Homeschool Tips Tricks Ideas

Today we launch our latest Ebook! DaddyTeller™ has arrived.

Focusing on helping any Dad tell stories to his kids, this affordable Ebook is available today with an instant download by visiting http://www.daddyteller.com .

(Moms can use this Ebook, too. Just know that it’s written in guy-speak.)

Written by award-winning K. Sean Buvala, a 23 year veteran of the storytelling movement, we help Dad put down the storybooks and look into the eyes of his children while he tells them stories that pass on values, build communication, improve reading and math skills and create memories that will live far beyond the moment.

Filled with training and coaching, the book includes 8 stories with step-by-step instructions on what to say and how to say it. Going beyond fathering tips, this is a very specific guidebook.

The “DaddyTeller™: Be a Hero to Your Kids and Teach Them What’s Important by Telling Them One Simple Story at a Time” Ebook is available now at the initial launch price of just $14.95.

This Ebook is just the beginning of the DaddyTeller™ project. Be part of the first to join this unique learning and telling community.

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Homeschool Education – Is it a Radical Or Right Choice?
By Cyra Miles (Guest Editorial Post)

Is it really a radical choice for parents to decide homeschool? Or should we applaud these parents for making the right choice about their children’s education?

Some parents nowadays are thinking-out-of-the-box to make sure that their children don’t have only the best education but possess also the right values, principles and attitude towards life. There is an apparent increase in the number of homeschool students. According to U.S. Department of Education, there is approximately 1,096,000 students who are educated at home in spring of 2003. It is a big leap (approximately 29% increase) compared to spring of 1999 which has only an estimated 850,000 homeschoolers.

Let us delve as why more parents are now taking the radical choice of opting for homeschool education for their children.

Away from school bullying . This is one of the primary reasons cited by parents who homeschooled their children. School bullying is very prevalent nowadays. The National Youth Violence Prevention stated that there are over 5.7 million youth who are bullied at school. It is about 30% of total youth population in the United States.

It is a disturbing situation with a negative impact to children being bullied at school. Bullied students live a stressful life as they become fearful with possible bullying incidents again. They are scared to be alone like being in the bathroom or in the hallway. Victims will have less interest in attending school also and even the task of riding a bus becomes a terrifying activity.

This results in depression, low self-esteem, physical illness, loneliness and in worst cases, suicidal thoughts.

Most bullied children also find it difficult to learn at school as they struggle coping up with their fear and anxiety. They can hardly focus in the classroom.

Other Safety Concerns. Homeschooler parents are worried about the safety of their children in the traditional school. Safety concerns include drugs, negative peer pressure and accidents. Some isolated cases include children being gunned down or murdered at school. Children’s safety at school is unpredictably at stake.

Some homeschooler parents perceived that homeschool children are safer compared to children attending a regular school.

Quality Learning. Parents are the primary teacher and models of the children. A ratio of one teacher to two or three students makes a huge difference in the quality of education delivered to a teacher handling 30 to 40 children in a regular classroom.

Also, the fact that it is their children makes education is more personalized and the result is far better. Schedules for homeschool are flexible also so children are not forced to wake up early to catch the school bus and options for what the children want to learn for the day are possible.

Better Person. Parents always want to instill good values to their children. It is one of their intention and hope that their children become a better person but when children attend a regular school, parents can no longer control the other factors such friends, schoolmates and school environment. These are external factors that can influence the children either positively or negatively.

Oftentimes children acquire attitudes from their friends at school. Children are vulnerable to adapting certain manners or attitudes which are relative to the kind of friends or clique they mingle and hang out with. On some occasions, they are negatively influence because of peer pressure. For the child to be part of the group or to be labeled ‘cool’ at school, sometimes they do things out of their way.

Parents of homeschoolers prefer to train and raise their children the way they would have wanted them to be. They believe that they are more effective in instilling moral and religious values.

24/7. This is the best advantage of homeschool. Parents are with their children 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Experience parents always encourage new parents to spend as much time as they can with their children especially in their growing years. This is the stage where children are still dependent to their parents. Once they reach puberty, they now prefer to spend time with their peers and once they reach adulthood, they will spend more time with colleagues, friends and at work.

Strong bond. As parents and children spend more time together than the average parents whose children are attending a regular school, the opportunity to develop profound bond and strengthened relationship is inevitable.

Homeschool reinforces the value of family.

Flexibility. There are parents who are always mobile because of work-related issues. Some parents find homeschool very convenient because it allows them to travel without much constraint. Travelling can be planned anytime as there are no worries of missing the classes or interrupting school activities. It indeed gives more flexibility to parents and children to travel.

