Category: Starting to Homeschool

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What are Some of the Benefits and Challenges of Homeschooling?

The past week or two, I’ve been doing a series of posts about homeschooling… trying to address the incredibly challenging question, “How do I start homeschooling?”  Now that I’ve (more or less) finished talking about the nitty gritty issues of curriculum, I wanted to spend a few days talking about some of the more nebulous aspects of homeschooling.  Today I want to talk about some of the benefits and challenges...

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Finding a Language Arts Curriculum (Writing, Grammar, etc.)

Welcome back to the our series on how to start homeschooling. During the past week, I have provided information about some of the homeschool curriculums available out there in the different subject areas. Today I wanted to share some of the writing and grammar programs available to homeschoolers. This is not an exhaustive list. You may want to order the (free)  Rainbow Resource Catalog, which is packed with homeschool reviews.  But these...

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Homeschool Science Curriculum Options

  We tend to create our own units and I’ll highlight some of our most popular posts below, but first I wanted to share some of the science curriculums available to homeschoolers. Once again this is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you a place to start. Real Science 4 Kids NOEO Science R.E.A.L Science Odyssey Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (by B. Nebel) – K-2 Science Curriculum Elementary...

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Hands-On Geography Activities for Ages 4-10

There are so many fun things you can do with your kids to help them gain an understanding of the geography of our amazing world! Here are some of the geography activities we use in our homeschool. Over the years we have made maps… with sand, dirt and grass seed like our Nile River Valley Out of clay, like our Ancient Greece (and Mediterranean Sea) map  (Ancient Greece Geography Project, Ancient Greece...

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Choosing or Creating a History Curriculum

  When we first started homeschooling, I read The Well Trained Mind. The thought of covering history in four year cycles sounded like a wonderful way to approach history. After all, the kids would build on their former knowledge… learning about the ancient world several times, but going into more depth each time round.  History was broken into  these four year cycles: Ancients Middle Ages and Early Renaissance Late Renaissance/Early Modern...

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Math Worksheets, Game Boards, Lapbook and more (All Free!)

This is the second part in my talk about math curriculums. In the previous post, not only did I list some of the better known homeschool math curriculums, but I shared 15+ ideas for making math engaging and fun! (Math Curriculums and Active Engaging Math Activities) Today I wanted to share some of the materials I’ve made for the kids. I’ve found that the kids really enjoy when I make...

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Math Curriculum Options & Active, Engaging Math Activity Ideas

In this series, I thought I’d try to offer new homeschoolers a starting point for finding homeschool curriculums that works for your family. Today I’ll be talking about math. It’s sometimes tricky to find the curriculum that works well for you and your kids. It’s helpful to ask around (online and in your community) to see what will work for your child.  If you can go to a homeschool curriculum...

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How Do You Know What to Teach the Kids? Finding a Homeschool Curriculum

I’ve been asked fairly regularly, “How do you know what to teach the kids?”  That is definitely a daunting task, especially if you are pulling your child out of public/private school mid-year.  Homeschool does not have to look like traditional school and there’s no rule saying that learning has to come from books or a certain set of books.  There are a lot of homeschool curriculum options out there… and...

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How To Start Homeschooling

When parents are thinking about homeschooling, they want to know exactly “how to start.”  That’s such a huge question I’ve actually written a book… or rather, most of a book. It’s about 200 pages and I’m still not quite done!  But I still want to write a shorter blog post to help those parents wondering what to do to get started homeschooling. First things first, make sure you find out...

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Back to (Home)School Shopping List

The back to school sales are starting up where we live… and across the other side of the country, the kids’ cousins are back in the classroom next week. With that in mind, I thought it was time to share our homeschool shopping list. We try to top up on various supplies while the back-to-school sales are on.   Here are some of the things that we use in our...

How Long Will We Keep Homeschooling? (Homeschooling Through High School) 16

How Long Will We Keep Homeschooling? (Homeschooling Through High School)

This is the question our family gets asked most often… or some variation of it… Will you homeschool through high school? How will you teach the tough subjects like calculus? My son will be entering 6th grade this year… In our area he would be entering middle school.  DD is a 4th grader and ED will be in 1st grade. (You know, we’re homeschoolers so really they do work on...

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How and Why Did We Get Started Homeschooling?

As I start off this series, I realize there might be some readers who are fairly new to our blog.  I thought I’d share how we got started homeschooling (and blogging about our adventures). Homeschooling was on our radar even before we had kids. My older sister had kids before we did. They decided to homeschool their kids just about the time we had our son, LD. Also, my cousin...