My Favorite Quotes....And More!

I enjoy gardening... although I have to admit I don't do as much with it as I'd like. In my front yard is a butterfly garden, and in my back is an herb garden and a perennial garden. The photo below is of some Lillies in my perennial garden.

Earth laughs in flowers.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"


Plants give us oxygen for the lungs and for the soul.
-Linda Solegato


The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
-Basho


I appreciate the misunderstanding I have had with Nature over my perennial border. I think it is a flower garden; she thinks it is a meadow lacking grass, and tries to correct the error.
-Sara Stein, from My Weeds: A Gardener's Botany



Here Are Some Of Sara Stein's Books (see quote above):

Exploring Native American Life In The Early 1600's: Making A Bone Needle

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) .

I have a Master's Degree in education and taught kindergarten in the public schools for several years before having children of my own. Currently, one of my children attends public school, and the other is homeschooled. Why? That's what they each want and it works for us!

In addition to homeschooling my son, I'm one of the organizers of a local homeschool co-op. We get together for classes once a week and enjoy such things as hands-on science experiments, recorder class, sharing the poems and stories we've written during the previous week, critical thinking activities, hands on activities that help us learn about various cultures around the world, etc.


If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.
- Ignacio Estrada


Some children are primarily auditory learners, others are visual, and still others are kinesthetic. Why teach them all the same? Although it is difficult in a classroom setting to completely individualize your curriculum, it isn't that difficult to include a wide variety of activities geared toward various learning styles. And although it does take some time and thought, when homeschooling parents or tutors change their curriculum to best meet the needs and learning styles of the child, more learning usually occurs and everyone tends to be happier.

Exploring The Composition Of Soil

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)


The question is not,-how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education-but how much does he care?
- Charlotte Mason


As you can probably tell by the quotes above, I'm not the kind of teacher or homeschooling parent who requires that kids sit behind a desk doing workbooks most of the day. Yes, we do do some paper and pencil activities, such as writing and math (yet even when doing math we like to use manipulatives when we're first learning a new concept), but we also do a lot of hands-on activities which truly engage and excite us. Current research shows that the brain actually learns information better when physical activity is involved. I learned this fact during graduate school years ago, but didn't REALLY learn it until I actually found it to be true. I am currently putting together a book of active learning activities and games for kids to do along with parents or tutors, or in small groups at school.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
- Benjamin Franklin

What better way to learn about butterflies, than to raise caterpillars and watch them change into chrysalises and then into butterflies? Engaging in activities such as raising butterflies naturally leads us to do additional research in library books and on websites. For example, earlier this year we learned that butterflies actually need the sun in order to fly! We first found that out by observing our butterflies, and then confirmed it by doing some online research.

Learning About Caterpillar to Butterfly Metamorphosis First Hand

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.
-Jean Piaget


Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein (1879 -1955)

Our homeschool co-op had a wonderful class on critical thinking and problem solving this year. The students sometimes worked alone, but most often in pairs or small groups, to solve various challenges presented to them. These included things such as building a bridge between two chairs that would actually hold weight... using nothing but straws and tape, finding a way to make music using only everyday objects found in the room, designing their own inventions, and a wide variety of other interesting challenges. The kids absolutely loved the class, and yet it was teaching them very valuable life skills: to be creative and inventive, to find a way to solve their own problems, to look within for information rather than always to a teacher or a book, to work as a team, to experiment and not be afraid of making mistakes, to be persistent even when their creation didn't work the first time, and so on.

Engaging In A Critical Thinking Challenge: Building A Straw Bridge That Can Hold Weight

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
- Albert Einstein


Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
- Chinese proverb


Teacher: Two kinds: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just give you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.
- Robert Frost (1875-1963)


You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

"Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs... since the payment is pure love."
- Mildred B. Vermont


The more we give love, the greater our capacity to do so.
-David R. Hawkins


All mothers are working mothers.
- Unknown


Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose.
- Jane Seymour


The Mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother and to become fully independent.
- Erich Fromm

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
- George Washington Carver


The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
- Galileo


As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
- Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping


Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.
- George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896


Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 5 January 1856