Homeschool

Homeschooling With Squidoo

2006-12-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

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

2006-07-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

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!

Busy Busy

2006-04-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

Homeschooling has been keeping us busy, but it has been great. I really appreciate this opportunity to have more quality time with my teenage son.

He expressed an interest in working with me on The Mommy Mall, so I hired him and gave him a project to create a teen section, called The Teen Cafe'. He is to write regular reviews of music, movies, and books that kids his age would enjoy. He would love to be a writer, so this gives him practical experience. The site is still in development, but I think he is doing a wonderful job.

This has been a rough week, however. Our sweet Baby Kitty went to the bridge on Monday, and our beloved Uncle Hal left us on Tuesday. Cancer took them both from us. We will miss them both desperately.

The lesson here is to live well and enjoy the time we have on Earth.

Once Upon a Time

2006-03-24T07:28:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I was a new mom, a big geek, and was just getting involved in this Internet thing. This was about 1997 and some unknown company called The Mining Company approached me to create a site about Cleveland, Ohio. I already had a Cleveland forum, which was an attempt to move my BBS system to the Internet. Well, long story short, they talked me into it and I became a Guide. I later became a Guide to Computer Action Games, as well. During my tenure, The Mining Company went through many changes, and became About.com. It also became less and less about writing, and more and more about how many ads they could stuff on a page. Fortunately, I cashed in my stock options and got out of there before the bottom dropped out.

What does this have to do with Homeschooling? Well, I met a number of very talented people when I was a guide, and one of them was Ann Zeise of A to Z Home's Cool. Back then she was called the Homeschooling Guide and the Milpitas Guide. At the time, I was a busy new mom and was not at all interested in homeschooling. I just mentioned to her what as shame it was that I never spent time at her site, because I may have started sooner with my children, rather than wasting their time in public school. I truly believe that my daughter only attends school because she is a social butterfly, and that she is learning almost nothing. My son is eager to learn, so he has absorbed more from public school than my daughter, but I honestly believe he learned more on his own, than he did sitting in classes that were far below his aptitude level.

Anyway, the point of this post is that Ann has an amazing resource in her site, A to Z Home's Cool and should be required reading for all new parents. I may not live long enough to visit every page and every great link on this site, but I can work on it, one day at a time.

Cable in The Classroom

2006-03-21T11:40:00.000-08:00

Cable in the Classroom was created to help educators take advantage of commercial free educational programming. Typically, these programs are broadcast very early in the morning or on weekends, so many people are not aware of all that is available.

This programming is ideal for a home educator, particularly if you have a TiVo or other recording device. Generally, most educational programming is licensed to be copied and kept for one year for use in a classroom or homeschool setting. I set our TiVo to record educational programming every day, and then I select lesson plans from among those programs. There are lessons available for many different subjects, from Science, to Social Studies, to Language Arts, Heath, and more. TiVo also recently announced that they will be adding a new feature called TiVo Kidzone, to make it easier to find and record educational programming.

Cable in the Classroom's Magazine, Access Learning provides programming guides and lesson plans, and learning resources for these programs.

A&E Classroom is broadcast, commercial free, every weekday morning. The classroom calendar with associated lesson plans is posted on their site. They also have several hundred teaching guides that correspond with A&E Videos and DVDs.

The History Channel, also provides a commercial free hour of educational programming every weekday morning. They also have an online classroom calendar with associated lesson plans, when available. Like A&E, they have study guides available that correspond to History Channel Videos.

Discovery School offers free lesson plans and other teaching materials that correspond with Discovery Channel's educational programming.

Don't forget that March is Women's History Month

Language Arts Curriculum

2006-03-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

I'm very pleased with the language arts curriculum we selected. We chose a wonderfully challenging vocabulary series for grades 5-11, called Vocabulary from Classical Roots, from Educators Publishing Service.

This series was recommended by Cathy Duffy in her book, 100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum and by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise in their book, The Well-Trained Mind.

The student books and teacher's guides are reasonably priced and published in convenient workbooks that can be written in, or used as masters. The teacher's manual provides the answer key, teaching suggestions, extended lesson ideas, and literary references for each lesson.

