Homeschooling help here! along with your bits & pieces

A little chatty, and bits & pieces Math Goals with your bits & pieces

Homeschooling help here! along with your bits & pieces

Welcome new readers! Perhaps you are searching for information about homeschooling, given the disruption caused by the pandemic!

Here you will find a welcoming place and I hope, peace for your journey.

At Like Mother, Like Daughter we aim at encouragement to become competent at homemaking so that education can be accomplished — with “reasonable humble beauty,” not “staged perfection.” (Hence the plastic bucket in the foreground of that photo, and all the fences to keep the chickens out of the seedlings!)

This blog was started by my daughter, Rosie; I somewhat took it over (with her permission) because I enjoy it and to try to answer questions that people asked and still ask me all the time about homeschooling. (Before they got very busy with their little ones, the daughters also joined in here.)

Unlike most bloggers I found when I started, I was further along on the path of parenthood. I had already seen my older kids off to college and beyond. I could assess what had been beneficial in their education and what hadn’t — including my own shortcomings and the ways that our family could have done things better.

We homeschooled all but one of our seven children (the eldest, who had other opportunities). I had my ideals and my dreams. Reality falls short of the perfection we have in mind for ourselves, but fortunately, all that depends on us is that we try; that we care enough to give our best effort. God will do the rest.

I have tried to convey the things I learned so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We talk a lot about the collective memory, mainly in the context of how it has been lost, sadly. When you get serious about educating your own children (which is really your primary duty as a parent) you realize how much goes into doing it and how little you know.

I had to figure a lot of things out totally on my own (and remember, no internet). I blog because my thought is that maybe you can benefit from what I learned.

I also try to convey what I wish I had done. But always with a sense of realism and what I hope comes across to you, dear reader, as affirmation when the process seems difficult and not something you feel much equipped to do.

Since I am working on the book that will put everything here in order (I hope!), I haven’t been posting as much as I used to — mainly a weekly round-up of links preceded by a few thoughts or even just a picture or two. The links are always meant to stimulate the intellect and imagination — your own and your children’s.

If you look up at the menu bar, search the categories on the sidebar, and browse through the archives, I think you will find the help you need to educate your children in the context of a home established in Order and Wonder.

By the way, as I’m working on the book, I realize that in the more than 10 years I’ve been posting, with so much about reading, writing, history, science, and all, I’ve never really written about teaching math! Do you have questions about that? Ask away!

I made this cake again, for the Ascension, so I updated my chocolate cake post with this better picture!

bits & pieces

(If you sign up with your email, you will receive this round-up of links every week (mostly) in your inbox! Or just check back with us… )

For a strong introduction to classical education: Thomas Mirus has a podcast with Andrew Kern of the CIRCE Institute: Ep. 74—What Is Classical Christian Education?—Andrew Kern (At the very end Thomas asks questions and Andrew gives great and very inspiring answers — do listen.)

Why read Boethius? (I finished re-reading The Consolation of Philosophy this past fall. You will find no better guide to discovering what is worthy in life than this book; it will save you from pursuing the wrong “excellences” as people mistakenly call them.) (I could have done without the Pope Francis reference at the end, full disclosure.)

“Lewis thought that an old book like The Consolation could serve as a balm to the myopia of the modern mind. Old books are the “clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds,” he rhapsodically wrote. We read old books not to provoke some kind of antiquarian fetish for the past. Nor do we read them to conjure nostalgia to assuage our discontent with the present.”

“This Book of Hours, referred to as the Black Hours, is one of a small handful of manuscripts written and illuminated on vellum that is stained or painted black. The result is quite arresting.”

At the passing of Rolf Hochhuth, author of a play deriding Pius XII as an antisemite, I thought I would link to this fascinating and in-depth interview with Roy Schoeman on this subject. Roy is a convert from Judaism and the author of the book Salvation is from the Jews (affiliate link) — he is also a friend of ours and someone we greatly admire:

“The current spate of calumnies against the Church, and Pius XII, are clearly revisionist history, frequently coming from fallen-away “Catholics” out to negate, I’m tempted to say destroy, the Catholic Church. So I think that anti-Semitism serves as an extremely useful cover for enemies of the Church to attack Catholic Faith and morals and practices and Doctrine; and to sully the reputation of the Church.”

Long ago (before I had children, 40 years ago), I realized that sex ed in schools was such a problem that one simply could not cooperate with the system at all. I realize, however, that some parents are still in the process of being convinced. Cathy Ruse has worked on this issue for a long time. Read what she has to say: Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination.

Still didn’t get to the “good” Education/Homeschool Summit, the conference that counters the destructive Harvard one? It’s here.