Posts tagged ‘homeschooling’

Debbie C. made the journey not only from public school education to homeschooling, but also from life in the city to running a farm with her family. Debbie puts 100-percent effort into all that she does and is happy to share her experiences (and yogurt-making know-how) with others. Read on to learn more about Debbie:

What is your name?

Debbie C.

How does education relate in your life?

We farm and homeschooled our two youngest children, so learning is a large
part of every day. We moved to our farm from city life, so it has been a huge
learning curve to learn how to feed ourselves.

What was your biggest triumph as a homeschooler?

My youngest son had a very hard time in public school mathematics classes.
It was a huge feeling of success when he suddenly grasped the concepts he
had been struggling with, and now as a teenager, he is excelling in Pre-Calculus
courses. That is such a feeling of accomplishment for a child who couldn’t
grasp long division.

What was your biggest blunder?

I think my biggest blunder was not starting our homeschool life from the
beginning. Our children started in public school and then moved to
homeschooling. It is a completely different discipline.

What has your role been with LessonPathways.com?

My role with LessonPathways.com has been as a contributor who helped build
Pathways. It was a great learning experience for me.

How did you come to create Pathways for our site?

I came to create Pathways because I was writing blogs for
Choosyhomeschooler.com and was invited to.

What was the most challenging part?

The most challenging part was learning the computer.

Of all the Pathways you created, which one did you enjoy the most?

I thoroughly enjoyed The Billy Goats Gruff. I just wish my children were young enough again to want to try the crafts I found.

How do you feel Lesson Pathways impacts the educational community?

Lesson Pathways impacts the education community by allowing the teacher to teach. All the basics are supplied for teachers, so their time can be spent productively interacting with their students.

If you could offer one piece of advice to a new homeschooler, what would it be?

Although it is hard, you need to learn how to relax and let your students
guide more. When we started, I was so focused on needing to get a piece of
work done I forgot that all children learn at different paces and we need to
allow for that.

Do you currently have a blog or website you would like to let others know
about?

Please take a look at Chikousky Farms.

More about Debbie: Debbie C. is the homeschooling mother of four children, two of which she homeschooled through to graduation from high school. When not teaching, she spends her time freelance writing and farming. The Chikousky family is currently delving into traditional food storage and preparation methods, such as fermentation, and having a blast incorporating this learning into hands-on homeschooling science experiments!

Liz K. started out creating Pathways and eventually moved on to reviewing and editing others’ contributions. She currently monitors comments users add to our science section and helps update links. Liz is always willing to pitch in and help when needed and can be counted on to do an excellent job. Read more about her below:

What is your name?

Liz K.

How does education relate in your life?

Homeschool parent.

What was your biggest triumph as a homeschooler?

Two homeschool graduates!

What was your biggest blunder?

Trying to throw money at problems–spending too much on curriculum.

What has your role been with LessonPathways.com?

First as a contributor writing Pathways and then as a reviewer/editor. Now I am monitoring the Science Pathways for questions and concerns and assisting to fix broken links.

How did you come to create Pathways for our site?

I heard about the project, applied, and was accepted.

What was the most challenging part?

All the math units!

Of all the Pathways you created, which one did you enjoy the most?

There wasn’t one Pathway. It was more of a category–the Language Arts Pathways were fun to write.

How do you feel Lesson Pathways impacts the educational community?

Pathways opens up the Web and shows how learning can occur outside of textbooks.

If you could offer one piece of advice to a new homeschooler, what would it be?

Relax and remember that teaching kids to love learning and how to learn will be more beneficial than stuffing their heads full of facts and figures.

Here’s a little more from Liz: I graduated from Bob Jones University. My husband and I have three children and two grandchildren. Have been homeschooling for over fifteen years. Writing and copy editing keeps me busy when I’m not homeschooling. Writing projects include stories for BJU Press, short pieces for Family Fun, articles off and online, a newspaper column, and high school literature lesson plans.

We’re pleased to present a new series here on the blog.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing you to the people who worked tirelessly to make LessonPathways.com possible.  We’ll be hearing from Pathway creators, editors and managers.  We hope you enjoy this “behind the scenes” look at all of these fantastic people!

