A Day in the Life...

One of the first homeschool books I ever read was Homeschooling: A Patchwork of Days by Nancy Lande. This book did not recommend curriculum or tell me the best how-to homeschool method. It did not describe the newest educational philosophy or teach me about my childs learning style. I believe what it gave me was more valuable than even those. This book teaches you about the very essence of homeschooling. The spirit that moves seemingly unrelated families to remove their children from traditional education and school them at home. The peace and love for learning that can only be found within the walls of a homeschooling home.

The book is broken up into chapters one for each of the 30 homeschool families who wrote about what a day in the life of their homeschooling looked like. Although these families all school in different ways, with different curriculum's and philosophies, you cannot help but come away feeling the shared community between them all. I highly recommend this as a must read homeschooling book.

Nancy has put out a new book called Homeschool Open House, were she interviews 55 homeschooling families. I have not read it yet, but I assume it will be just as good as the first book.

Everything Homeschooling: A Review

All out of clever lesson ideas?

Have no fear Everything Homeschooling is here!!

I stumbled upon this site a few years back after reading the book Everything Homeschooling Book by Sherri Linsenbach.  Which is also a great resource to have on hand for your homeschool.


Everything Homeschooling is truly a unique and versatile site. They provide a few free resources-the blog, a newsletter, many free lesson ideas, and an activity idea calendar.

The best part is for a mere $15.95 you too can have access to an entire homeschool curriculum for your whole family. No Joke! The site membership gives you access to the real gem of this site. The lessons!


The lessons are listed under grade level grouping- Grades K-2 Lessons,  Grades 3-6 Lessons,  Grades 6-9 Lessons, or Grades 9-12 Lessons. You will need to modify the lessons for your child's ability in each grade grouping. This grouping makes it easy to teach multiple kids as your Kindergartner and 2nd grader can be learning the same topics but at their ability levels.

The lessons are further grouped by week. There are 30 weeks of lessons for each grade level grouping. The lessons consist of  list of ideas and web resources under subject headings for the entire week. The subjects are listed as Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Life Skills, Health, Safety, Arts and Music. The lessons are not planned out on a day to day bases. You will need to decide what to do on what day of the week. Depending on your teaching style you can use the lessons as is or modify them by planning ahead and adding in your own resources and books.

You could feasibly use Everything Homeschooling as a stand alone curriculum and be quite happy. The lessons are extremely well rounded and cover a large variety of topics.

We use Everything Homeschooling in our home as a supplement. It has been extremely handy during holidays and summer vacation times when we do light homeschooling. Or just on those days when I have nothing planned for school. I'm a huge fan of the Christmas and Thanksgiving Units offered. They have saved me so much work!! I can just log on and teach the kids with minimal to no prep time. More than anything when I feel my homeschool ideas running low, just looking at the lesson ideas sparks my creativity and gets us excited about learning again.

There are a few negative things I can think of when using Everything Homeschooling. If you are using it as a stand alone curriculum you are possible going to need to plan ahead a bit and pick and choose what ideas you will use for the week and when. Lesson text and resources are largely web based so you may need to print or be teaching near your computer. You may also want to be comfortable with your children accessing the internet.

Overall it is an extremely handy site- simple and easy to use. No fuss!
It is definitely worth the $15.95 a year for membership.

Oh! Did I mention the 100% money back guarantee? I'm serious! They have one.

Everything Homeschooling

Bare Bones Homeschooling

I had a new homeschool Mom call me up for a bit of advice. She wanted to know what she should do to homeschool in her current situation. They will be living up near Idaho City in a small RV for the rest of the Spring and Summer. They have no computer, no electronic devices, no money really, no space and they want to homeschool their 12 year old daughter.

My first reaction was shock. I honestly could not imagine homeschool without the internet or a whole room to store all my neat homeschool stuff in-or so I thought. In helping this mother I realized how very little we really NEED to homeschool. Sometimes we are so consumed by the newest math software or the best science kits that we can lose sight of how simple homeschooling really can be.

This mom was mostly concerned about missing something in her daughter education. I recommended the What Your ___ Grader Needs To Know book series by E.D Hirsch because it is cheap, easy to find,  and offered a great overview for all the subjects so she can see what she has or hasn't covered in her daughters education.

