To help motivate and reward my daughter for doing yoga with me every morning, I've made her a special chart which she decorated. Each week she checks off all the postures learned and practiced that week. I've randomly highlighted boxes throughout the chart. Whenever she checks a yellow box, she gets a reward from me! We ...

Yesterday I wrote about Julia doing Hatha Yoga with me. This is how we're doing it: In the yoga program I'm following, from Raquel Welch's Total Beauty and Fitness Program, there are 28 yoga postures to do every day. When I do them all, it takes me just a little over an hour. (There are also shorter condensed versions as well.) Since ...

I have a lot of trouble staying consistent with anything, especially exercising. But I've stumbled onto a trick that is helping me: my oldest daughter. Julia is not flexible at all. She's also very tall with long legs, and is becoming a young lady. Since I had started doing Hatha Yoga again, which gives one a lot of flexibility, I ...

In talking with my mother about our decision on whether to start preparing Shannon for a professional dance career, we spoke about laying a strong spiritual foundation, and she doesn’t feel our kids are getting enough, due to our style of home church (and having no specific children’s program). Afterwards, I spoke to Joan Strain about ...

The other day I was reminiscing, and I remembered several treasured moments we had as a family when we did two Konos unit studies. Konos is a Christian-based homeschool curriculum, which is set up as unit studies based on godly character traits, such as Honor, Patience, Obedience, Attentiveness, etc. A couple of years ago, while homeschooling, we ...

With my nine-year-old's recent birthday, I wanted to give her a "quest" to fulfill this year, to help build her character. I may start doing this for all of my children on their birthdays (maybe I'll even do one for myself--I'm turning 40 this year!). Since my daughter turned nine, I decided to give her nine tasks to ...

What is a mandala, you ask? If you're not familiar with mandalas, check out this site--it includes lots of mandalas as well as Turkish tiles to print and color.

We got a mandala creator this Christmas, and the kids and I are having a great time creating and coloring in our own original mandalas. It really is a peaceful activity. While looking on the net for mandalas, I came across this great site of crop circle designs for kids to print and color in--teaching geometry at the same time! Some of these ...

One of my daughters is eight years old. But that doesn’t stop her from running her own business. We got the idea from the novelty catalog we get in the mail. You have to buy a minimum of $50.00 with any one order. But the items are so cheap, that she’s able to pick out several fun joke toys and candies, mark them up around 100%, and still sell ...

            I just learned about this. The Montessori philosophy has developed a great Middle School program, with the kids working a real farm and running real businesses, to correspond with their academic work.             If you’re not ...