Does your curriculum include social studies? Do you think that social studies is an important part of your child’s education? I do, and I can tell you that I am eternally grateful that I don’t have to come up with all of the content to teach my child social studies. I firmly believe that if you don’t learn from history you are doomed to repeat it, but if I had to go out and collect every little piece of the information my child needed to be well versed in social studies, well, lets just say her education would not be as well rounded! The curriculum we use is Time4Learning, and they provide us with a great social studies program. It contains history, civics, social studies, and economics. Even though it is a well rounded curriculum, sometimes you just have to get something that is less…well….lesson-ish. On occasion we just need to expand on what we are learning. Take Ben Franklin for example. Historically speaking, the study of Mr. Franklin can be kind of dry. To lighten the mood and still get the information covered, you can certainly turn to word searches and true and false questions. Maybe add some special rewards if the fun material is mastered. My daughter certainly enjoys learning “the fun way” as she calls it, and it never ceases to amaze me that she will choose to start her day of lessons with something like social studies. It makes any extra work you have to put into the lessons worth it to have them say, “Can we start with social studies today?”

It’s adorable how the younger kids want to be like their big brothers or big sisters.  My preschooler wants to “do school” along with her older siblings.  I’m all for it, but I wish there were more of me to go around!  I’m stretched pretty thin just trying to get the older kids through their lessons for the day.

I was relieved to find some preschool learning games that I could let her do while I’m working with my older kids.  She’s proud of herself for “doing school”, and she’s learning a bit at the same time.  It’s a great solution!

Of course, playing computer games tends to evolve into full preschool curriculum, and pretty soon I discovered I’d introduced my preschooler to schoolwork, almost by accident!  And she loves it!

As a home-school mom I feel I have to make things more creative to keep my girls from the doing the same ol’ same ol’!  Writing and spelling WERE a bore to them.  After they do their spelling ritual I print the printable handwriting worksheets of their word list then they can practice writing them. Having them also write a sentence for each word.  Later in the week they usually do their online keyboarding games, but I have added that when I give them their spelling test on those words they type them out.  Therefore, getting more keyboarding in and spelling at same time. 

Now only if I can be more creative with math!

Did you know you were going to home school before you even had children?

Not me, I fought the idea of home schooling tooth and nail, and until I couldn’t fight it any longer. I’m an accidental home schooler. Part of being an accidental homeschooler meant that I was not home schooling as part of a lifestyle choice. I was not home schooling because it was a choice based on religious beliefs. It was purely a choice of my child needed something different than she was being offered in public school or private school. This posed problems that people who home school because of lifestyle, or religion, don’t face. I found that I was not only an accidental homeschooler but also a secular homeschooler. This is a growing segment of the home schooling population, and until very recently, a segment that was under represented in terms of curriculum choices. It was hard to find a place to settle, that wasn’t based on religion, and that didn’t require a full lifestyle commitment. In the process of trying to find out where we fit in, I discovered that Time4Learning was a perfect fit for us. That is not to say that Time4Learning couldn’t work for you if you choose home schooling for religious or lifestyle reasons. It just means that for those of us who choose to educate our children at home for other reasons, there is a place where we fit in. If you are also an accidental homeschooler, I hope that you, too, can find a place to belong at Time4Learning!

My son and I were sitting on a bench the other day, waiting for his sisters to come outside the building from their Girl Scout meeting.  He started looking for something to pass the time and ended up picking up nuts from the ground near a group of trees.  I was excited to see they were buckeyes!  What a neat learning opportunity!

The buckeye is the state tree of Ohio, and the nuts are very distinctive looking, dark brown with light brown centers.  They look like eyeballs!  (They’re poisonous though, so this is one nut you shouldn’t try to eat!)  So I used this as an opening to learning a little about the state of Ohio.  It’s always best to have the kids learn without knowing they’re learning, right?  We talked about the buckeye tree being the state tree, which led into a discussion of the state bird, state flower, etc.

There are some neat Ohio state games online too, to reinforce some of these ideas.  Games make learning fun! One of our Ohio homeschool groups did some neat craft projects with the buckeyes, and that really helped too.   So, no matter where you live, make it “buckeye season”, and find some inspiration in an unusual place to teach about your state too!