Without doubt, homeschool education offers many benefits to your children and to you as parents though critics always question the socialization life of the homeschool children. Are they really being deprived of their socialization skills?

Homeschool curriculum nowadays have supplement activities like pottery classes, museum visits, karate classes and so on. There are many institutions also that offer and organize different activities for homeschool children. If you can just do a little research and get connected with the right network or community of homeschoolers, you will be amazed with the available socialization opportunities for homeschool children.

Socialization is not limited at school only. There are so many venues that children can develop their socialization skills.

So, is it really a radical or right choice to homeschool? Parents know their children better than anyone else and so, too, the answer to this question.

Statistics Resources: www.safeyouth.org, www.ed.gov

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Cyra Miles is a freelance writer who is passionate in her writing craft. Visit http://www.cyramiles.com or follow her at http://www.thepassionateslave.com to discover more about her passion.

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The Mailbox to Improve Reading in Homeschool
by Michelle B.

A fun and easy method for increasing the pleasurable use of reading in your homeschool is through the use of a mailbox. Your children will be excited to find mail addressed to them and will want to be able to read their notes. The use of the mailboxes will fit into any style of homeschool education, from unschooling to classical homeschooling.

First, everyone needs their own mailbox. Crafting a mailbox can be an art project easy or complicated. Find a cardboard box sized to fit the space allowed. Cut a slot for sliding the notes in at the top and cut a folding door near the bottom for mail removal. Shoeboxes make great mailboxes, too. Oatmeal boxes work well. The mail slot can be cut in the plastic lid, and the child pulls the lid off to retrieve the mail. Cereal boxes can be used as well. Tape the top closed and add the mail slot and door. And decorate! Cut a red flag out of thin cardboard and attach it to the side of the box with a paper brad. When your boxes are in use your kids will be checking the flag to see if they should look inside their mailbox. Supply a mailbox for each child or have your children make their own. And don’t forget to provide one for Mom and Dad, too! Everyone needs to print their name on their box. The boxes can be placed in a row on a bookshelf, or even at each person’s bedroom door.

If you wish to purchase a mailbox, there are many to choose from,such as a standard steel mailbox or a standard plastic mailbox. You can find a toy mailbox to hang on the dooror stand on the floor.

So, what goes in the mailboxes? The whole point of mailbox writing is to get your children more involved in reading and writing for pleasure, not for correcting grammar and spelling or suggesting they get more involved with their schoolwork. If the kids know that every note they write to mom comes back with those red marks, they will lose interest and see it as simply a school subject.

Write a note to each of your children, regardless of their age or reading ability, as often as you can. Put a reminder in your school planner or calendar so you can keep the messages coming at a regular pace. Your children will look forward to these notes and will check their mailboxes often! Have your children write to you, as well, and each other. Keep the writing supplies readily available. Perhaps mechanical pencils, a fancy pen, attractive note paper and a few envelopes, etc.can be placed in a basket on the school supply shelf, or at the writing station if you have one. Place the completed correspondence in a basket or a “to be delivered” mailbox, and your child can be the mailcarrier. If you have several children who would like the delivery job, perhaps they can be assigned different days of the week.

You know your children best, so choose something you know will get their attention.Write a question for your child to answer in a note back to you. If the note is beyond the child’s reading ability, he will bring it to someone to read it to him. If your child likes to look things up, ask a question she will have to find the answer for using the internet or a book, such as, “Where do avocado trees grow?” or, “How deep is the Grand Canyon?” If that looks “too much like school” to another child, make the messages fit his interests. Ask questions such as, “How tall are you?” or, “Which park shall we go to today?”

Using the daily news, write a little about your child’s favorite sport or an interesting news piece. Write about what excites your child. Horses? Sports cars? A movie? Trading cards? You can send uplifting or congratulatory notes. Keep the notes short, unless you have a child that loves long letters (and you have the time to write a long one!).

An occasional surprise can be tremendously fun, such as, “Look under your bed (to find a new deck of trading cards)” or, “After our schoolwork is done today we can go get ice cream.” Do not have the surprises too often in your notes or the kids will begin to expect them, and be disappointed in the regular notes.

You will probably find a certain time in your day that works for your homeschool style, such as a good morning note, a note at breakfast or lunch, after quiet reading or afternoon rest time, or bedtime. Or perhaps you prefer to leave the notes at a different time each day. Your homeschool children will begin expecting those notes before long, and will no doubt remind you if you forget to leave one!