Welcome to Spring!
Today is the Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

Two Great Homeschooling Books

2006-03-18T19:37:00.000-08:00

I finished reading two wonderful homeschooling books that I would eagerly recommend to other home educators as they were recommended to me.

The first book is 100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing The Right Curriculum And Approach For Your Child's Learning Style
This is an excellent reference guide for all home educators. I discovered quite a few wonderful programs and curriculum ideas from this book. The author, Cathy Duffy, gives detailed reviews of her recommendations. She also includes a wonderful chart which rates the curriculum based on things like learning style, teaching style, prep time, amount of writing, religion, and much more. The author also has an associated website which posts reviews, updates, and articles related to homeschooling.

The other book is The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home
This is an essential book for anyone interested in classical education. The book includes fantastic recommendations for reasonably priced, well-designed homeschool curriculum, too. The book not only includes very helpful reviews of specific curriculum, but it also explains the concept of classical education, and includes recommendations for each stage of the trivium. I also appreciate the fact that the book includes contact information for the various publishers mentioned in the book. This book also has a very helpful companion website.

Please let me know what you think of these. I would really appreciate hearing your recommendations of great homeschooling books and websites.

Social Studies Curriculum

2006-03-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

We spent quite a bit of time trying to find the best social studies curriculum. As an eighth grader, my son was learning American History when he was in public school. He wanted to stick with the same type of chronological format and he said he would prefer to use textbooks or workbooks, rather than anything Internet-based or DVD.

I received a lot of recommendations for LIFEPAC from Alpha Omega, and they offered exactly what we were looking for. The program uses 10 workbooks, plus a teacher's guide. The price is very reasonable, and the especially nice thing is that you can purchase just the workbooks you need.

Since we were starting near the end of the year, I was able to purchase the book that corresponds to the lessons he was working on in public school. What a wonderful idea! Lifepac has other k-12 curriculum, designed to teach the core subjects, plus a variety of electives.

Thinking About Homeschooling? See AOP's Educational Options!

Saxon Homeschool Algebra

2006-03-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

We selected the Saxon Homeschool program for our Algebra 1 curriculum and are very pleased. My son enjoys the lessons and they are designed to take only 15-20 minutes to teach. My husband is taking charge of the Algebra studies, so he reviews each lesson with our son in the evening and then completes the unit problems the next day. The lessons are easy to follow and just challenging enough to be interesting. I can see why the Saxon Homeschool programs came highly recommended. They seem to appreciate and understand the way homeschoolers teach.

The products can be purchased directly from Saxon, but Amazon has great deals on both new and gently used editions of the same books.

Algebra 1: An Incremental Development
This is the main Algebra 1 textbook.

Algebra 1: Home School
This is the answer guide and test answers that you will need to homeschool.

Algebra 1: Home School-tests
This booklet includes 30 test forms.

Algebra 1: An Incremental Development Solutions Manual
This optional solutions manual includes step-by-step solutions for each problem in the textbook. This is very helpful for explaining solutions and understanding the processes.

Daily Writing Journal

2006-03-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

I believe that it is very important for students to express their creativity and practice writing daily. One of our first homeschool projects was to create and customize a blog to be used as a daily writing journal.

Each day I give my son a writing prompt that he may use for his daily post. He also has the option to use a topic of his own instead. The daily writing prompts come from a variety of sources:

The Homeschool Learning Network, provides a daily writing prompt to members.

CanTeach has a list of writing prompts on their site.

Alternately, I may use an interesting topic from the media or our daily life.

My son's daily writing journal is called El Blogo and he really enjoys posting to it.

For those of you concerned about your child's privacy online, there is no need to include personal information on the blog, and blogs are easy for parents to monitor.

Blogger is an excellent free blogging tool from Google that is easy for anyone to setup and use. I have been creating Blogger blogs for years.

Jumping in!

2006-03-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

We started our adventures in homeschooling on March, 1, 2006. We were disappointed with the school district and the lack of educational opportunities for our gifted teen. After considerable soul searching and research, we decided to take the plunge.

After one week, I can say that I am sorry we did not do this a long time ago. What a joy it is to teach our son and see his enthusiasm for learning. I told my husband that it is like pouring water on a sponge. He soaks it up and he is ready for more.

I know that we have a lot to learn, but I'm looking forward to going down this road with our family.