The fifth grade school year is a very important year where language arts and vocabulary are concerned. Standards based bench marks indicate that students should be able to use grade appropriate vocabulary. From a parental and teacher point of view that statement doesn’t really help us decided what is the appropriate vocabulary. Aside from giving [...]

I realized when I started homeschooling years ago that I too will be learning and relearning.  Just when I thought my brain was getting stale it gets refreshed.  Daily that is now with homeschooling my girls.  My mother was not a so good speller and I seem to somewhat take after her.  But I did [...]

  Do you supplement your child’s basic education with subjects that are considered enhancements? As my child reaches upper elementary school it becomes more and more obvious that she needs “electives” to add to her basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. These electives are things that enrich and enhance her education. Foreign language is one thing [...]

“Oh Mom!  I don’t want to do another vocabularly lesson!  When am I EVER going to need this stuff in real life?!” I’d be willing to bet just about all homeschooling moms have heard some variation on this theme.  Kids don’t like vocabularly lessons, with all those funky words they’ve never heard of, and having [...]

I am not sure how I feel for my state’s  standardized testing. Well ok I do know how I feel!  Not good at all.  When I see the news and it tells me that the children from our state aren’t graduating and dropping out it makes me wonder.  My concern is I want my children to have [...]