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. The newsletter I hand out at conferences is downloadable in color from the front page of the Everyday Education site. It’s published once a year, and has as many articles as I can cram into eight pages. Here it is as a PDF.

I enjoyed coloring this tree of life page from The Art of Cursive.

The July e-newsletter below just went out to my mailing list. It usually contains a classic painting, short note, book recommendations, pointers to new or updated articles on the website, any special deals I might have, and a nod to any amazing new resources I may have found (cursive resources!). In theory, I send it once a month. In fact, I send it about six times a year. I definitely won’t overwhelm your inbox!

If you’re not on the list and you’d like to be, you can sign up in the right sidebar. If you are on the mailing list, I’d love to know whether it went to your inbox or to the nether regions (otherwise known as the spam folder). So many of the newsletters I receive end up there, so I suspect mine probably does too.

Summer reading

I forgot to include a book recommendation in the newsletter, but I’ve just added The Green Ember series to my Books Boys Like list. I plan to write about it in a bit more detail, but for now, just know that it would be an enjoyable summer read for middle-grade students, or a nice family read-aloud. I never suspected rabbits could be so fierce!

I just noticed that the audiobook version is $3.95 at Amazon, and you can read the Kindle version free if you have Kindle Unlimited. Of course, the print books are much more pleasant to read, but it’s a good thing to know. I’ve gotten rather fond of the Kindle/Audible Whispersync deals that allow you go back and forth from listening to reading without losing your place. If you haven’t tried them, this book might be a good place to start. (As always, Amazon links are affiliate links — details in footer.)

