By Mary Beach
​
If your parents forced you to practice your scales saying it would build “character”, they were onto something.  One of the largest scientific studies into music’s effect on the brain at the University of Vermont College of Medicine found something remarkable:  Musical training doesn’t just affect your musical ability ---- it provides tremendous benefits to
children’s emotional and behavioral maturation.

by Brenda Conyne

​My youngest daughter started homeschooling in 6th grade. We were totally clueless how to start or what to do. We wound up basing our entire curriculum on a recommendation for a math book.

We heard that the BJU Press math curriculum was wonderful, so we decided to do that. After reading the BJU Press catalog, we liked their philosophy for 2 other classes which made it cheaper just to buy the entire curriculum. We thought we would try that the first year and supplement if we did not like some of the classes.

By Beverly Williams

Want your children to enjoy “school” more?  Want to bond as a family better?  Want to avoid tears when your child hits a concept s/he can’t understand?  Play games!
 
I’m Beverly Williams, the Brainiac Baroness, also known as the Math Games Mom.  As a homeschooling mother of four, birth to the end of high school, with two of them struggling learners, my husband and I have played a lot of games, math and otherwise, with our children. 
 
I developed the Math Games curriculum to give my extremely intuitive (read, “no logic”) daughter* success when she hit an arithmetic wall.  Generally, the game would not address the wall at all, but review fundamentals or reinforce logic flow.  In this way, the game made it clear to her that she was good at math and gave her brain a break, which allowed some time for her brain to develop to understand the new concept.  This is to say, we often played a variety of games for several weeks before getting back to the problem concept.