Kind and Cultivated (2026)

22/08/2026

I got my nature journal tools out this weekend to prepare for our Teen Nature Club! 🌿 This month’s object lesson is on the pawpaw, and I’m excited to share my love for this fascinating native fruit with our students!

A few things I love about the pawpaw:

🌿 Latin name: Asimina triloba (we saw the beautiful 3 lobed petals of the flower in May!)

🍃 The leaves: Large, long, and smooth-edged. They can grow nearly a foot long and have a tropical look that seems a little out of place in our Tennessee forests. (But the leaves are toxic for consuming…. Definitely smell them and see if you think they smell like motor oil!)

🥭 The fruit: Creamy and custard-like, with a tropical flavor that can remind people of banana, mango, pineapple, or melon.

🌎 A botanical oddity: Pawpaw belongs to the Annonaceae, or custard-apple family—a family made up primarily of tropical plants. Other members include cherimoya, soursop, and ylang ylang

🇺🇸 And here’s the really amazing part: The pawpaw produces the largest edible tropical fruit native to North America!

I love discovering these little botanical surprises hiding in our own backyard. A fruit that tastes tropical growing on a tree native to our eastern forests is such a wonderful reminder of how much there is to discover when we slow down and observe.

If you have pawpaws growing on your land that you would be willing to share, please let me know! Our teens would love to see, smell, journal, and taste this unusual native fruit! 💚

22/08/2026

Doing a little educational philosophy reading this Saturday morning and enjoying an article by James Cardinal Gibbons on citizenship. I love this visual:

“To keep the social planet within its proper orbit, the centripetal force of religion should counterbalance the centrifugal motion of free thought. The only effectual way to preserve the blessings of civil freedom within legitimate bounds is to inculcate in the mind of youth while at school the virtues of truth, justice, honesty, temperance, self-denial, and those other fundamental duties comprised in the Christian code of morals.”

Full article available on archive (dot) org

Charlotte Mason’s own principle:
“We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children: but should teach them that the divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties, and joys of life.”

Practically, I love that we have purposed to read and discuss Plutarch’s Lives and Charlotte Mason’s volume to students, Formation of Character, as a main part of our curriculum since middle school. ❤️

21/08/2026

I have been a fan of Edith Blyton since I discovered her when my children were little. Although we never read her Magic Faraway Tree series I am excited to watch the movie and maybe add the books this year for some easy reading. 📖

This book has a special place in my heart. I used it as the spine when I taught a class called “Notes in Nature” when my kids were elementary! It is beautiful with nature stories, riddles, songs, and plays for each week of the month 🥰

21/08/2026

It feels like a completely different world entering the phase of only home educating high school.

Now that both of my students are moving toward the finish line, I love being able to count high school credit as college credit too!

I don’t believe college is the only goal after high school but I also think it is a great service to prepare them for college if that is the path they choose. And I am so thankful to Modern States for the opportunity to earn college credit for free!

This year, both Christian and Eva Mae are taking advantage of the Modern States courses and Christian is also taking dual enrollment at the local community college.

I love helping homeschoolers navigate these waters! If you have questions about CLEP, dual enrollment, high school transcripts, or more let me know and I can send you some of my free downloads!

Or, if you want to set up a one-on-one to go over high school planning I am also happy to work with you on setting up a consultation!

These years of educating our children go by way too fast!

20/08/2026

Lots of deep thoughts this month as I prepared for our local Charlotte Mason book club! I find it so interesting that words written over 100 years ago, by a woman who was not even a parent, can have such meaningful application.

If you’re local, come to my house tonight at 7 for discussion!

18/08/2026

What a blast with our nature journal club this morning! We saw so many interesting things but the skink on the tree was the highlight! He hung out there watching all the children nature journal together 🦎❤️

14/08/2026

Excited for our nature group next week! I enjoyed digging deeper about some common grasses we see at this time of year!

🌾 I especially enjoyed learning about the dallisgrass that is all over my backyard.

Its scientific name is Paspalum dilatatum. The genus Paspalum comes from an ancient Greek word for a type of grass or millet, while dilatatum is Latin for “spread out” or “expanded”—a fitting description of those distinctive, finger-like seed heads.

But even its common name has a story.

Dallisgrass was named after A. T. Dallis, an American who promoted the grass as a pasture plant in the South. What began as a useful forage grass eventually spread far beyond cultivated pastures and became a familiar sight in lawns, roadsides, and fields.

I love discovering these little stories hiding in ordinary plants. 🌿

A “weed” beside the sidewalk suddenly becomes a piece of history, geography, language, and ecology—all waiting to be noticed.

That’s the joy of nature journaling: the more closely we look, the more there is to see.

I look forward to seeing my nature journal club buddies next week! After our meeting I will update my blog with resources so you can dig deeper too!

13/08/2026

I love when my readings start a chain reaction of philosophical thought!

In the first chapter of Volume 3, CM has a lot to say about parenting styles and the evolution of educational thought. A lot of what she was saying started to sound familiar with the literary analysis we have been doing with Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift - and then she started dropping the name Locke.

I knew Locke and Swift were contemporaries so it was a fun rabbit trail to start following these philosophical disagreements and in the process, understand Charlotte Mason even more.

I love that learning never stops 🥰

11/08/2026

Ok, I know we have varying opinions on AI images, but when I put some of our cicada nature journal pictures in the tool to make one image I have to say this is adorable!!!

I’m sitting with my morning coffee enjoying the calls of the summer cicadas and wanted to invite you to take your children out for a nature walk to observe these fascinating creatures! I’ll put a link in my story to the post with resources and ideas to enjoy a day of learning!

11/08/2026

Ok, I know we have varying opinions on AI images, but when I put some of our cicada nature journal pictures in the tool to make one image I have to say this is adorable!!!

I’m sitting with my morning coffee enjoying the calls of the summer cicadas and wanted to invite you to take your children out for a nature walk to observe these fascinating creatures! I’ll put a link in the first comment to check it out!

Kind and Cultivated

22/08/2026

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