Posts tagged ‘curriculum’

For some homeschoolers, a “curriculum in a box” is easier and takes the guess work out of planning the school year. But for many homeschoolers, a more eclectic approach is needed.

This can be true for children with delayed learning in certain topic areas, to account for a child’s learning style, or because of personal preferences. One of the benefits, after all, of homeschooling is that you are never locked in to the same thing for each topic for each child!

If you are planning to teach your child using an eclectic approach, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Check your State Laws – The HSLDA is a great resource for keeping up with state regulations for homeschooling because the requirements vary state-by-state. Parents will want to note the minimum required hours or days, and what subjects are “required” by the state regulations.

Local and Regional Resources – Taking advantage of local and regional resources can enable a parent to supplement homeschooling efforts with fantastic opportunities. Do you live near a college? Find out what programs they have for children or whether they will accept highschoolers into classes like music, art or choir.

Homeschool Co-Op Classes and Group Efforts – Not great of Spanish? Maybe there is a homeschool group near you that offers a subject you aren’t as proficient in. Field trips and group outings can be very educational for children who learn best by doing.

Online Resources – Lots of learning resources are available online and for children who learn well with online activities, they can be a great educational source. LessonPathways also has a great collection of learning resources covering a wide variety of learning styles.

Child’s Interests – Here’s where homeschooling really shines. What is your child interested in? Take note and then explore ways to encourage these interests in educational opportunities. For example when I was interested in veterinarian medicine, my mother found a local vet who would allow me to come to the clinic for three hours a week as an “apprenticeship program” so I could see firsthand the skills necessary to do the job. It helped me stay more focused in my bookwork, and also helped me realize that veterinary medicine was not the right career path for me.

Once you know which areas you want to focus on in your education, and what your resources area in the local area, it becomes a matter of putting the pieces together.

Scheduling Considerations – While many homeschoolers try to follow a traditional school schedule of Monday-Friday, others prefer to have the children work on supplementary materials on Saturday also. Or they work the school schedule around an unusual work schedule, which is what we do at my house – three days of school and three days off when my husband is off so the kids can do hands-on stuff with their daddy. Then we keep the education going on through most of the school year.

Keeping Records or Learning Portfolios – I think one of the key for eclectic, or unschooling homeschooling approaches is to keep accurate records or a school portfolio. Each of my children have a binder where I can put samples of their work, photos from field trips, pictures of a hands-on activity we did or science experiment, etc. Being able to demonstrate their learning in the various areas will come in handy if anyone ever questions the eclectic nature of our school.

Having an eclectic style in our homeschool is just an extension of the controlled chaos of the rest of my life. My work is very flexible, my husband’s schedule is non-traditional, so it only makes sense that our schooling would reflect this as well.

Angela England lives in rural Oklahoma with her husband and soon to be four children, where she works as a professional blogger in addition to homeschooling, doing childbirth work and massage therapy. England is the founder of The Untrained Housewife – a social site for homemakers, mothers and homeschoolers to exchange back-to-the-basic tips and tricks.

Miamiopia (pronounced “mee-yuh-mee-oh-pee-yuh” not “Miami-opia”) is a new virtual world just for kids. This site is totally FREE and totally educational to boot!

From the website:

The World of Miamiopia is where balloons go when they escape from the hands of a human. Once here, these balloons seek to improve themselves by learning as much as they can about the world around them. Each building in Miamiopia is filled with learning games.

Some of these games teach the little Miamiopians about math, others about dinosaurs, biology, animals, music, history, and many other topics. Miamiopians “learn to earn”. Each time they plan a learning game, they earn coins. These coins can be used to buy things in the shopping district.

New Miamiopians get to pick the color of their body, and also the type of eyes that they will sport. As they play learning games, they can use the coins they earn to purchase clothing, wigs, and other accessories.

After watching a rather lengthy introductory video, your child will get to create his or her character (a balloon), which consists of color choice and eye choice. Once in this virtual world, your child’s character will explore different areas of the world and play educational games to earn coins. After earning coins, they can buy “add-ons” such as wigs and clothing for your character.

Navigation of Miamiopia is relatively intuitive. There is a map, and your child will pick where he or she wants to go. There is a zoo, science lab and more.  Once your character enters a building, he or she will look for boxes.  Walk to the boxes, wait for it to open to display the name of the game.

