What does a home-school language artscurriculum need to have to make it useful, interesting and comprehensive? My answer is fun and self paced. If I haven’t mentioned it before I will mention it again…teaching reading to my girls scared me!  Yes, we made it through those years but I was always afraid I wasn’t going to teach my girls to read or write correctly.  Decode words and identify sounds that letters were suppose to make on some exceptional rule.  I would buy all kinds of phonic books to help me through this.  Instead of buying books now I realized all the games and activities there are online to help you out.  Like when it came to teaching contractions and compound words I was OK so I have to tell them to leave a letter out on contractions and compound words combine them together.  For my youngest she was, huh?  LOL! 

The teaching of Language Arts way has gone wild! 

One of my concerns when I started homeschooling was getting in my children’s fitness.  Public School have just about taken PE out of all schools now.  But really after putting more thought to it my girls are so active I really didn’t have to work anything special into our schedule.  My girls are on a swim team that swims mostly year around and practices  4-5 days a week.  I bet they get more than most kids do.  I know I sure get the driving in…driving back in forth to practice and all.

 Along with that I thought ok I need to also teach health to them.  I know, I know….as parents we do that already!  Just sometimes when they hear it from some other source it sticks with them.  Like when I took my girls to the dentist they were so scared that it was going to hurt.  My oldest actually still kinda has anxiety going to dentist.  Maybe because the last time she went she had 4 teeth pulled.  Her baby teeth were not coming out in time for the others to take over.  She made it through that ordeal just fine.  I found that these dental games have helped them understand some of the dental hygeine issues they have. 

 Where was this stuff when I was growin up?

I have such fond memories of doing art projects as a child, and it warms my heart that my girls like it just as much. I have an art supply closet full of just about anything you want.  When my mother gave me my baby book when I was an adult I couldn’t believe it!  There were tons of my art projects that I had done throughout my childhood inside.  So I figured this was such a great idea to keep my most precious art projects that my girls gave me.  My littlest one has been doing art games online since she could tap on a keyboard.  She loves to print her master pieces for me!  She now does an online art  program that actually teaches the principles and history of art.  Out of the blue she will point out a picture to me and say what type of materials were used and perhaps the concept of the picture.  So….it really is seeping in her brain and staying there.  I believe she will someday put this all to use in her own special way. 

If you recall I home-school my 2 daughters for going on eight years now.  Through out the years I have used different curriculums but now I have landed on a homeschool online curriculum that we absolutely love!  I at first was barrels blasting about sticking to the plan.  If the lessons asked for my oldest daughter to write…she would.  You see she hates writing!  So skipping one time turned into skipping two times, four times, and now most the time.  When I do ask for her to go ahead and do the assignment I get tears of frustration.  Is she playing me?  Have I created monster that doesn’t want to write?  Not to mention the guilt of ” oh no my daughter isn’t going to know how to write a term paper!”  But when it comes to her having to write in her friendship book that she exchanges weekly with a friend she has no problem.  When she has to write in her swim journal for her coach what her goals are….no problem!  Well….now that this homeschool writing class has crossed my path my than once I am going to take the hint.  I am signing both daughters up this year!   

BTW…when did it become OK take your sisters shirt that she wore all day out of the dirty clothes hamper and you wear it the next day.   Ewwwwww! 

Hi, my name is Carol.  I have two daughters that I home-school, my oldest is in 7th grade and youngest is 5th grade.  We use Time4Learning  online curriculum.  Time4Learning lets me give my girls independence that they crave without me having to hover over them. I use Time4Learning for the core subjects and a hands on science class at out local museum. When I made that choice to home-school I wish I knew about the Time4Preschool program.  I struggled with the reading part.  Phewww, we made it through that and they can actually read…lol!  I also like to add extras in our monthly routine to change it up. Spellingcity.com offers a monthly holiday list that I like to use quite often.  It seems like when one of my girls ask a particular question on what a holiday stands for I sometimes do NOT know the right answer so I send them to this site and I am also re-learning the correct answer.

I am a Certified Signing Agent, which means I close loans for title companies.  This gives me the opportunity to have a lot freedom to take a job or not if it happens to interfere with my girls.  I feel without Time4Learning I would have been simply just lost. 

 Happy Home-schooling!