Subject: Friend, Art of Cursive is here! Excellence in Lit link updates, too

July 2017
Happy July!

  • Note from Janice
  • New Art of Cursive and a bundle special
  • New handy link pages at Excellence-in-Literature.com 
  • Peaceful Planning
  • Conference schedule
  • Classics-based writing lessons

Dear [firstname],

Another conference season is almost over, and I look forward to doing a bit more writing during the rest of summer and fall. Summer has been fun so far, with embroidery lessons and poetry teatime with the grandchildren. I've been memorizing poetry, too — my personal Memory Project. Do you have a special summer project?

I hope you're having a wonderful summer (winter for our friends in the southern hemisphere). If you're anywhere near St. Louis, MO, I'd be delighted to meet you at the conference—see details belows!  

—Janice Campbell 

P. S. Did you know that we are the only source for the Excellence in Literature books in e-book format? It's the most economical way for our overseas friends to get our books. Plus, we do a "Print Plus" bundle with print and a seriously discounted ebook together so you can use a single level with more than one student at a time (in your immediate family). 

Amazon Prime Day: Don't miss the July 11 Prime Day—there will be a lot of sales. It might be the perfect time to purchase the classics you'll need for Excellence in Literature!

The Art of Cursive coloring book follows the CursiveLogic handwriting worktext and provides extensive practice in the CursiveLogic handwriting method (you'll want to learn the basic . As students are coloring beautiful pictures, they are practicing cursive letters, connections, slant, spacing, and more. Best of all, it’s fun and relaxing (I've colored way more samples than necessary)!

CursiveLogic teaches cursive in four simple lessons in a beautifully-designed text. Learning to write become something to look forward to, rather than a chore, especially when it's followed by The Art of Cursive.

Handwriting is important for a lot of reasons, some of which I've explained in "Penmanship Matters" on the DoingWhatMatters.com blog. This two-book system is an excellent introduction to an art that can bring a lifetime of pleasure (and you can even use it with your children!). Enjoy!

Cursive Made Easy bundle — both books together: $47.95
CursiveLogic Handwriting worktext: $34.95
Art of Cursive 8.5 x 11″ paperbound book: $15.95
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New link updates at Excellence in Literature! 

We have just completed a link update for the online context resources mentioned in the Excellence in Literature curriculum, and have also created a page for each module on the website, with the most updated current version of the links. I'm excited about this, because it means that I can keep links much more current than is possible when they are only in the book. The links pages are just the links, so students will have to refer to the book to know what they are supposed to look for and do, but I think it will make the curriculum even easier to use. You can reach all the links pages from the Curriculum User Content page.

The Excellence-in-Literature.com website now hosts a growing collection of 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.

From Cathy Duffy's review: “Students completing these courses should be miles ahead of most of their high school contemporaries in their ability to read and analyze literature at a sophisticated level. The challenging writing assignments also promise to develop student skills in composition to a high level.”

You'll find a downloadable book list as well as links to the recommended editions of books studied in Excellence in Literature at Everyday-Education.com. You'll also find links on the description page for each study guide. 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. 

From a review at Joy in Our Journey: “I guess what impresses me so much is that this is written in such a straightforward manner that most junior high aged students could easily work through the entire curriculum on their own. And there are no ‘waste of time’ pop quizzes with those silly WWWWW questions to see if our children have actually read the book selections. You won’t find ‘busywork’ in this curriculum.”

And of course, all Amazon links are affiliate links, and help keep the website afloat (though it costs you absolutely nothing extra)! 
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Peaceful Planning and Record-keeping

I finally got around to creating some small  planning and recordkeeping booklets that reflected the type of planning I did.
You can read about the Peaceful Planning system at PeacefulPlanning.net. There are four booklets:

Lifetime Reading List

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. With these little books, your plans and records can be simple and beautiful. I hope you find them helpful!
Conference Schedule
I'll be leaving on Tuesday for the Missouri Homeschool Conference, GHC St. Louis, and I hope I see you there (come for free shopping night Thursday, and stay for it all!). You'll find a downloadable schedule, workshop descriptions, and other details at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com) I'm looking forward to being there, and will be in booth 236-237. Be sure to stop by and say hello!

For talks, I'll be doing the Homeschool 101 track and sharing in the Charlotte Mason track:
— How to Plan Your Homeschool Year
— How to Choose Curriculum
— How to Teach Writing (and other things) with Living Books
— How to Cultivate Habits of Lifelong Learning
— How to Create a Simple, Effective, Transcript.

As early it as it seems, I already have six conferences on my schedule for 2018, with space for just a few more. Perhaps I'll see you next year!
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Have you tried my 
Classics-Based Writing Class at
SchoolhouseTeachers.com?

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's an amazing deal.
Cursive Made Easy
                    
Learn cursive in four easy lessons with CursiveLogic, then practice and review with beautiful coloring pages in The Art of Cursive.
HIgh School English                                            
Excellence in Literature helps you teach classic literature and writing to teens even if you don’t know Virginia Woolf from Beowulf!

  • Self-directed
  • College prep
  • Easy to use
Peaceful Planning                                               
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. There's useful stuff, there, though, so I hope you'll find it interesting. 
Everyday Education, LLC, P.O. Box 549, 23005, Ashland, United States
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