Category: Homeschool Den

To Homeschool You Need… 12

To Homeschool You Need…

Love The most important ingredient of homeschooling is simply love. Homeschooling is about the relationships, not the curriculum we use.  Some days will be wonderful, other days… not as noteworthy, but at the end of the day did we connect wit the kids, snuggle with the kids, help them find their own voice and strengths. I help motivate them and support them. I try to keep in mind that at...

Homeschool socialization 6

Homeschool Questions Answered: What About Socialization?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked by people “What about socialization?” or something to that effect. Depending on the tone of the person asking I’ve responded in different ways.  My answer has also changed as the kids have gotten older. These days in answering that question I often start with my own thoughts about socialization… “well, I want the kids to be good listeners, polite, well-rounded,...

Reasons for Homeschooling 9

Homeschool Questions Answered: Why Do People Homeschool?

People are often curious why homeschoolers have chosen this route. After all, the vast majority of people choose to send their children to public school.  On the other hand, there are now more children being home-schooled than are enrolled in charter and voucher schools combined. I read recently that there are now over 2 million homeschooled children. In 1999, three reasons for homeschooling were the most frequently cited: 49 percent...

Massive Hornets Nest, Before-After Room Shot and other Summer Stuff 0

Massive Hornets Nest, Before-After Room Shot and other Summer Stuff

I remember reading once that you are never supposed to write about not blogging. “Boring!” someone said.  I still feel the need to apologize or explain the infrequent posts, though! We’re still in summer mode and while  I think I’ve more-or-less hammered out our fall semester and have been busy browsing and purchasing books, scoping out cool science experiments and activities, making some worksheets and games for our units, I’ve felt...

When Kids Bicker, Argue…How to Address Sibling Fights! 2

When Kids Bicker, Argue…How to Address Sibling Fights!

We’re in the home stretch of summer vacation. It’s very hot (very, very hot!) so we’re spending a lot of time indoors. At times the kids play like angels. Their creativity is inspiring. Their music and shows are lovely. Other times? They argue and are at each other’s throats. Nasty words come out. Tears run like Niagara Falls. What do we do to help alleviate that sibling bickering? I notice...

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Worksheets to Accompany the Bob Books Set 2

Earlier this summer ED switched back to the Bob Book series for a little while and I made some worksheets to go along with them.  She really liked working on these. I hope someone else finds them useful. As always, they are free to download. If you’d like to share or pin, go ahead just link back to my original post. Thanks! If you use them I’d love to hear...

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My Skin Cancer Scare

Here in the U.S. we hear about the importance of staying out of the sun during peak hours and using sun screen.  Over in Australia, there was a HUGE campaign to get people to protect themselves from the sun.  “Slip, Slop, Slap” was an advertisement we saw ALL the time on TV. Slip on a shirt, slop on the sunscreen, slap on a hat.  The kids in our small town...

Parkour — A Fun Sport for Kids 4

Parkour — A Fun Sport for Kids

My older two kids went to parkour camp. It was a day camp — and they absolutely LOVED it!  We heard about parkour because their cousin out in California has been doing it for some time. My son described it this morning as “doing amazing things without dying.”  Imagine climbing and jumping over obstacles, climbing up metal bars, running up the wall and doing flips, swinging from ring to ring,...

Trash Crafts (9-foot trash-o-saurus and more) 0

Trash Crafts (9-foot trash-o-saurus and more)

A wonderful way to recycle, inspire and create is to save your clean trash. Set that out along with feathers, googly eyes, glue, pipe cleaners and other assorted things to see what you child can come up with.  Egg cartons were a huge hit with the girls last week.  While I decorated a tissue box… the girls set to work on their own cute puppets (no input from me)! Our...

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Patriotic Songs for Kids

Earlier this week, I shared the 10-page packet of summer camp songs I’ve been singing with the kids.  With the 4th of July right around the corner, I also put together a set of patriotic songs to sing with them. If you are interested, here are some of the songs we’ve been singing (and learning):  American Patriotic Song Packet   Related Posts: You might also be interested in our free...

playing the glockenspiel 0

Glockenspiel — A Wonderful First Instrument for Kids

Yesterday I mentioned that we are trying to add in more music to our summer.  I shared a packet of some fun kids songs we’ve been singing. We’ve also been more regular about practicing instruments. DD is learning a new piece on the piano and I started sitting down with ED again to help her learn some pieces on the glockenspiel. I started all of the kids around the age...

Most Popular Posts From this School Year 0

Most Popular Posts From this School Year

Since I am wrapping up the school year, I thought I would go through and share some of the most popular posts from this school year. Most of them had to do with some of the free materials I made, but two of them had to do with family life in general–3-The Most Stressful Number of Kids and the post I wrote just after our beloved Vovo, hubby’s grandmother, died — The...

Homeschool Students Fight to Play on Public School Teams 0

Homeschool Students Fight to Play on Public School Teams

A couple of days ago, NPR ran a story on All Things Considered about how homeschool students in some states are fighting to play on public school teams. It is an issue fraught with emotion and politics. The laws vary state to state.  Policies are changing from year to year. In fact just in the past two or three years, there has been a lot of legislation being considered by...

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Homeschool Year in Review (Grades 2 and 4)

This is such a fun post to write! This is where I get to reminisce and think about the amazing year we’ve had.  It has been a blast… tiring at times (particularly in February when LD had a lot of out-of-town gymnastics meets, I had lots of meetings and was training for a half-marathon). But looking back, we had a fulfilling, successful year. We do a lot of our activities...