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.

My son was a 6-year-old (almost 7) when I began teaching him to read, and it seemed as though he just wasn’t getting it. He had learned some phonics in kindergarten and recognized some sight words, but putting together everything he had learned just wasn’t happening. I tried everything from McGuffey readers to other phonics books and workbooks.

I then turned to online learn to read activities, and he took to these very quickly. He liked the animation and the online short books and stories. Soon he had completed many online reading lessons, as well as his phonics materials and books. I continued reading him stories on a daily basis. One day I realized he was reading well, and he began reading to me.

Then I began thinking, “Does he really understand what he’s reading?,” so I gave him oral book reports, asked him to explain passages he had read, had him write short summaries of his books, etc. Not only was he decoding words, but his reading comprehension was at a high level. He had exploded the reading code, and in a period of about 4 months, he proceeded to read 125 books–without me prompting him. I was overjoyed, because I had a child who loved to read!

Phonics and decoding are only part of learning to read; reading comprehension is more complicated. Your child can decode words (break them down phonetically) and really not understand what he’s reading. Sometimes when a child is learning to read, his energy is focused on decoding, so it’s hard to focus on comprehension too.

Online reading comprehension programs allow children to interact with the text, include vocabulary questions, and test them to see if they understand the text. There are read along stories as well as opportunities for children to be read to via the online audio. This makes interaction and comprehension a priority.

Making sure your daughter (or son) becomes a fluent reader with excellent reading comprehension skills can be done with the help of an online reading comprehension program.

I’d love to hear about your homeschool reading program; please share your experience or ask questions.

It didn’t take me long to get used to the idea of online homeschooling, because I began teaching my son at home via a home-based virtual public school that used online resources. They recommended that younger children do about fifteen to twenty percent of their work on the computer. I only used this home-based school for about six weeks, because I saw their curriculum wasn’t working for my son.

After this, I tried a labor intensive free curriculum that required me to print lots of books, keep lots of records, and spend lots of time preparing lessons. I did this for awhile, and for all my effort, I received an emphatic “boring” from my then 6-year-old son. So, I continued to search for an affordable curriculum. Homeschooling was becoming pure drudgery, and each day, I pieced together school work for my son, as I continued to search for excellent, affordable homeschool materials. I finally happened upon an online homeschooling curriculum that sounded too good to be true. I tried it out before I ever allowed my precocious 6-year-old to try it, and after reviewing a few Language Arts and Math lessons, I knew he would love it. I was right, and three and a half years later, he’s still loving it.

Online homeschooling resources can be helpful to your child and to you too. If your child is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner, the online interactive lessons will keep her engaged. The online homeschool resources will help you too, because as your child matures, she will do her lessons independently, while you tend to your younger children or get things done around the house.

Once you begin using the online homeschooling materials, you won’t abandon your books, your unit studies, your hands-on projects, or your field trips; online resources will only be part of your home school, and your child will look forward to the lessons. You can even use those lessons to reward him for doing well with his other homeschool work.

You may have toyed with the idea of homeschool online but thought better of it, because you felt like the computer would be teaching your child instead of you. However, most homeschoolers use online homeschooling in combination with more traditional methods.

Homeschooling is all about freedom of educational choice and options. If online homeschooling materials work for your child, then don’t be afraid to use them. You may be a homeschooling mom who works from home and need some free time to check emails, answer phones, or search the internet. Online homeschooling materials will free you to do those things during the day and will also free your child to learn independent study and work skills.

My strong recommendation for those homeschooling and using the web is to check out the following.

 Time4Learning’s web-based online curriculum.  They have great interactive lessons for middle school, elementary school, and even preschool.  It’s highly interactive and full of animation and multimedia. Whereas some curriculum are just lots of text with an occassional video or animation, Time4Learning is an interactive experience.  All those tough math concepts seem simple when they’re explained in such alight-hearted manner.  Who says fractions has to be hard? Their great multimedia lays it out so simply.  Give it a try.  Time4Learning is a great homeschool partner. They let you sign up month to month and start and quit at any time. Start by looking at their lesson demos.
 

 Number 2 choice - Time4Writing.  If you are like me, you find some subjects hard to teach.  One of the hardest is writing skills, especially when the kids get into middle and high school.  Expectations are so high. And my kids just don’t react well to my correcting their writing. Want help?  This isn’t a “how to”, it’s an online tutoring course where they work directly with your student teaching writing skills every week and giving one-on-one feedback.  You get the same tutor for the whole eight week course which the kids really like. It’s definitely worth taking Time4Writing’s writing classes. They have sentence writing, paragraph writing, essay writing (these are for writing tests and college essays), and research paper writing.
 
 
Number 3 choice - Fun Building Vocabulary. This is not really a curriculum choice but a fun collection of vocabulary games. Vocabulary is Fun is a leading vocabulary website worldwide with the best flash online word games.  The vocabulary games include an online word search, an online crossword puzzle, and hangman online (their version is called HangMouse).  Users choose the vocabulary list that the online word game will use in the word game. So have some Fun Building Vocabulary.  
 
 
Number 4 Choice - Spelling City. This spelling program should be used by everyone. I would have put it first but I’m not a huge believer in the importance of spelling skills.  Despite that, now that I’m using this site, I’ve returned to having spelling as part of our weekly routine.  You know what’s really cool, check out how the vocabulary site’s science songs have put their vocabulary/spellinglist on SpellingCity.
 
 
Number 5 choice - This learning games website is really what it sounds like.  But they have the best collections.  For instance, they have keyboarding games, memory games,  science songs (also integrated with vocabulary lists), and math learning games.

I am Angie, and I homeschool my two boys. Tim is 5 1/2 and is ‘in’ kindergarten now. He is mildly autistic, he’s come a long way compared to where he was two years ago, but he does still have some problems. Josh is 3, and the way it looks right now, he’s gifted.

Tim is currently doing 1st grade language arts and math, 2nd grade science,and 3rd grade social studies on Time4Learning. He started in 1st grade science and 1st grade social studies, but passed those levels and we just move on. Josh is doing kindergarten language arts and math since there isn’t a preschool section for him, but he’s doing just fine!

I make my own curriculum, it just seems to be the best way to do it for us. I teach the core subjects, plus whatever else Tim wants to learn about. If Time4Learning has something directly to do with what we’re learning about, we do it. Regardless, we use Time4Learning every day, doing two subjects one day, two the next, and we keep alternating. Tim’s reading skills are below his cognition level in science and social studies, so I have to read what those say, but he doesn’t seem to mind. It’s great to find an online curriculum that helps my kids so much!