Back-To-School Brains

While I was lounging in the sun recently with an icy glass of lemonade in hand, a back-to-school radio ad interrupted the Beach Boys and my summer reverie. “Back-to-school already?!”  I cried out in protest.

A veteran second grade teacher I know reluctantly admitted that she’s finished every home project she’d planned and she is bored to death. We all know kids who were ready to re-enroll after two weeks of sleeping in and watching daytime TV.  Their parents have been ready to re-enroll them too. And, if I’m honest with you, even I sense that back-to-school nudge.

So, I have put aside my beach novel for the time being and picked up a book on education that I bought at the end of the school year. I heard the author, Julie Anderson, speak at the Washington Homeschool Organization convention in June and subsequently purchased her book in order to review it for you.  I found her talk so interesting and helpful.

While Julie’s book is intended to be a primer for first time homeschoolers, I learned a lot about optimizing my children’s learning experience by understanding their brain characteristics–even though this will be my seventh year of homeschooling this fall. So, in my next couple of blogs, I’ll summarize her research on the brain and its practical implications for you as a parent:

1) Learning Preferences

2) Introversion & Extroversion

3) Brain Leads

So, you have a couple days to finish that novel before my blogs will join the back-to-school chorus.  If you’d like to order her book or look at her online material to get a jump on my blogs, her book is, The Quickest Way to Insanity—Homeschool your Kids by Julie Anderson.  Her website is:  quickestwaytoinsanity .com.

Watch for the next blog in my series:  Back-To-School Brains:  Learning Preferences.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who loves that learning about her children’s brains helps her understand her brain and her husband’s brain too.