Jennifer G. is one of our fearless leaders here at Lesson Pathways. As you’ll learn from the following interview, she wears a variety of hats as she works to make our site a user-friendly, invaluable educational resource. We asked Jennifer to share her thoughts about education and Lesson Pathways. Here’s what she had to say:

What is your name?

Jennifer G.

How does education relate in your life?

Homeschooler.

What was your biggest triumph as a homeschooler?

I don’t know that it was a triumph, but more of a confirmation that all the hard work pays off.  After homeschooling for 7 years, my son was accepted into a technology high school with strict entry requirements.  He aced his placement exams and as a freshman, he is now taking two junior level courses.  He is studying Biotechnology and was just accepted into an internship program with a local Biotechnology firm.

What was your biggest blunder?

Oh, there were many!  I think the two biggest were:

1) Trying to follow a schedule that was too rigid.  When we first started homeschooling, I tried to schedule every minute of the day and tried to do too much work each day.  I didn’t allow for natural learning, but instead looked at the number of pages of material we got through.  I soon realized that this causes a lot of anxiety for everyone!

2)  Trying to teach my children using techniques that work best for *my* learning style.  I’m a very visual learner, so I naturally tried to teach my children the same way.  I finally stepped back and took some time to watch them learn and see what techniques were best for them.  This was quite an eye-opening experience, as each of my children learns differently.

What has your role been with LessonPathways.com?

I originally started working on the ChoosyHomeschooler site and then became involved in the conceptual development of the Lesson Pathways site.  I wear many hats, but mostly work on the technology, marketing, and operations aspects of the site.

How did you come to create Pathways for our site?

Our company founder, Richard Rasmus, and I had been discussing the concept of Lesson Pathways for many months.  One day I sat down at my computer and decided to create a sample Pathway.  My kids and I had just finished planting some seeds for our container garden and we had discussed the various types of seeds and how they grow into plants.  We had used the Internet to find information, articles, and videos about seeds.  I used these resources to create the very first Pathway on the site – Learning About Plants: Seeds

What was the most challenging part?

For me, the most challenging part of creating a Pathway is finding the resources and decidingwhich ones to use.  This is actually how we came up with the concept for Lesson Pathways.  There are tons of great educational resources online, but it takes a lot of time to sort through them and find the ones that are 1) appropriate for children, 2) high quality, and 3) at the correct educational level.  Many parents and teachers who use online resources spend a significant number of hours researching and planning.  Our goal for Lesson Pathways is to reduce planning time, so educators can spend more time teaching and learning.

Of all the Pathways you created, which one did you enjoy the most?

Well, I guess it’s time for me to make a confession here.  I’ve only create TWO Pathways!  The first is the Seeds Pathway mentioned above.  And the second is one of the new Travel & Field Trip Pathways,  Lexington and Concord Massachusetts.

How do you feel Lesson Pathways impacts the educational community?

I believe that Lesson Pathways offers educators the ability to easily find and use online resources.  My children are constantly asking questions about science and history.  We used to Google everything, but now Lesson Pathways is our first stop. I know that if we type a term into the search field, we’re going to find results that have been hand-selected by the Lesson Pathways team.

If you could offer one piece of advice to a new homeschooler (or new teacher, if you are a classroom educator), what would it be?

My advice to new homeschoolers:  RELAX!  Your children are learning all the time and you don’t always need worksheets, quizzes and tests to prove it.

Jennifer G. is a  mom of three very active boys.  Her family enjoys taking educational field trips to destinations throughout Europe and the Caribbean islands.  In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, and local travel adventures.  She also volunteers in a local women’s shelter, teaches yoga and relaxation classes.

As mentioned last Friday, each week we will be featuring a new Pathway here on our blog.  In addition, we will be giving everyone FREE access to this unit for a full week.  Each Pathway contains enough resources for a full week’s worth of learning.

This week’s Free Featured Pathway is all about Booker T. Washington.

Explore the life of Booker T. Washington in this unit. Your child will create a diorama, design a stamp, and make a collage. A map and an online story are included to help your child learn more about Washington. This unit is designed to last one week, depending on how often you teach history.

