Homeschoolers Work At Home Virtually

The best way to find a curriculum that will work with you and your children is to sample as many different types as possible.  But of course there’s that little problem of cash to fund this little experiment. But there is hope …

Homeschoolers love to share resources. Because of this (and it’s just good business) many curriculum stores give away freebies and sample so that you can try before you buy. Another great source of freebies are homeschool expos.  You can check around to see when one is coming near you. Or you can enjoy a virtual expo from the comfort of your home. Virtual expos provide you with samples of all of the vendors that have participated that year.  You’ll get MP3s, ebooks and sometimes special websites for you to learn more and/or try out products.  I went to my first one this year and I’ve been enjoying it at my own pace.

There are also people who collect free resources from across the internet, such as Homeschool Freebie of the Day. The Erksine Family has great websites that give away free curriculum, ebooks and audio shows to enhance the homeschooling experience. The Erksines encourage people to sign up for their weekly notifications so that you know exactly what day each resource is offered. This is very important since they take down each resource at the end of the day and you don’t want to miss any of their finds!

Another way to experience all that is homeschooling is by getting a subscription to a monthly magazine and seeing how other homeschoolers are getting things done.  Right now there is a great Summer Bouquet subscription drive that not only gives you an in-depth look into homeschooling, but they’re also giving away 19 bonus curriculum packages. These packages contain ebooks, real books, software, DVDs, movies, etc. What better way to get an overview of the many, many different types of ways there are to educate your children today? Just a word to the wise, these particular bonuses are only available for the first 5,000 subscribers, so if you are thinking about doing this, you need to get it right away. (If you’re one of the first 1,000 subscribers you’ll get additional gifts!)

Oh, another cool aspect of this particular subscription drive is that they’ve also created a really cool interactive catalog so that you get an in-depth understanding of what you are really getting.  You know, I always hate those ads that tell you you’re getting free bonuses and then just list a bunch of stuff under it. I mean, what if you are unfamiliar with a certain product and want to know more? But these gals are taking full disclosure to new lengths, so you won’t be surprised when your packages arrive.

This short list should be a good place to start on your curriculum hunt.  And always remember that Google + FREE + curriculum is always a winning combination to find more great curriculum ideas and samples.

When people begin to toy with the idea of homeschooling their children one of the common fears involves the curriculum:

• Which curriculum is the best?
• Which one guarantees that my child will be able to do brain surgery at 10?
• Which one will take me by the hand and lead me through everything because I don’t have a degree in education?
• What happens if I don’t know the answer to a question?
• Will my child be doomed by my “ignorance”?

And the answer to all of these questions is … there is no magic curriculum. The purpose of homeschooling isn’t to create Einstein (even though that might be nice). It isn’t to prove to outside friends and family that your child is smarter than their child. It is to provide your child with an educational platform that will allow him to thrive as an individual and to be able to learn the skills they need for their chosen profession. The rest is all ego – parental ego.

So the first thing that parents considering homeschooling should work on is their own attitude. There is no one on this planet that loves your children more than you do. There is no one on this planet that will lay their life down for their children but you. So, you will not hurt your child by educating them. Education is really teaching someone how to find out the answers to the questions that they have in life. Common sense is a much harder thing to learn than regurgitating facts for a test, which unfortunately, the current educational system revels in these days. So before you pick out a curriculum, you need to have a good long talk with yourself about why you want to homeschool, make a commitment and do it. The rest will fall in line.

I have spent lots of money looking for the holy grail of curricula. But I was looking for things that interested me and not really considering the things that would interest my children or suit their personalities. So, before you pull out your checkbook, watch your children play and interact and see what works best for them. My eldest daughter must be in motion or she’ll explode. She’s a really smart girl, but sitting quietly is not her best learning style. My middle daughter is of a reflective nature, so I have to make sure that I leave her a lot of time to get her work done. She’s a daydreamer, but her work is always well done by the end of the school day. My youngest (he’s 2) seems like he’s going to follow in the footsteps of my first daughter. He’s always in motion and does his best “work” while he’s running around. So, we’ll be doing hopscotch alphabet and numbers in a couple of years. J

Now, that I’ve categorized my kids I can start thinking about which curriculum would be “the best”. I think “the best” curriculum is one that works for my family. It may not work for Fran’s family or Katy’s family, just my family. Every family is unique. So, I have a more eclectic approach. I like Sonlight’s curriculum, but my daughters had trouble with some of the math samples I printed up, so it didn’t make sense for me to invest in the whole year curriculum. But I do use their reading book lists that tie in what I’m teaching my girls right now. We’re learning Russian from a fellow homeschooling mom and her family. I like the language arts and history programs by Susan Wise. I have various science books around the house, so this year we’ll actually see which ones we will use.

