• Learning to Play the Piano
    Music

    Learning to Play the Piano in our Home

    Why? ~ Introduction to Music ~ Our Piano ~ Piano for littles ~ Piano apps for a bit older ~ Starter Piano Song Books ~ Further Thoughts ~ Relationships “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato Like every subject in our homeschool, I think it is…

  • HomeEducation.ie.CombBondBooks
    Books & Curriculum

    Making My Own Books

    I was making some simple comb bound books as I get ready for more formal school.  It is quick to make a book like this when you have a printer, binder and cutter, but fathoming it out the first time can take a bit of time.  To simplify it for you,  I made notes as I worked to create this…

  • Hutchinson Treasury of Stories to read aloud
    Books to Read Aloud

    The Hutchinson Treasury of Stories to Read Aloud

    I wanted to recommend the book The Hutchinson treasury of stories to read aloud selected by Janet Schulman.  This book was previously been printed under the title The 20th-Century Children’s Book Treasury.   The content is the same. This book contains many books which are recommended on various US curriculum.  It used to be on Sonlight’s PreK curriculum for families abroad…

  • Adapting US curriculum

    Do I need to teach sentence diagramming in Ireland?

    When I was investigating US writing curricula, I found that some of them include a lot of sentence diagramming, starting around 4th grade or so. I had never heard of sentence diagramming, never mind done any myself in school. I asked around and was told that three moms with older children had just crossed out those exercises in their writing/language…

  • Start Here

    Start Here

    I frequently see people asking: How to homeschool in Ireland? The first talk I listened to about home education about seven years ago was “Hold on to your credit card” and I am very grateful that it was. I’m going to suggest the sentiment of that talk here: Think about your why, look at you and your children – think…

  • Charlotte Mason Art Appreciation
    Irish Art

    Art Appreciation Charlotte Mason Style

    Charlotte Mason believed a child’s “education should furnish him with whole galleries of mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new;––…–– in fact, every child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings, sculpture, beauty of form and colour…