School Days Around the World by Margriet Ruur and illustrated by Alice Feagan (Kids Can Press, 2015) captures Malala’s vision in the epigram at the beginning: “I don’t mind if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education.” In the cut-paper collage illustrations, the stories of real children around the

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I read How We Learn by Benedict Carey (Random House, September 2014) at much the same time as I read Born Reading, so I found the correlation between the two quite interesting. Both books were written for very different and unique reasons and for different audiences. But, since I’m a homeschooling mom, I found that

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I had heard of Wonder by R.J. Palacio. It’s one of those books that has been on the top of “to read” lists since it came out in early 2012. Now that I have read it, I know why. At the center of Wonder is a boy, August or Auggie Pullman, with a severe facial

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I am a mother that is not comfortable with mess. I don’t like noise or chaos either. And yet, I’m learning to adapt. In fact, when I read Recipes for Play by Rachel Sumner and Ruth Mitchener (The Experiment, September 2014), I started actually getting excited about trying out some of the activities and crafts mentioned.

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Not everyone will be as interested as I was in Homeschooling in America by Joseph Murphy (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012). It is, as the subtitle suggests, a book that captures and assess the current modern homeschooling movement. The author reviews, analyzes, and categories all the studies and polls taken on homeschooling in America from the early

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I feel like I should title this post “Yes, I actually read an adult nonfiction book once again,” since I’ve been neglecting not only my personal reading but also my nonfiction. Lately, I’ve been reading picture books, biographies of American historical figures geared toward youth, and other such interesting, but not mind-boggling reading. Education by

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I have been blogging on Rebecca Reads for more than four years now, but I still feel like a newbie when it comes to my new blog, Line Upon Line, which focuses on my homeschooling and education journey and promotes products, both free and paid, in the blogosphere. I found Born to Blog by Mark Schaefer and

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How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin, 2012) is a volume exploring why certain children succeed, despite the odds. He focuses on the children who are most struggling. Some of them succeed, by going to college and becoming successful, contributing members of society. What in their

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Mem Fox is a successful children’s book author and literacy expert. Her expertise in Reading Magic (Harcourt 2001) comes across as personal and passionate, mostly because she writes foremost from her position as a mother. Her main point in writing this book is to read aloud to our children, making it a fun time and

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Raisin and I are only done with a little more than 40 of the lessons for the Kindergarten language arts program Logic of English Foundations. However, he enjoys it so much that I feel it is time I discussed it briefly on this blog. LoE Foundations is an “all in one” language arts for 4-6

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I mentioned last year that my son is a very creative child. He is regularly having imaginary adventures with his imaginary friends, and he constantly comes up with stories for me, stories he tells as if he’s surely experienced them. Given his intense interest in creative writing, I was seeking further instruction on how to

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