love to paint

A month ago, I started noticing a bunch of posts from friends about a tv show, This is Us .  I was curious, so I opened a new tab and watched the available episodes of the show.  But, I seem to have had the opposite reaction that many people I know have had to this show. I don't like it. This is one of those times when I have felt puzzled and so I began asking the question, "Why don't I like it?" Yesterday, after leaving Bible study, I was able to articulate part of why.  We're going through the book A Praying Life by Paul Miller and our discussion was about chapter 23.  It focused on understanding that our suffering is part of God's story that He is weaving.  Mr. Miller gave some advice on how to cope with suffering and this is my paraphrased of his advice.                  1.  Surrender.                  2.  Look for God's story and what he's doing. ...

Sometimes I wish I read books a little more slowly, but other times, it doesn't bother me.  Last week, I sat down with a new book by Tamera Alexander, A Note Yet Unsung . It is the story of a young woman returning to the south during the Reconstruction Era after the US Civil War.  The young woman, Rebekah, has been forced to return home from Austria, where she had been living for several years.  It was not by choice that she returns home, but rather because of the death of her grandmother.  She is a musician, but at the time women were not allowed to play in orchestras.  They were a male-only profession.  This fictional story is of her attempt to play and perform.  She becomes the assistant to the local Orchestra Conductor and an invaluable aid to his work.  Due to her home situation, she was also unable to return to her mother's home where her stepfather lives, but she finds a live-in position as a music instructor.  The main plot of th...

Okay. So I had an aha moment.  I do not use IEW and I do not follow the classical model for writing.  I follow the model of students writing first sentences (K-2), paragraphs (3-5), then essays (4-8). when they write (I've used Write Source from Great Sour ce for K-6) they learn many different forms: how to writing, cause and effect writing, compare/contrast, descriptive, narrative, poetry... In 7th grade, I wrote my own curriculum that focused first on Show, Don't Tell Writing (lots of printables online for free), then moved into poetry--choosing words on purpose, then into narrative writing where description naturally fits, and then into non-fiction narrative. We end that year with compare/contrast writing.  This year, we began with summarizing, moved into when to paraphrase, quote, and summarize, and then into a research paper. The research paper was where the waters got muddy. It's an enormous undertaking and I needed to break it down. We started with how to tel...

I find that it is hard to keep track of series of books when one has to wait several months between their publishing.  But, sometimes I happen upon the first and then subsequent books in a series.  Honestly, I prefer to read a series when it has all already been published--because then I don't have to wait! Last year, I began reading the books by one particular author, Susan May Warren.  She had written two different series set in Deep Haven, Minnesota.  One was about a fictional family, the Christiansens.  The second was several interconnected stories about people who lived in that same town.  I enjoyed the stories more than I enjoy most stories.  So, I looked forward to the books in her new Montana Rescue series.  A few months ago, I reviewed the first novel of the series: Wild Montana Skies.  Then, a week ago, I got to read the second book in the series, Rescue Me . Rescue Me follows two characters that appear near the end of the f...

Where I live (Maryland), art is a required subjects for homeschoolers in grades K-8.  What counts as art?  That's a good question. Art appreciation is art. Arts and crafts is art. Drawing is art. Painting is art. Photography is art. Interior Design is art. Lettering and calligraphy are art. Graphic Design is art. Sculpture is art. Cartooning is art. Stop animation is art. What parents choose to do for art depends on what they want and the importance they place on art.  I remember when my oldest daughter started drawing.  I didn't think much of it.  She could draw.  I signed up for a few random art classes.  But, as she grew older, I realized that she could take an assignment and run with it.   My husband and I saw that art needed to be a priority in our family, particularly in her case. I've used a few different curriculums over the years.  I love Laura Chapman's older art textbooks for grades 1-6, because they incorporate bot...