{Although a silly story (needing some tweaking), the science mystery experiment pictured above is both fun and worthwhile as you step away from the textbooks this Christmas season. Enjoy the Christmas Cookie Mystery with Teacher Directions.} Below is an article I wrote for CHEK’s December Newsletter. I thought I’d post it here just in case…
I {heart} Pinterest! Seriously. It may very well be the greatest invention on the planet. Okay, the greatest recent invention. Through Pinterest, I found (and archived) some fun leafy art lessons to go along with our botany studies this autumn. While we didn’t get to all the wonderful ideas – this autumn – we found…
Welcome to Day 2 of my 10 Days of… series on Teaching Values in your homeschool! One of the easiest things you can do in your homeschool is teach values with books and that’s exactly what I’ll show you how to do! This post contains affiliate links. Teaching Values with Books Today I’m writing about…
Welcome to Day 4 of my 10 Days of Teaching Values in your homeschool series! Today we’ll talk about character building with chores and jobs in homeschooling. This post contains affiliate links. Building character with chores and jobs is really very easy in homeschooling. We are blessed with the precious gift of time for so many…
Welcome back to my 10 Days of Teaching Values in your homeschool series! Today I’m writing about instilling values in your children through character building discipline that reaches the heart of the matter. This post contains affiliate links. I’ll be the first to admit that heartfelt discipline is not my strongest parenting skill. It’s way easier to…
Welcome to day six of my 10 Days of Teaching Values in your homeschool series! Today I’d like to share my very favorite resource for supporting me in the teaching of Biblical values – For Instruction in Righteousness : A Topical Reference Guide for Biblical Child-Training by Pam Forster. This post contains affiliate links. Why do…
Welcome back to day eight of my 10 Days of teaching values in your homeschool series! Today’s topic is about one of my favorite allegories. The Pilgrim’s Progress is a beautiful book to help your children see good character traits and how to be watchful for pitfalls that can keep us from doing what we know…
Whew. Day 10. Thank you for hanging in there with me these past two weeks! Today I’m going to wrap up the series a comprehensive list of the character building resources that you can find here at Our Journey Westward! I truly hope you’ve enjoyed this series about teaching values and pray that at least…
I told you I’ve been slacking on my posts! Four botany study posts in four days doesn’t mean we’ve been studying botany in such depth every day. In fact, each topic took us at least a week to cover. Today’s post is about one of the lessons spent learning about fungi. After some activities from…
We came across this little scene in our yard the other day – some sweet little animal is busily preparing for winter! A few days later, this is what we found in the same tree cavity! It was so full of hickory nuts that I asked my children if they had stuffed the hole. Everyone…
Caleb (and Eli) and I have been so loving our study of botany! This post highlights one of our activities as we learned about gymnosperms, particularly conifers. Gymnosperms are plants with “naked seeds” that aren’t housed inside a fruit. Conifers (cone-bearing plants) are an example of a gymnosperm. During this lesson, we had collected various…
In continuing our middle school botany study, we’ve been studying trees. A lot. Most of the activities we’ve done have come from the Delightful Deciduous Trees NaturExplorers study. One super-interesting nature walk activity was finding the tap root (main root that grows straight down), lateral roots (large roots that grow outward or laterally) and fibrous…