To access this Pathway, simply click the link above.  While there is no registration needed, we encourage you to sign up for a 7 day free trial to access all of our great Pathways!

*Booker T. Washington clip art courtesy of ClipArtGuide.com

It happens to the best of homeschool families: homeschool burnout. It’s the point at which you simply do not want to look at another lesson plan or spelling list or sit down and work on multiplication facts.  I’ve read many articles that discuss how to avoid homeschool burnout, but what happens if you can’t avoid it?

As homeschool parents, we’re often busy juggling multiple schedules, task lists, volunteering, taxiing children to and from activities, homemaking and sometimes even working at a job.  Sometimes, you never see it coming, but you wake up one day with zero motivation or desire to do “school.” While each family’s situation is unique, I’d like to offer a few suggestions for if you should find yourself in “burnout” mode.

1.      Let go of the guilt. In my previous blog post, “Homeschooling, You’re Doing It Wrong!,” I talked about letting go of the guilt in your homeschool.  This advice applies here as well.  You can’t be all things to all people at all times, and that’s okay.  Give yourself permission to feel unmotivated for a bit.  Remember, this is only temporary.  It will pass.  With a little time, you’ll be able to return to schooling, full of passion.

2.      Take some time off. If your state laws don’t regulate otherwise, take a few days off.  Maybe even take a week off if you need to.  You’ll be able to get more accomplished after a short break than by trying to dredge through the days.  Use the time to catch up on all of those “loose ends” you’ve been meaning to tie up, work on your favorite hobby, or just hang out with the kids.

3.      Liven up your studies. If you can’t take time off from homeschooling, consider varying your routine a little.  You can plan a field trip, watch a documentary or plan a day of educational games.

As with any other trade or craft, you need to hone your craft, keeping up with the latest news, techniques and tools.

4.      Meet with other homeschooling moms or dads. Attend (or organize) a parents’ night out with your local homeschool support group.  You can host an evening in your home or your local coffee shop. It doesn’t need to be expensive or time consuming.  It might be a good idea to have an idea of some conversation starters, just to break the ice.  By the end of the evening, you’ll likely find support and inspiration from other parents.

5.     Attend a conference. Homeschooling conferences can be a great source of inspiration and support.  Consider homeschooling your craft or profession.  As with any other trade or craft, you need to hone your craft, keeping up with the latest news, techniques and tools.  Many conferences for homeschoolers are family friendly with programming options for children.  This can be a fantastic way for everyone to make friends and ignite the fire.

6.      Take time for YOU.  You are wearing many hats: parent, educator, spouse and female (or male) head of the household.  Likely, most of your waking hours are dedicated to taking care of and doing for others.  While you can’t completely ignore these responsibilities without consequences, it is important to routinely incorporate time for taking care of you.  You’ll need to determine what works best for you and your family.  Some homeschool parents set aside a little time every day while others prefer to arrange for child care for a full day once a month.  Going grocery shopping without the children doesn’t count!

7.      Reconsider your curriculum. If you’ve been on the edge of “burnout” for a while, you may want to reassess your current curriculum.  Is it boring?  Does it actually meet your children’s needs and fit your lifestyle?  You might be able to spice things up by tweaking it yourself and supplementing with other resources, such as those you’ll find at LessonPathways. With the wide variety of options today, there is no need to be “stuck” with a curriculum you don’t like.

8.      Reconsider your commitments. Take an honest look at your schedule.  Too much “busy-ness” can lead to too much stress for you and your children.  As the homeschooling movement grows, so does the number of opportunities for our children to participate in playgroups, co-ops and extracurricular activities.  While we all want our children to have the best opportunities, it’s important to remember that we don’t need to take advantage of ALL opportunities.  Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.  Determine whether your current list of outside activities is truly enriching your homeschool or stressing it.

These are a few things I’ve done when I felt unmotivated.  If you find yourself in this same situation, I hope you find these suggestions helpful.  If you’ve experienced homeschool burnout before, I’d love to hear how you overcame it. Please feel free to post your experiences in the comments section.

