When I teach essay writing for high school or college exams, I encourage students to beware of using absolutes such as “always” or “never,” because these are rarely true — there are exceptions to almost everything, and those absolutes...
Connie Schenkelberg, my friend and colleague, stepped from this life to the next on Sunday morning (12/1/13), and I will miss her. I first met Connie at an HEAV homeschool conference in the 1990s. Her table was tucked into a...
How to use the correct word when peeking at a peak.
I love wordy holidays. We spend time teaching our children that words matter, and how to read, write, and speak correctly (or at least I hope we do), and I think those home lessons are reinforced by national holidays that...
There are five stages in learning language arts, and each stage has a different focus. This graphic will help you remember what to do when.
As I post the books we offer, I try to answer all the questions I can think of. Inevitably, others think of questions that would never cross my mind, and I try to add them to the FAQ page to...
Okay, students, put on your party hats! It’s time to celebrate the not-so-lowly punctuation mark. We’re a little late to join the baking contest planned as part of the celebration, but there nothing stopping us from using commas, periods, apostrophes,...
I received an e-mail this morning from a co-op leader, inquiring about the Excellence in Literature (EIL) curriculum. When I receive detailed questions like these, I know that others are probably wondering some of the same of the same things,...
As I talk to homeschool parents at conventions and via e-mail, I am often asked, “How many years of grammar should I be requiring of my student?” or “Does the Grammar Made Easy: Writing a Step Above (sadly, this excellent book...
As parent-teachers, we’ve all seen boring writing assignments — a grammatically-correct report that simply paraphrases an encyclopedia entry or a five-paragraph essay that piles one trite cliche on another, and concludes without a glimmer of an original thought. If you’re anything like...
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