Homeschooling help and encouragement from experienced homeschoolers - find out how homeschooling works and how to start, get tips & ideas for when things need adjusting, read curriculum reviews before buying, learn how online schools work, gain confidence about homeschooling high school, and more.
This week I visited with a homeschooling family whose son was anxiously awaiting his shipments from New Egg and Tiger Direct -- full of the components he would assemble into his own PC.
This brought back fond memories, since two of my three sons undertook this same project during their teen years, and my oldest actually did the same after he graduated. Continue reading »
Put Homeschooling in the Bag - Your homeschool group or co-op might enjoy working together to create homeschooling activity bags for a swap. This was a fun idea our family did with a homeschool group, and it sort of works like a cookie swap at holiday time. You gather inexpensive supplies for a single hands-on pre-school activity, homeschool craft, or simple science experiment or demonstration (up through elementary age), and you put them in a zipper plastic bag with instructions. The beauty part is -- you make up ten or twenty identical activity bags (according to the number of families participating), and you take them to the swap. Continue reading »
Many of us homeschoolers are automobile-dependent. Living in rural or suburban areas and in some small and medium size towns and cities, we find that our communities aren't "walkable," and there is no public transportation to speak of. There is certainly no school bus serving our family. Since our kids aren't in the "big box of school" we have to drive to many of the activities and classes our kids participate in. With three kids in a wide age range and with a diversity of interests, over the years I have found myself constantly traveling from one "homeschool thing" to another, also mixing in our regular errands. Continue reading »
As I've written previously in the Grandparents Guide to Homeschooling series, there are all kinds of great ways to spend time with your homeschooled grandchildren -- just having fun, sharing your skills, providing child care, and helping them learn.
But the granddaddy of them all (pun intended), in my opinion, is taking them on field trips.
Field trips combine so much of the rest of the good stuff. They are great learning opportunities, they can be fun and adventurous, and they provide a kind of hands-on help that homeschooling parents really appreciate from their own parents.
And here's the secret: they don't have to be big deals -- or, they can be. Continue reading »
I wrote in the first installment of the Grandparent Guide to Homeschooling that grandparents can be a big blessing to homeschooling families -- by sharing their time and resources and by providing informed support. Today's post is about sharing time. Grandparents who are able to share time with their homeschooled grandchildren can make a huge difference in their lives and in the lives of the homeschooling parents. Continue reading »
Dear Jeanne,
It's so freeing to hear your thoughts about the effectiveness of a more informal education! I have realized that homeschooling is hard because of my background in teaching elementary school. It's hard to shake away from formal lessons and expected structure, but, when I do, my active 6yo boy thrives!
Sincerely, Teacher Mom
Jeanne's response:
Ah yes. All my elementary teacher friends say that this is the hardest thing for them. You are in good company here.
Try to think about how much you did in a classroom was because you were in a classroom -- with 25 kids who had to get through a set curriculum... Continue reading »
Snowflakes are fascinating to children and adults. They are unique, beautiful, and tiny marvels of nature.
Introduce your children to the fun of cutting paper snowflakes. Instructables has step-by-step text instructions with photos and diagrams to show you how to make six-pointed snowflakes. Six-pointed flakes are the most authentic, since they generally occur in nature with six points.
This YouTube video by The Bookhouse is a great paper snowflake-cutting demonstration that is easy to follow: Continue reading »
My question is this: in your opinion would speech delay in a child directly affect the child's ability to comprehend and read simultaneously - meaning, the ability to read words is good, however the understanding while reading seems to be disconnected. My little girl is turning 6 at the end of the month and although had a speech delay which was identified at 3, she is now within the "normal" spectrum ... translated as: her speech and language therapist says she has caught up with her peers but still has some pronunciation issues. Continue reading »
New homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers sometimes wonder about the word "deschooling" vs. "unschooling". The prefixes "de" and "un" often mean such similar things. We "de-humidify" and we "un-tie" our shoes — both acts of reversing the meaning of the root word.
And in that sense, the words are related. Both deschooling and unschooling require thinking about the inverse of schooling.
