Penmanship

What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain

Yet scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn “functional specialization,” that is capacity for optimal efficiency. In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates both sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during learning of cursive writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice.

Cursive Benefits Go Beyond Writing

Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed.

Links
Lessons in Calligraphy and Penmanship
A Penmanship Forum
4 benefits of writing by hand
More Penmanship Links

Caterpillar

Pocket College

An interesting project bases on the works of Rousas John Rushdoony, see: Pocket College Wiki and PocketCollege.com

Pocket College is an online Christian college equipping the saints to advance the kingdom. Why Pocket College? For all the same reasons you homeschool. For ages 16 and up. Learn on your schedule, where ever you are. Learn while you work full time or start your own business. Everything presented in the context of the truth of Scripture. Available online; formatted for a smartphone. Tithe based tuition: no loans; no debt. Instead build capital and gain job experience.

We need to teach our daughters

"We need to teach our daughters to distinguish between a man who flatters her - and a man who compliments her. A man who spends money on her - and a man who invests in her. A man who views her as property - and a man who views her properly. A man who lusts after her - and a man who loves her. A man who believes he is God's gift to women - and a man who remembers a woman was God's gift to man... And then teach our boys to be that kind of a man."

Source: Teaching Our Sons and Daughters and Sign of the Times

How Do You Socialize Your Children?

How Do You Socialize Your Children?


A good short video on the foolish attacks on homeschoolers.

Preacher's Kids With Wild Ideas

Has College become a Moloch Cult...

I do have to wonder if college is becoming a Moloch Cult, especially in the case of young women. What do parents get from it other than having their children debauched, then move far way and not give them grandchildren. Sadly one will find very little like John Henry Newman's "Idea of a University" in a modern University; in many cases one finds little of educational value. Look at the student newspaper at most universities one will find articles on sex, rape, and perversion; and advertisements for bars, abortion, and pornography. Dormitories are dirty poorly-run cesspools, where debauchery is encouraged. Even "Christian" colleges most of the time seem unwilling to stand for morality. At what point do parents say no? I don't know the answer to this problem, but the general culture is evil. I am not necessarily saying young people should not go to college, but sometimes needs to be done...

On a related note see this article at the Ladies Against Feminism site, while the article is about young women, but much of it applies to young men as well.
Letters on College, the Workplace, etc

Is this what college does for young people...

A very depressing story from the Thinking Housewife "Emmie’s Adventure" and "Emmie’s Future" (Not for young readers)

And yikes...

Down the Ivy-Covered Lane

Should homeschooling parents send their children away to college? I am not completely sure of the answer to this question. But what I have seen of the "public school system" and colleges, has left me with a feeling it might be better to keep child out of school altogether. I recall a few years ago Maggie Gallagher asked has the time come for "home colleging." The Internet, CLEP exams and other leaning options may provide a workable compromise.

College From Home

Also see: Venereal diseases now the main cause of infertility.

Doll Commercials: Yesterday and Today....

And we wonder what why young women fall into moral degeneracy....

Mattel Chatty Cathy TV Commercial 1963 (dead)



Update: Well, that link is dead here one that works: Mattel Chatty Cathy TV Commercial 1963


Bratz Girlz Really Rock Dolls Commercial



Note: I am not endorsing the first toy just making social comment on the commercial.

Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason (1842–1923) was a British educator. Her thoughts and ideas have been developed into methods which are commonly used in homeschooling curriculum.

Charlotte Mason on her education:

“My mother was delicate and required sea air, so it happened I was born in Bangor and that my earliest recollections are associated with the sea. My father, J. H. Mason, was a Liverpool merchant, a ‘dry-salter’...a refined and simple man, very fond of books....I had no brothers and sisters, and both parents were also only children...My parents, who were glad of the occupation educated me (with some lessons from outside), my father taking some subjects, my mother others, at first through the medium of Butter’s Spelling Book, with its long lists and hard spellings, its Aesop’s Fables and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son.”

See:
Ambleside Online: An Introduction to Charlotte Mason