Category: Homeschooling
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The Three Things
The more I live, the more I see that the Three Things follow us through life. The Three Things are the three levels that one goes through in any subject from basics to mastery. They are described in numerous places in the Bible: Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom; Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life; Faith,…
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How Kids Think
With ten kids, we are bound to have different thinking patterns among them. We had a very right-brained girl followed by a very left-brained girl. This talk is about all we learned while helping them to stretch the weak sides of their brains. Do you recognize your child?
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BadgerMomma News!
Shannon will be speaking at the Christian Home Educators’ of Wisconsin 2025 Conference at the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells. Kirk Cameron is a confirmed speaker, too! I don’t know what he is speaking on, but my titles are “The 3 Things Every Child Must Learn,” “Mama Discipleship,” and “The Goldilocks Zone,” a creation talk from…
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Popping the Phantom Mom MACHE podcast
Last fall I was interviewed by Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators for their podcast. Dayle Annand, their director of outreach, and I had a lot of fun discussing what we DON’T have to do to homeschool! Click here to listen!
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Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style–Cursive Handwriting
Who writes in cursive, anymore? Mostly people over the age of thirty-five. Why is it important? Is it important? I mentioned to our local postmaster once that I homeschooled and he looked at me very sternly and asked, “You’re teaching them cursive, aren’t you?” Taken aback, I said, “Yessir!” It wasn’t until I left…
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The Oldest of Old-Fashioned Lessons–Read Great Books!
A liberal education where one is exposed to all manner of views should confirm whatever is right and good. In college, studying Plato confirmed my faith because it lined up in its arguments with the Bible. Studying the Buddhist scriptures confirmed my Christian faith because it seemed very far-fetched that a real man would…
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Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style–the Analog Clock
Telling time. It’s one of the first things we start teaching kindergartners. I remember the model clock in my kindergarten class. It had a huge wooden face with big, red plastic hands and big black numbers. The public schools are not teaching time on an analog clock, anymore. There are so many children who have…
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Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style–Drills
Fun, huh? Not! But, oh, so important! Drills are part of memorization. For the Grammar stage of subjects such as playing musical instruments and sports, drills are physical rather than mental or verbal. Drills, once again, form neural pathways. During the Olympics several years ago, they put up a quote: “An amateur practices until…
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Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style–Memorizing
How boring! Who likes to memorize? Everyone always talks about how hard it is. But if you read Little House on the Prairie books or Tom Sawyer or Elsie Dinsmore, that was what they did. Every lesson was memorized. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t actually write a single thing until she was sixteen years old.…
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Old-Fashioned Lessons That Never Go Out of Style–Silence
What has been growing on us in our family is that simple is best. In the “old days,” they didn’t have all the fancy bells-and-whistles curricula that are available now and they produced Shakespeare, Jane Austen, John Wesley, and Thomas Jefferson. How did they do it? With simple lessons. Fred Rogers — yes: Mr.…