Features homeschool “how-to” and state-of-mind Covid-19 blog articles from a homeschool family in the Los Angeles area.
Q & A with Christine Echeverri, author of Earth Party! Why did you write this curriculum? The real reason — so many life forms are disappearing before our very own eyes! Many young students are aware of this predicament. Instead of leveling on guilt and sadness about this, we step back provide a broad introduction […]
My top 5 international gems This article focuses on the 5 most memorable international places I’ve traveled. Since 2002, I have had the opportunity to go on 4 month-long international trips to Asia (Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Bali, Thailand, Turkey), Europe (Austria, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Brussels, Greece, Netherlands), and Africa (Morocco). Though I have […]
People that have influenced me and given me hope “As I listened to the daily newscasts about students, parents’ and teachers’ frustrations with ‘pandemic..learning’ my first reaction was, ‘Worksheets?‘ for those with no or little or limited access to distance learning tools…What about questions that help students to create their own questions with inquisitive thinking, […]
What a year it has been! With Covid, so much of how we educate our kids has changed. One of my highlights has been working with my California Out of the Box online students. Even though we meet on Zoom each week and are not able to see each other physically, projects such as these […]
Earth Party! Biology Curriculum – “I am honoured to be asked for my input on this curriculum. These lessons provide invaluable educational tools for young girls and boys interested in learning about science and hopefully continuing to pursue science as they progress onto high school and beyond. I am impressed with the depth of the […]
(And, what are the “kingdoms of life?”) The five kingdoms of living things involve all of forms of life such as bacteria (single-celled organisms without a true nucleus), fungi (mushroom and yeast), protists (algae, paramecium), plants, and animals (both vertebrates and invertebrates). Let’s Not Bore Our Kids Do you find yourself spending a lot of […]
Collaboration One aspect that struck me as I wrote Earth Party! was how collaborative living things truly are. Flowering plants depend on wind, insects, and animals to propagate. If left to their own devices, they would not produce fertilized seeds. Plants need animals; herbivores (plant eaters) such as birds, deer, rabbits, and rodents need plants. […]
We are delighted more families are choosing California Out of the Box for their California history curriculum. Recently, we have received emails from families having difficulty obtaining a few of the resources. Stories from Where We Live Update December 2020: See this page for specific information on where to find story selections from Stories from […]
As the summer stretches on, instead of the state of California opening up more, I see it hitting pause or reverting closer to the “Safer at Home” mandate. One of the things that helps me get through it all — the thought of online-only classes in fall, more economic downturn and fallout, parents that were […]
Today I had a strange experience. My boys and I biked to the post office in Pasadena to mail some books out. As we pulled up we noticed a trash can that was burning. A moment later I noticed an ambulance driving down the street, headed somewhere else. The fire had melted the trash bag […]
