The Blog — back to school

Besides having a crazy split public/online/co-op/home school schedule with a couple of my teenagers, I'm also exclusively homeschooling my 3rd grader this year.  I actually homeschooled him for kindergarten and absolutely loathed it.  I vowed to never homeschool again after that year.  And here we are just a couple years later....  What is that saying about experience being the best teacher?  Yikes.  But it's happening anyway. I feel like I've at least set this year up for less torture than kindergarten was.  I did more research, I found some programs I feel more confident about, and I have organized all. the. things. ...

We've decided to homeschool this year.  Well, we've decided to be crazy people and split-schedule-school our teenagers this year so they're kind of all over the place.  (And when I say "we", that would be the royal we, because let's face it, I decided to do this to myself.  There's a lot of driving and juggling involved, and I'm horrible at both.) One week in and I've realized that my teenagers' organizational skills are even worse than I thought.  And while I'm in charge of their overall schedules, I'm making them keep track of some assignments and stuff....for my sanity's sake. ...

Do you need black and white clipart?   Are you tired of using the same old clipart in your lesson plans, but need a larger selection of black and white art to choose from here at Dorky Doodles?   I believe that learning should be a joyful experience. And while there is a large selection of colored clipart in our shop, we lack a lot of their black and white companions.  And I know black and white art is crucial when it comes to making enough copies for an entire class, so I'd like to add to your options! To start out I...

I wrote and illustrated TWO books!  They're about food - because food is life!   They're also silly, and rhyming, and fun, and they don't take very long to read.  So if you have one of those kids that's always like "Read it again!!!"  You can do that and it won't take very long at all! My first book "Potato Potato Potato" was one of those middle of the night inspirations.  I couldn't sleep.  It was 2:00 AM.  I started thinking about potatoes.  All the thoughts rhymed.  And viola, A BOOK WAS BORN!!! My most recently published book "I Like to...

My son participated in a great online preschool this past year.  He has learned a TON.  But one thing that it lacked was letter making and handwriting practice.  So that's what we'll be working on this summer before he heads off to Kindergarten. He gets bored with just practicing letters though, so I threw together this fun snail tracing page and he enjoyed it MUCH more than writing the letter E, which is what he was refusing to do before this. He had so much fun that I thought I would share the page.  I hope your kids enjoy it as...