July 2017 Newsletter Happy July!  Note from Janice New Art of Cursive and a bundle special New handy link pages at Excellence-in-Literature.com Peaceful Planning Conference schedule Classics-based writing lessons   Another conference season is almost over, and I look forward to doing a bit more writing during the rest of summer and fall. Summer has been fun so far, with embroidery lessons and poetry teatime with the grandchildren. I’ve been memorizing poetry, too — my personal Memory Project. Do you have a special summer project?   I hope you’re having a wonderful summer (winter for our friends in the southern hemisphere). If you’re anywhere near St. Louis, MO, I’d be delighted to meet you at the conference—see details belows!     —Janice Campbell  Everyday-Education.com DoingWhatMatters.com Excellence-in-Literature.com   P. S. Did you know that we are the only source for the Excellence in Literature books in e-book format? It’s the most economical way for our overseas friends to get our books. Plus, we do a “Print Plus” bundle with print and a seriously discounted ebook together so you can use a single level with more than one student at a time (in your immediate family).    Amazon Prime Day: Don’t miss the July 11 Prime Day—there will be a lot of sales. It might be the perfect time to purchase the classics you’ll need for Excellence in Literature!   Prime Members get 40% off Audible Membership from June 29, 2017 through July 11, 2017 The Art of Cursive coloring book follows the CursiveLogic handwriting worktext and provides extensive practice in the CursiveLogic handwriting method (you’ll want to learn the basic . As students are coloring beautiful pictures, they are practicing cursive letters, connections, slant, spacing, and more. Best of all, it’s fun and relaxing (I’ve colored way more samples than necessary)! CursiveLogic teaches cursive in four simple lessons in a beautifully-designed text. Learning to write become something to look forward to, rather than a chore, especially when it’s followed by The Art of Cursive.   Handwriting is important for a lot of reasons, some of which I’ve explained in “Penmanship Matters” on the DoingWhatMatters.com blog. This two-book system is an excellent introduction to an art that can bring a lifetime of pleasure (and you can even use it with your children!). Enjoy! Cursive Made Easy bundle — both books together: $47.95 CursiveLogic Handwriting worktext: $34.95 Art of Cursive 8.5 x 11″ paperbound book: $15.95 New link updates at Excellence in Literature!  We have just completed a link update for the online context resources mentioned in the Excellence in Literature curriculum, and have also created a page for each module on the website, with the most updated current version of the links. I’m excited about this, because it means that I can keep links much more current than is possible when they are only in the book. The links pages are just the links, so students will have to refer to the book to know what they are supposed to look for and do, but I think it will make the curriculum even easier to use. You can reach all the links pages from the Curriculum User Content page.   The Excellence-in-Literature.com website now hosts a growing collection of over 800 pages of resources for the study of literature. These include poetry, short stories, and other context resources, plus a growing selection of how-to articles. From Cathy Duffy’s review: “Students completing these courses should be miles ahead of most of their high school contemporaries in their ability to read and analyze literature at a sophisticated level. The challenging writing assignments also promise to develop student skills in composition to a high level.”   Recommended book editions  now linked at Everyday Education You’ll find a downloadable book list as well as links to the recommended editions of books studied in Excellence in Literature at Everyday-Education.com. You’ll also find links on the description page for each study guide. You don’t have to use the recommended edition, but there are reasons I prefer them, and you’ll find my criteria listed on this page as well.    From a review at Joy in Our Journey: “I guess what impresses me so much is that this is written in such a straightforward manner that most junior high aged students could easily work through the entire curriculum on their own. And there are no ‘waste of time’ pop quizzes with those silly WWWWW questions to see if our children have actually read the book selections. You won’t find ‘busywork’ in this curriculum.”   And of course, all Amazon links are affiliate links, and help keep the website afloat (though it costs you absolutely nothing extra)!  Peaceful Planning and Record-keeping   I finally got around to creating some small  planning and recordkeeping booklets that reflected the type of planning I did. You can read about the Peaceful Planning system at PeacefulPlanning.net. There are four booklets:   12-Year Planner K-8 Student Record High School Student Record Lifetime Reading List For quite a few years of homeschooling, I’d buy a teacher plan book from the teacher store or set up a big binder with highly organized and structured daily plans and overall organizational schemes. These usually lasted a few weeks (if I was lucky and tried really, really hard), but in the end, I always went back to keeping short, simple records in the 5.5 x 8.5″ format of my daily planner. Somehow, it didn’t seem overwhelming to pick it up for reference or adding more notes, and I would actually end up with the important stuff written down. With these little books, your plans and records can be simple and beautiful. I hope you find them helpful! Conference Schedule I’ll be leaving on Tuesday for the Missouri Homeschool Conference, GHC St. Louis, and I hope I see you there (come for free shopping night Thursday, and stay for it all!).  You’ll find a downloadable schedule, workshop descriptions, and other details at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com) I’m looking forward to being there, and will be in booth 236-237. Be sure to stop by and say hello!  For talks, I’ll be doing the Homeschool 101 track and sharing in the Charlotte Mason track: — How to Plan Your Homeschool Year — How to Choose Curriculum — How to Teach Writing (and other things) with Living Books — How to Cultivate Habits of Lifelong Learning — How to Create a Simple, Effective, Transcript.   As early it as it seems, I have six conferences on the schedule for 2018, with space for just a few more. Perhaps I’ll see you next year! Visit the Doing What Matters blog!  Have you tried my Classics-Based Writing Lessons at SchoolhouseTeachers.com? There are a lot of other classes for all ages at SchoolhouseTeachers, plus many other great resources. It’s inexpensive — you can try a month for just $5, so even if you use only a few classes, it’s an amazing deal. Cursive Made Easy                      Learn cursive in four easy lessons with CursiveLogic, then practice and review with beautiful coloring pages in The Art of Cursive. Write! HIgh School English                                             Excellence in Literature helps you teach classic literature and writing to teens even if you don’t know Virginia Woolf from Beowulf!   Self-directed College prep Easy to use Literature Peaceful Planning                                                At Everyday Education you’ll find an article with brief instructions for simple, peaceful planning and recordkeeping, and at DoingWhatMatters.com, you’ll find a number of posts on planning and organization.  Plan! Everyday Education, LLC is the publisher of the Excellence in Literature curriculum, the 1857 McGuffey Readers with instructions for use with Charlotte Mason methods, Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting; Transcripts Made Easy; and other homeschool helps. We’ve been online since 2001, which is a really long time in internet years.  The DoingWhatMatters.com blog has been online since 2007, and has quite a few articles on teaching with a classical/Charlotte Mason focus. We moved it from a different address a couple of years ago, so are still updating and relinking articles. There’s useful stuff, there, though, so I hope you’ll find it interesting.  The classic painting is “Children of the Sea” by Jozef Israëls, 1872. [Public domain.]