National Reading Month: 10 Must-Read Classics for High School

National Reading Month: 10 Must-Read Classics for High School


SHARON’S BLOG

I’ve had a long and strange relationship with the classics.

In 8th grade, our English class read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, but I could never figure out what the red “A” stood for.

As an Christian adult, I developed the inexplicable idea that reading fiction was a waste of time. I should read only religious or self-help books . . . until I became so ill that I was bored out of my skull for one month lying on the couch. Then I turned to the only fiction book in our tiny trailer: a complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, which seemed appropriate for someone with the last name of Watson.

I was hooked, and I never looked back.

(Well, there was that one time when I resisted reading George Eliot’s Silas Marner because I mistook “Marner” for “Mariner,” and I have a dislike for sea-going stories but then read it and it became one of my FAVORITES! But that is another story.) (more…)

Shock Your Children with These Three Writing Tips

Shock Your Children with These Three Writing Tips


SHARON’S BLOG

Are your homeschool students completely and utterly bored with their writing lessons? Is it a struggle to get them to write again?
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When it comes to writing essays, it’s easy for students to stall out. They need motivation. They need a change. They need some fun—and so do we!

3 Shocking Tips

Here are three shocking writing tips you can use in your homeschool—shocking because they are fun and because, to your children, they are totally unexpected. (more…)