Have you heard the one about the homeschooling family that lives on less than $22K a year in an area that costs above 100% (116%) of the National CoL Index?
I haven't quite figured out why so many people still persist in perpetuating the myth that living on a single income and homeschooling on a dime aren't possible. I can only suppose these are people who can't imagine life without a daily trip to Starbucks and dinner out several times a week. The people who actually shop at malls (*shudder*) and think "Brand Name = Best". The people who really live by the "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality.
That? Would not be us!
Welcome to our world. We cook from scratch. Buy from thrift stores. Find 95% of our homeschool materials for free. This is my blog and this is how we do it.
Test Prep.
If you have an older student who will soon be facing college entrance exams, there are some free sources he/she can utilize for practice.
SparkNotes - the site I linked to in the High School Lit posts - offers more than just classic literature guides. THIS PAGE has links to free online copies of test prep books for the SAT & ACT.
CliffsNotes also offers a PREP SECTION.
The STUDY GUIDE ZONE has test prep help for many different standardized exams. (Note to Florida parents: THIS PAGE covers FCAT test prep. As homeschoolers, taking the FCAT is a legitimate, legal way to meet accountability standards; however, our children are not allowed access to the FCAT Explorer on-line test prep program made available to public school children. I have contacted the state & DOE about this several times and will continue to do so. Perhaps someday this could be changed. Meanwhile, you might want to keep the Study Guide Zone in mind, though their guide is specifically targeted toward the high-school level FCAT.)
TEST PREP PREVIEW has a series of free practice tests - including graduate and vocational exams.
MAJOR TESTS offers free SAT, GRE and GMAT practice exams and help.
Finally, 4 TESTS has a wide range of free pratice tests for educational, professional, and computer exams.Labels: curriculum chatter
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High School Lit, part 4 - Senior Guide
High School Lit, part 3 - Junior Guide
High School Lit, part 2 - Sophomore Guide
High School Lit, part 1 - Freshman Guide
This post, to be followed up with posts for sophomore, junior, and senior years, is a list based on the oh-so-scientific-method of "This is what I read in high school." so I by no means am trying to say all students should read all these books by each of these grades. I'm posting the list here, along with all the study guides, as a suggestion, to give parents more ideas as they look toward homeschooling in the high school years.
Many of these books are public domain and can be found at WOWIO or PROJECT GUTENBERG. Others could be found at used book stores or the library.
FYI - The Spark Notes, Cliff Notes, and Grade Saver sites are all very similar, offering analysis and summary by chapter, author notes, essay questions, and quizzes. The majority of the books I'm listing here have a guide from all three sites, but a few did not. You can read all three of these sites free on-line.
(More in full post.)
Each year includes one play by Shakespeare. THIS PDF FILE offers some general tips for teaching Shakespeare to high school students.
Freshman:
1) The Red Badge of Courage:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
2) A Tale of Two Cities:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
3) To Kill a Mockingbird:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
4) Romeo and Juliet:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
5) The Grapes of Wrath:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
CLIFF NOTES
GRADE SAVER
6) The Time Machine:
STUDY GUIDE
SPARK NOTES
GRADE SAVER
Labels: curriculum chatter
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Host a summer day camp.
Looking for something fun (and not budget-busting) to do this summer? How about having a week-long or once-a-week day camp? You could pick any one theme, such as art, or have a different theme each day like History Day and Music Day.
Borrowing from the idea of weekly science camps held at the Orlando Science Center, this week we're having a Summer Science Camp at our house. We have two other homeschool families involved for 8 kids total. The experiments are all conducted using common household items and the kids are filling out FREE SCIENCE EXPERIMENT NOTEBOOKING FORMS for each experiment. (More in full post.)
Our camp is meeting daily from 10:00 until 3:00 and we're sharing lunch costs by each family contributing different food items for each lunch. Today was Chemistry day. We followed several experiments found online and let the kids begin their Summer Science Camp notebooks. Tomorrow we'll be having a Physical Science day. Wednesday is "Backyard Science", which will combine some fun outdoor science experiments and a 4th of July party. (For instance, instead of traditional fireworks - we'll be making an exploding volcano.) Thursday, we'll be studying Earth Science, and on Friday we'll be having a general science fun day to wrap up all the experiments that took more than one day, due to necessary observations of results, followed by a movie and a presentation of CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION.
