Sometimes I get so caught up in providing my daughter with a better education than she would get in the public school alternative to our homeschool, that I forget that she needs down time, too.

I get caught up in the idea of what science curriculum we will use when she finishes her current one. Our core curriculum only has new science work through sixth grade. Though she just started 6^th grade officially this school year, she will be through science by the end of the calendar year.

While she is surging ahead in science, her writing skills are not quite to grade level. She is a reluctant writer. We butt heads about this constantly because, well, I just want her to write more and better. So now I’m looking into a homeschool writing course so that she can have the experience of writing for someone besides me.

And I push, push, push. As she gets higher in middle school, I realize I am pushing her harder, (because the work is harder and there is more of it). She complains that we don’t do enough fun school, and only do “work” school.

So this week, when most students have the entire week off, I am backing off just a little bit. She is doing science, because she loves it. And she is doing a Thanksgiving Spelling list, because I need her to do some school this week. My nod to making it more fun is letting her cut up some magazines, and do some art work that corresponds to those words. Oh, and we are studying a bit of math…you know, the kind that results in a piping hot batch of chocolate chip cookies, and some fresh baked yeast rolls!

Have a great week and remember to give thanks for those things that mean the most to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

My daughter is reading several books at one time. She has two started on the e-reader, one hardcover book, and is listening to a different audio book. Yes, I consider listening to the audio book reading. How can I do that? Well, part of the reason I want my daughter to read is to increase her vocabulary. The audio books provide a unique learning experience in that she gets to hear a word in context, and also gets exposure to the world of the book.

Building an excellent spoken vocabulary, and building an extensive written vocabulary is important to a child’s success in school. Reading is one way to help build a good vocabulary. There are some children for whom reading at grade level is not an option due to dyslexia or other learning issues. For those children, building a reading vocabulary has to come from other sources. Audio books and reading to your child can help build vocabulary in the same way as reading does.

Fluent readers often do not even need additional vocabulary study, but if you want to spot check your child’s knowledge why not give them a vocabulary quiz based on the literature your child is reading? If you need to give them more practice or find a noticeable gap, why not check out the ability to create your own lists through Vocabulary and Spelling City?

For readers, learning vocabulary always means visiting new worlds, meeting new people, and experiencing events they would never be able to experience in the real world. Isn’t that a fun way to learn something so important?

I just wanted to share with you two really cool things that I have encountered this week.

If your child is anything like mine, she could use a little extra handwriting practice. I’ve looked into some of those programs that say that they can teach handwriting without hysterics. I’m sure they work, but I’m not sure they will work for us. Everything is an hysteric moment if it doesn’t go exactly as planned. My child doesn’t do calm, simple, or easy!! I know, sometimes I sound like she is impossible. And sometimes she is. But I have to add the disclaimer that sometimes she is awesomely wonderful , too!

That is, as long as it doesn’t involve writing, as in creatively composing with words, or penmanship, as in, “I would love to know what that says, if I could read what those letters were”. I think that having handwriting and spelling words combined in the same assignment would be great, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. I may have mentioned this before, but there are printable handwriting worksheets from your saved lists available. What that means is your child can practice writing the words that are relevant to his or her particular assignment this week.

One other thing I wanted to mention to you this week was that a great site, Homeschool Literature, is going to have a virtual book release party on November 16^th. It will last all day. The site features books written by, for, and about homeschoolers, so your home schooled child might just find something on there that featured a kid just like them. Check out the party online on Wednesday for games, and give-a-ways. It looks like it could be a great diversion for a midweek bit of fun!!

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Do you teach geography in your home school? We have not done a lot of geography other than that which is included in our core curriculum. At the beginning of the school year this year, a group of moms from my local home school group got together and made a unit study for each state of the union. Part of that activity was map work about each state and the relationship of each state to its neighbors, and region. I thought that was so neat!

Some of the things that they included in each state study was information on state flower, with a photograph, and a coloring page for each. They also included state bird pictures, and workbook type pages with information about each state.

Another thing they added to each unit study was geography games that helped the children place the states, and continue to review them as they move on to different states. You know me and my idea of fun learning…I love games that will help kids have fun, and practice what they are learning. I found geography games here that you could use in your own studies.

Games make geography fun, but I was wondering how to really bring it to life. After all, playing the game is one thing, but hands on might be even better. Then I read a story about a family that was doing just that, hands on geography…and history…and language…

This story I read was about a family who decided that their children needed to have a little more hands on education. They sold their house, bought a camper, and set out on a great adventure. They do what is called road schooling .

Their children are educated through online resources as they travel across the country. They decide where they are headed, and as they make their way to a destination they study not only their basic core curriculum, but also specifics about their destination. If they were headed toward Shiloh, they would spend time learning about the Civil war, about the battle fields there, and cultural studies, like how the people who lived at the time of that battle lived.

You don’t have to sell your house and travel around the country while home schooling to use this idea in your own home school. Consider using the road schooling idea on long weekends, or vacations. If you are all learning as a family, and traveling to a destination that you are learning about, it can be a great opportunity to make memories as a family that you might otherwise have missed out on. Give it a try

Is it important to do math in a particular order? Yes, at least for us!

We started sixth grade math a week or so ago. I decided that this year we would absolutely do it in the order presented. Last year, I let my daughter skip ahead to what she wanted to work on. I figured she already had fraction lessons, and geometry lessons. We had worked on multiplication and division. So it shouldn’t have mattered that we took them out of order, right?

Well, I can tell you that your math curriculum presents things in a particular order for a reason. My daughter wanted to start with algebra last year, so when we hit things that had been in the fraction portion of our curriculum, she didn’t know it. No problem, I just backed us up to fractions. Then there were things in fractions that she needed a refresher in multiplication and division to work out. Once again, I backed her up a set of lessons, to multiplication and division.

This was an incredible point of frustration, because we would just get into a lesson good when we discovered that we needed knowledge from a previous chapter.

And so, I have had to be the bad guy this year. If our math curriculum is presenting operations with whole numbers first, by golly, we are going to do that one first. I have always heard that math was a subject where you built skills upon a solid foundation of previous skills. I had just never experienced it before last year. Hmnm, except when, in my own education, I never quite got algebra, had trouble with geometry, then had to have special help from the algebra II teacher, because I couldn’t pass the class unassisted. As I continue to think about this, if I had gotten a good basis in algebra I, then I would have saved a whole bunch of money on tutors in college to pass college algebra. Hmmmm…ok, that was kind of a bad trip down memory lane!

From now on, if they say “A” comes first, then “B”, then that is the order we are going to do it in, no matter how much my independent, hard headed child thinks otherwise!