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Transcripts and Conferences, oh my!
- Letter from Janice
- The new 4th edition of Transcripts Made Easy arrives tomorrow!
- Will I see you at a conference?
- New cover option for Personal Reading Log
- Reader's Choice Award for Excellence in Literature
- Link Updates posted for Excellence in Literature
- Free resource: QuickDraw
Dear [firstname],
I hope your year has been going well. Spring is beginning to blossom here in central Virginia, and we've had enough pretty days that it's a bit shocking to open the door and discover sleet falling. No matter, though—springtime always comes, and we are thankful.
My big news is that I completed the update and revision of Transcripts Made Easy, and copies will be arriving tomorrow in Greenville for the Great Homeschool Convention this coming weekend (assuming that all goes well). If you are homeschooling through high school, this comprehensive guide will help you manage the planning and paperwork that goes into it. My goal for the book has always been to encourage and equip you, and to let you know that the transcript process really can be easy. I hope you'll check it out!
Reading and writing
Are you reading anything wonderful? As always, I have several things going. I've been re-reading the Wrinkle in Time quintet (I didn't realize there were five until I found a nice inexpensive boxed set on Amazon). I enjoy L'Engle's writing. She was interested in everything, and it shows, lending depth and interest to both her fiction and nonfiction. The Crosswicks Journals, her memoirs, have a place of honor on my shelf of old favorites.
I wish you peace and joy in the coming month.
—Janice Campbell
P. S. Model-Based Writing is still with the editor (I'm hoping it will be completed sometime this summer), but for now, there are a number of lessons in my SchoolhouseTeachers Classics-Based Writing Class. There are a lot of other classes for all ages at SchoolhouseTeachers, plus many other great resources. It's inexpensive — you can try a month for just $5, so even if you use only a few classes, it can be a good deal.
And of course, all Amazon links are affiliate links.
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| | Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler's Guide to High School Paperwork has been a trusted guide since 2001. It has always helped readers
—Keep simple, accurate records quickly and easily.
—Issue grades fairly and honestly, even if you haven’t been using grades in your homeschool.
—Grant credit for traditional classes, unit studies, work experience, and other activities.
—Award extra credit for honors classes, credit by exam, or dual-credit classes.
—Calculate a grade point average, with or without weighted grades.
—Showcase student achievements with a professional, credible transcript
—Issue a diploma that’s nice enough to frame
In this new fourth edition, you’ll find:
— An overview of what your student needs to study in high school
— A new chapter on college alternatives
— Seven tips from Professor Carol Reynolds on what college freshman need to know
— An updated chapter on records and transcripts for special needs students
— Detailed, step-by-step instructions for creating beautiful transcripts using software you already own or can download free
— Reproducibles that make record-keeping easy
I hope you will enjoy using it! |
| | Will I see you at a conference this year?
I’ll be doing the Homeschool 101 track at all five Great Homeschool Conventions:
GHC: Great Homeschool Conventions: Greenville, SC — March 8–10
GHC: Great Homeschool Conventions: Ft. Worth, TX — March 15–17
GHC: Great Homeschool Conventions: Cincinnati, OH — April 12–14
GHC: Great Homeschool Conventions — GHC: Ontario, CA —June 14–16
GHC: Great Homeschool Conventions: St. Charles, MO— July 19–21
Conferences can renew your vision and nourish your spirit. The speakers and vendors that come are there for you, and all of those I know look forward to answering your questions. I hope you can come! |
| | Peaceful Planning and Record-keeping
Don't miss the conference special on these booklets! I've long had in mind the project of creating planning and recordkeeping booklets that reflected the type of planning I always ended up doing. I finally got it done, and you can read about the Peaceful Planning system at PeacefulPlanning.net. There are four booklets:
For quite a few years of homeschooling, I'd buy a teacher plan book from the teacher store or set up a big binder with highly organized and structured daily plans and overall organizational schemes. These usually lasted a few weeks (if I was lucky and tried really, really hard), but in the end, I always went back to keeping short, simple records in the 5.5 x 8.5" format of my daily planner. Somehow, it didn't seem overwhelming to pick it up for reference or adding more notes, and I would actually end up with what I needed to keep track of written down. My homeschool records were cobbled together over a number of years and boys, so they weren't as beautiful or orderly as I would have liked. With these little books, your plans and records can be simple and beautiful. I hope you find them helpful!
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New cover available for the Personal Reading Log
Now there are two cover choices for the Personal Reading Log, and as you see, there is a new name, too (it used to be the Lifetime Reading List). I created another cover choice just to give you options;-).
Each Reading Log holds 100 books, and has space for comments and other information. They are 7.99 each. |
| | | Link Updates posted at Excellence in Literature
We have added a new section to the EIL site. It contains a page for every module in the curriculum with all of the links, including the updated links. There are no explanations, of course—those are in the study guide—but these link lists will make life simpler and allow us to keep them all current between print editions.
The Excellence in Literature website has been growing for a number of years, and now hosts over 800 pages of resources for the study of literature. These include poetry, short stories, and other context resources, plus a growing selection of how-to articles. We keep adding more things and trying to improve the navigation, so if there is anything you would like to see there, please feel free to suggest it. Meanwhile, the easiest way to find something is often to to simply type a few keywords into the site search box.
The Excellence in Literature book lists are now linked to the recommended edition of each focus and honors text. You can find links on the study guide product description pages at Everyday Education and in the Curriculum User Content pages at Excellence in Literature. I hope that's helpful! You don't have to use the recommended edition, but there are reasons I prefer them, and you'll find my criteria listed on this page as well.
And of course, all Amazon links are affiliate links. |
| | We were honored to win a Reader Award from Practical Homeschooling again this year for Excellence in Literature, the English curriculum for grades 8-12. - Self-Directed
- Week-by-Week Lesson Plans
- Classic Literature-Based
- College Preparatory, with Optional Honors Track
- Earn one full English credit through each study guide
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Just for fun: Quick, Draw! Have you tried Google's Quick, Draw? It reminds me of Pictionary, except that you have 20 seconds to draw whatever the app suggests, and you're drawing with your finger, mouse, or trackpad on a screen. The purpose of it is to teach Google's neural network to recognize doodles "by adding your drawings to the world’s largest doodle data set." The robotic voice that tries to guess what you're drawing is quite funny. |
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New 4th edition! Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler’s Guide to High School Paperwork shows you how to grade, grant credit, create simple, effective home-school transcripts and high school diplomas, and keep simple records.
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Trade paper; 8 x 10″; 136 pages. $24.95
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A poem for you
My most recent Memory Project poem has been Gerard Manley Hopkins' As Kingfishers Catch Fire. I had fun memorizing it, and hope you enjoy it too. |
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At Everyday Education you'll find an article with brief instructions for simple, peaceful planning and recordkeeping, and at DoingWhatMatters.com, you'll find a number of posts on planning and organization. |
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| Everyday Education, LLC is the publisher of the Excellence in Literature curriculum, the 1857 McGuffey Readers with instructions for use with Charlotte Mason methods, Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting; Transcripts Made Easy; and other homeschool helps. We've been online since 2001, which is a really long time in internet years.
The DoingWhatMatters.com blog has been online since 2007, and has quite a few articles on teaching with a classical/Charlotte Mason focus. We moved it from a different address a couple of years ago, so are still updating and relinking articles. You can find lists of the main articles linked from the category titles at the very top of the page. Just click and go! I hope you'll find the site helpful. |
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