Highlights from 2005 (Jan-Mar)
For YEARS I’ve wanted to comb through my blog archives and collect the best writing, the most enduring resource recommendations, the laugh-out-loud kid moments. But that’s a lot of posts to revisit! And time is so short. It struck me that if I aim for three months a week, I could complete the project in 60 weeks—a little over a year. Of course, by then there will be, presumably, 60 more weeks’ worth of posts. But that’s getting way ahead of myself. I’m much better at hatching plans like this than sticking with them over the long haul. (Hello, Gretchen Rubin Tendencies obliger here. I need deadlines and outside accountability to finish things.)
But well begun is half done, as Mary Poppins likes to say (hahaha, it’s clear Mary Poppins never wrote a novel), so here’s one quarter: January-March 2005. Jiminy crickets! There’s some good stuff here!
The comments are closed on some of these older posts, but feel free to hit me with any questions or remarks here on this post.
Book recommendations
Boxes for Katje
It’s Not My Turn to Look for Grandma
The Scrambled States of America
A Case of Red Herrings
Fannie in the Kitchen
Books for nature study, some favorites in 2005
The Floating House
Henry Hikes to Fitchburg
One Day in Elizabethan England (A splendiferous book)
Resource recommendations
Brave Writer (One of my very first homeschooling resource recs on the blog, written in Feb 2005. Now I work for them!)
Snoopy the Musical (the rabbit-trailer’s soundtrack)
A Tiger in Algebra? (Jacobs Algebra textbook)
Three ways to get more poetry into your day
Homeschooling ideas that worked
Mealtime readalouds
Strategic strewing
Project Feederwatch
Life on the Trail
Chain chain chain
How Jane helped her sisters learn handwriting
Kid moments (Lots of overlap here with book & resource recommendations & of course homeschooling. Categories are hard!)
Those Stubborn Bunnies
The More It Snows, Tiddly-pom
The Deliciousness of Mah (hearing aids, ear molds, learning to talk)
The Temper of the Shrew
Perspective
Beanie’s elephant (post by Scott)
One wit left
My commonplace book (quotes from my reading)
The earth, galloping / My Antonia, Willa Cather
katieh says:
Oh this is such a great idea! So much gold in the archives !
On January 21, 2020 at 8:31 am
Melissa Wiley says:
Thank you for the encouragement! 🙂
On January 21, 2020 at 9:12 am
Chris ODonnell says:
” Of course, by then there will be, presumably, 60 more weeks’ worth of posts. ”
Is this your pledge to update at least once per week this year? 😉
BTW, I did this same process in reverse on Facebook. Every day I went through the “On this day” page and deleted just about everything. After a year, I had dramatically cleaned up Facebook.
On January 21, 2020 at 9:36 am
Anne says:
This is a beautiful idea!! Especially intrigued to see what you still recommend years later!
On January 21, 2020 at 9:47 am
Penny says:
Your book recommendations were a backbone of our homeschool. Some of the best book $$ I ever spent.
I love BW too. I’m so sad that my homeschool days are over. BW is one of the few resources I’m keeping – just in case I want to write one day. Or just read it and weep with nostalgia. Poetry teatime though – that’s not going anywhere, even if I’m the only one here!
Oh the joy of Bonny Glen!
On January 21, 2020 at 11:06 am
Libby says:
I keep coming back to this post to check out another picture book or two! I can’t wait for the next installment.
I’m reading/listening to a pair of books that make me think of you and Jane: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s _Gathering Moss_ and _Braiding Sweetgrass_. The audiobooks are narrated by the author, who has a soft, soothing, northern-y voice that’s perfect for her writing: a lyrical combination of knowledge about plants from modern botany and indigenous knowledge. Braiding Sweetgrass, in particular, is worldview-changing for me, and has me gesticulating and muttering “Why didn’t anybody ever teach me this??” They’re just wonderful.
On February 3, 2020 at 1:40 pm