Susie is six and can’t count to thirty without missing a few numbers. Johnny has almost finished eighth grade but hasn’t started pre-algebra. “Oh dear, oh dear, my child is falling behind.” Just as one child can be given the label “Attention Deficit Disorder” because some adults cannot tolerate his activity level, so can another…
Some teenagers seem to develop an attitude toward their high school studies. They may even view high school as a trial to test their endurance rather than a pleasurable opportunity for learning. Is this the way it should be? No – not really. The youthful joy of learning, so evident in Kindergarten, may have been…
Christina took the plunge. She pulled her children out of the system and turned to home study. To do this, she had to beat off the doomsayers who predicted her kids would end-up social misfits. She had to convince her overworked husband who hadn’t yet noticed the decline in public education. And, she had to…
The child tunes in to life and learns at breakneck speed. Mimicking what he sees and hears — he plays tribute to the old “Monkey See; Monkey Do” adage. If the child were raised by wolves, he would howl in the wind and walk on all fours. But unlike the monkey and wolf, children are…
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do! Robert Louis Stevenson: A Child’s Garden of Verses I love this stanza from Stevenson’s poem; it brings memories of pumping so high I felt I was…
“A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge,” —words penned by Scottish Writer, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). Beautiful words, kind words, but is a “loving heart” truly the key to all learning? And if it is, then shouldn’t it be the first lesson we teach our children? And so it is: mother’s tender kiss, father’s…
You are guided at every step. “I am very excited about the help I received with my daughter’s home study program at Applied Scholastics Online Academy. Earlier we had gotten to a point where she was no longer willing to read from her book. I tried many different things with her, but she would not…
The term self-esteem is batted around in every educational arena in the nation. Teachers are taught a child’s happiness depends on it and lack of it causes bullying, disrespect and even violence. If self-esteem is of such great consequence, what-is this sought after quality anyway? The word self-esteem was coined in 1890 by psychologist William…
Why make a New Year’s resolution? Making resolutions at the start of the year exemplifies Man’s desire to improve conditions in life. Setting a specific goal and seeing it through dates back to Babylonian times about 4,000 years ago. Indeed, it may be mankind’s longest-lived tradition. A persistence founded on the idea that a resolution…