composes, records original songs, and works on other creative endeavors all day long. He is never idle, never bored. My son works from the moment he wakes up, which is usually before 7:00, and stays busy until around 10:00 at night when he finally tires out and heads to bed. Sleep usually comes an hour later when his mind finally calms down. Most days I am in awe of all he does. It really is amazing. But it is also incredibly frustrating, and at times, overwhelming …

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Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Month 1, Dinosaur National Park

Handcrafting High School: Year 2, Month 1 The first month of tenth grade might have been the best month we ever spent homeschooling. You might be thinking, “Well, Yeah! You were traveling and hanging out. How could that not be great?” 🙂 That is true, of course, but it was more than that. The planning and intent for this trip focused on enriched learning. The choices for where we stayed and what we did were planned with the intent that what we studied on the road would enrich our understanding of a situation in science, culture, and/or history. We were …

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Handcrafting High School: Year 1, Month 9

Handcrafting High School: Year 1, Month 9 We school year round with lots of breaks. That doesn’t matter to a planner like me though. Every year I have a start date and an end date.  The year-end date for this year was the day we picked Sean up from Stanford. Our life was a whirlwind during the time leading up to that. Talk about eclectic! And academic! And we always keep it secular! Science is not a small part of our life! Planning for next year The previous month I had Sean work on some short nonfiction essays. As he …

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A Day in the Life: Charlotte Mason Inspired Homeschool

A Day in the Life: Charlotte Mason Inspired Homeschool Every homeschooler wants to get a peek into another’s day. We’re always curious about how other mom’s manage. Maybe your homeschool tends toward very school-at-home, or classical, or project-based. We all picture every other homeschool mom as being a Pinterest-worthy super-mom, but really, we’re all pretty much the same – just doing our best to educate our children as well as we possibly can. This school year, I am teaching a 11th grader, two 8th graders and a 1st grader. My plate is FULL. I can honestly say, this has been …

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Living Books and How to Choose Them

Living Books and How to Choose Them What makes a book “living?” written by Emily Cook I should start out by explaining what I mean when I call a book “living.” I know you may be thinking, “Doesn’t everyone teach with books?” Well, yes and no. I’m referring to what Charlotte Mason called “living books.” I am of the belief that what actually makes a book “living” can be subjective. But the basic idea is that a living book is one that is written by an author who cares about the subject matter which he or she writes about. The author …

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Interest-Led Learning: When Passion and Delight Inspire

Interest-Led Learning Happens when Passion Ignites Learning Much has been said about interest-led learning, but to us it simply means finding or creating as many learning opportunities and experiences to which we expose our son, making sure that he is challenged and engaged in a stimulating environment. What fascinates him and what doesn’t? What does he think about a learning activity? We employ one gentle rule: “Try it once or twice and then decide if you want to pursue it or not.” This way, we communicate the message that we respect his decision in the end, but after urging him …

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Building the Habit of Reading Aloud

Building the Habit of Reading Aloud As a homeschooling parent, there are many things you do to make sure your child is getting the best possible education. You can research curriculum, create the perfect learning space, and search out great learning opportunities in your community. But often, reading aloud to your child slips off the to-do list. Maybe you think that once they can read to themselves, reading aloud is irrelevant. Or maybe, life just takes over and you can’t seem to find a way to schedule it in to your day. But reading aloud is one of the most …

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Great Basin National Park, Utah

Great Basin National Park, Utah This was our viewing spot for the Perseid meteor shower. It was nearly a perfect location. Nice and dark with no light pollution, which is what stargazers call the artificial lights that make it hard to view astronomical events. We started 10th grade on August 12th, 2015 by getting on the road. It might seem arbitrary to choose a date since we homeschool, but why not? 🙂 When we travel, we include history and science as a part of the journey. Over the next month I will be posting regular science and history information from …

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The Charlotte Mason Method in the Secular Homeschool

“I am, I can, I ought, I will.”* If you’ve been homeschooling for any amount of time, chances are you’ve heard the name Charlotte Mason. She has made quite a name for herself in the modern homeschool movement, despite the fact she lived over a hundred years ago. Charlotte Mason (1842 – 1923) was a British educator who advocated for improving the quality of education for children. She promoted the idea of a “liberal education for all” not just those of a certain social class. If you’ve ever searched for Charlotte Mason inspired curriculum or information, you probably found a …

