Kathleen Desmarais

Sorry I haven’t posted lately. 5 months since my last post! That’s really bad.

Pandia Press Update – Chemistry (1) is finished! Well, almost, it’s finished as far as the writer and myself are concerned. It is in the hands of the editor. And then the printer. It is scheduled to be ready in March (the eBook hopefully in Feb). It is an extraordinary book! It turned out so much better than I envisioned. I know you will LOVE it! You can view a sample online now at www.pandiapress.com . (Part of the Try It Before You Buy It offer.)

Speaking of which, you can now try out all Pandia Press courses before you buy. The first several lessons of each course are available as eBooks at Pandia Press. Hopefully this will answer a lot of questions. It seems the sample lessons that we had online were just not enough. So now you can go ahead and start a course. If it works, great! Just purchase the rest.

Modern Times (2) is almost done. I have several families reviewing the course. I plan to have it available in March as well. (The eBook may be sooner.) After that, I will focus on writing the very much requested Teacher Guides for level 2. The teacher guides will contain tests, suggested answers, and much more. I think they will be a nice addition (although not completely necessary) to the level 2 books.

Let’s see, what else… Oh! R.E.A.L. Science is now called R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey (RSO) to further delineate from similar-sounding courses. (That’s all I will say about that, although I wish I could say more.) And I have a writer for a high school American history course.

Physics (1) and Biology (2) are well under way. So is an art history course. And I am currently reviewing several submissions for a literature-based language arts program. Hopefully I will secure a writer for that soon.

The Desmarais Family – Still “victims” of the current economy and our new house is on perpetual hold. Small amounts of tinkering going on but nothing substantial. 

My oldest daughter has the fashion bug. This is something that both thrills me and saddens me. Sarah is a smart girl. She is an extraordinary writer and can read classic literature like it’s Dr. Seuss. But she wants nothing to do with academics. (Confession time here. Yes, the daughter of a classical education Mom is not academic, (sigh) you can only lead a horse to water.) She wants to be a fashion designer, and a runway model! This has been her dream since she was 5. So, finally I conceded. And it turns out she just might be successful at it. The model agencies were very smitten with her and she had her first photo shoot last weekend. Here is my picture of her, I will post some professional ones when we get them.

I am really happy about one aspect of this though. Sarah has a level of confidence that I could only dream of having at 15. Like her, I was tall at a young age (started at 5′8″ and was 5′10″ before high school was over). I was HORRIFIED by my height in school. It was not a good thing to be taller than most all my classmates, especially the boys. It is the reason I still struggle with poor posture, the product of 4 years trying to look shorter than I was. But because Sarah is homeschooled, she has never had to feel that negativity. And since she is wanting to be model, she was THRILLED when she finally reached 5′8″ and her shoe size jumped to 9!

Another unexpected benefit of homeschooling!