Comparing my experiences in school classrooms and homeschooling is interesting to me. All of the schools and programs we’ve been involved with have things to recommend them to almost any child, yet in each instance the children seemed to learn differently based on the mix of kids, the teachers, and the subject matter. As I’ve…

More thoughts about food. (Can you tell it’s one of my favorite subjects? Too bad wine doesn’t have much to do with parenting, unless you overuse it!) I was talking to some moms the other day, all identities not to be revealed so as not to incriminate the innocent…or the guilty. We were talking about…

Last night some other homeschooling moms and I were talking about educational theories. Someone said, “Waldorf says…” and another said, “Well, Montessori says…” And then we started talking about teachers who were trained in one discipline who start to go renegade. For example, a Waldorf-trained teacher who practices handwriting with her kindergarteners. What it comes…

Yesterday I took my kids to the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair. This is an annual excursion for us and apparently thousands of other people. It’s in the Louden Nelson Center and is very, very crowded. Despite that, it’s a great experience for kids and parents alike. The life cycle of fungus is fascinating. Kids learn…

In our simpler past life (that is, before both our kids got old enough to have schedules of their own), we used to tune in religiously to the kids’ show on KUSP. It was called Castle Cottage and it was very wonderful. Except for the stretch where our local actress Billie Harris read a chapter…