Are you new to homeschooling? The first of your family to make the leap? Are you transitioning your children out of public school to homeschool? Whether you are scared, nervous, unsure, clueless or just need a starting point, here are our basics. Inspired by a family friend of ours who made the leap of faith to take her children out of public school. I heard her concerns and “what – ifs” and started a list. Because we have all been…
Explore a park with trees and talk about the layers of color that the seasons show. If you don’t live in an area that gets beautiful fall colors or no fall season at all, below are some samples of seasonal colors. Or, a variation could be a green tree or palm trees etc. The Process… The first part of this art lesson was exploring a local park during the autumn season. We drove around and walked around looking at the…
From the everyday to curriculum and more, there’s always a resource for reviews, extra worksheet practice or just general ideas. Here are some we have accumulated over the decade that work well for us. Some of these we find we use everyday for worksheet practice or general research. Other websites are helpful in a pinch or on those days you need more reference for a subject. Dive in. It’s taken us a while to accumulate good quality websites that give…
Over the past decade, homeschooling has increased dramatically. While COVID was an influential and often very challenging time for families, it also made something painfully clear: public schools were failing. Many families chose to homeschool because they had more forced proximity to their children’s education. From that, a beautiful revelation and upheaval was born. A change was initiated. Perhaps you are one of the thousands of families who continued to homeschool long after COVID ended. Watch the “unprecedented surge” of…
How to Balance the Different Levels and Ages Know your goals, your intentions and your own time. With a blend of check-ins, independent learning and intentional learning days, you can have a fluid schedule that allows for breaks, freedom and sanity for teacher and child. The Optimal Homeschool Schedule with Multiples: Daily Schedule Sample: Sunday Mon. Tues. Weds. Thurs. Friday Saturday Catch-up Teaching Day Self-Directed Learning Teaching Day /Check-ins Review Day Check-ins / Catch-up OFF How It Works: With multiple…
Who was Salvador Dali? Art Lesson: First we looked at a few books from the library about Dali, discussing the general information about where he was born, his family and what styles of art he enjoyed. Then we watched the three minute video “Art History for Kids” which gave a great and simple overview of Dali. I liked it because it showed his quirky paintings and his famous silly mustache (which my middle child later tried to mimic with pipe…
Creating a colorful profile collage was an idea I thought of from previous experience in Art Club during my high school years. However, what I envisioned and what occurred were two very different things. But I share this because homeschooling and teaching is a journey, not a one and done. It’s about taking on challenges and working with them. What I envisioned… What actually occurred… So while this is the first stage to my collage art experiment with three boys,…
Free printables by subject that we have found or created. Here are some of our quick favorites to use in your everyday homeschool… We have collected websites and free printables over the course of many years in homeschooling. As many homeschooling families do, we find our favorites and try to keep them organized in one place. This list will be a working list since we are always finding more resources and ideas as we teach. Reading Freebies For our reading…
For your child who is a tinkerer, there may be a variety of ways they approach the day to day. Is the house filled with half done projects or experiments all over? For us, life with a tinkerer is: How you teach a tinkerer Guide them and give them structure but allow them to figure out how to safely experiment within their means and within their age range and capacity while also building autonomy and finding out how things work….
A great and affordable typing program that gives kids access to the basics of typing and is fun and easygoing. User friendly, full of games and shows progress. Why Typing is Important Using a computer is very valuable in any profession. This is the age of technology and over the generations, many things have changed. The current generation knows much more about touch screens and using an iPhone as a mini-computer than actually using a desktop computer. Typing is valuable…