Sacramento Homeschool Math By Hand

It’s spring . . . time to plant your homeschool math lessons!  And reap the harvest: an enthusiasm for and genuine love of the subject that extrapolates to a lifelong love of all learning.  Perhaps one of the greatest shortcomings of  today’s mainstream education model is its abstractness or isolation from life itself. As John […]

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Who was Blaise Pascal?  He left a lasting legacy of influence in many fields: theology, philosophy, literature, economics, social science, and mathematics, all in a short life of only 39 years. Pascal’s mother died when he was only 3 years old, and his father, who was a judge and tax collector, homeschooled Blaise.  His genius […]

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Good old-fashioned fun, outdoors or in, sadly seems to be a thing of the past since today’s children are too busy with organized sports, specialty lessons, TV or video games, and too much homework to indulge in simple pleasures like hopscotch, street games, or checkers. Choosing to school at home changes the mindset from organized learning […]

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Clouds weren’t named until 1803 when Luke Howard, an English pharmacist who was also an amateur sky watcher and weather buff, took it upon himself to give them their descriptive, Latin names.  He named  stratus clouds for the Latin: layer, cumulus for the Latin: heap, cirrus for the Latin: curly, and nimbus for the Latin: rain.  So, for example, a cumulonimbus […]

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Time and measurement are essential aspects of your homeschool math curriculum, but it may be better to wait until your child is ready to receive these abstract concepts.  The garden of childhood is timeless, and so it should be.  There’s time enough to be preoccupied with time, no need to rush it. In Waldorf education, […]

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Zero is such a familiar concept that it seems like it’s been with us forever.  Not so!  Letters were used as numbers in many ancient cultures, most notably, in ancient Rome.  The premise was relatively simple; only 7 letters were used for all the known numbers in the Roman system.  And the Roman numerals far […]

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Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest mathematician/scientist of our or any time, was by no means an honor student.  School was not to his liking, and he did not excel in his classes.  But he was able in spite of (or perhaps because of) that “shortcoming” to successfully nurture an inner genius that was prolific, productive, […]

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One of the most valuable concepts I learned as a Waldorf teacher was that “breathing out” is as (or more) essential to successful teaching and learning as “breathing in” is.  Recreational time or time out from learning is absolutely crucial to every student’s health, well-being, and true educational success.  The good news is that your […]

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Should we be using a different measuring tool for intelligence?  Dr. Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University, thought so.  In 1983 he developed the theory of multiple intelligences, a measuring tool that allows for a multi-faceted look at the qualities and talents that comprise true intelligence.  Your homeschool curriculum allows the flexibility […]

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