My Cool HomeschoolHomeschooling Resources

This summer, our library presented its annual children’s summer reading program. After reading for 10, 15, and 25 hours, children could win prizes such as passes to a local water park or ice skating rink, free ice cream from Chick-fil-A, and more. Although it didn’t sound like a lot of time, we got a late start, and those first 10 hours of picture books for my youngest added up to about 80 books we had to read! Every time we went to the library, I felt as if I was clearing a lot of their shelf space. While I tried to find books we hadn’t read before, I came across some favorites as well, on of which was What’s Going On In There? By Geoffrey Grahn.

In this book, things are not always as they appear. In each double-page spread, the pages on the left are used for the text, and the pages on the right for the illustrations. There you’ll find a building with windows, with a silhouette of a person, animal, or object in each window. The fun, then, is to guess what’s going on — to guess what the people or animals are doing. With a turn of the page, the reader discovers what’s really going on, and it’s usually not what you were thinking.  What looks like people pulling saltwater taffy is really astronauts preparing to launch their rocket; what appears to be students taking a test is actually a swimming class.

This book is a fun one for all ages. Younger children (and parents!) will be surprised by the revelations, and older children will have fun guessing. The author/illustrator has even provided the reader with some clues: look closely at the outside of the buildings where you see the silhouettes for hints of what’s inside.

As I Watch is another picture book I’ve had the privilege of illustrating. Written by Chitra Sounder and published by Guardian Angel Publishing, this simple yet beautiful book describes the life-cycle of a butterfly.

Designed especially for the youngest readers, As I Watch follows the development of the insect from egg, to larva, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly and back to egg again. It’s a great starting point for a unit study about butterflies or insects in general. The illustrations are done in oils and realistically depict the tiger swallowtail butterfly.

If you have young children and are interested in doing a unit study on butterflies, here are some other online resources you might find helpful:

EnchantedLearning.com – This site has so much information for young butterfly enthusiasts! While you may need to pay a small membership fee to access all of the worksheets, it’s well-worth it. They’ve even organized all of the information into a hypertext book, covering topics such as butterflies and moths, defense mechanisms, classification, butterfly gardens, and butterfly anatomy. You’ll also find printouts featuring the lifecycle.

ParentingOurKids.com – Among many other resources, this site also offers butterfly lesson plans. Some of these are complete lessons in themselves, while others are links to worksheets and puzzles. All would be good additions to your unit study!

TheHealthyHomeschool.com – Here you’ll find all you need to know about how to plant your own butterfly garden.

Glorious-Butterfly.com -  – While this site isn’t particularly a schooling site, you’ll find some great ideas for butterfly study here as well. The lesson plans focus on the monarch butterfly, its development, and migration.

InsectLore.com -  This site sells the life cycle kits for various insects, including butterflies. For about $20.00 you can get a kit with a coupon for live caterpillars.

Enjoy a butterfly study with your children — and watch the wonder of nature together!

As I’ve been working on plans for the new school year in the fall, I’ve come across some homeschooling sites with lots of great information. Here are a few of them:

OklahomaHomeschool.com – Even if you’re not from Oklahoma, OklahomaHomeschool.com is a great site to look through as you’re planning your new school year. Written by Cindy Downes, you’ll find information for parents just beginning to homeschool, such as a discussion about what homeschooling is, how to choose curriculum, and teaching the basic subjects. She also offers free unit studies, homeschooling forms, and checklists.

PEAH’s-Homeschool-Curriculum-Savings.com – Though the name of this site suggests it’s a curriculum site, it’s actually so much more. Here you’ll find lots of general information about homeschooling, including how to begin, finding help, testing, and legal information. Then there are the links for curriculum help, including reviews and unit studies, as well as help with math and science. One of my favorite features of this site can be found on the contact page, where visitors can ask questions and receive help from both the author of the site and other visitors.

All In One Homeschool Resource Center (http://www.come-over.to/homeschool/) — If you’re looking for a site that can direct you to other resources on the web, this is one to check out. Featuring links to articles related to homeschooling, support groups, and teaching a special needs child, this website will help you find the information you need.  You can also click on the links to sites about homeschooling books, books for kids, and educational games.

With so much help available on the Internet, parents can feel more confident as they plan their schedules for the 2010-2011 school year. The resources available on the web keep increasing every day, and it’s fun to receive emails from homeschooling friends telling me about great sites they’ve found. Do you have a favorite homeschooling site?

The past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on plans for the school year in the fall — deciding what curriculum to use and figuring out the cost. I’m finding that as the children grow older, the cost of the books we need to buy goes up as well. Add that to the cost of regular school supplies, such as paper, pens, and notebooks, along with the cost of any extra classes such as co-op classes, sports clubs, or fine art instruction, and it’s easy to see that homeschooling can be expensive.