The games are fun and it is very easy to get coins for later spending. We played the “Identi-cell” game, where we had to identify different parts of the cell. What was nice about this was that we got many chances to get the answer right. Not only that, they offered a link in the lower right-hand corner of the game to learn more.

The other game we tried was a counting game, where the “Count” would say a number and we clicked on it.  Each correct answer earned 1 coin, a bonus of 100 coins after answering 20 questions.  This game was definitely for the younger set, but we really had no way of telling until we clicked and read the description.

Since the site is still in “beta mode,” the number of places to visit is still limited, but there should be more coming within the next week or two.  Additionally, I did not notice an obvious “log out” button or link, making it difficult to use with multiple children.  Unlike other virtual-world sites, I did not notice any type of chat, mail or messaging system. While this may be developed after the beta version, I feel much safer knowing that my child isn’t communicating with someone we don’t know.

Kids will love this site because it will give them the freedom to explore the areas they are interested in and parents will love this site because its educational content. While I personally think that a quality educational resource can be used across multiple grade levels, those in the middle school set and above may not like this site, because of its overtly cartoon-ish appearance.

The Bottom Line:

Pros:

• FREE
• Easy to Navigate
• Wholesome, quality educational games
• Entertaining and encouraging

Cons:

• Still in beta mode, limited areas to explore
• No log out button or link
• Unable to gauge activity difficulty until playing

Final Verdict:

Despite the limitations in beta mode, this is a great, wholesome, supplement to homeschool and classroom-based learning.

This post was written by Christina S..  She is completing her 10th year of homeschooling and lives in Detroit with her husband, 2 daughters, cat, dog and turtle.

Educators, don’t forget to catch up on all of the great blogging happening in this month’s Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival, hosted by Teaching Challenges.

This month, you’ll find Free Christmas Math Worksheets, the Top 50 Bloggers to Help You Learn, and the Top Ten Books for Preschoolers.

This is a relatively new blog carnival.  If you’re an educator with a blog, why not consider submitting your favorite post to the carnival for next month’s publication?

Many public schools have videos, movie reels and DVDs devoted to educational topics that teachers are free to use as desired. Obviously, homeschoolers do not always have such resources available. However, there are several ways to enrich your children’s learning experiences with educational movies and videos, without having to purchase each one for yourself.

The Local Library

While most libraries are not able to get videos through Inter-Library Loan (ILL), they often have a nice selection of educational films and documentaries on anything from aeronautics to sports to ballet. If your library allows inter-library loan for videos, or allows videos to be brought in for ILL for educators, your options open up even further!

Online Educational Videos

There are lots of video clips available online on YouTube and teacher resource sites, but search carefully to weed out the junk. Be very specific about what you need. Don’t type in “science.” Type in “Water Cycle Video” instead. One of the benefits of Lesson Pathways is that the searching for video clips has been done for you.

Using Video Rentals for Educational Purposes

Many homeschoolers study a particular theme or subject at a time, and the judicious use of videos can really help foster learning in a more visual way for children who have varied learning styles. Since we live in a town with very little to offer in the way of video rental places, Netflix has been a blessing.

Some people like the convenience of mail-in video rentals and other people enjoy avoiding late fees. The rates are usually very reasonable, and if you use the program a lot like we do, you get your money’s worth out of it. The key, however, is to plan just a little ahead.

My kids love the animal documentaries, science shows and educational programs. I’ll search about a week in advance to see what videos are available related to next week’s planned unit study. That way, my videos arrive in time for my kids to use them. At any given time, we have two or three videos in the house–one that’s being returned, one of this week’s topic and one just coming in a couple days before the next unit begins. By rotating the videos you have like this, you’ll always have something ready to go for your kids on one of those rainy days that just requires a nice, quiet, but still educational, activity.

Angela England lives in rural Oklahoma with her husband and soon to be four children, where she works as a professional blogger in addition to homeschooling, doing childbirth work and massage therapy. England is the founder of The Untrained Housewife – a social site for homemakers, mothers and homeschoolers to exchange back-to-the-basic tips and tricks.

If you asked your students what these things are, I’m betting they’d either stare at you blankly or ask if it’s the name of an “oldies band.” We are not just moving in a new direction for obtaining information. The movers have already arrived and your forwarding address is at the post office (you know, that place where you get that paper stuff called mail).