But within the world of homeschooling, the two words deschooling and unschooling have meanings that are, most often, distinct from one another. Continue reading »
I know you know about this homeschooling thing. I understand it probably can help some kids, but my grandchildren are absolutely fine, and they don't need it. My daughter-in-law quit her very good job when they were born (twin girls) and now when we bring up preschool, she says she's homeschooling. I thought this would pass, but she recently mentioned not registering for kindergarten next year. We have really good schools here, probably some of the best in the country, and I am devastated thinking about these dear little girls missing out. My son won't talk to me about it; I think he has his head in the sand and is so busy supporting the family (this is a high cost area) that he just goes along. I know homeschooling should be legal for the children who need alternatives if they can't function in school, but this is not the case. How can I get them to open their eyes? Continue reading »
Homeschooling teens means a lot of questions about preparing for college admission or getting experience and training for a vocation or artistic endeavor. We wring our hands over curriculum and credits, and we help our teens learn to drive and manage their money.
But another little piece of life experience we can help our teens with is being able to work in "a third place."
Typically, a third place is talked about in the world of adults, as the place that is "not home" and "not work."
College students and some high school students often study or socialize in a "third place" that is "not home" and "not classroom." Continue reading »
Your dog, cat, bird, fish, ferret, hamster, or lizard may be a unit study waiting to happen. Many children are fascinated by domestic animals, and their strong interest will motivate them to read, write, solve problems, and create projects. Here are some ideas for developing a unit study around our pets. Continue reading »
We just started homeschooling about a month ago. Our son is in first grade. We purchased the curriculum (here she named a specific well-known Christian curriculum), but it's not going as well as I had hoped. My son really doesn't like the structure of the program. He's a six-year-old boy who loves to be outside. Any encouragement, advice, resources, wisdom, or thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks so much! Continue reading »
Nutrition is an ideal homeschooling topic for the 10 - 14 year olds in your family or homeschool co-op. These middle years are an excellent time to go into more depth about what we eat and how it affects our health and growth. Tweens and early teens are especially interested in the changes brought by adolescence, and nutrition is a "safe" topic where kids can think about how their current choices affect their future. Continue reading »
Tangrams are simple seven-piece puzzles that build visual-spatial skills. Kids and adults alike enjoy manipulating the standardized pieces in the set, which includes a parallelogram, a square, and three sizes of right triangles. The pieces can be fit together to form a square, and in fact, when the puzzle pieces are made of wood, they are often stored in a square wooden frame. The real fun and thinking occur while moving the shapes around to form "pictures" or shapes. There is a real challenge in matching shapes that are already drawn out as puzzles to solve. Continue reading »
What are the toys in your bathtub? And how good are you at tolerating a little mess? If you're able to create a nice collection of bathtub toys and allow some extended playtime in the bath, you have the possibility of giving your preschool and kindergarten age kids a good experience "tub schooling." It's more important for your kids to enjoy creative play than to sit at a table doing worksheets for hours a day from ages 3 - 6, and there's no place better to play than in the bathtub. I suggest having a plastic bin full of toys, stocked with... Continue reading »
After we'd met for a homeschool evaluation, a mom of a ten year old wrote to me with concerns about her son's spelling.
We have are having an issue (problem?) with spelling. Up until last fall we had been using All About Spelling with good success (I thought) and had made it through five levels. Since then, it's kind of fallen to the wayside, and every few weeks I have my son write a story, mark the words he has misspelled (which he always identifies), and then work on spelling them correctly. When he tries to write things out, he has a really hard time spelling and has to really think things through. Continue reading »
It's not part of the traditional curriculum in United States schools or homeschool families -- but playing chess is a part of the curriculum in about thirty countries around the world. According to Dr. Teresa Parr of MATCH, there are five significant educational advantages to chess for homeschoolers (and others) to consider. Continue reading »
I grew up participating in 4H, and while I recommend the 4H program itself, I also find myself thinking a lot about the four "H's" as they apply to homeschooling: head, heart, hands, and health. If you want a holistic way to personally assess your homeschooling, think about whether what your kids are doing is working in each of these areas. Continue reading »
Where can you find over 100 free high quality unit studies? Boy Scouts! The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) program offers great merit badge materials to its Scouts, which my older sons used on their way to achieving their Eagle Scout ranks. Completing merit badge requirements was often a great addition to their study of science, history, culture, government, business, and technology, and they also learned some great life skills for staying fit and healthy, managing money, and dealing with emergencies. Continue reading »
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