For two weeks only we have these t-shirts available. This is the first time we’ve had a red shirt. They will be delivered by the end of the month. They are available through October 15th. Cost is $15.

ORDER

We’re a month away from the opening of our fall science fair. This is our first science fair and our second competition. We had great participation in our short story writing contest in the spring. It’s not too early to get started on your experiment for this fall!

The science fair will be run in a similar format to the writing contest. Our guidelines can be found on the EP Competitions page which has a link to the science fair in particular. Submissions will be done by link. We’re going to try to keep things standard. I’m asking that you submit your project on Google Slides. (Give that Google Slides link a click. It’s my walk-through of the process and gives hints.) It’s all on the Science Fair page.

There is a $25 entrance fee and money awards will be given out to the winners.

Experiments take time. Don’t wait to the last minute. We’d appreciate entries coming in during October and not waiting until the last day to submit.

Entries will be received from October 15th through November 15th (EST). You will fill out your entry form when you are ready to submit your project. All of the science project links will be on display on the site. Our short stories got thousands of views.

While trying to keep all presentations standard with Google slides, we’d also like to ask that you do not include pictures of yourself (unless absolutely necessary for the data), nor include your name and age. The names of the winners will be posted on the site.

There is a blog post I wrote on the high school site called, “The Key.” The key was the grace of God. There’s a page in my prayer journal that has scrawled across it: Everything is Grace. When you are teaching your kids to read and to multiply and to recognize the difference between mitosis and meiosis, don’t forget to teach grace.

You aren’t going to raise perfect children because you are human and they are human. There’s no perfect way you can teach them. There’s no perfect way you can raise them. Teaching them rules and enforcing them may create a nice family picture on the outside, but it will never teach your children grace, and we are saved by grace. Do you want your children to act good or be good, act like a Christian or be a Christian?

The Old Testament is two-thirds of the Bible. Its main point seems to be humans aren’t perfect and can’t be. God is God and we’re not. God is good and we’re not. God is all things wonderful and we’re not.

And it would be a sad story, but for grace.

Grace gives God’s goodness and all things wonderful to us, namely Himself. He gives us the grace to be patient, to love, to understand, to teach, to learn, to live, to laugh, to forgive, to try again, to turn back, to heal, to help, to rejoice when our world and our life is far from perfect. He gives us the sun, and the rain. He provides for our needs and then some.

One of our family expressions is: God provides cake too. For a time, about a decade ago, my husband decided he needed to leave his job. We decided we would live by faith and trust the Lord to provide. One evening right around the time we had made our decision, a Roma man, just an acquaintance of ours, stopped by with all the leftovers from his fruit and vegetable cart that he hadn’t sold that day. It was the only time he ever did that. And on his way over, he had picked up a cake for the kids from the store. We feasted on the fresh fruits and veggies—and the cake. We said to our kids, “God doesn’t just make us eat our vegetables. He gives us cake too.”

So let your kids eat cake, the sweet grace of God. Teach your kids grace, the good God who knows we’re human and can’t do it on our own and so made a way to be there with us always to help us out. Make sure your kids know they will never be “good” apart from Christ in them, but that God sees them perfect in Christ Jesus. And make sure they know that God doesn’t just give us what we need, but cake too, just because He can, just because He loves us. God loves your kids more than you do. Make sure they know it.

I just wanted to remind everyone that we don’t have any records of your children’s work. Even though we have My EP Assignments now, we are not keeping any records. Even though technically we could see that your child is on Day 34 of Math 2, we couldn’t officially make a record of that because we have no way of knowing what work is actually being completed.

When the students do an online activity or take an online quiz, there is no record of what was done or how well they did. You need to check in with your child to make sure they are completing their work. You can have them take a screenshot if you want them to prove their scores or that they finished an assignment.

We are not a school, not a program. We’re just a homeschool curriculum. Please don’t list us on your forms for the school district as the school your child is attending. We get contacted by schools often asking for verification that a student is attending or asking for their records. We can’t provide them with those things. You are your child’s teacher and you are the school administrator! You can make records for your child and turn them into the school if they are being requested.

Our courses do have course descriptions and reading lists on course pages to help you with your records and you can even point people to the site to see what the assignments were for the courses you used. We do suggest you keep at least minimal records, something from each subject at least once a quarter. We have reminders in our courses about that to help you out. You can keep written work, but you can also take screen shots of online activities.

 

UPDATE: Two of our Spanish 1 classes (Mondays at 3:30 PM EST and Thursdays at 7:30 PM EST) are full. One Spanish 1 class (Mondays at 12:30 PM EST) still has room. Spanish 2 still has room as well. 

To register, please go here.

Thinking about using EP’s Spanish 1 or Spanish 2 courses this year for your middle or high school student? Consider signing up for our Spanish Live classes to give your student live practice actually using the material he or she is learning in the course.

These classes meet LIVE, in a virtual classroom, one hour per week during the school year. They are an optional supplement to EP’s free online Spanish courses. Students receive structured practice in speaking and understanding Spanish as they interact with each other and with an experienced teacher fluent in Spanish.

The live classes cost $99 per student for the entire school year, and discounts are available for multiple students in the same family. Classes are starting in early September, so register now to get your student ready. Classes are starting soon!

Registration will be closed when the classes are full. For more information, please see our Language Live page. If you have further questions, please write to David Giles at eplanguagelive@gmail.com. Hope to see you in class!

Meet your teacher – Liz Fernandez