Summer day camps hosted by companies like the YMCA can run hundreds of dollars or more per child, but if that's out of the question for your budget, as it is for ours, you can recreate the same concept right at home. Find some friends to join in and though it's a learning experience, keep the focus on the fun. Be sure to take plenty of photos, too, so that the kids can have some to paste in notebooks if they're making them, or in a homemade photo album. (I use a digital camera and print pictures right off my color printer on regular paper - not the expensive photo paper.) You can host every day at your house, as we're doing, or have each family host a day or two at their own homes.
We're making our notebooks in plain green folders I bought last summer for 10 cents each. I printed THE PERIODIC TABLE and glued them to the fronts for covers.
At the end of the week the kids will have their notebooks, their certificates, and a few "souvenirs" like spongy eggs - made from soaking eggs in vinegar - and the crystals we're growing.
We had a lot of fun today, but wow! I think I might need a nap now! :)
Labels: curriculum chatter
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Free online textbooks.
As most of these are written on a college level, they are, of course, advanced materials. However, if you have a high schooler interested in a particular topic/subject, or perhaps you are yourself, you might want to check out some of these offerings.
FREE TECH BOOKS - covers computer science, programming & scripting, mathematics, and other related fields
FREELOAD PRESS - mostly maths and computers, but a few other books are available, such as "Writing Exploratory Essays". Just note - the site says "most" of the books are free, but some have a end-users fee.
WIKIBOOKS - covers a very wide range of topics, languages, sciences, history, and more. Has a section called wikijunior specifically for younger children. This site, being a wiki, is definitely a work in progress, but it does have some nice reference resources.Labels: curriculum chatter
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Creative writing with Aesop's Fables.
Here's something a little different from your typical creative writing prompt:
CREATIVE WRITING USING WORDLESS PICTURE BOOKS
I really do like the concept and think it would work well for my dyslexic daughter, but, well, *ahem*, I don't want to buy any wordless picture books. So instead, I popped on over to Project Gutenberg to see what I could come up with, and I found this: THE AESOP FOR CHILDREN. It has lots of lovely illustrations, and as they are WOO! public domain, I can print as many as I want. My daughter loves animals of all kinds, so I picked several and now I'm going to let her choose one and write a short story about what she thinks is happening in the picture. Then we can read the "real" story together and see how hers compares, in a same/different sense, not a "this one is good, but yours is bad" sense. I think she'll enjoy this much more than a word prompt of the "Imagine you're sailing a boat on a jungle river...." kind.
Aesop's Fables is by no means the only illustrated book at Project Gutenberg. If you have a child who might need new ideas for writing, poke around the PG site and see what you can find. :)Labels: curriculum chatter
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Week 4 of American History and Language Arts.
My advice to new homeschoolers.
I really wasn't sure if I was going to do this post, as part of the PASS THE TORCH HOMESCHOOL TIPS AND ADVICE CAMPAIGN because a) I'm not sure I wouldn't just be saying the same things everyone else is saying and b) I haven't a clue what a Mr. Linky is.
But I decided I did want to mention the 3 things I have found the most crucial to homeschooling.
1) Read, read, read, and then read some more. Research homeschooling like you were about to have to give a five hour lecture to a crowd of people who have never heard of homeschooling. Read every single thing you can find and get your hands on. If you don't know where to start - google it. Your reading list will be enormous after just one simple web search.
2) Join a support group or co-op. There is a school of thought with some people to not do this as it sounds too "school like" and so they refuse to get involved. But a support group is invaluable to you as a resource where you can meet other homeschooling families, find a mentor in someone who's been at this for awhile now, and give your kids a chance to make new friends. It can also provide you with a chance for your kids to do some things that may be closed to them otherwise, like perform in a drama or group sports. To find a local group, try googling "homeschool support group" plus the name of your city or town. Or, google "homeschool" plus the name of your state, to find a state-wide association that can then point you in the right direction.
