flynn057

Dear friends, This reflection is bittersweet for me since I officially retired from home schooling this year. I haven't posted on this blog in a few years, and I think this will be my last entry here. I do know that blog is still read, mainly via Google searches on literature studies, so I'm leaving it up as a resource. I was just reminiscing back on home schooling during the middle school years. My first child started 6th grade in 1998 and my tenth (and last) child just finished 6th grade in May.  That's a lot of years with middle school students in the house. My youngest  started public school this month for 7th grade, and is making a good transition. I'm very relieved about that since t his summer I went back to work part time (on a crisis and human services referral phone line). Next month I start seminary full time too, starting out with Church History, Christian Ethics, and Inductive Bible Study (much of which is literary analysis).   A nyway, I was just thinking ...

I'm so delighted to see a new children's biography by Joyce McPherson, published by Greenleaf Press .   Her newest title is  The Sword of the Spirit: The Story of William Tyndale .   The Reformation Era is my favorite time period to study in World History, and Tyndale's is a fascinating story about the translation of the Bible into English at great peril.   Tyndale  studied Hebrew under Martin Luther, constantly fled persecution by the English government, and was eventually betrayed by a friend, arrested, and executed as a martyr for the gospel in 1536.  His dying prayer? "Lord, open the king of England's eyes..."  Two years later, King James authorized The Great Bible, largely Tyndale's work, for use in the Church of England. I am most familiar with Tyndale through Scott O'Dell's novel The Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day , which I've taught as literature in our co-op a few times.    Most of our reading selections this coming school year will ...

Dear friends, You know by now how I love to integrate English with history!  The 5th-6th graders in our home school co-op are using the Mystery of History Volume 2 text (by Linda Hobar) on the time period of the early church up through the Middle Ages for their history class.  One of the lessons this past week was about St. Francis of Assisi.  I decided to shape my literature and writing assignments around that. In class on Monday, I read the  picture book Saint Francis of Assissi: A Life of Joy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  There are many pictures books about St. Francis, but this is my favorite, and the author (son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy) has had a keen personal connection with his subject since childhood.   Charlotte Mason would say that's the best kind of author to read! Our main literature resource this year is The Book of Virtues edited by Dr. William Bennett, so I assigned "The Sermon to the Birds."  Francis is...

Dear friends, In honor of President's Day this week, I assigned a literature study on the topic of honesty to my home school co-op English class.  In addition to the assignments and discussion notes below, you will also find very useful lists about honesty at  http://www.k12.hi.us/~mkunimit/honesty.htm Discussion: What is honesty? ·          Honesty is telling the whole truth , in your words, actions, and intentions.  It is being accurate . (That does not mean that someone who tells wrong information is lying.  If they sincerely think it is true, they are not being deceptive, just mistaken. There can still be negative consequences for this, especially if the person should have known better, but there is a difference based on their intention!)   Being honest does not mean you need to tell someone information that is none of their business, or that they would use to harm other people, or that is unnecessarily hurtful...