Corporate training is a great model for homeschooling

For the first couple of weeks in August, we went to Aspen for music lessons. The Aspen Music Festival is huge, and famous, and drives up the price of hotels in Aspen (as if they can be driven up any further.) So we stayed in a town nearby, Snomass. It’s a ski town in the winter […]

Anger gets a bad rap – it’s a good tool

This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She homeschools five kids in Washington state. I have yet to meet a mom who does not wish she didn’t yell.  I have yet to meet a homeschooling mom who has not had blowouts with their children. But people always end their yelling stories with their heads hung […]

How tall will my child be?

Tall people make more money as adults. There is lots of great research about this topic, but the most interesting, to me, is that on average, tall people contribute more to a team than shorter people in a business environment. Probably this is because tall people have more self-confidence because they get treated better because they are […]

You don’t need to teach kids a second language

My ex-husband’s father is from Peru.  So when we were engaged, we had a big party in Peru. I was shocked to see that my husband never learned Spanish, so he couldn’t talk to anyone. I had already learned French and a little bit of Hebrew and German, so it was not difficult to teach myself a […]

Does self-directed learning lead to bad choices?

Did I ever tell you about my failed reality TV show? I need to talk about it one more time because I still have photos from it. The show had a buyer, so we made a pilot. And then TLC said we are too normal.

Pokemon GO vs School

We have been traveling all over the place this summer, mostly for cello: Montana, Chicago, Claremont, Chicago, Santa Monica, Aspen. I want to show you pictures of everything. But it would mostly look like kids playing video game in a lot of airports. Or me losing my mind.

What would my life be like if I didn’t homeschool?

This is a guest post from Sarah Faulkner. She is a homeschooling mom in Washington state. She has five kids, ages 14, 13, 10, 7, and 3. Sometimes I dream about who I would be if I sent my kids to a traditional school. Would I be more relaxed? Put together? Would we parents have more friends? […]

Why do I have two blogs? I ask myself every day.

I was struck by this interview on NPR with the authors of Becoming Brilliant: NPR: What led you to write this book now? Golinkoff: We live in a crazy time, and parents are very worried about their children’s futures. They’re getting all kinds of messages about children having to score at the top level on […]

I started homeschooling right before it was too late

This is a guest post from Sarah Griffith. This a story I’ve read many times on Penelope’s blog: How I started homeschooling. But my story feels like the white trash version. 

Sex ed curricula for homeschoolers

I have been thinking about how I want to talk to my sons about sex ed. Specifically, about women. I want them to understand rape, but I want them to understand sex done right as well.

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