But there are ways to save, especially where curriculum is concerned. Used curriculum can often be found at a fraction of the retail price, even the most recent editions. If you are looking for used curriculum, here are a few places you can start:

Yahoo Groups: There are a number of yahoo groups that you can join where people post their used curriculum for sale. Once you contact the seller, the two of you work out payment and shipping. Go to Yahoo Groups and check out BobJonesCurriculum,  Used_Homeschooling_Curriculum, ChristianCurriculum, All-Wholesome-Books,  UsedHomeschoolBooks, and TheHomeschoolMomUsedCurriculum.

eBay: If you enjoy using eBay, look for the curriculum you need in the listings there. If you don’t like the auction-style format (it can become a little nerve-wracking sometimes), check to see if someone has listed the books as Buy It Now.

Used Curriculum Sites: You might find what you’re looking for by searching a used homeschooling curriculum site. Visit HomeschoolClassifieds, VegSource, and The Book Cover.

CraigsList: Often homeschoolers will list their curriculum on CraigsList.com. Click on the link for the city nearest you, look under the “For Sale” column, and click on “Books”. You can scroll through the list or do a search for the particular book you’re looking for. Remember to use caution when purchasing items from CraigsList, and meet the seller at a public location.

If you aren’t able to find what you’re looking for online, ask around to find out where homeschoolers in your area sell used books. Do they post it on an email loop, or is there a used book sale you can attend? You might even be able to simply borrow the books you need from someone who won’t be using them this year.

It is possible to homeschool on a budget, and buying used curriculum can help. For many homeschoolers, finding that good deal is all part of the adventure.

My youngest loves looking for objects hidden in books, such as the I Spy books by Scholastic. Whenever we visit our library’s bookmobile, he heads straight for the section that holds the “finding books.” So when I found an I SPY game on sale at the store, I couldn’t resist.

Overall, it turned out to be a good game, especially for younger children. To begin, each player is given a playing card made out of very sturdy cardboard with a picture featuring a couple hundred objects, such as marbles, blocks, buttons, toy cars, letters, beads, balls, or tiny figures. Each side of the game board has a different picture, and there are four game boards, making eight pictures in all. The rest of the game consists a bell and thirty double-sided playing cards with eight pictures on each.

Players all play the game at the same time. Each player draws a card from the stack and looks at the eight images on the card, then tries to figure out which ONE object is a match with an object on his game board. The first player to find his particular match rings the bell. So, not only does the player have to find an object first, but he also has to figure out just which object he needs to find.

Sounds difficult, doesn’t it? It was at first, even for me; my six-year-old was finding his objects before I could find mine. It was a good game for our family to play together — everyone seemed to have an equal chance at winning, no matter how young or old they were.

Interestingly, though, the game became easier and easier the more we played. The first few times through, we studied the game boards very closely; after a while, when we drew new playing cards, it was easy to recognize which object we needed to find and easy to find it. So, we switched the game boards around, but again, after several rounds of play, it became too easy, especially for the older children. My youngest became frustrated that he could never win, and the older ones were tired of hearing him fuss about it.

Right now the game is back on our game shelf, but I’m sure we’ll pull it out again. We’ll just have to wait until we’ve forgotten where all the objects are hidden.

Last week, a friend of mine who heads up a group for field trips and celebrations organized a yard sale for the kids. The children gathered toys, books, household items, and more for the sale. But instead of working the sale for profit, my friend wanted to make it a fundraiser for a worthy cause.

There are so many needs, and so many good causes, but she wanted to find something that would be meaningful to the children and closer to home. I told her about my niece and her husband who are in the process of adopting a baby from Africa, hopefully later this year, and we decided to raise the funds for them. I gave my friend their photo and a letter about their family to post at the sale.

Due to a prior commitment, we weren’t able to be there for most of the sale and could only stop by towards the end. The day was hot, and the crowd was small, but the effort was amazing, as my son would say. Besides gathering items for the sale, families made cupcakes and lemonade and brought bottled water along to sell too. And all this for a family that they didn’t know, all to help bring a little girl to her new home. How neat it was to see the children so excited about doing something totally for the benefit of someone else.

One of the reasons we homeschool is for character education — I want my children to grow up to be honest, compassionate, dependable, generous, responsible adults. Yet often, in the rush of school assignments and activities, it’s easy for me to overlook opportunities for building those character traits. This yard sale was one such opportunity, and, in our busyness, we couldn’t be a part of the actual sale. I thought we’d missed it again.

But as it turned out, my children didn’t miss it after all. As we were driving to the sale, my son asked why their friends would work so hard raising money for their cousin — they didn’t even know her family. We talked about that on the way, and then they saw it for themselves. They saw their friends working; they saw the drinks, the snacks, the items for sale, and the bag of money for their cousin.

