Links to interesting postings - 26 Jan 06

Melissa Wiley at Here in the Bonny Glen writes about her approach to homeschooling.
She has some great thoughts about how as parents we can provide environments for our children to learn. Go read the whole post.

Barbara Frank at The Imperfect Homeschooler writes about how her wonderful experience in fifth grade lead to her being a homeschooler. She had so much fun, and learned so much in fifth grade that her eyes had been opened to just how much children could learn. From sixth grade on she had a fairly typical boring educational experience. But once she had seen the possibilities of what education could be, she knew what she wanted for her children.

Alice at like a tea-tray in the sky writes about a recent study about children in the UK. The study found that "11- and 12-year-old children in year 7 are 'now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago', in terms of cognitive and conceptual development." Unfortunately the study doesn't have any good reasons for the decline. It is sad to see that the United States isn't the only country suffering greatly in the field of education.

Mother Tenn at SCHOOL@HOME writes in response to the recent Newsweek article: "The Boy Crisis." (We talked about this before, briefly recent studies have found that boys are falling behind faster than girls as our education system deteriorates.) Mother Tenn focused in on how fathers make a key difference in the lives and challenges homeschooling fathers to be involved with the education of their sons.

At Trivium Pursuit, the point is made that not only do we want to develop a love for reading in our children, but we need to direct them to good literature. Parents need to teach their children to appreciate good books and have a desire to read them. The post has several good suggestions on how to do this.