Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

A foundation of our early homeschooling journey was reading on the couch and talking about books. The length of the books grew with the children's attention spans, but there was usually a good mix of picture books and chapter books. My kids are three and a half years apart, so if Henry at age 18 months wasn't sitting next to us on the couch and along for the ride, he was on the floor playing or up in his room napping. Lessons had to be in short snatches because we did have a little interrupter. Reading and writing are the gateway to the world! Use this time to establish or strengthen their reading and writing foundation with a few simple things that can apply to all subjects-- 1. Read! Read good books, books that have intriguing words and deep characters. Read aloud to your kids and when you finish the chapter, ask them to retell, or narrate, the story back to you.  2. Narration-- Write down the narration word for word that your child tells you then read it back to the...

I asked my children for some homeschool highlights to share with friends and family who are looking for ideas. Pretty much simultaneously a picture popped up on my computer of my kids doing cave paintings way back when. So here's a little bit about that--a quick post and a few ideas. This idea is from Susan Wise Bauer in her book and activity guide, Story of the World, volume 1. I loved these books--a great way to introduce history to first through fourth graders and beyond. You can find them on Amazon or at  https://welltrainedmind.com/ So if you can get a hold of those books, I recommend them.  I'll share in another post how you can use that book for a whole morning's worth of reading, writing, history, and maybe even science if you can get into it . . . For now, cave paintings. Humans have painted in caves over thousands of years and there are many different examples you can see online.  Google cave paintings, or check out this awesome link to learn ...