• Books and Reading

    “My Family and Other Animals” Book Review

    If you are looking for some light fiction that is also written in sparkling prose, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell is the book for you. I really cannot say enough good things about this read. It was sheer delight. The book begins with a family of four children and their widowed mother tired of their humdrum average British life. On a whim, they sell their house and move to the island of Corfu and rent a house sight unseen. The story is told from Gerald’s perspective as the youngest brother, describing his family with a loving touch, though…

  • Books and Reading

    “Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories” Book Review

    Last Sunday I had the great luxury of several hours in which to read entirely for fun, and in that time I finished Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories. This book is a truly enjoyable collection of little self-contained mysteries, each in one chapter, all cleverly solved by the unassuming and unlikely character of Miss Marple. The elderly spinster has a keen mind and a rather uncanny ability to relate seemingly mundane happenings in her small village to crimes on a larger scale. This combination of sleuthing super-powers never fails to take those around her by surprise, given…

  • Books and Reading - Uncategorized

    The Reading Report, Vol. 20: Reboot Edition

    Hey, readers! It has been over a year (yikes!) since I posted an actual edition of The Reading Report. I have a ton of books going right now, but I don’t have any new reviews for the B2tC 2020 Challenge. So I thought I would pop on here today and give ya’ll an update on how I’m doing on all my current reading challenges. Brace yourselves…this could get long! 😉 Back to the Classics Challenge Report I haven’t finished any new books on my B2tC list lately, but I am currently reading Gerald Durell’s My Family and Other Animals. I…

  • Homeschooling

    This Year in Our Home School: AmblesideOnline Year 4, Part 4

    Welcome back to my series on AmblesideOnline Year 4 and how we are implementing the curriculum in our homeschool this year. In this final post I am going to write about how I have scheduled subjects and a little about how this works in our daily routine. Before I get any farther with that, however, I want to emphasize that currently our daily routine is quite fluid. Some days we get everything done more quickly than I expect. Other days are a slog. Many times we have to move things around to make room for outings, grocery runs or appointments.…

  • Homeschooling

    This Year in Our Homeschool: AmblesideOnline Year 4, Part 3

    This week I am continuing my series on our current homeschool year using the AmblesideOnline curriculum. I meant to have this post ready to go last week, but I went to the Nashville Teach Them Diligently homeschool convention and was too busy to actually write it until now. (By the way, if you have a chance to attend a TTD conference near you, definitely go! I was so encouraged!) So here we are at last, adding a little more information about what supplemental resources I am using with AO Year 4. Supplemental Resources for Year 4 Math–MEP and Khan Academy…