The last 3 days, my oldest son participated in his first debate tournament. He joined a local debate club last September and jumped right into the world of debate. He learned the difference between Lincoln-Douglas and Team Policy debates. He learned terms like affirmative, negative, constructive, cross-examination, and rebuttals. To be honest, at times it felt like we (him and I) were drinking from a fire hose. But over the first semester, he gradually started catching on. During club meetings, he practiced debating fellow club members, and flowing his debate rounds. On our drives home, we wou ..read more

Our family has been homeschooling for about two years now, and during that time my goals for my kids’ education has changed. Instead of focusing on grades, I want them to learn how to teach themselves. I’ve realized in order for them to be able to teach themselves, they need to develop two skills: reading comprehension and critical thinking. Reading is how we access new information. Critical thinking is how we understand the information. A great way to develop critical thinking is through puzzles. However, I’ve struggled to find puzzles that interest my oldest. Being gifted, he learns quickly ..read more

My husband recently built our family several raised beds to grow vegetables. We were noticing some of the garden beds were being disturbed by our friendly neighborhood squirrels, so my husband threw up some netting over the beds. Unfortunately, we later noticed the tomatoes were growing flowers, but not fruit. We knew from a previous garden that no fruit meant pollinators were not getting to our plants. So, we threw the netting off, and a few days later saw tomatoes growing! Our experience reminded me of the importance of pollinators to the growth of a garden. I found some great books about be ..read more

I recently discovered my sons like eating hard boiled eggs. I had no idea they liked them, until joining some friends for a meal that included hard boiled eggs, and my youngest couldn’t stop eating them! So, I bought some eggs for us the next day, and boiled them. Then I got an idea! Why don’t we add some fun to these eggs and try to use natural dyes to color them? We could further experiment by testing whether each natural egg dye affects how an egg tastes! Natural Egg Dye Experiment with Hard-Boiled Eggs We started our experiment with researching possible natural dye sources and seeing if we ..read more

My mother is a retired Spanish teacher, so when we decided to start homeschooling, I asked her if she could give my boys Spanish lessons once a week. She emphatically said yes! Spanish is her first language, and she was excited to share this part of her history with her grandsons. As we’re drawing close to summer, and my parents will start traveling a bit, we decided to bring out Spanish lessons to an end for the school year. But I don’t want the boys to forget all they have learned this past year, so I thought I would share with you what we did. This way, I can reference back to all the lesso ..read more

About a year ago I made some homemade valentines cards for my youngest son to give out to his class at preschool. We made valentine’s cards that included a small baking soda heart glued on, and made them a few days in advance, just to make sure they had time dry. The day of his valentine’s day class party, we carefully placed his cards in a box, and headed off to school. But when we got there, I realized several of the baking soda hearts had broken apart. Thankfully, my son didn’t notice, and he cheerfully delivered his cards to his teacher. I, on the other hand, was deteremined to find a way ..read more

One of the areas I struggled with in college was circuits. It was all very confusing talk about voltage, current, resistors, power, and all the other electrical terms. The mystery behind circuits continued in my career, until I met an electrical engineer who was able to equate electrical circuits to water flow. Since then I’ve been able to visualize what is going on in simple circuits, and trouble-shoot them better. I’ve also made a simple circuit with my oldest son, to make a card for his teacher. Now that he is almost in middle school, I thought he would be ready for a more complicated circu ..read more

Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to an inspirational young lady I recently met, Emily Bayuk. I was initially introduced to her through her circuits book ,”The Fundamentals of Circuits Made Easy“. In college I really struggled to understand circuits, and wish Emily’s book had been available back then. She is currently in college, and I asked to share her story and experience as an engineer. Her story will both amaze and encourage you! This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see the disclosure. The Author’s of “The Fundamentals of Circuits Made Easy” Journey to Bec ..read more

Our family has been homeschooling for about two years now, and during that time my goals for my kids’ education has changed. Instead of focusing on grades, I want them to learn how to teach themselves. I’ve realized in order for them to be able to teach themselves, they need to develop two skills: reading comprehension and critical thinking. Reading is how we access new information. Critical thinking is how we understand the information. A great way to develop critical thinking is through puzzles. However, I’ve struggled to find puzzles that interest my oldest. Being gifted, he learns quickly ..read more

My husband recently built our family several raised beds to grow vegetables. We were noticing some of the garden beds were being disturbed by our friendly neighborhood squirrels, so my husband threw up some netting over the beds. Unfortunately, we later noticed the tomatoes were growing flowers, but not fruit. We knew from a previous garden that no fruit meant pollinators were not getting to our plants. So, we threw the netting off, and a few days later saw tomatoes growing! Our experience reminded me of the importance of pollinators to the growth of a garden. I found some great books about be ..read more