I am reading Ruth Beechick's You Can Teach Your Child Successfully. I found it again while looking for her guides to teaching younger children, I was successful in finding the language and math volumes,but I am still on the hunt for A Home Start in Reading which I wanted to reference in my teaching of my 4 year old.
I am regretful that I did not take the time to read You Can Teach Your Child Successfully when I received it 3 or 4 years ago. It is geared to the teaching of children in the upper Grammar and Logic stages, grades 4-8, and is filled with practical advice on whole learning. It is geared to help parents become well-informed teachers of their children. I am only 20 pages in and she has already touched on stages of reading, what we can learn from standardized tests, how to decode school/teacher vocabulary and now I am reading about different types of reading.
In skimming it this morning, I found some writing lessons and we started one of them today based on a copywork/dictation passage.
I am finally taking the time to educate myself about education rather than trying to rely upon curriculum and assignments to cover things. I have always been so eager to jump into stuff that I don't take the time to really learn and plan. I guess late is better than never.

Go check out my friend Lori's blog to glean some great insights into writing. I find her writings so inspirational, I always want to aspire to better things after I visit.