My local school will begin the 2011-12 school year next week. While this doesn’t really effect my home school, it does increase my level of stress a little bit. We took an unforeseen break in June and July as far as school was concerned. Family issues required much of my time, and school was the [...]

Do you have a reluctant writer? I’m not talking about penmanship here but about actually writing of paragraphs, reports, journals, and things like that. I have a very reluctant writer. My daughter does not like to write anything. She does not like to put pen to paper for any reason. We think that part of [...]

One of the biggest problems with the traditional school year is the long summer break. During that break, many students do not continue to make academic progress. The three places that students fail to continue their forward progress are math, reading, and spelling. Some students lose as much as two months worth of knowledge in [...]

Many parents are finding out that there child is not where he or she should be at the end of the school year. Final evaluations are out or will be soon, and some parents are in for some rather unpleasant news. It may even be unexpected news as some school systems are teaching “to the [...]

Words, words, words. Whether it is spelling words, or vocabulary words, increasing your child’s usable vocabulary is very important in fifth grade, and into middle school. There are lists in many books and workbooks that will help your child learn to spell better. Additionally, there are many resources online where you can find spelling and [...]