3) DON'T DON'T DON'T rush out and buy a pre-packaged curriculum until you have researched it THOROUGHLY. Try this site: HOMESCHOOL REVIEWS to find out what other parents think about anything you are considering buying. You can spend (and waste) a fortune on curricula that ends up being something you hardly, if ever, use. Even if you've pulled your child from school in the middle of the year and have no idea what to do next - do NOT rush out and buy something. Go to the library and check out some books and spend a little while de-schooling and de-toxing. Let your child read all and as much as he wants while you spend the time to research things and make an informed decision. A few weeks of de-schooling, or even a month or more if you and your child needs it, can easily be made up later.
(And remember, you don't HAVE to buy any curriculum at all! See the rest of my blog for more about that.)Labels: curriculum chatter, general chatter
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Geography & Science Week 4.
Free penmanship font & printables.
In THIS POST I pointed out a website with a free cursive writing font. THIS SITE has a free downloadable font for manuscript writing. (Including the primary-school dotted lines.) Scroll down the page a bit to find it.
Also - a link from that site takes you HERE where you can create your own flash cards, game boards, study sheets and other printables - including tracing sheets for beginner writers for free. Be sure to check out the "List Wizard" to help you create your word lists. Pretty cool! :)Labels: curriculum chatter
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Win, Lose, or Draw - Homeschool style.
Anyone remember "Win, Lose, or Draw!"? It was a sorta cheesy game show based primarily on Pictionary. (You can read about it in more detail HERE.)
So what's the homeschool version? Simple: play the game, award points instead of money, and for your cards of items to be drawn, use vocabulary words or terms from subjects you're currently studying. For instance, as we're learning American History right now, some of our terms might be "The Mayflower" or "Pocahontas". I write a bunch of these on plain index cards* and we use a large dry erase board to work with.
To make the game fair, because I already know every potential answer, I work only as an "artist" - not a guesser. And we don't use teams. Everyone not drawing (but me, when I'm not the artist) has a chance to guess the answer. The person who gets the answer right in under 30 seconds gets 15 points; if it takes between 30 and 60 seconds, it's 10 points; between 60 and 90 seconds, it's 5 points; between 90 and 120 seconds is 2 points, and after that the round ends and no points are awarded. The person with the most points at the end of the game gets bragging rights. We actually have a notepad where we've been recording the winners and how may points they earned. And yeah, because I can't guess, I'm nowhere in the winner's circle. *Elaborate sigh*. ;) To determine who's the artist, we simply take turns. Everyone draws an equal number of times.
We've played this game with science terms, history terms, Bible heroes and more. We usually use a mix from several subjects to make things more interesting. This is a fun "rainy day" game or a good game to play if your kids are showing signs of "spring fever" and can't seem to focus on their regular lessons.
*I cut the index cards into five pieces so that we aren't wasting them and after we've played one game, we keep the cards for another one - and write on the backs.Labels: curriculum chatter, general chatter
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Lesson Plans and Copywork.
The Week 3 Language Arts plans for 5th and 7th grade are uploaded. Also, I've added 5 more OT Bible Copywork pages and another Secret Garden page.
I do not know why the links in the pdfs won't work for some people so if anyone has ever had this issue and solved it, PLEASE let me know how! Thanks! I can't seem to find anything wrong myself, so I clearly don't know what I'm looking for/at!Labels: curriculum chatter
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Neat Art Ideas.
Just a quick "blogging fly-by". I still have to clean up from my daughter's all-day birthday celebrating. This is definitely one of those times where I need to recite the dirty dishes poem:
"Thank God for dirty dishes;
They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry,
We're eating very well
With home, health, and happiness,
I shouldn't want to fuss;
By the stack of evidence,
God's been very good to us."
~author unknown.
Aside from my mountain of dishes - why on earth do homemade refried beans take so many pots? Hee! - I wanted to point out THIS CUTE SITE for some awesome ideas for art projects. And not only are there some cool "art sparkers", but there're also links you can follow for more information. Be sure to explore the whole site!
Then there's THIS SITE of "Incredible Art Education Resources" - with lots of links and lesson plans.
Switching gears - I have not yet posted the week 3 LA plans. It's been pointed out to me that for at least one person, the links in the pdfs aren't working and I'm trying to figure that out. One way or the other, I will post the plans some time tomorrow. Hopefully with that problem solved!
Hope everyone had a fantastic Father's Day! Did you go stargazing? We only did so-so on the constellations, but we were able to find Venus easily enough. Yay, us. ;)Labels: curriculum chatter, general chatter
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