Thoughtworthy (Life Skills, Charlotte Mason Boot Camp Scholarships, and MORE!)

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I’ve decided I’m going to make “Life Skills” (defined veeeeeerrry broadly) a more permanent category in our morning Circle Time. We’ve been doing our homeopathic first aid book and it’s gone really well — all the children have seemed very interested, and I’ve seen them practice some of what they have learned.

I started thinking about what we’d do after that, and I didn’t really want to do another health book. Then I thought that maybe this could be a more general category, and so our course in Life Skills was born.

I’ve got two books ordered and placed on deck for this. Will we read every page of those books? I don’t yet know; they haven’t arrived yet. I’ll decide once I get a chance to skim through and see what I think applies.

The first title is How to Be Better At Almost Everything by Pat Flynn (not that Pat Flynn).

The second is Talk to Me by Dean Nelson. Yes, it’s a book about interviewing. But I listened to an interview with the author, and it turns out people find his information helps with social situations, too, because at the end of the day, good conversation starts with learning to ask good questions. Most kids could stand a jump start on good conversation, amiright?

I’ll let you know how it goes once we’ve done it.

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A new AfterCast episode came out yesterday:

You can listen in the post or, even better, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast player. ♥

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We awarded the Charlotte Mason Boot Camp scholarships earlier this week. Remember that we only contact recipients, so if you haven’t heard from us, this means you didn’t get one this time. But don’t worry. You can apply again next time!

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This month in 2017:

I still maintain that this is so. Also: moment of silence for the fact that it is already February!

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Yes, we now have enough volunteers for the AmblesideOnline booth at GHC Texas next month. With that said, we still need a few for GHC California so if you use AO and you’re planning to be there and you want to volunteers (and get free admission), just let me know!

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This week’s links collection:

• 3-day human-trafficking sting in California leads to 339 arrests from ABC7
  • The headline doesn’t mentioned that almost 50 victims were FREED! Do you see me clapping my hands? I love that Trump has been cracking down on human trafficking.
  • With that said, this administration shouldn’t think this is enough. If they really want to free slaves, they also need to stop granting visas to child brides!
• Why Nationalism Won’t Save Us From Globalism from The Imaginative Conservative
  • “[A]ny restoration of the nation must include the rebuilding of those groups, families and associations that make up the nation, create culture, and foster goodwill and unity. Without these dynamic elements, the notion of nation is reduced to vague sentiments of political and economic grandeur, often detached from reality.”
• Why Millions Of Kids Can’t Read, And What Better Teaching Can Do About It from NPR
  • Exhibit A: “When a child came to a word she didn’t know, the teacher would tell her to look at the picture and guess.” Deceased good teachers everywhere are collectively rolling over in their graves. Guessing is almost always a problem.
  • I have heard this nonsense about how grasping meaning is “more important” than actually being able to read the words on the page and all I can say is that this is ridiculous. Unless, of course, you want an illiterate population.
  • Exhibit B: “Michelle Bosak, who teaches English as a second language in Bethlehem, said that when she was in college learning to be a teacher, she was taught almost nothing about how kids learn to read.”