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The Author, Michelle B., is a full-time homeschooling mother of four who, as of this writing, has been homeschooling for 18 years. She is a former elementary school teacher in the private-school system

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Homeschool For Free – Why Pay For Curriculum
By Greg Millman

Homeschooling can be your best educational bargain in a recession, but not if you spend thousands of dollars on curriculum you can get for free. Take a business-like approach to your homeschooling budget. The make-or-buy decision is one of the most important economic issues that businesses face. Successful businesses know what they should do on their own, and what they are better off hiring outsiders to do for them. The fact is, you never have to buy homeschooling curriculum. Homeschool4free and other sites offer hundreds of free homeschooling curriculum, sports, art, music, college guidance and other resources. You can homeschool on the tightest of budgets. So, when so much is free, does it ever make sense to buy anything? Yes, sometimes it does. Here are four tips to help you use sound business logic when you face homeschooling make-or-buy decisions:

1) Know what you can do better than anyone else, and do it yourself — Businesses sometimes call this their “core competence”. It’s the thing that sets them apart from the competition and keeps them in business. As a homeschooler, you can also have a core competence: you know your child better than anyone else. You know how your child learns, what your child finds easy, what your child struggles with. You can’t buy this knowledge. So don’t try. Don’t waste money on an off-the-shelf curriculum that doesn’t address your child’s needs, maturity level, learning style, gifts or challenges.

2) Know the opportunity cost of your time - If you can spend your time on something more valuable than putting together a free curriculum, it may make sense to buy. But before you spend thousands of dollars on curriculum, be sure that it makes economic sense. There may be lower cost ways for you to get the same educational benefit. For example, many homeschoolers join co-ops because they can pool their talents and time. They get a great educational benefit without laying out a lot of cash. In a recession, when cash is scarce, you want to be sure you know what your time costs.

3) Know what others do better than you, and consider buying that – Many homeschoolers start out with a lot of self-doubt. They are easy prey for the self-styled experts who are selling curriculum and services. But experience and research show that homeschoolers can do a lot more than they give themselves credit for. Be confident in your abilities. Before you buy any curriculum or service, be sure that what you are buying can do the job better than you can do it yourself. This is especially important when you are thinking of buying a whole curriculum, or of hiring a tutor, instructor or coach.

4) Know when to re-think — One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is flexibility. Unlike school teachers, homeschoolers don’t have to get approval from a bureaucracy to change their curriculum or approach. So don’t get stuck in a rut. Your child changes. You change. Your economic circumstances change. Adapt to change by re-thinking your homeschooling approach, especially the make-or-buy decision. You may want to set a time each year to go over what you are doing and check it against your expectations. Or you may want to keep a continuous re-thinking underway, watching and adjusting as you go. Cash is tight for many people these days. But homeschoolers can probably weather hard times better than public schools. Use sites such as Homeschool4free to take advantage of the many opportunities to homeschool for free – and only buy when it makes clear economic and educational sense.

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Greg Millman is co-author of Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey. His articles have appeared in Barrons, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many other publications. Comment on this article and learn more at Homeschool4free.

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By Lily Ann

#1 – Be Positive. I cannot stress this enough. Smile. Let the child know you are happy for every improvement no matter how small. Give suggestions in a positive tone. The child will pick up your attitude quickly. If you’re having fun your child will have fun too. Even if everything goes wrong, which it will at first, if you stay calm everything will smooth out.

#2 – Be organized. Start on time. End on time. Stay focused. If it’s school time, it’s school time. Even if you can only get in three hours a day, make those three hours count. Do those same three hours every day. Have a designated place to do school work. School stays at school. Don’t scatter it all over the house.

Have an opening routine. Look at the date. Mark the calendar. Count the day. Sing a song. Write a memory gem on the board. What ever opening routine you choose stick to it. The same with the closing routine. Put away books. Clean up area. Review successes. What ever the routine, this marks the end of school.

#3 – Be creative. Make up games activities. Younger children can be entertained by very simple means. Use resources to give you ideas.

#4 – Be simple. Don’t spoil them with a lot of expensive games, fancy pencils, flashy note books, etc. While all the flashy stuff will make school seem fun for that day, the next day it’ll all be old. Let it be a once in a while surprise to brighten up the school experience rather than the purpose of school.

#5 – Let the child’s interest be your guide. That doesn’t mean forget math because your son hates it. But if he’s just not interested, try a different teaching strategy. This is where your creativity comes in.

Take clues from the kind of questions he asks. If he wants to know why there is a arrow after 100 on the number line, take the time to explain that numbers go on forever. Tell a story about how we use numbers. If he loses interest, go on to something else.

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Lily Ann is a mother of six who enjoys great success in homeschooling. To read more about home school ideas visit http://twentynine-homeschool-fun.blogspot.com

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