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Sitges, Spain, the Antipope of Peniscola

Sitges, Spain, the Antipope of Peniscola The present castle in Peniscola was built by the Knights Templar from 1294 to 1307. It looks like a prime piece of real estate that would be easy to defend. From 1415 to 1423 it was home of the antipope Benedict XIII. Wait…antipope? What is an antipope? An antipope (Latin: antipapa) is a person who, in opposition to the one who is generally seen as the legitimately elected Pope, makes a significantly accepted competing claim to be the Pope,[1]the Bishop of Rome and leader of the Roman Catholic Church. At times between the 3rd …

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There Were Mammooths in Andalusia

There Were Mammooths in Andalusia Sean woke me up early. “Mom, I have broken out in a bad rash, or bites, or something all over!” Well, that will get a mother up and going! We could not figure it out. No one else had any bumps. Could it be that Sean was allergic to the detergent used when we washed clothes, or maybe it was the 30 to 40 nispero (fruits from the tree in the backyard) he ate over the course of 1&1/2 days? We still are not sure. In two itchy, scratchy days they were gone. It did get …

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The Alhambra in Daylight

The Alhambra in Daylight When you buy tickets for the Alhambra you have to choose between the morning or afternoon. We chose afternoon because the morning session started at 8 a.m.  We had yet to even be awake once that early in the morning. The problem with that is the temperature. It had been warm in the afternoons all week. Still we were glad we chose the afternoon. We were all enjoying waking late every morning. Over the past few months in the States there have been many news stories about African refugees trying to come to Europe. We had …

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Seeing Seville on an Electric Bike and Flamencoa

Seeing Seville on an Electric Bike and Flamencoa The Flying Dutchmen told us what a blast they had riding around Seville on a Segway. We called every Segway rental company we could find on the Internet and they were all booked. I looked on TripAdvisor to make sure we had not missed any Segway companies and what came up as the number one outdoor activity in Seville was the Electric Bicycle not the Segway. I called Elecmove Electric Bikes (If you are wondering, I use TripAdvisor a lot when we travel.) and they were able to fit us in. We …

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Leaving Girona for the Abbaye de Capservy, South of France

Leaving Girona for the Abbaye de Capservy, South of France Before we left Girona we had to take one more walk on the wall. Again there was no one on it.               I am sitting on an old fashioned toilet. It would be an interesting feel to bare it all and go to the bathroom like this, LOL!  Did I remember to post the link to Casa Cundaro? Here it is in case I didn’t. http://www.casacundaro.com/english.html Casa Cundaro is attached to the Historic Hotel. Where we had to have one last superb breakfast.    Look how narrow the streets …

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The Dali Museum, The Mediterranean, and Vegan Tapas!

The Dali Museum, The Mediterranean, and Vegan Tapas! The town of Figueres, Spain is about a 35 minute drive from Girona. There is a lot of history there, but we only went for the Dali Museum. We did not want to spend the day in Figures, because we also wanted to visit Costa Brava. Costa Brava is what the coastline of northeast Spain is called. Salvadore Dali is a genius! He worked in almost every medium you can think of. The museum is a bit crowded but not too crowded. When we were standing in line Sean said, “What is …

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Handcrafting 10th grade: The Plan for 2015/2016

Eclectic? Absolutely! Academic? Of Course! Innovative? You Know It! It’s Organic, Too! (I am a chemist, after all! ;-)) History: American government & politics with writing History and the upcoming election will be the main focus this year. The Homeschool History Project – This is a name I came up with. Sean is designing a website to go with it. I posted about the Homeschool History Project in a separate blog piece, https://blairleeblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/the-homeschool-history-project-handcrafting-high-school-year-2-american-government/ If James, Sean’s 30 year old brother, gets his campaign finance reform NGO started, volunteer once a week for him. Big History with online group – https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home – Sean will be …

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Handcrafting High School: Year 1, Month 8

Handcrafting High School: Year 1, Month 8 What a crazy month April was. We moved for the third time since the summer of 2012, and we aren’t in the military. First we moved from the mountains to San Diego where there is a larger homeschool community. That house was too far inland, so we moved closer to the coast. That house was too far from rowing and our adult kids, so we moved closer to both. As you can imagine our friends and family think we’re crazy, or that we really like to move. I feel the feather in Forrest …

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