For math I like Math Mammoth. My 9-year-old and 6-year-old are both working in the same series (at different paces, obviously), but what I’m really impressed by is their mastery of each worksheet. My eldest really struggled with conventional math books and got more wrong than right. Now, however, she’s a consistent 95% and above on each one. That’s greatly improved her confidence which has led to better work habits. My six year old is adding and subtracting double digits with ease. Although she works more slowly than her sister (who is still in review mode) she gets 100% every time. So how can I complain about a little daydreaming?

My 6 year old is still working on her reading skills, but the book, “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons”, I’m using to teach her to read is much different than the ones that her big sister used. Why? Because she needs more time to think out her answers. The eldest (and probably her little brother) loved the computerized independent/discovery learning style. I used the Scholastic Reading Program (that they discontinued for some reason) as well as StarFall and IKnowThat coupled with the LeapFrog Videos and she pretty much taught herself. My point is that each child learns at his or her own pace. Our job is to find what works and encourage it. And that’s one reason I think the best way to start is not to spend hundreds of dollars on curriculum, but find something that is flexible while you work out the details of how your children learn.

I have fallen in love with the The Old Schoolhouse Planner. It’s an eclectic collection of resources that is also a complete year’s curriculum. First off, let me confess that I have not been the most organized homeschooler. I’ve purchased programs to keep records on the girls work, I’ve set up schedules (that I then proceeded to ignore after about a week), and changed my mind a couple of times during the course of the year on some of the books that we had chosen to use for learning. But after reading through this 375 page masterpiece of planning I am finally content. Each month is based upon a theme and all the activities and subjects that are taught in that month follow that theme. This would be just about perfect for new homeschooling families. When you start out homeschooling you always worry that you won’t get everything done. The planner is designed to help you not only get yourself organized, but to have fun while you teach and learn. (If you want to learn more about the planner you can go here or read additional reviews here.)

Another resource that you will find useful is called “Oklahoma Homeschool” and has a great breakdown of educational styles and ideas that will be a great help to you as you choose your curriculum. You can also visit The Homeschool Lounge and talk to experienced homeschoolers. You’ll see that the ways to have well-educated children are as diverse as the stars.

You can and will make the difference in your child’s education. The curriculum is just a tool in your hand. Take your time to pick the right one for you and your family and the rest will follow.

It’s all my fault. I admit it.  My eldest daughter is having problems with math right now because I changed direction and confused the heck out of her. I was snared in the siren’s song of cyber-schooling and now I’m doing damage control.  See, when I started teaching my daughter math I made if fun, practical and entertaining. When I hooked up the cyberschools they made it worksheets, boring, and repetitious. And that just doesn’t work for a blue child — I should know since I’m blue too! And the cyber-curriculum has created a division of education amongst the girls. Under my own regime (another aspect of my emancipation!) everyone pretty much learned at the same time with mild adjustment for age and attention span, of course.

But now I’m back into traditional homeschooling and I’m feeling great about it.  Except for getting my little girl back into loving math. Well, that was until I stumbled upon Mammoth Math Clock while hanging out at Currclick the other day. I was looking for a resource to build up my eldest child’s ability to tell time. If you ask her what time it is she can tell you, but since she can’t explain how she figured it out I translatethis as a need for more practice.  since if you should be able to teach something to others once you really know it.  Her little sister is just learning to tell time. so I was looking for something that will kill two birds with one stone.  And Mammoth Math Clock is the answer for us.

For one thing, Maria Miller’s approach to math is a simple one.  Work on one concept at time and build upon it. Her mathbooks don’t have a lot of colorful pictures, cute jokes or other distractions that has made Jade’s cyberschooling math experience so rocky. Just simple explanations, short practice examples to complete and move on to the next component.  This approach makes it easy to include children from different age groups. Ms. Miller also includes a load of online and offline resources you can tap into if you want to expand the lessons or your child needs more practice.

Let me give you one example. In the beginning she only uses the hour hand to teach the children how they can tell time.  She shows them how the position of the hour hand will tell them if the time is a whole hour or a half hour. She gives some illustrations and then it’s the child’s turn to tell time.  The beauty of this system, at least for my kids, is that they are onlyconcentrating on one thing.  There is no confusion about which hand they’re working with. Jade sometimes would confuse the minute and hour hand — now there’s no confusion. My six year old got it immediately and has never experienced the confusion of which is which.  When we moved on to the second lesson, the minute hand was intoduced, but the focus was only on the quarter and half hours. And so on and so forth.

