Old Year Gratitude; New Year Hope
This year — 2020 — is almost over. It’s been quite a year! Decades from now, I’m guessing that people will remember it most as the Year of the Pandemic; the year that Covid-19 changed the way that many of...
Entrepreneurship / High School, College, and Alternatives / Home School
by Janice Campbell · Published March 8, 2022 · Last modified March 26, 2022
As you probably know if you’ve read very far in my blog, I love to learn. I love reading, writing, and learning, and have spent many years of my life doing just that. Homeschooling my boys was an extension of...
This year — 2020 — is almost over. It’s been quite a year! Decades from now, I’m guessing that people will remember it most as the Year of the Pandemic; the year that Covid-19 changed the way that many of...
Inspiration and encouragement / Justice and Peace
by Janice Campbell · Published June 9, 2020 · Last modified October 14, 2020
I rarely post anything personal, but once in awhile, it happens. I’ve been thinking about peacemaking, mending breaches, and restoring what has been broken. For issues that have existed for years or decades or even centuries, there are no quick...
Charlotte Mason / Home School / How to . . . / Inspiration and encouragement
by Janice Campbell · Published March 31, 2020 · Last modified February 7, 2022
In which a student of Charlotte Mason (British educator 1842-1923) imperfectly outlines first steps of the Mason method with an eye toward hope and encouragement to new home educators. By: Anya Campbell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ampc7/ Ideas on How to Begin I...
Creativity and Soul Care / Home School / Inspiration and encouragement
by Janice Campbell · Published March 20, 2020 · Last modified March 24, 2020
After the first of the Great Homeschool Conventions ended early, I drove home from Texas to Virginia. While I listened to audiobooks most of the way, there was plenty of time to think about what the next few weeks or...
Home School / Planning and Time Management
by Janice Campbell · Published December 31, 2019 · Last modified January 2, 2020
December is the month when my planning instinct kicks into overdrive. I flip the calendar page on the first, and it’s as if I’ve opened a new channel in my brain. All the while I’m enjoying holiday preparations and wondering...
Of all Charlotte Mason’s recommendations, I found her advice to read Plutarch with children one of the least appealing. I enjoy old books and love learning, but somehow, it seemed especially daunting to fit in Plutarch along with everything else....
Books and Reading / Home School
by Janice Campbell · Published September 10, 2019 · Last modified October 5, 2020
Summer is winding down in the northern hemisphere and schoolbooks are being dusted off and swimsuits put away. I always enjoyed getting back into an orderly and predictable schedule (as orderly and predictable as was possible in a household with...
Home School / How to . . . / Penmanship
by Janice Campbell · Published August 30, 2019 · Last modified October 5, 2020
How do you learn? If you wanted to learn about architecture, invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, or cartography, how would you begin? Long before textbooks and workbooks were invented, people of...
Home School / Planning and Time Management
by Janice Campbell · Published November 12, 2018 · Last modified November 8, 2018
Considering the greater good “Are you finished with school? Want to ride with me to the dump?” my husband Donald inquired, poking his head into the schoolroom. Pencils flew everywhere as the boys jumped up, ready to go. We hadn’t...
Books and Reading / Justice and Peace
by Janice Campbell · Published July 17, 2018 · Last modified February 2, 2021
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was recently renamed the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, a remarkably generic name for such a prestigious award. A lot has been said about the change, and most that I have seen has been negative, with reactions...
I recently came across an interesting comparison of two middle school reading lists. The author, Annie Holmquist, compared a list from 1908 with a current list from the same state on the basis of time period, thematic elements, and reading...
Books and Reading / Charlotte Mason / Language Arts and Literature / Learning Lifestyle
by Janice Campbell · Published April 23, 2018 · Last modified April 30, 2018
Reading, Comprehension, and Knowledge Do you enjoy reading? I do. I grew up reading voraciously — new books, old books, books set in the city, the country, in foreign lands, and many books that featured characters that lived lives very...
Creativity and Soul Care / Language Arts and Literature
by Janice Campbell · Published August 29, 2017 · Last modified May 4, 2018
Do you read poetry and share it with your children? I’d like to prescribe a dose of poetry every single day, but I know that might seem daunting. How about poetry every week instead? Start with simple poems, laying a solid...
A newsletter and a reading suggestion I’ve had several people ask me if there is a difference between the newsletter I hand out at conferences, and the one that comes via email, so I thought I’d show you a sample....
I enjoy books on time management, life balance, and purpose, but I’ve read so many that it’s rare that one stands out. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport definitely stood out. Moving past elementary...
Books and Reading / Language Arts and Literature
by Janice Campbell · Published June 13, 2017 · Last modified August 23, 2017
Choosing books for boys isn’t all that hard. Give them adventure — the kind with blood and courage, dirt and ingenuity — and watch their imaginations soar, assuming they haven’t been “Eustaced”* by the sort of twaddle mentioned in Martin...
