Homeschooling With Squidoo

Squidoo is one of the most fun, interesting, and useful websites that I visit each day. Squidoo is a service where anyone can easily create a one-page overview on a topic of his or her choice. These pages are called lenses and they provide a condensed look at various topics.

Building lenses is a wonderful way for students to express their thoughts and ideas and it is a fun alternative to report writing. Give your student a topic (or let them choose their own) and assign them the task of researching, writing, and publishing a lens.

Squidoo is evolving into a growing directory of information on a vast array of topics, and browsing the lenses can be a wonderful learning experience as well.

My husband, my son, and I have all created lenses. Some are educational, some are entertaining, and some are silly.

Each lens has the potential to generate revenue because one may add links to products, link to existing websites, and each lens also includes Google Adsense Ads. One has the option of designating a charity to receive the proceeds from their lens, choosing to receive cash payments, or a combination of both.

For me, creating lenses is an easy way to donate to my favorite charities, while having fun and expressing myself at the same time.

Lenses are also wonderful marketing tools, and the effort required to create, maintain, and promote them is a fantastic educational experience. Students can use their lenses to help their favorite charities, or raise money for a special goal.

I hope you take time to check out Squidoo and give it a try. I think you will have fun with it. If you do create lenses, I'd love to hear about them. Please post a comment here and tell me about it or stop by my Home Educators lens at Squidoo and say hello there.

Summer Learning

We finished our first school year as a homeschool family and it was a wonderful experience. We had our assessment with a local teacher to satisfy the state requirements, and we were both so proud of our accomplishments as student and teacher.

My son chose to continue with some of his studies over the summer months, at a slower pace. I can't imagine a child in public school volunteering for summer school at his age. He is also writing for two different blogs, The Teen Cafe and The Gamer's Cafe.

In addition, we are volunteering each weekend at our local ferret shelter, which may be one of the most satisfying learning experiences of all. Summer is tough for animal shelters. They shelters fill up with unwanted babies, and animals that have been dumped in parks and surrendered, but people are busy and volunteers are hard to come by. Volunteering at a local animal shelter is good for everyone involved. Your teen children learn valuable skills, and responsibility, and the shelters benefit from the extra help. You can visit Petfinder to find shelters in your area and see if they can use some volunteer help over the summer. Even if you can only visit once a month, it will be helpful.

What is your family doing over the summer? We'd love to hear stories from other homeschool families.

Our New Home

Home, Not Alone has moved to our new address:
www.home-not-alone.com

Please update your bookmarks! The old address should still forward you here, however.

This site continues to be part of The Mommy Mall, but I moved some of my blogs over to a new host called 1&1 because I have been hearing good things about them. My new host came with a new domain, so I figured this was as good a time as any to give this site its own address.

Please feel free to add your comments and questions. I always look forward to hearing from other homeschoolers.

Julianne

Alpha Omega

The FedEx truck delivered our big box from Alpha Omega today! We used their LIFEPAC program for History and Geography this year. We loved it so much that going forward we are going to use LIFEPAC for Science, History, Geography, and Health.

These are a great deal and we took advantage of a sale to stock up for next year.

Of all the curriculum that we use, the LIFEPACs are the most convenient. The lessons are contained in student workbooks and each workbook includes self-tests and exams. The teacher's materials include the answer keys, learning activities, and even a handy lesson planner, and gradebook. The design of this program makes it easy to stay organized.

The best thing about the program is that they make the lessons interesting. My son actually enjoys the lessons, and asked me to use them again for next year!