My kids loved the fact that once they finished a section, they “knew” what time it was and how to manage the clock. Jade now confidently tells the time and explains how she knows — no more nervous glances at me to see if she’s on the right track or not. And her little sister, Alaya, enjoys telling me “Mommy it’s 2:35 p.m.” (or whatever the time may be when she gets into her silly mode).  And best of all, for me, is that I’m done teaching how to tell time for at least 2 more years!  We’re moving into the Mammoth Blue Series now.  I’ll be doing Addition and Subtraction with the ladies before moving on to Multiplication and Division.

And I’ll get to teach them both at one time freeing up time for me to work on other things during the day. And maybe even carve out some more time for fun and games. Yeah!

If you’d like to learn more about Mammoth Math, you can visit www.mammothmath.com and sign up for Maria Miller’s newsletter, free math worksheets and software.  She has a great deal where you buy even one of her workbooks and you get free math software for the kids!

Hi, this just arrived in my email today and I thought I’d share it with everyone:

We are pleased to make you aware of CurrClick’s Black Friday Freebie Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays Sale, in advance of the general public.

Black Friday is about savings, this season is about being frugal and CurrClick is and always has been about helping you trim your education budget. That’s why this year, beginning Friday the 28th at 10 AM EST, we’re inviting you and your readership, egroups and co-ops, to our biggest Black Friday Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays sales event yet, offering 28 COMPLETELY FREE TITLES from our most popular publishers and dozens of your favorite holiday education titles up to 85% OFF!

This Friday, November 28th, put on your pajamas, put away your pocketbooks and “head over” to CurrClick’s best ever Black Friday Freebie Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays Sale!

**Look for these graphics on our homepage at 10 am EST on Friday, November 28th:

Wishing you a Blessed Holiday Season,

The CurrClick Staff

P.S. Amazon is also having a Black Friday sale too! Details are below:

Great Black Friday Deals. No Black Friday Blues.

Black Friday deals start today! Don’t spend Black Friday 2008 jostling for bargains and parking spots. Amazon will have amazing deals to help you and your site visitors get holiday shopping done for less. Our Black Friday page is the central point to find all our Black Friday deals, including the Gold Box hourly deals featured from midnight to 11pm PST and thousands of products that are on sale for a limited time only.

While in the children’s section of the library my eye fell upon a book entitled “The Dragon’s Lair (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme)” As I am a fantasy reader and was looking for something light to enjoy I picked it up for myself … and fell in love. The book is set up as a restoration of archeological records and they tell the story of Ven Polypheme as he goes through his life as an explorer, adventurer, and journalist for the High King.

As has been my misfortune of late, I began the series at the end – “The Dragon’s Lair” is actually Book 3 in this series. The other two books are “The Thief Queen’s Daughter (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme)“– Book 2 — and “The Floating Island (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme)” – Book 1. Because I do have younger children I checked to see if audiobooks had been created for the series, but not as of today.

The story itself is fast-paced, sometimes funny, sometimes scary, but always interesting. I’m sure that boys (even boys who aren’t really sure if books are cool or not) will enjoy the series. The scary parts aren’t too scary for the little ones and the moral ambiguities of life are intriguing enough for older children to ponder without steam pouring from their ears. But what I like most about these books is that she includes a curriculum in the back of each one. She covers composition, art, cartography and other subjects in a fun manner, using her characters to take the sting out of “school work”.

Here’s one example of her Reader’s Guide:

“II. Gated Cities and Penal Colonies – B. What is a penal colony and why would a government want to use one? Look up some examples and read about them. Then draw a vertical line down a sheet of paper and make two columns, one for good and one for bad results. List why you think the penal colony system was a good idea on the left, and a bad one on the right. Then decide overall whether you would have used a penal colony if you were a king long ago.” – The Thief Queen’s Daughter, p. 315

In her book “The Dragon’s Lair” she includes art projects as well as science and other cross-curricular activities. I think that this would be a great addition to the homeschooling community library since she does such a good job of making the reader think and apply the story to the world that we live in today.

My daughter, Jade is going to read the book once she finishes with her latest omnibus so I’ll be sure to share her 8 (almost 9) year old point of view too! And be on the lookout for Book 4 coming soon!

Now, back to Percy Jackson … but that’s another post!