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Homeschool Tips

Three Steps to a Successful Book Sale Visit

Last Friday we attended the annual Rockcliffe Park Book Fair, one of the best book sales in Ottawa.  It’s an adventure each time we go and we make many bookish memories—both while we’re there and afterwards when we’re reading our new books. For a big book sale like this, we need to prepare.  What books […]

The Official SAT Question of the Day

If your teen is planning to take the SAT, it’s a good idea to practice.  You can spend huge amounts of money on SAT prep classes, or you can buy a practice book as we did.  However, the valuable first step we take is free:   in grade 11 we start doing The Official SAT Question of […]

NaNoWriMo: Novel Writing for Kids (and Adults)

This Friday, all around the world, the writing frenzy of NaNoWriMo begins again.  During NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, thousands of people world-wide challenge themselves to write a novel.  Yes, a complete novel in a month—an unedited novel, mind you, but a novel none the less. My kids have participated in the Young Writer Program […]

Review: The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill

Every once in a while, a wonderful children’s book presents an educational philosophy and becomes a treat for both children and their parents.  Louisa May Alcott wrote several books like this (Jack and Jill, Jo’s Boys, Little Men), Dorothy Canfield Fisher gave us Understood Betsy, and now Kirkpatrick Hill presents her ideas in the delightful […]

You, Your Teen’s Guidance Counsellor

  If you, a homeschooling mom, have teens, you need to become their guidance counsellor.  Yes, really.  Who else is going to guide them through the maze of questions about their future?  Help them discover what they want to be?  Tell them about jobs, apprenticeships, mentors, college, financial aid, scholarships, admission tests?  No one.  It’s […]