To say that the way we (and our students) obtain information has changed drastically in the last 20 years would be a dramatic understatement. Where we used to search for information, we now have to kind of “weed out” information because there is just so much available to us, literally at our fingertips.

Do you know what we did if there was a question we couldn’t answer and we couldn’t find the answer in our encyclopedias? We called the “reference desk” at the library. The nice lady there would try to answer any question you had, even if it took her a while to look something up.

So if you were researching something, you’d have to pull out a rack in the card catalog according to the alphabetized subject and flip through the cards. If you got lucky, the title of a book or a brief description would point you in the right direction. Then you had to actually find the book, skim through it, and hope that you’d find some information.

Quote: http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2007/05/information.html

The Internet is changing the way our students learn, and it’s changing the way we teach. If we don’t adapt our teaching to meet these changes, we’re going to lose our students. Those of us who are already teaching are going to have to keep up. Education students in universities are learning to teach this way. It’s not new to them. It’s already second nature. Along those lines, the kids we teach are already a step or two ahead of us when it comes to technology anyway. Kids can now study their spelling words online using sites like SpellingCity.com. Teachers use the Internet to generate their own quizzes, worksheets, and web quests.

I love that the information is so “easy” to find these days. I put easy in quotation marks because as I mentioned earlier, there is just so much out there that sometimes it becomes overwhelming. That’s one of the things I love about Lesson Pathways. When I want to find an activity or an online game or even just some reference material for a subject, it’s already there. It’s been screened for content and appropriateness. All I have to do is enter a search term into the search box and everything I need has already been found for me. I don’t want to be left behind when it comes to technology, and a site like Lesson Pathways makes it easy for me to look like I know what I’m doing–even when I don’t (which never happens…really, honest).

I’m glad information has become so easy to obtain. It gives me more time to focus on my students’ needs, and it gives my students more time to focus on synthesizing the information they have in front of them instead of spending all that time searching for a needle in a haystack.

Editors, synthesizers, and creators. That’s the new generation. They’ll no longer have hunt and gather for precious bits of information. Instead, they’ll be able to build something new and–we can hope–better.

Quote: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2140631,00.asp

This post was written by Crystal P., classroom educator and Lesson Pathways contributor.

Teachers are always looking for new ways to engage their students. I’ve found one of the easiest ways to do that is by using technology. Kids LOVE technology. Tell them it’s time for math and they groan. Tell them we’re going to the computer lab to work tessellations on the computer, and suddenly I’m a hero! Lesson Pathways is a wonderful tool that assists busy teachers in offering Internet-based activities to their students. The best part? All the work is already done for them. What teacher wouldn’t love that?

I have personally spent hours sitting at the computer looking for a cool webquest or an online game. Sometimes I’ve looked for my whole class; sometimes I’ve looked for reinforcement or enrichment for a single student. I wish I had been able to access a service like Lesson Pathways all along. It would have saved me valuable time–you know, to fill out paperwork, call parents, attend a staffing…

Among the 36 weeks of curriculum per core subject, per grade (currently through grade 5), you’ll find a wealth of lessons, mini-lessons, hands-on activities, online games, videos, e-books…the list goes on. It’s so easy to use too! The Planner feature is such a useful tool. You can add your entire class in just a few minutes. Once that is set up, you can select the Pathways you want to assign. The part I really like is having the option to assign Pathways to individual students or to the entire class. Again, anything that saves some time is a good thing in my book.

I really like that I can use this anywhere. I can browse Lesson Pathways from home, school, the coffee shop… I don’t have to lug around those big, heavy teacher-edition textbooks. I don’t even need to have a pen with me, for that matter. That’s generally a good thing. I never have a pen when I need it. (I think I was absent the day they taught organization at my university.) I just click on the Pathway I want to use and assign it to either the whole class or just the students I want to use it. I can also print out a worksheet from home and take it to school for copying the next day. I don’t know about you, but I do my best thinking with my bunny slippers on–and well, administration tends to frown on me wearing them to school.

Differentiated instruction is one of my favorite education buzzwords, and Lesson Pathways has a handle on it. The creators of Lesson Pathways are aware of the distinct needs of individual learners and of teacher’s requirements to differentiate instruction for their students. For this reason, the lessons offered address a wide variety of learning styles and methods. The search feature on the site will allow you to find just what you need. For example, type “Mesopotamia” into the search box and 49 pre-screened and carefully selected choices will pop up. You can then filter your search further if you’re looking for, say, a video. All of the Pathways are tagged to help you find resources for special needs or instructional methods.