Thinking on it, the only other recommendations I had for her were access to a library for good books and making sure her daughter was doing some sort of reading, writing, and math each day. Other than that just looking for educational opportunities around them, like all the amazing nature up there, and facilitating learning things her daughter was interested in were my only other thoughts. Throw in some minimal school supplies and you've got yourself a fully functioning homeschool.

What about you? If you had to suddenly be a homesteader and could only bring what you could fit in a back pack what would you take to homeschool your kids?

Owl Moon

I am using Evan Moors Literature Pockets Caldecott Winners, Grades 1-3 

with Ian (3rd) and Kaleb (1st).

Here are some of our projects from Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.

Ian loved this book. It has beautiful illustrations and the story is very poetic and descriptive.

 To extend the book a bit we did look up some owl photos and sounds on the internet, but did not take it any further than that. You could do a whole Owl unit branching out from this book. I try not to get carried away sometimes.

We focused on the story elements and the art of the illustrations. This book contains a great deal of simile, which we had a discussion on. My favorite was "...and the snow below it was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl." The illustrations are amazing, you feel like you  are there in the cold woods with them. My favorite illustration was when the Dad shines the flashlight on the owl they have found.  

 This is the picture Oliver (4) painted while sitting by us. 

These are Kaleb and Ian's Owl Moon style illustrations.

 

These are their owl drawings. 

Time4Learning: A Review

We were able to try out Time4Learning in the month of December. This was an incredible opportunity during the holiday season, with all the activities, parties and family events in the month of December. Time4Learning became my partner for educating my kids. While I fluttered about decorating, baking, and wrapping gifts I simply sent my children to the computer each day to grab some much needed learning time, between cookie eating and holiday TV programs. I had them log in each day and do a minimum of one lesson from each subject. The subjects are Language Art Extensions (which are high interest stories that support skills), Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies.

I have four children, so I was able to try out a broad range of Time4Learning levels. We used PreK, 1st grade, 3rd grade and 6th grade.

Oliver (PreK)simply loved it! He gets a little left out sometimes as we work on homeschooling. This was great for him because I would log him in for him to do 'his school'. I'd let him pick a themed box to work on (choice is huge for his age level). He loved to show me how many boxes he had done that session. It gave him a great sense of accomplishment, the ability to make choices, and have fun. I loved that he was learning too!

Kaleb(1st grade) likes the Playground portion of Time4Learning the best. After he does his lessons for the day I let him play there for a while. It is a great reward and motivation for him.He also enjoyed seeing how far he moved along in the program by the visual check marks placed over lessons completed. The lessons were fun and entertaining for his grade level.

Ian (3rd grade) says he really didn't like Time4Learning, because you have to read a little and then answer questions and he felt like he hadn't learned enough to answer the questions. This is why I feel Time4Learning is a great supplement, but wouldn't be adequate as your only source for curriculum and instruction. He enjoyed the playground part of Time4Learning too, with all it's games.

Josef (6th) thinks it was pretty fun. This is a pretty good review since it takes a great deal to impress him these days. The lessons are very visual, exciting, and interactive.  Time4Learning helped him review concepts we had been over in previous grades and was maybe a bit rusty at. While other high interest topics like Rome and Electricity and Magnetism kept him learning new things.

We give Time4Learning five stars for being a great homeschool supplement!!

Book Review: The Bumblebee Queen

The Bumblebee Queen
by April Pulley Sayre
Illustrated by Patricia Wynne
ISBN#1570913625

This beautifully illustrated children's nonfiction book is a real gem. The bright and detailed pictures keep children engaged as you read about the life of a queen bumblebee. Although a factual book, the story of the Queen is not dry or boring. Our favorite part was learning about how she cared for her young and the illustration of her laying on her larva to keep them warm . Additional interesting facts are sprinkled throughout the book. At the end of the book the author gives you additional reading, as well as websites on bumblebees.
So BUZZ on over to your local library and pick up this great book!

Homeschool Reviews

I have had the opportunity this year to be a reviewer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. I have been able to test out a ton of products with my kids. There were some that we LOVED that I had never heard of before. All of my reviews are found here and there are links to some of my favorites at the top right.

If there are any of the items you would like to see, let me know and we can arrange a time to meet.