by guest author Robyn van Eck
Read part 1 here.
If you think children learn the beauty of our language by hearing great books read to them (and they do), guess how well they learn it by copying great writing, word by word?
But please note that if you do not have your children copy sentences that are examples of literary excellence, then… they will not learn literary excellence!
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By Carolyn Martin, CHEC Director of Government Relations
Does your family use any kind of state-funded programs for your young children — like state-funded child care or preschool? This legislative session a bill was passed into law to administer the Colorado Universal Preschool Program and move all early childhood programs into the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC). The bill (HB22-1295) gives CDEC the authority to collect data “to monitor early childhood outcomes throughout the state, which must include outcomes in health, including physical, social-emotional, and dental; learning; and overall well-being” with the goal of evaluating “long-term outcomes.”
Maybe you think they’re just wanting to protect children by tracking their well-being. If you understood the legislature and the education system, you would think differently. Being involved up at the Capitol and watching legislators make law, it is pretty clear that most of the legislators think the state can do a better job taking care of your children than you can. They often use those rare cases of abuse and neglect to justify their intrusion into your family. And for some, the state is God.
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By Shari McMinn
It’s firecracker-hot July, a season some have termed “the dog days of summer.” Not only are dogs hot, tired, and panting, but parents and kids are probably also in a similar state!
As a farm family for many years, July meant final preparations on 4-H projects before the county fair in early August. Each morning after breakfast, my children had to groom their goats, lambs, pigs, and steers, ending with a cool water hosing. This was often a fruitless attempt to keep the show animals from sweating off the prime body weight that we had worked so hard for months to put on them with measured rations. During the afternoons inside our unairconditioned farmhouse my kids, with my supervision (read: nagging), put the finishing touches in their 4-H record books. These included the final page titled, “My Story”, which told about their project, the struggles, and what they learned.
Read MoreBy guest author Robyn Van Eck
I was a new mother, just beginning to learn about homeschooling, when an older friend told me about this old-fashioned method she used in her homeschool: copywork. The mere mention of the word awakened thoughts of kind-but-strict schoolmarms, dusty slates, wooden desks, and inkwells. It was love at first, err, hearing… I was sold.
But when I actually started having my children do copywork, it turned out to be far better than I had even imagined!
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By guest author Antoniette LaGrossa
Research shows over 7% of students experience severe learning disabilities in math. Countless more struggle because of the way the language of math is spoken to them. You might as well be speaking Greek. My goal is to make math understandable for every child with hands-on, exploratory learning — learning by doing.
Is your child struggling with math or would you like to avoid your child having math problems in the first place? The decimal material (also known as base ten blocks) paired with Montessori number cards are a game-changer for students young and old. I wonder how many parents, who themselves struggled with math as children, would have had an easier time learning (and even loving) math if they had worked with these tools.
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