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Showing posts from August, 2024

Thoughts on Geography Education in the Home

I've been exploring subject-specific home education strategies on the blog in 2024. Child #1 won't start formal homeschooling for a few years, but I love being prepared! Even in toddler years, one can set up children for success in later work by nurturing their love of learning and discovery, as well as being mindful of the destination ahead (a well-rounded, well-educated mind in a healthy body). This week, I will explore one of my weaker subjects, geography. Here are links to my other posts on  health education ,  life sciences , and history . As with history, geography is an area in which I feel weaker in knowledge and understanding. That's part of the beauty of homeschooling, especially when one spouse has knowledge and interest in areas in which the other is lacking. The Bibliovore has a thoroughly historical mindset and thus a decent grasp of geography (see below). I, meanwhile, have more of a STEM mindset. I look forward to learning about non-STEM areas along with our

Trusting the Church Fathers

In the Bibliovore's household, the church fathers are a fairly frequent topic of discussion. I've written previously about a volume of the Apostolic Fathers' writings that I read about a year ago. Having gone from a theological tradition that places relatively less (but still more than no) weight in the writings of these early Christians to one that places a fairly significant amount of weight in the writings, I figured that an exploration of who  the Fathers were and why  I think they are trustworthy guides to Scriptural interpretation is in order. Who Are the Church Fathers? In the history of Christianity, there are several categories of ancient writings preserved and translated for us. Almost all Bibles contain only the canonical books of Scripture; some Bibles also contain the Apocrypha (non-canonical but canon-adjacent). Besides these groups of writings, there are also writings from the first several generations of Christians after the Apostles (Church Fathers). The

Thoughts on History Education in the Home

Throughout the remainder of this year, I will be continuing a series of posts on home education in various subjects required by or related to those required by the state we currently reside in. As I said in an earlier post, this is partly to develop my own homeschooling philosophy and specific ideas via writing, and partly sharing some toddler-appropriate ideas and visions that may be of help to you. This post is on history education, focusing on how to sequence said education in the K-12 age range. Earlier posts in this series are on  health education  and  life sciences . Check out this page also on characteristics of a historical  mindset . Some Historical Vocabulary Last year, I stumbled across  The Homeschool Historian . The objective of this blog/website is to provide good-quality, ideologically neutral (as possible!) historical educational materials and information developed by a Christian with substantial historical training. I am appreciative of her approach because of the ten

The Day the Revolution Began: A Book Reflection

What's so special about Good Friday? Much has been written in Christian literature and scholarship about this day when Jesus was crucified. A recent, fresh take by prolific New Testament scholar N. T. Wright is that this day was even more of a pivot point in Judeo-Christian thought than previously realized. In this week's post, it is my pleasure to walk you through the key points of Wright's argument in a book reflection on The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion . As a reminder, here's the general outline of this post: I will . . . Contextualize the author's writings as a whole (bibliography) Bring the author's major ideas to the present day Comment on major sections of the book, or important chapters, depending on organization N. T. Wright's Bibliography Check out this post from a few months ago for Wright's bibliography so far. Some time ago, I learned the reason he frequently includes the name of a specific

Thoughts on Life Science Education in the Home

Throughout the rest of this year, I will be continuing a series of posts on home education in various subjects required by or related to those required by the state we currently reside in. This is partly to develop my own homeschooling philosophy and specific ideas via writing, and partly sharing some toddler-appropriate ideas and visions that may be of help to you. This post is on life science education, focusing on how to sequence said education in the K-12 age range. My previous post is on health education. The last section of this post does dive somewhat into controversies between extremes in life science education, particularly biology and origins science. My position is that of a conservative moderate Christian, and within the word limits of a blog post (what most people are willing to read!) I have tried to explain the relevant background and rationale. However, the section only scratches the surface. What Are the Life Sciences? Back in the day, I was (no surprise to Renaissanc