Search Results for: blog straight from high school to college

Keeping Your Faith at College – Part 2

Last month I looked at keeping your faith at college. I’m going to make a few more suggestions in this area today. Don’t cut yourself off from opportunities. Just because you’ve always belonged to one denomination doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the right one for you. When our daughter went to university she, like a few others, I know found she was not fitting in to the Anglican Church she attended. She got lost in the sheer size of the congregation and found it hard to mix. After a while she opted out and went along to a Baptist church which … Continue reading →

At School Too Long?

Author, Hilary Mantel, created a furor recently when she suggested girls were ready to have babies at 14. While I am in no way agreeing with her on that, it did occur to me to wonder whether we are keeping young people at school too long and not allowing them to grow up. Years ago some of us will know from our own experience, others will know from parents and grandparents that young people left school much earlier. By 14-16 they had finished with school and were out in the workforce. In some case it was even earlier than that. … Continue reading →

Keeping Your Faith at College

Keeping your faith when you go off to college or university can be a real test for some young people. So what can you do to ensure that you don’t over commit and get caught up in the whirl of activities and neglect your spiritual life? Here are some suggestions based on the experience with our own children and those of friends’ children who have gone away to college or university. If you know any people who are already attending that college, get information from them about the types of groups that are available, If not the college will always … Continue reading →

Should You Teach Your Child to Read Before They Go To School?

Should you teach your child to read before they go to school? It’s a question that people often have differing opinions about. My mother taught me to read when I was four years old. As far as I can see it was one of the best and most loving things she did and she did plenty of other loving things. So when my son was four it seemed only natural to teach him to read. We started over with a combination of phonetics and flash cards. By the time he went to school he could already read well. Fortunately his … Continue reading →

Is College a Must?

I was talking to one of my cousins a while back and he was talking about how proud and impressed he was that I was trying to get my Ph.D. There were two things in his voice: 1) a level of disappointment in himself that he didn’t try for more schooling and 2) an assumption that I was going to make lots of money because of my advanced degree. This led to a valuable conversation where we cleared up our misconceptions. The question became: Is College a Must? My cousin was, at the time, driving a forklift for a soda … Continue reading →

Straight from High School to College?

Is it a good idea to go straight from high school to college? Many young people I know have chosen to take a year’s break and defer their college or university for a year and do one of two things. I’ll talk about one today and the other in my next education blog. Sometimes finances play a part and the parents may not have enough money to pay for college without some assistance. So some young people will work for twelve months in any job they can find to help get a little money saved towards that. I have friends … Continue reading →

Homeschooling Middle School Kids

Homeschooling during the elementary school years means teaching kids the basics. It involves teaching, reading, writing, and basic math. Homeschooling during these early years also means setting your kids in the right direction in areas of emotional and social development. Homeschooling during the high school years means preparing your kids for adult life. This means intensive academic preparation for the college bound. It means internships for trade bound students. It also means slowly transferring adult responsibilities to your children and helping them learn to step into an adult role. Homeschooling middle school students are a different animal altogether. You have … Continue reading →

For Something Better

We all have to make sacrifices in life. Sometimes we have to sacrifice something good for something better down the road. This has become very apparent to me over the course of the last year and a half, but particularly over the last few months. When I got divorced I was faced with a very serious decision. I wanted to be on my own, but I knew that if I didn’t finish my last two years of school we would be barely scraping by for the rest of our lives. I wanted more for Logan so I sacrificed my independence … Continue reading →

Flower Child of Education

The other day my husband called me the “Flower Child of Education.” He was referring to my idea that one needs to “de-school” their brain in order to educate properly. One of my favorite quotes is by Mark Twain; “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” My husband has heard me quote this many times and smiles each time at my enthusiasm for being a “flower child of education.” As a matter of fact, I love that term so much I may use it for a blog or a book someday. While, my husband intends … Continue reading →

Timed Tests Help Concentration

If you are a homeschooling parent you may or may not give your child tests in general much less timed tests. Many homeschoolers do not see the benefit in giving tests to their children. I agree that a test is not the end all be all of intelligence or mastery over a subject. I was also a homeschooler who did not give or rely on tests to weigh the level of mastery achieved on a subject. Recently, I have decided to change my homeschool to include tests for my older children. Before this year I had only given spelling tests … Continue reading →