The Reading Game is an amazing tool for all homeschoolers learning to read. Whether you have a pre-schooler, who is ready to move on from pictures, or if you’re teaching the basics to your kindgartener, or even if you are looking for resources for your struggling reader – The Reading Game is for you.. After completing all the levels of The Reading Game, your student will be able to read 180 new sight words. And it meets criteria for four skill sets in the Common Core Standards for Language and Literacy Arts. Although it may sound too good to be true, this program has been field-tested in a variety of settings (both in public school and homeschool settings) with amazing results.
End of the year achievement testing is now here, and in many states it’s a requirement. It’s one thing to possess a set of skills, but another to be able to demonstrate them in a test setting which may be unfamiliar and feel uncomfortable to the student. Below are six tips that, if followed, will increase the likelihood of a positive and successful test experience.
With the emphasis on good penmanship waning, many parents are asking if it’s a necessary subject for their homeschooling. They recognize the connection between handwriting and fine motor skills but wonder, with technology advancing daily, will it be necessary for the future?
Why Does My Homeschooled Child Need To Be Taught About Social Emotional Intelligence?
By Eileen Healy, MA, LMFT
Social emotional intelligence has been proven to be more important to teach our children than any of the core subjects. Why is that? Our children will need a certain proficiency in their core subjects but need to relate and adapt to the rest of the world outside the home. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand one’s own emotions and the emotions of others and to respond to those emotions in a healthy way. Children with a high emotional intelligence know how to manage their emotions and how to respond to others in a healthy way. Your child will need to know how to intra-relate and interrelate to himself and others throughout his life. Research continues to report that a high emotional intelligence in a child is the best predictor of success in life for a child -- even more than a high IQ.
Today, as perhaps never before, our society purports to value creativity in education. Touted as the solution to economic, social, and environmental problems, creative thinking has become a primary objective for many educational institutions and homeschool families. Especially in the area of writing, creativity seems to be both the key and the goal. “Be unique! Be creative! Be original! Just make it up!” That which appears to engender creativity is considered good; that which fails to do so, is bad. Therefore, activities which promote basic skills (such as copywork, memorization, rote learning, drill) are often put aside in favor of activities which appear more spontaneous (story starters, free writing, journaling, etc.).
Q: Should we throw out grammar, spelling, and rules during the creative process?
A: Yes.
I was fifteen the first time I drove a car. Mr. McAfree, my Driver's Ed teacher, slid into the vinyl-clad passenger seat as Craig Sulley, another student, buckled up in the back. Even though McAfree was nearing retirement, he looked uncomfortable. I chalked it up to lack of self-confidence and revved the engine before pulling out into traffic.
By Michael Leppert
This is one of the most elementary questions that parents ask when contemplating whether to homeschool or not. Most of us assume that school teaching requires skills that we mere parents do not possess because we have not been trained. But the seasoned homeschool parent realizes that these skillshave more to do with crowd-control and the imparting and monitoring of knowledge to 30 or 45 children that are not one's own. In most homeschooling households, the student-teacher ratio is 2:1 or 3:1 at most. Any teacher would love to work in such an environment! Plus, discipline should not be as much a problem for a parent as it is for a teacher.
Yes, My Grown Homeschooled Children Are Odd ? And Yours Will Be Too!
By Diane Flynn Keith
I am sick and tired of defending homeschooling from the question, “What about socialization?” Members of the modern homeschool movement have insisted for thirty years that homeschooled children are well-socialized. We laughingly refer to socialization as the “S word.” We deflect the socialization question by insisting it’s a myth. And yet, it persists.
by Nan Barchowsky
You and I heard the news: Cursive is out. My curiosity was aroused. Would no handwriting be taught in US schools? I doubt you would buy that for your children! Handwriting is just too important.
Three basic methods of handwriting are taught today -- or was that yesterday? There?s print-script (manu?script or ball-and-stick), cursive italic, and conventional cursive where all letters are joined within words.
by Jean Burk
Full Scholarship ? two words that could change your life. Getting free college can be like winning the lottery. Imagine throwing away several trash bags full of college scholarships that come in the mail. This is what happened to us. But for some families, getting just one scholarship offer could be the difference between junior college and the perfect university.
By Michael and Mary Leppert[A partial excerpt from The Homeschooling Almanac 2000-2001.]
In the late 1960s, Boston educator John Holtcame up with some ideas about learning that startled many of his colleagues and formed the basis of the unschooling movement in homeschooling. After formulating his basic theories that children are naturally curious and will lead themselves in exploring and finding out about the world around them, Holt worked to bring about school reform, attempting to implement his ideas in the classroom setting to which he was accustomed.
