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Language Arts the Natural Way: Introduction
Before your child reaches school age, does he know how to talk? How did he learn? Did you pull out the flashcards, go over grammar, show him diagrams of how to form sounds with his mouth, use neat...
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Language Arts the Natural Way: Reading
Most great writers are great readers. This makes sense if you think about the fact that by reading authors’ words, those words and the way they are used are input, and “copied” when we write — albeit...
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Language Arts the Natural Way: Narrating
I remember when we first started homeschooling our oldest. I, fortunately, didn’t know any better than to just pull together those materials I thought we needed. One of these gems was the first book...
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Language Arts the Natural Way: Copying
Once a child is comfortable holding a pencil, he can begin copying. Rather than starting with copywork, some prefer to start with tracing. Probably your child’s first writing lesson was when you...
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Language Arts the Natural Way: Dictation
We started by reading to our child, familiarizing him with language. At some point we had him narrate to us what was read, absorbing the language. Our child traced his name. Then he began copying —...
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30 Life Skills — Don’t Leave Home Without Them
There are many things we do each day that we take for granted. We’ve done them so long we forget that our children may not know how to do them. One easy remedy is to bring our children alongside us —...
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Ways to Develop Critical Thinking Skills
In a chapter titled “Thinking Skills” in her book A Biblical Home Education, Ruth Beechick explains that we don’t need a “thinking” class. Instead we want our children to apply critical thinking...
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5 Traits of a Good Writer
We spend hundreds of dollars looking for the “perfect” curriculum that will turn our children into good writers. We try everything — the great classical writing program, the seminar experience offered...
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4 Levels of Creativity in Writing
You don’t have to plan “creative writing” lessons. Just set the stage for writing lessons, plain ones. If creativity comes along, nurture it, but don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to be here today…....
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Teaching a Child to Read — The Natural Way!
It seems that one of the areas we make more complicated than it needs to be is teaching a child to read. Frequently, many of our problems in this area stem from simple impatience! We tend to start...
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5 Ways to Develop a Better Thinker
Modern education has a problem: it tends to teach children how to take tests, rather than how to think. Students who work a practice book before a test do in fact score better on the test. They play...
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Productive Alternative to a Gap Year: Run a Business!
It has always been true, but perhaps with college having become a default societal setting it is even more obvious now — there are a vast number of students attending college with absolutely no idea...
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“How Not to Teach Writing”
Having grown two writers from the ground up using natural methods, this article by Dr. Ruth Beechick, “How Not to Teach Writing,” really hit home. Want to learn to write? Write. You can find more...
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5 Real-Life Writing Elements
Parents who give up the struggle with daily workbook lessons and encourage real-life writing and children’s choice writing look back months later and are delighted not only with the progress but with...
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9 Ways to Encourage a Lifelong Reading Habit
According to a 2007 National Endowment of the Arts report, fewer people read. Americans in almost every demographic group were reading fiction, poetry, and drama—and books in general—at significantly...
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5 Ideas Toward a Richer Vocabulary
How many of us remember memorizing a list of vocabulary words and their meanings to pass an English test? Funny how those words — and their meanings — disappeared from our world about five minutes...
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5 Ways to Develop a Better Thinker
Modern education has a problem: it tends to teach children how to take tests, rather than how to think. Students who work a practice book before a test do in fact score better on the test. They play...
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