Are you getting ready for the new school year? It is right around the corner. While we do home school all year long, we still have a certain excitement that happens around the beginning of the traditional school year. We love going to buy school supplies, new pencils, pristine new notebooks, at great prices. Another of the things that helps us rekindle excitement at this time of year, is looking at our curriculum for the new school year. As a general rule, we follow our same core curriculum, Time4Learning. But as my daughter gets older, we have started to add other things to our core curriculum as she develops her own interests and her education advances.

Recently, I had a conversation with a fellow home schooling mom, and she was complaining that they were buying their fourth homeschool language arts program in as many years. Her frustration with changing programs was that different programs taught concepts in different orders. When the first program didn’t work, they tried a different program, but found that there were gaps in some places and too much repetition in other places when compared to the program they had used the year before. Other homeschoolers complained that they used an expensive all-in-one curriculum. The language arts program worked for them, but the math curriculum within the same all-in-one program did not work at all with the child’s learning style.

Part of the reason my family home schools is because my daughter needed to learn different subjects at a different pace, she needed flexibility that one teacher with a classroom of thirty children, could not offer. I hope your planning for the new school year goes well, remember to stay flexible, and enjoy the light you see in your child’s eyes when they really “get” a concept.

I know I have mentioned before that my oldest daughter applied to go to Cyber Academy which is part of our public school system.  Well we are awaiting for the call to say she has been accepted.  In the meantime she has decided to start a blog about this whole experience of going to school.  Writing has not been her strong suit and I am partly to blame.  When it came time for a writing assignment her brain would shut down and I would cave in and let her skip it.  My bad!  In preparation for the blog and just to simply help her with school she will be staying with the homeschool writing curriculum.  She has already improved so much.  She is such a go-getter I know she will succeed in this new endeavor!

Boy do I remember the days my oldest daughter hated to read  and write because she didn’t understand spellings of words.  Now being in seventh grade I can not get her to put down a book.  She has a friend who has the Kindle and let her borrow it so she can read the new book she wanted.  There are some big words she comes across that still baffle her.  What I have turned that into is her writing and spelling assignments.  She gives me a list of the words she has  problems with and I make printable lists for her.  With that she will write the word a few times and I will give spelling test on them.  For some reason in her mind this is more fun than just a plain ol’ spelling test with random words for the week.  Go figure, but hey if it works…go with it!!

Well I knew what would be coming next!  The “I want a Kindle, Mom” statement.  I was doing some research on them and told her she needs to start saving for it and I will help her with the difference.  A couple of weeks have gone by and she went to the bookstore with her father to look for a gift for a friend.  While there she looking at their e-reader.  Much to my amazement she came home and said “I’m not sure if I want a e-reader, Mom.”   I asked why and she she said, ” I love the smell of books and holding them in my hand to read.”  Technology lost out on this one!

We all want a homeschool curriculum that helps our children learn. Each homeschooling family defines educational success in its own way. Most would say teaching to their child’s learning style is key. For my family, an excellent educational foundation in reading, writing,  and arithmetic is essential.

There are the visual learners (pictures, what they see), the auditory (listening, talking) learners, and the kinesthetic (physical, hands on) learners. Most of our kids don’t learn solely via one learning style. Many learn from a combination of two, or maybe even all three learning styles. Homeschool curriculum is expensive and most of us don’t have a ton of money to spend on it; buying a homeschool program like a “school in a box” curriculum for a certain grade level and finding out it doesn’t work is a major disappointment and a huge financial loss.

Interactive homeschool curriculum is one that many kids take to quickly, and it has elements in it that teach to all three learning styles; it fits in with the interactive games today’s kids play and is part of learning in the 21st century. My son, David, has benefited greatly from an online homeschool curriculum; it brought the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning methods under one umbrella which is perfect for him, since he learns all three ways.

Even better, you can usually get a trial period for these curricula; if it doesn’t work out for your child, you’re under no obligation. That’s good news during these economic times.

I never thought of myself as a particularly artsy and craftsy type of mom. Many moms are, and I admire them greatly. Despite my lack of art skills, my son loves to draw, is good at it, and has learned much from a how-to drawing book and an online art program.

Okay, when I first thought about it, online art sounded a bit strange to me; I thought, “Now that’s one subject you can’t learn online.” But then I thought about it a bit; I remember Microsoft Office WordArt and you actually could use it to draw online. My son tried it and liked it, along with learning some art basics. Now there are interactive programs that actually teach online art techniques, art history, and art theory.

When most kids think about art and drawing, it’s just a cool, fun thing for them to do. They usually aren’t concerned about art history and art theory; those interests are usually piqued later.

I wouldn’t say it’s time to throw the art books away, but I think learning art online, for some kids, might be an intro into the world of art and computers and actually lead to a career. For others, simply a fun break in the homeschooling day.