We all know how overpaid teachers are, right? We just love to spend our own money in the classroom and buy supplies for which we’ll never even dream of being reimbursed. Hmmm…maybe not. The good news is Lesson Pathways isn’t going to break your classroom stipend (if you’re lucky enough to get one). Compared with a tutoring service, boxed curriculum, and other learning sites, you’ll find this service is incredibly cost-efficient.

If you’re still not sure, sign up for a FREE trial with Lesson Pathways. For more information, contact one of the team members at ContactUs@LessonPathways.com.

When my family and I decided to begin homeschooling about 10 years ago, I found myself asking the same questions of every homeschooler I met, for probably about the first three or four years: “How do you homeschool?” I received many responses, each one different from the other.  With each different response, I would wind up in a panic, thinking “I’m doing this all wrong!  I’m going to mess up my kids forever because I’m not doing <insert any advice you’ve ever received here>!”

Now, after years of asking the “How do you homeschool?” question, I find I’m the one answering the question for many new homeschoolers.  I’m always reluctant to answer this because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. How my family has homeschooled has changed and evolved each year, as our needs and situation changes.  We’ve implemented many different homeschooling approaches, ranging from unschooling to unit studies to boxed curriculum.  There were things we loved about each one of them, but what works for us one year may not work for us another year.   No matter what approach I’ve taken to homeschooling, there are few words of wisdom that always apply:

Relax: Take a deep breath, calm down and relax.  Stressing and obsessing won’t help educate your child, and it certainly isn’t going to help you!  Try to enjoy the journey and the time with your children.

Don’t compare your homeschooling style with others: It’s always helpful to “peek” into another’s home classroom; you can find lots of inspiration and ideas!  However, don’t compare your homeschool with someone else’s.  It’s like comparing apples and oranges.  No matter how similar two families or children may be, each one is unique.

We’ve implemented many different homeschooling approaches, ranging from unschooling to unit studies to boxed curriculum. There were things we loved about each one of them, but what works for us one year may not work for us another year. No matter what approach I’ve taken to homeschooling, there are few words of wisdom that always apply

Don’t believe the hype: People are very passionate about what they use and how they do things.  Before drinking the Kool-Aid, do more research first.  Try it out, and see whether you can borrow the books from a friend for a few weeks.  I’m speaking from experience on this one, my friends.  My oldest daughter was really struggling with math for several years.  Naturally, being the concerned homeschool mom I am, I asked around. Everyone was raving about a particular math program.  It was supposedly the best.  Everyone loved it.   I bought it, lock, stock and barrel, only to find that it did not work for us.

Because this was the “very best math program in the whole world,” I figured we just had to keep at it.  So, we kept at it for two full years before I came to the realization that maybe this wasn’t the “very best math program in the whole world” for us.  Since then, I’ve found some lesser-known programs, and both of my girls are flourishing.  The shame of it all is that it took me so long to figure it out. Don’t believe the hype!

Let go of the guilt: There will always be something you could have done better.  On the flip side, there will always be something you could have done worse.  Let go of the guilt.  Not all children learn the same things at the same pace.  Sometimes, you just have to realize you’re doing the best you can and recognize the baby steps you and your child have taken towards reaching your educational goals.  In my book, if your child knows you love her at the end of every day, you’ve done a good job.

There is no definitive answer to the question “How do you homeschool?” It’s a lot like trying to answer the question “How do you mother?”  People can tell you how to become a mother and that you need to change diapers, make sure the baby is fed, take him to the doctor for checkups, and so on, but nobody can really tell you how to mother your child.  It’s something you just have to do and figure out what works best for you and your family.  As your child grows, his need will change, and (with a little perception on your part) you will naturally adapt.

The same holds true for homsechooling.  There is no “right way” or “wrong way” to homeschool.  What works for one family may not be the right choice for your family. What works for your family this year may not work next year.  In fact, what works for one child may not even work well for your other children.  Enjoy the journey, love your children, and enjoy the benefits of the homeschooling lifestyle; you’ll be just fine.

This post was written by Christina S., a LessonPathways.com Team Member and  homeschool mom of 10 years.  She lives with her husband and two daughters in Detroit, Michigan.