Closing down shop

This blog was started as part of a community project that I was going to be a part of. Since then the community has fallen apart and so we won't be doing the project. I'm going to leave this blog up since I've linked to it from my other blog but won't be posting here anymore. Thanks!

What do all of these people have in common?

C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Pearl S. Buck, Hans Christian Andersen, Helen Beatrix Potter, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Whoopi Goldberg, Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Charlie Chaplin?

Take a moment to read this article and find out!

Art is an important part of homeschool

Have you been meaning to find new art projects for your children? Or do you simply think that art is not important?

Well, art is a lot more important than you may think. It teaches children to be creative and to think outside of the lines. Art is also something that your child can take with them for life. Therefore, you can see that art is important.

Now that you understand the importance of art, you may be thinking to yourself that this is going to be really hard because you are not creative. This does not have to be the case though. As this article suggests, there are lots of places where you can find art projects to use in your homeschool.

Take some time, do some reading and begin getting creative with your children today.

Curriculum for children who have special needs

Finding pre-packaged curriculum will take some searching so that you are sure to find what will work best for you. If you have a child with special needs, this searching may take even more work. This is because you will want to be sure to find something that will definitely work with your child while sparking a love learning in them. Spending time to do this will really pay off for you though. Once you see that light bulb go off in your child's mind or that spark of interest flare up, you will be very happy that you have spent this time searching and researching. Here are some of the things that you should keep in mind whenever you start your "hunt."

Unit Studies: The answer to teaching multiple ages of students at 1 time

If you are a parent who is homeschooling more than 1 child, you know just how difficult it can be. One way in which you can make homeschooling easier for yourself is through unit studies. Through unit studies you can teach multiple ages of children about a topic at the same time. This is very beneficial as it will make your teaching easier. However, it is going to take you some extra time in order to put a unit study together. Of course, you could also purchase a pre-packaged unit study to do with your children. If you would like more information about what unit studies are and how to put them together, I invite you to take a moment to read an article I wrote, entitled "Frugal Homeschool Unit Studies."

The advantages and disadvantages of unschooling

I am going to take a moment to talk about myself here, which is something that I do not do too often but I feel that doing so will help some of you out right now...

I have gone through various phases of homeschooling my daughter. We started out with doing unit studies that I created. This did well for us for quite a while but I soon got burnt out with everything that I was trying to do, so we started doing various workbooks. Of course, my dd didn't like them 1 bit. So, after figuring out that it really was not worth fighting with her, I slowed down a bit. This is when I met a radical unschooler and started to really understand what unschooling is about. While we are by no means radical unschoolers I have embraced this lifestyle and it works quite well for us. The reason I say that we are not radical is that whenever my dd says she's interested in something, I'll look for worksheets to do about the topic. For instance, she is now interested in sharks and so I've gone to such places as Enchanted Learning and printed out some worksheets for us to work through together.

My point is that I really recommend that you go with the ebb and flow of homeschooling instead of fighting it. You are going to have to spend some time figuring out what method really works for you and your family. If you are thinking about unschooling, like we do, then here is an article that I have written about the advantages and disadvantages of this method. I encourage you to take a look, weigh the advantages with the disadvantages and then decide whether or not this method will work for you and your family. Whatever you decide is great, I just think it's important to think everything through. Good luck!

Unit Studies

A fun homeschooling method is the Unit Studies (also known as thematic units or integrated studies) aproach. This approach teaches everything in 1 unit instead of several different subjects. The Unit Study has a common theme running through everything that you do as all areas are blended together. As such, the children will get to experience how the world them in interconnected.

This approach can be easily adapted to any other style of teaching that you use. Herein everything is neatly tied together in 1 package. If you use a little creativity, you can actually change any pre-packaged curriculum to fit this aproach. This is something that big families enjoy because children of various ages can learn together in their own ways.