Creativity and Soul Care / Language Arts and Literature
by Janice Campbell · Published April 12, 2017
Springtime puts me into a poetic frame of mind, so by the time April arrives — it’s Poetry Month, you know — I have a stack of poetry by my chair and favorite lines running through my head. Most of the...
Books and Reading / High School, College, and Alternatives
by Janice Campbell · Published March 7, 2017 · Last modified March 8, 2022
I picked up Professor Carol‘s new book, Why Freshmen Fail, at the Great Homeschool Convention in Fort Worth, thinking it might be a resource I could recommend to parents of high-school and almost-high-school age students. I didn’t expect to find...
David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd One of my childhood companions was an old copy of David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd. It was one of the books I turned to whenever I wanted to travel the fairie realms, and...
Books and Reading / Ideas Worth Sharing
by Janice Campbell · Published December 14, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
Give the gift of delight There’s a lot to be said for gifts you can read. Books provide hours of delight at just pennies per hour, and of course, I have a few suggestions (it was hard to whittle down the list!)....
by Janice Campbell · Published November 23, 2016 · Last modified August 17, 2017
Thanksgiving is an opportunity to spend time with loved ones and give thanks for the blessings of the year. Ideally, the holiday is something to anticipate with joy. Realistically, I know that the prospect of spending a day or more with a houseful of volatile opinion...
Ideas Worth Sharing / Justice and Peace
by Janice Campbell · Published November 8, 2016 · Last modified June 8, 2020
An orderly line of voters snaked halfway around the parking lot at the polling place this morning. The crowd courteously made way for seniors with canes, wheelchairs, or walkers, with quiet thanks to those who sported evidence of military service. My...
Creativity and Soul Care / Inspiration and encouragement
by Janice Campbell · Published August 10, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
Psalms in Music The Psalms were the first poetry and prayer that I encountered as a child, and they still bring daily joy, peace, and comfort. I recently found this playlist of the entire book of Psalms in music, sung...
It’s time for another Ideas Worth Sharing post, so even thought my internet connection is barely working, I’m going to attempt it. You’ll notice that almost all my links this time have to do with handwriting and reading. That’s because it’s...
Learning Lifestyle / News, Opportunities, and Events
by Janice Campbell · Published July 7, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
We had only three days in Beijing, but like Chengdu, it was a living kaleidoscope of sights, scents, and sounds. On every corner it seemed there was something out of the ordinary — dozens of red lanterns, exotic street food...
Learning Lifestyle / News, Opportunities, and Events
by Janice Campbell · Published June 28, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
I had the extraordinary privilege of traveling to China in May for the Chengdu Homeschool Conference plus a few days of sightseeing. I spent the first part of the trip in Chengdu, which is in the Sichuan province. After the...
Under the Willows by James Russell Lowell, 1819 – 1891 May is a pious fraud of the almanac, A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; Or if, o’er-confident, she trust the date, And, with her...
Charlotte Mason / Creativity and Soul Care / Language Arts and Literature / Penmanship
by Janice Campbell · Published March 29, 2016 · Last modified May 2, 2022
Is there any reason for an ordinary person to learn decent penmanship? I believe there is, even if handwriting seems difficult or unnecessary. Clear italic or cursive penmanship is an art form that virtually anyone can master. Because handwriting is...
by Janice Campbell · Published February 8, 2016 · Last modified September 29, 2020
Praise has power. Well-earned and properly given praise has the power to motivate and build confidence, while improperly directed praise can create unhealthy attitudes, provide an inaccurate self-concept, and even make children unwilling to try new or hard things. What...
Creativity and Soul Care / How to . . .
by Janice Campbell · Published January 23, 2016 · Last modified January 9, 2017
My granddaughter called this morning, and we talked about building snowmen. Since we are both living in a snow globe, it seemed a perfect topic. However, I did experience a pang of guilt upon hanging up. Remembering the years of...
Here’s our annual conference newsletter handout with booklists and articles. We’d rather be sharing it in person, but for now, you can download the Everyday Educator here.
We in the northern hemisphere may be melting in the July heat, but there are compensations. July poems from poets such as Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Amy Lowell, and Lewis Carroll remind us...
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616), Spanish novelist (Don Quixote and others), playwright, and poet was born at Alcalá de Henares in 1547. The attempts of biographers to provide him with an illustrious genealogy are...
In this brief article, scholar, editor, and translator Luis Sundkvist explores the life of noted Russian author Ivan Turgenev and considers ways in which his life and work intersected with the Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Biography...
Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. She won several awards for her poetry in her lifetime, and her poems are frequently anthologized. Poetry (1919) by Marianne...
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He is seen as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets. His works include several collections of poetry, one novel, and...
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