Posts for category ‘Guest Posts’

We have a lot of Bloggers in our family of LessonPathways users.  We wanted to share their links with you so you can stop by, say “hello” and get insipired.

WayzLey Academy “Just the Krazy life of a Krazy family!” offers a a peek into their homeschool lives with great resource links.

Homeschool Gardner “Just trying to control the chaos” shares great information on homemaking, sustainability and homeschooling.

At the Learners at Home blog, a veteran homeschool mom chronicles her journey and information about homeschooling LD children.

The Reed Family blog has giveaways, curriculum advice and more.  Stop by to connect with this mother of four.

Homeschooling Aurora is written by a new homeschool mom who is also in the process of earning her college degree.  (way to go!!!)

Treasured Chapters blogs about life and family.  Being a homeschooling family, you’re sure to get a good does of educational inspiration as well.

The multi-talented Rowena (ballerina, costume designer, author AND homeschool mom!) shares her journey with you at Ella Echo.

Saint Ambrose Academy “Living to Learn” is a new blog written by a stay at home mom in Atlanta.  We can’t wait to hear what she has to say.

Shay, a LessonPathways blog contributor, and author of Wonderfully Chaotic, shares the story of her life as a young happily married stay at home momma of two and writer.

The GA Peach Homeschool blog shares wonderful resources for FREE homeschooling!  We all love free!

Stop by the Year of Handmade blog to see what super hand crafted gifts Colette is working on (really beautiful stuff!).

Gabby, completely awesome blog designer, shares her homeschooling days and fun ideas at Work of Childhood.

Do you have a blog you’d like to share?  Let us know in the comments section!

Bloggers, did you know you can grab our blog button for FREE!  Just highlight and copy the html code in the right side bar to add the LessonPathways.com blog button to your site.

Today as I was piecing the quilt I am making my Father, it occurred to me that sometimes I feel we are living on Nim’s Island and that my daughter is Nim (this happens to be one of my daughter’s favorite books and movies).  She is an only child and we live on six acres in rural Upstate NY, and often during our homeschooling week she does not get to see any of her friends, as we don’t have any close neighbors with kids and her friends are busy with traditional school. Weekends are a different matter altogether, as she is involved in sports, dance, and plenty of play dates.

One of the reasons we waited until this year to homeschool is that we worried about “socialization” because she is an ONLY child.

This morning she is busying herself making a “Farmer’s Market” for the “fairies who live outside”.  Sticks, grass, and paper comprise the structure of the market and the detailed “wares” for sale inside are incredible! From tiny sewing needles (made from bits of toothpicks), mini journals and teenie tiny pencils, paintings and books (all fairy sized, of course), acorn caps, buttons, little fabric bundles, to small vases and even bite-sized food!

And the funny thing is, like Nim, she is happy and loves reading, using her imagination, and playing with her “animal” and “fairy” friends. She has named the fox across the road “Fern”, the opossum that frequents our garden “Emily”, a rascally raccoon “Jasper”, and a tiny mouse in our field “Amos”.  She loves to write stories and draw pictures of these critters.  But she is also very social and loves playing with her best friends on the weekends.  So why do I let it worry me so much?

One of the reasons we waited until this year to homeschool is that we worried about “socialization” because she is an ONLY child. To feel a bit more connected to our community during the school week, since the weather has turned warm, we have been driving into the Village to grab an ice cream from the scoop shop and walking through the Village admiring the houses and community garden.  Next year she will be playing sports (4^th grade) that actually practices during the week and we certainly look forward to that. We are also both looking forward to summer where she will spend her mornings at Theater Camp with her friends (and me walking with my friends in the Village!) and the afternoons where we will park ourselves at my best friend’s pool with her kids.

As homeschoolers or parents of an only child, what do you do to feel connected to your community and to keep your child(ren) involved with their friends?

This post was written by Colette D., a new-to-homeschooling Mom and a Lesson Pathways Blog contributing writer.  She and her Husband raise their daughter together in the rural countryside of Upstate New York where they like to spend as much time as possible being creative and enjoying nature.  She blogs about her adventures in sewing, crafting, and baking (among other things) at yearofhandmade.

Julie C. is a proud homeschooling mom to 3 children. You can find out more about Julie and her family at The Clark Chronicles. This article was originally published 2/17/09 at The Clark Chronicles.

A homeschool group that I am a part of got together today at my house to do some socializing of our children. Er, um, I mean we got together to do some school.

I found a great lesson plan a few weeks ago on THIS website that inspired the lesson. Basically the idea was to teach about a variety of subjects by using popcorn. I love the idea of doing unit studies – Taking one thing and building a multi-disciplinary lesson around it – and this was the perfect way to do just that. I also found THIS WEBSITE with lots of fantastic resources for creating lesson plans using popcorn.

We did art, math, science, social studies, language, history, geography and PE all using lessons utilizing popcorn!

We used all 5 of our senses to experience the popcorn. We  learned about weight and volume, went on a treasure hunt, learned how to keep score using tally marks, took a nature walk to gather branches for our art activity, made hand cranked corn on the stove, estimated how much popcorn 1/2 cup of uncooked corn would yield, measured and weighed uncooked and cooked corn on a food scale, learned about the history of popcorn and identified on a map of the US where most of the world’s popcorn is grown, shucked an ear of corn to see how corn grows, jumped on the trampoline like we were popping kernels of corn and sang popcorn songs to the tunes of row row row your boat and I’m a little teapot.

And we managed to eat lunch together and have some pleasant and edifying adult conversation in the process.

Here are the final results of our popcorn tree – Abby and I did some work on it after her nap:

I made a little downloadable workbook with all the activities – Yours for the taking! We had so much fun with this today and I hope you can use some of the ideas in it for your home or school activities! Enjoy!

For even more great popcorn project ideas, check out these resources featured at LessonPathways.com:

Making Popcorn, Popcorn Jewelry, Popcorn Fractions, Number Popcorn, Popcorn Geography, How Much Popcorn?, Grow Corn from Popcorn, Odd & Even Popcorn, Popcorn Place  Value