Cardamom Publishers has reopened today after being closed for a week while we moved our business to Janesville, WI. Our books are in stock and we’re now shipping orders again. If you ordered a book in the last week to ten days, it will go out today.
Our new address is:
Cardamom Publishers
PO Box 2146
Janesville, WI 53547
Thanks for your patience while we made this transition!
We’re in the midst of moving household and businesses beginning tomorrow. For that reason, Cardamom Publishers will be closed tomorrow and all of next week. Whether you order directly from us online or via snail-mail, your order will not ship until Monday, August 24, 2009.
If you’re in a hurry, you can order our books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian Book Distributors, Discount Home School Supplies, Emmanuel Books, Rainbow Resource and many other booksellers.
BTW, there are Amazon links to our books on every page of this blog for your convenience. 🙂
Be back soon!
By now I imagine you’ve amassed quite a pile of books and curriculum as you get ready for another great year of homeschooling. There’s nothing like the sight of all those new materials to get the enthusiasm going.
But the books that look so inviting in August are often less loved by November. The fact is that for both kids and parents, homeschooling can become boring if you just rely on a set curriculum.
It took me a while to figure that out. As I said in The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling,
Like many people, I began homeschooling by imitating the schools of my youth. I bought a boxful of curriculum, divided it into daily assignments, and taught my kids right out of those books.
And there wasn’t anything especially bad about that, except that after the initial excitement wore off, my kids started to get bored. Instead of being excited about doing school, they ranked it right down there with making their beds and setting the table-something we have to do, so let’s get it over with.
That was not in my game plan. I didn’t want them to be bored. I was bored in school, and I still recalled how bad that felt. I wanted my kids to enjoy school.
What I soon realized was that while they might have been bored with school, my kids still loved learning. They enjoyed visiting museums. My daughter read through stacks of books without my telling her to do so. And my son drew beautiful, detailed pictures that were not assigned by me.
I even became bored by the assignments I was teaching the kids, and it must have been around that time that I came up with the idea of playing store. I labeled some items in our pantry (using prices written on sticky notes), then dug up all the spare change I could find.
I became the storekeeper, and the kids became the shoppers. They’d choose an item from the pantry and pay me for it. Often I had to make change for them. Soon they were buying more than one item at a time and figuring out how much they owed me. Before long, they started taking turns being the store-keeper. This became a game they enjoyed for a long time, but I think I probably learned the most from that experience, because I saw that homeschooling didn’t have to be boring, like formal school was for me as a child.
This success led me to become more creative with our homeschooling…..(read the rest of the chapter HERE)
The moral of the story? Enjoy those books, and take advantage of that carefully crafted curriculum. But make sure you don’t spend the whole day with them. Provide your kids with plenty of time for creative learning, independent learning and free play. As the old saying goes, “Variety is the spice of life.” Keep that in mind, and your children will learn more, and have fun at the same time.
With the renaissance of homeschooling in the early 1980s came a trickle, and then a flood, of books and magazines about homeschooling.
These were eagerly read by homeschooling parents wanting to know how others were teaching their children, because there weren’t many homeschoolers around to talk with.
Today, reading about how other families homeschool their children is almost too easy. There are more magazines and books than ever, plus countless blogs on the Internet where parents reveal every last detail of their homeschooling journeys, or so it seems.
There’s a very real danger here, however. With so much personal revelation out there, it’s way too easy to compare your family and your homeschooling experience to others. This is not a good thing!
You can always find someone whose homeschooling experience sounds far more successful than your own. It’s way too tempting to think, “We have so many struggles, and after reading about this family, it’s obvious that I’m in over my head in this homeschooling thing. Her kids are doing so many wonderful projects, and I have to fight to get mine away from the video games to do anything. I give up!”
The fact is that every family is different, and no family can imitate another and come up with the same results. It’s not fair to compare another family to yours: different kids, different parents, different financial situations.
When you read about other homeschooling families, try to think about which of their ideas would work for your family instead of imitating everything they do in a misguided attempt to “succeed.”
Besides, homeschooling success is defined in many different ways. For one child, it’s getting to college on a full scholarship. For another, it’s making his or her way in the world on their own. For a few, like my teenage son, it’s functioning to the best of your abilities despite multiple disabilities.
So go ahead, read all the homeschooling books and magazines and surf homeschoolers’ blogs. Visit the Carnival of Homeschooling each week. Glean as many great ideas as you think might work for your family. Discard those that turn out to be wrong for your family. And always keep in mind that there’s no one right way to homeschool. The beauty of homeschooling is that it can be tailored to each family, each child, and each parent.
Yesterday was the annual event that always threatens to give the mailman a hernia: the arrival of the latest Rainbow Resource catalog 🙂
That’s right, over 1300 pages of homeschool books, curriculum and assorted goodies. I’ve been receiving Rainbow’s catalog for many years, but this one must be the biggest yet.
Especially exciting for me is that this is the first year The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling has been in the print catalog. The review is on page 11:
If you’re going to take the time to read a book about homeschooling, don’t you want it to be the wholesome, practical advice of a mom who has “been there and done that?” Author Barbara Frank’s warm conversational tone leaves the reader of this book with the feeling that you’ve just finished a coffee chat where you’ve been able to ask all your questions and each was met with a knowing smile that implied she knew exactly what you were asking. And each was met with a no-frills answer that empowers the hearer rather than overwhelms. She covers all the basic topics – getting started, teaching techniques and specific subjects, covering the bases, and home organization. Two chapters were particularly helpful – overcoming obstacles and coping with challenges. In these she not only looks at personal habits that can get in the way but also personality-driven roadblocks. Don’t be fooled by the “plain Jane” cover or the lack of detailed information about homeschool philosophies or educational approaches readily available elsewhere; this is a must-have book that will help you start out or “regroup” your homeschool into a livable lifestyle. 192 pgs, pb. ~ Janice
Got your Rainbow Resource catalog yet? If you’ve never seen one, you can sign up here for a free copy. I’ve been buying from Rainbow for 20 years, and you can’t beat their prices or their service.