TheHomeSchoolMom's Free Homeschool Resources - March, 2010
Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Get your own subscription here »
Become a fan of TheHomeSchoolMom on Facebook
In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. --Mark Twain
~~~~
Contents ~~~~
- From the Editor
- Website Updates
- Apologia Elementary Curriculum 33% Off (Our Sponsor)
- Educational Resources
- American Heritage Foundation (Our Sponsor)
- Recently Seen Online
- Article - Overwhelmed by Homeschooling and Life (Part 1) by Barbara Frank
1. From the Editor
 | Although you wouldn't know it by looking out my window, spring is indeed on its way. Debra of Notebooking Pages has added the spring pages for her free Mom's Home Journal, so be sure to check them out (scroll to the bottom of the linked page for the download links). For more resources more often, become a fan of our Facebook page . Enjoy the newsletter!
Warm regards,
Mary Ann Kelley
Editor |
Back to the Table of Contents
2. TheHomeSchoolMom.com Website Updates
Teaching Calendar
Back to the Table of Contents
3. 33% off Apologia Elementary Curriculum - March only sale!
(our sponsor)
Apologia provides fun and challenging K-12 creation-based science curriculum specifically designed for the home school. Written by a former university professor and homeschool parent, the courses provide college-preparatory science in a way that is both clear and challenging. The texts are readable, easy to understand, and full of engaging experiments that can be performed at home. They even provide a FREE help line to answer any questions or problems you may encounter and a money-back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied. For the month of March only, Christianbook.com is offering Apologia's elementary curriculum at 33% off!
Order the elementary curiculum at 33% off or find out more »
Back to the Table of Contents
4. Educational Resources
ck12.org Free PDF Textbooks
"CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning." I did not review the texts for the accuracy or suitability of the content, but they are certainly a resource to check out. Most of the available texts are for upper level classes.
http://ck12.org/flexr/
Free American Presidents Timeline Poster
"C-SPAN is delighted to announce our new American Presidents Timeline poster for classrooms. The 6ft long poster details the lives and public service careers of every president, plus key historical events, Supreme Court cases, and technology milestones throughout 280 years of Presidential history. They are free of charge to C-SPAN Classroom members." The posters are available to current or new registered teachers and registration is open to homeschoolers.
http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Special-Offers.aspx
Lesson Pathways - Now Free!
Launched as a paid service, Lesson Pathways is now a free subscription. A Pathway is a unique learning unit that contains a prescreened selection of Internet resources, which together cover a particular topic. Each Pathway provides a multisensory learning experience, enabling children to learn from a variety of reading materials, hands-on projects, games, online activities, and videos. Many Pathways also include audio resources, e-books, and reference pages for those who want to delve even deeper into a topic. Pathway resources are prescreened to ensure that they are age-appropriate and informative, and each one is developed to appeal to various learning styles. LessonPathways.com provides unique Pathways in each of the core subjects: history, language arts, math, and science. Reading and phonics Pathways are provided for Years K through 2. You'll also find a Guided Jo
urney for each core subject in Years K through 5. Each core Guided Journey lists 36 Pathways--one for each week of learning. To understand how this works, consider a textbook that has 36 chapters. Each Pathway of a Guided Journey is like a chapter in a book.
http://www.lessonpathways.com/
Special Needs Homeschooling
This site offers both general "getting started" resources as well as resources for those struggling with ADHD, autism, learning disorders, or a parent with special needs.
http://specialneedshomeschooling.com/
Back to the Table of Contents
5. Free Social Studies Lesson Plans
(Our Sponsor)
 |
America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty
- To help teach America’s factual, philosophical heritage, history, and founding principles.
- Utilized by homeschoolers, teachers, and schools in all 50 states to learn about America's goodness and greatness!
- Social studies, US history, US government, civics, economics, geography, reading, music, and related subjects.
- Over 91,000 CDs distributed to educators and over 1,400,000 received instruction on America's founding principles!
- Available at no cost to users for educational purposes! $150 value!
- Written by a team of professional educators over 3 years at a cost of $388,000.
- Meets all major national standards and guidelines and advanced testing guidelines.
- Tested and proven to raise social studies scores!
- Easy to use. No teacher training required! Award-winning design and presentation!
Download/order your free resource at www.americanheritage.org |
Back to the Table of Contents
6. Recently Seen Online
More high-schoolers reinvent or skip their senior year
Could it be that the establishment is finally starting to get it?
Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter's Uncommon Year
New homeschooling book: After years of watching her eldest daughter, Julia, struggle in the highly regimented public school system, Laura Brodie - ignoring the skepticism of her husband, friends, and relatives - made the radical decision to teach her child at home for a year. The monotony of fill-in-the-blank history and math worksheets would be replaced with studying dinosaurs and dragons, some conversational French, violin lessons, and field trips to historical places, art museums, science fairs, bookstores, and concerts. Julia would have homework, but mostly it would be to write about what she'd experienced each day and to read to her heart's delight. "Love in a Time of Homeschooling" is the touching story of human foibles and human potential, in which love, anger, and hope, mingle with reading, math, and American history. Once the purview of Christian fundamentalist and bohemian parents, homeschooling is a growing trend among mainstream parents looking to address their
children's short-term educational problems. Brodie gave her daughter a sabbatical to explore, learn, create, and grow - a year of independent research and writing to rejuvenate Julia's love of learning. Though the experiment was not easy, mother and daughter worked through their frustration and difficulties to forge an invaluable bond. Hers is a life lesson no parent should miss.
Forbes' List of Top High School Drop-Out Millionaires
"'For all the new entrepreneurship programs popping up at business schools, there will always be a slew of born entrepreneurs who prove that high school diplomas, let alone fancy graduate degrees, might well be (barely) worth the paper they're printed on.' If you're homeschooling your kiddos, take heart. If you're thinking about homeschooling your kiddos, take a few minutes to visualize what life can be like for those who develop an early sense of purpose. Even the sky isn't a limit anymore."
See more on TheHomeSchoolMom.com
Back to the Table of Contents
7. Article - Overwhelmed by Homeschooling and Life (Part 1)
by Barbara Frank
 | |
Lately I’m hearing from a lot of homeschool moms asking how to juggle homeschooling, homemaking and preschoolers without losing your mind. Maybe the popularity of this latest topic stems from the fact that it’s late winter, everyone’s been cooped up indoors for months and they’re sick of it. But juggling the kids, the house and homeschooling can be stressful; how well I know that from my own experience. |
Looking back on the days when I was running back and forth between the big kids, the little kids and the washing machine, I recall that it seemed that there was no solution to my problem. Some say the solution is to send the kids to school. But that wouldn’t work for me because I never considered putting any of my kids in school. It seemed to me that would be punishing them because I couldn’t hack it. I just felt that I wasn’t keeping up because I hadn’t yet figured out how to do this the right way.
Of course, now I know there is no right way. You can usually find a way that will work for a while, but once you get used to things going better, something changes with your schedule, or your kids, or you get pregnant, and it’s all up in the air again.
Ultimately, I found that there were several things I could do to help myself through the rough spots. First off, I prayed for guidance, regularly and often through tears. I mean, if God led our family to homeschooling (and I believed and still believe that He did) then He could surely teach me how to do it, right?
Next, I asked my husband for ideas. The truth is that I wasn’t always as receptive to his ideas as I should have been, but he did come up with some good ones. For example, he’s the one who figured out what I could do when our 18-month old started taking apart the house while I sat nursing our newborn, who had a voracious appetite and went ballistic if I put him down so I could pull Miss Toddler off the curtains. My husband suggested buying some quiet activity-type toys that she could only use while sitting at the high chair during baby’s nursing time. This worked very well and helped get us all through that particularly frustrating period of time.
I also found that I needed to think about our schedule, and what I could change to make our days run more smoothly. I also had to ask myself some tough questions, including:
- Are we spending too much time on homeschooling, considering my kids’ ages?
- Do we need to switch from a formal curriculum to something less structured? (Or, once in a while, do we need to add more structure to our day?)
- Are my preschoolers getting enough rest time? (Rest time, by the way, was the main reason I didn’t lose my marbles in the days when I had four kids under 10. Rest time was the successor to nap time, when everyone had to take a nap after lunch, thus giving us all a break from each other, giving me some much needed peace and quiet, and giving the kids some rest so they weren’t so keyed up later in the day, when Dad came home from work.)
- Do any of the kids need help with behavior issues, and am I being consistent with discipline? (This is another area where my husband was a huge help. We learned early on to present a united front to the kids, which really helped, especially once we had teens who liked to argue.)
Eventually, I realized that our life went through stages of working and not working. When things stopped working, I learned not to become depressed or freak out. Instead I had to look at what was happening and figure out what kind of changes I needed to make.
This process continued the entire time we had kids at home, and it still continues. These days, with only two left at home and only one of them still being homeschooled, the problems have more to do with scheduling than behavior, although being menopausal, behavior is sometimes a problem with me. ;)
So, if you’re wondering how you’re supposed to homeschool and make dinner and keep the toddlers off the window treatments, think about the changes you need to make at home so that things run more smoothly. Pray about it. Brainstorm with your husband. Come up with some new things to try, and be patient while you watch for results. And never forget that this too shall pass. Sooner than you can imagine, those kids that are driving you nuts will be grown and on their own, and you’ll be grappling with other questions, such as, where did all this gray in my hair come from?
Read Part 2 »
©2010 Barbara Frank/ Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank homeschooled three children to adulthood and continues to homeschool her youngest son. She’s the author of “Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling,” and “Homeschooling Your Teenagers,” as well as two upcoming books. You'll find her on the Web at www.cardamompublishers.com and http://barbarafrankonline.com
Back to the Table of Contents
)