They saw love in action — and it was a lesson learned.

Photo by Jane Sawyer

Today was the last day of our writing camp. It began on Monday and ran for two hours each day. By the end, every child had a completed story in a folder, with the folders acting as the cover of their books. They had designed and colored a picture for the front of the folder, as well as created a title page, a dedication page, and an author page. We also included an author photo. They had completed two author’s bookmarks and a painted picture frame which contained a photo of the child holding his or her book.

While most of the children finished everything, a few didn’t complete all of the illustrations for their books. Two of my children who were at the camp ran out of time, and one of them was quite upset. “Don’t worry, ” I told her, “We can finish at home.”

Now comes the tricky part — setting aside time in the very near future to get those books completed all the way, especially during the summer when there are a lot of other things going on. I have a shelf full of my children’s unfinished art pieces, so I know it’s going to be a challenge. If you’re like me and want to help your children finish those unfinished projects, here are some ideas for you (and me!) to try:

• Get back to the project right away! The longer it goes unfinished, the less likely your child (or you) will want to work on it again.

• Set aside a particular time — a day, a morning, an afternoon — to work only on the project. Don’t worry about other schoolwork you may have had planned; finishing a project is a lesson in itself.

• If your student is reluctant to finish it, give him smaller intervals of time to work on it, such as 20 or 30 minutes. Provide him with a timer, so he can see just how much time he has left. Challenge him to get a certain amount completed before the timer goes off.

• Create a place for your student to work on the project and ONLY that project, such as an extra desk or worktable. That way, if it’s still not completed in one sitting, your child can return to it and easily pick up again where he left off.

• Provide a reward! When the project’s completed, celebrate by showing it off to family and friends or sharing a special dessert or treat.

Now go get started…and get finished!

Photo by JDurham

This week, I’ve been helping to teach classes at a writing/illustrating camp for kids. We have students ages 6-13, and it’s been a lot of fun. The children have come up with some very imaginative stories!

One of the things we discussed at the camp was how the main character of a story has a problem to overcome. After the students decided on their main character, they had to figure out what the problem was going to be. For those who were having trouble thinking of a story line, we gave them a list of story starters.

The story starters were ideas for stories that the children could build upon. A story starter might be something like:

1. Tommy arrived home from school only to discover his baby brother was now sharing his bedroom.

2. The day before the royal ball, the princess fell from her horse and broke her leg.

3. The pirate captain and his crew were ready to dig for treasure, but they lost the map.

4. Spotty the dog wanted to walk with his owner to the store, but there was a cat sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Spotty was afraid of cats.

5. As Jane and Marvin were having a picnic in the yard, a terrible storm blew in.

You can create more story starters to get your child writing. Just choose a character and a problem, and let the story begin! But, if you need even more ideas, there’s plenty of help online. Below are a couple of sites worth visiting:

• Scholastic.com has a fun story starter “machine.” Just give the wheel a spin and see what comes up.

• BookWeekOnline offers some interesting story starters for older kids. The first part of the story is written by a well-known author, but it’s up to the student to finish the adventure.

Your child might write using the story starter, or it might inspire him to develop his own storyline. Either way, story starters are a great way to get kids thinking — and writing!

Photo by kakisky

This summer is passing so quickly — it’s hard to believe it’s almost the 4th of July. Not only is Independence Day a great time to celebrate, but it’s a great teaching time, too. If you’re family is anything like mine, though, a lesson during a summer holiday isn’t always fully appreciated by younger students. Here are some ideas for slipping some learning opportunities into your 4th of July fun:

Bake some holiday treats together — The magazine racks in grocery stores are full of periodicals and recipe books featuring red, white, and blue desserts for the holidays. You can also find plenty of recipes online at sites such as AllRecipes.com and CookEatShare.com. Look through the recipes with your child and pick out one or two favorites.

Plan a picnic — If you’re going to celebrate with a feast outdoors, have your child help plan it. Sit down together to figure out a menu, then look through the sales fliers to figure out the approximate cost of the food. When you go to the grocery store, have your child help you find all of the items you need.

Work on crafts — You can find great 4th of July craft ideas in family magazines and online. Try looking through sites such as FamilyFun.com, EnchantedLearning.com, and MarthaStewart.com.

Attend a concert — Many cities offer outdoor concerts for the 4th; is there one in your area? Use the concert as an opportunity to introduce your child to the different musical instruments and what they sound like.

Learn patriotic songs — Whether or not you’re attending a concert, you can still use the 4th as a time to teach your children songs about America. Some songs to sing together include You’re a Grand Old Flag, America the Beautiful, God Bless America, This Land is Your Land, and The Star Spangles Banner.

However you celebrate the 4th with your children, enjoy the time together. Just like the summer, these schooling years will pass by so quickly!