The Raising Lifelong Learners podcast helps parents — especially homeschooling parents — encourage their differently-wired kids to learn, explore passions, cultivate creativity, and become fascinated by the world around them. Join host Colleen Kessler — educational consultant, gifted specialist, author, and speaker — for interviews, audioblogs, tips, and encouragement to help your differently-wired kiddos become lifelong learners — children who know that they can find the answers to anything they want to know if they can just view their world with play, passion, and fascination.
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Sneaking In Summer Learning
As summer approaches, homeschool families often ask about the school schedule. Do you follow the schedule of the local public school? Do you take a summer break? Do you school year-round? And if you do include some learning during the summer, what does that look like? How Formal Is Your School Year? One […]
Managing Perfectionism | Strategies for Parents
It’s important for kids to strive for excellence, have high standards, and value hard work. But high standards are not the same as unrealistic expectations. When our kiddos have perfectionist tendencies or thinking, they can suffer from low self-esteem and a host of other negative consequences. Perfectionistic Tendencies and the Impact of Perfectionism Children […]
Finding Homeschool Balance
There are so many things that you need to accomplish in your homeschool each day and week. Besides school work and parenting, homeschool parents have to find ways to manage household work, meal planning, grocery shopping, volunteer work, and lots more. The to-do list seems impossible. So how do you find or create the perfect […]
Igniting Your Kids’ Passions
Parents begin homeschooling for a wide variety of reasons. Some of us (hello!) began homeschooling completely unexpectedly because it was what our kid needed, even if it wasn’t what we had pictured for our family at all! Some of us chose homeschooling for relationship building or because of the educational flexibility and opportunities it provides. […]
Building Self-Esteem in Kids
Building your child’s self-esteem or sense of self-worth is an important aspect of raising resilient kids. While healthy self-confidence is a part of positive self-esteem, these two terms are not interchangeable. Self-confidence applies in specific contexts, subject areas, or social situations where your child has developed a particular strength or learned to face new challenges […]
Test Your Homeschooled Child
I remember struggling with the question so many parents come to me online or in-person to ask… Should I test my child for giftedness? Should I test my child for dyslexia, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety, or any number of things? If you are homeschooling your child, it’s important to keep a couple of things […]