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How We Build Unit Studies
Unit studies are a fun way to pick a topic that your child is interested in and base all your schooling around that. Some families exclusively do unit studies as their way to home educate. As you might be aware, we typically use the Charlotte Mason method of education (though we aren’t purists). We have found a wonderful curriculum that works well for us. However, sometimes my daughter becomes so interested in a topic, that we find a way to weave it into our schooling. We did this a lot in previous years, but we’re doing it again right now! I thought I would spend some time sharing the process of…
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My Favorite Books of 2021
One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is look back on all of the books I read. It’s fun to reflect on what I loved reading, what I didn’t, things I learned and ways I grew. I read a lot more than I thought I would (Goodreads says 190 books, but that incudes books I didn’t finish and short stories, so those numbers are certainly skewed). I tried to branch out and read more varied genres this year. In some sense I was successful. My top genres were still middle grade and classics (the same as 2020), but I also tried some sci-fi and read…
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Our 4th Grade Curriculum Choices
Remember how I previously mentioned that I would blog a lot more after we had moved? Apparently I lied. Normally I would do a post before the beginning of the school year with all the curriculums we plan to use and subjects we hope to cover. Three months later, I am finally making the time to talk about it. Hopefully you can excuse my lateness. (This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase a product from a link on this page. To read more about this, check out our disclosure page here. Thanks for supporting Beautiful Minutiae!) Curriculum Choices…
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Homeschool Year in Review – 3rd Grade
It’s been a while since I blogged about our specific homeschooling plans. Normally I would do a wrap of the year in May or June, but a move put me a bit behind. So, here is a recap of our homeschool year … better late than never! If you’d like to read more about why we decided to homeschool, check out this post. (This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase a product from a link on this page. To read more about this, check out our disclosure page here. Thanks for supporting Beautiful Minutiae!) This is a stack of our…
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Catching Up with the Doyles
In my last post, I promised a life update. A lot has changed for our family in the last couple of months! If you’re mostly here for book reviews or homeschooling posts, this might not interest you as much. If that’s you, normal content is coming soon! If you’re interested in hearing about what our little family is up to, read on! The biggest news is that we moved! In case you didn’t know, we were living in Southern Illinois. In terms of ministry, we were doing Bible studies with college students in our home. We lived there for 3 years and absolutely loved every moment of it. Peter was working…
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June 2021 Reading Wrap Up
Hey, friends! Long time, no talk. Life has been really crazy lately (I will do a life update blog very soon!), so I haven’t been blogging very much. Now that things are starting to settle down a bit, I’m looking forward to getting back into the blogging groove. I have remained fairly active on my YouTube channel, where I primarily talk about the books I’ve been reading, but that’s pretty much all I’ve had time for. I thought my first order of business on the blog would be to update you on some of the reading I’ve been doing lately. I didn’t get a lot of reading accomplished in June (it…
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March 2021 Reading Wrap Up
I’m a little late sharing my March reading wrap up, but life has been a little crazy lately! March was a very busy reading month. I ended the month by reading 20 books! I participated in a reading challenge during the first week of the month and also enjoyed participating in Middle Grade March. A lot of the books I enjoyed this month were middle grade or YA books, which is why I was able to get so much reading in. On my YouTube channel, I review every single book that I’ve been reading (as opposed to here, where I just give the highlights). If you’re interested in more details, you…
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Curriculum Review: The Good and the Beautiful Science
Science has always been a subject that we have struggled to find our footing in. That’s a little odd, because I have always loved science, but apparently I prefer learning about it to teaching it? It’s been difficult to find a curriculum that fit my teaching style, Claire’s learning style and combines good books with experiments. The Good and the Beautiful is a newer curriculum that has become fairly popular in the homeschooling community over the last couple of years. When we were struggling with science, I decided to give it a try. Their Marine Biology unit was completely free, so it didn’t hurt to give it a try. We…
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February 2021 Reading Wrap Up
It’s that time again! Time for another reading wrap up! February was a busy reading month for me, despite the fact that it was a short month. I finished 15 books! Most of them were pretty enjoyable, but there were a few duds as well. As normal, I will be including the highlights in this blog post, but if you’d like a full rundown of everything I read, you can watch my wrap up video below. I always discuss every single book in my YouTube videos. However, I don’t mention what Claire has been reading or our read alouds, so there’s unique information found in both sources 😉 Without further ado, let’s…
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January 2021 Reading Wrap Up
It’s that time again! Time to share what Claire and I have been reading this month. It’s been a few months since I’ve posted a reading wrap up. In December, I was busy and then I decided to post 2020 reading recaps in lieu of a monthly wrap up. Check out my 2020 reading recap post here Check out our 2020 read aloud reading recap here I also have an exciting announcement! I have started a YouTube channel! For the moment, I’m intending to primarily use it to talk about books, but there will likely be other things interspersed (especially homeschooling). I will continue to post reading wrap ups on my blog,…
