So learning all this stuff about neuroscience, cognitive science, and functional brain theory is fun, right? But the thing is, it is only useful if we can see how all this knowledge should be affecting our daily lives. With that in mind, I am dedicating my weekly blog posts in November to addressing some of…
A Collection of Fun Ways to Explore U.S. History as a Family(This post does not contain affiliate links.) This year in our homeschool we are diving a bit deeper into U.S. History. History is one of the subjects I often like to study together as a family. Learning together helps strengthen our family bonds and…
This post is a photo journal assignment my 9th grader completed for a high school Language Arts assignment. This child was homeschooled from the beginning and did not go to public school until 9th grade. He is a energetic, extroverted, creative and fun loving kid. I say this lest the reader think he is just…
4 Soft Skills that Will Prepare Them Some things in life are not as mysterious as we often make them. Yes, the world is changing quickly, but that doesn’t mean we suddenly have no idea how our kids will be able to succeed in the future. What we need to realize is that some skills…
via GIPHY I was excited to find that Jeff Hawkins touched on the topic of creativity in his book On Intelligence. I think creativity is often highly misunderstood in our current culture. We think doing anything differently than it has been done before is creative. Yet our brain is primed to find patterns. Creativity can…
Do you ever get tired of educational hype and trendy fads? Want to know the truth about S.T.E.M.? It's not about the catchy acronym. Educate yourself so you can judge products before you buy, not every fancy package with the S.T.E.M. label on it will guide your child towards a lucrative career in tech. Also,…
Why is our brain primed for patterns and relationships? What does focusing on those aspects and ignoring some of the nitty-gritty details of input have to add to our intelligence? Focusing on patterns and relationships allows us to make predictions. This is done continually by our brain, in the background. If a prediction is violated,…
Why is the human brain faster at solving problems than a computer? Why can we engage in simple tasks like clicking on a picture if it contains a flower, yet a computer cannot? It has long been believed that computers are just not fast enough or small enough to do the things the human brain…
Get out a deck of playing cards. Take six cards and stack them on top of each other. (Go ahead and do it.) See how thick those six cards are? That is the thickness of your neocortex. Stretched out flat your neocortex is about the size of a dinner napkin. Your neocortex is all wrinkled…
For homeschoolers, the world of educational choices is endless. Freedom abounds and the world is ours to make what we want of it. The first overwhelm that often strikes new homeschoolers is how to choose…anything! There are seemingly endless choices we face every day and to try and keep ourselves from decision-making overload we have…