Around the Spinney

Homeschooling

  • Little Friend

    Little Friend

    Little Friend is a Song Sparrow in the Burgess Bird Book. He is a little sparrow characterized as the opposite of Bully, hence his name is “Little Friend.” The Cornell Lab notes that, “it’s one of the first species you should suspect if you see a streaky sparrow in an open, shrubby, or wet area.…

  • Jenny Wren

    We started The Burgess Bird Book this past week with Jenny Wren. Jenny is a common House Wren. I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever identified a Wren before, even though they are common over most of the Western Hemisphere. As we read the book and learned more about Wrens, we realized…

  • AGF Year End Review

    What’s the best way to look back at a school year? Here it is: We finished A Gentle Feast Cycle 1! Look at how many great books we were able to read together. When I see these books I have memories, and guess what? My children also share those memories. This year in Form 1…

  • The Last Chapters of Burgess Animal Coloring Pages

    Last week, I finished all of the coloring pages for the Burgess Animal Book covered in A Gentle Feast‘s curriculum for Cycle 1, Form 1. Last night, I finished the rest for the book! I’m so grateful to have grown through this process because I had the chance to get to know these animals better.…

  • You Can Homeschool Even if You Can’t

    “Homeschooling” can look like many different things. In some countries, it is illegal. It some families, it is severely looked down upon. In some places and spheres, it is idolized. Here are three things to think about when you just can’t homeschool: Never Take It For Granted There are so many reasons why I could…

  • Help with Narration

    What is Narration and Why do it? When I first started to homeschool with the Charlotte Mason method, I was a bit confused about one thing: narration. While aspects of my own education involved narration, it wasn’t primary, and I would not have known I was narrating because it wasn’t used in our classroom language.…

  • Burgess Animal Coloring Pages

    After a few weeks of hard work, I’m happy to announce that the first round of Burgess Animal Coloring Pages are in the shop. They include 19 animals that Burgess writes about in the first 12 chapters of the book. I have to tell you that it is very difficult to draw a North American…

  • When a Poem Touches the Heart

    I remember being young, sitting with a pen and my journal, and greatly desiring to be able to write a poem. I sat on my bed in my room trying to do this, and while I probably actually was successful at times, I usually ripped it out of my journal and threw it away because…

  • Why We Use A Gentle Feast

    As a part of the #whyweloveAGF challenge this month, I wanted to let you know why I chose this particular homeschool curriculum. As a part of my introduction last week, I mentioned that I started out homeschooling thinking that resources and workbooks were the important part of getting ready each year. Those things are important,…

  • Why We Love A Gentle Feast

    This month there is a #whyweloveAGF challenge! So here is the introduction to who we are and why we love A Gentle Feast Curriculum: This is us- I am from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan originally and moved down to Texas to spend most of my life in the Dallas area. I studied Therapeutic Recreation…