This post was written by Christina S., a homeschool mom, living in Michigan, with her husband, two children, dog, cat, guinea pig and turtle.  You can read more about her by visiting the “Our People” page.

What does it mean, exactly, to use technology in teaching? The definition of what technology is changes almost daily. So what does it mean when you use technology in your classroom? Is it just the use of computers? The Internet? GPS? There’s always new software, a new gadget, or a new site to try.

It’s important to be flexible and engage your students. There are just as many ways to present technology to your students as there are ways to teach them to read. The way you use technology is going to vary with each class and each student’s interest and ability level.

As education evolves, technology increasingly becomes a channel for innovative teaching and learning practices.

In addition, technology can be used to motivate students. Each class has a wide set of children who vary in their learning style and have different interests. It is the teachers ability to figure out individual learning styles and interests of students; thus making learning more fun and meaningful at the same time. Being a teacher, I think its my responsibility to come up with creative ideas to make curriculum more interesting. It has been a proven fact that visual factor plays a very important role in learning and memorizing details. So, I have been encouraging my students to use the following digital tools :

1. A list of all the good Web resources for Education: NoodleTools

2. Online Library: Lii

3. Collaborative learning platform: FunnelBrain.
This platform is entirely user-driven. Anyone can contribute by submitting or editing or reviewing the electronic flashcards, as well as adding rich content such as photos, videos, audio voice recordings and math equations. In addition, students work in teams to create review materials, paired with video explanations, for their class and leverage a learning management application known as the “Funnel” that tracks and monitors learning progress with a spaced repetition algorithm.

source: http://teachers20.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=1uu7ck4oyjsbo

Lesson Pathways is another site I would recommend that uses technology to meet the needs of a variety of learning styles and student interests. The units there provide a multitude of resources, all available online. I can print off worksheets, assign educational games, or have my students take online quizzes. The creators of that site have taken great care to be sure their lessons will cover a range of student abilities.

Technology has no doubt changed the way we run our classrooms. It’s changed the way we operate in our daily lives. If we approach these changes in our classrooms and strive to adapt our technology use to our classrooms, we will undoubtedly have many more successful and engaged students.

This post was written by Crystal P., classroom educator and LessonPathways.com contributor. You can read more about her in the “Our People” section.

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.

Homeschooling parents are often looking for inexpensive ways to supplement their children’s learning experience.  Two resources I’ve found particularly helpful in our family include the library and Netflix video rental.

Using Free Books in Homeschooling Situations

Homeschoolers might be surprised at the amount of resources and learning materials available via the library.  We live in a very small community, so our county library is quite tiny and only has about 12 rows of books (total–for fiction and non-fiction alike).  However, through that tiny hub, I am able to access any book in the state library system via Inter-Library Loan.

Familiarize Yourself With the Inter-Library Loan System

Using the Inter-Library Loan system, I am able to get my hands on just about any book I choose. Often, I will bring a “wish list” of book titles, authoer nmes and ISBN numbers I gleaned from the internet and present it to my librarian.  Within the next two weeks, book after book arrives from libraries across the state.  The checkout times are very generous, usually much longer than the standard checkout times for the in-house books.

Be sure to find out what the rules and limitations are for your particularly library.  Some books are only available for a fee.  Often, that fee will be waived for teachers and educators, so be sure to inquire about the rules for use in an educational setting. Sometimes there is a limit on the number of inter-library loan books that can be requested at one time.  Ask your librarian for help!  I’ve even acquired full-sized textbooks this way when I wanted to compare a couple of potential books before making a purchase of the one I’d ultimately want to use.

Educational Programs

I recently took my daughter to a quilts-through-history seminar, which we later used to talk about decades on our history timeline.  We’ve also been to insect adventure activities, story hours, sewing demonstrations and many, many more wonderful educational programs through the library.  Sometimes they are geared towards adults, but my children still learn something.  Other times they are designed specifically for children.  Either way, these free learning opportunities give your children a chance to meet someone outside the family–in a supervised environment–who is an expert in her or her area of knowledge!

Don’t be afraid to approach the teacher afterwards and ask about additional recommended resources, for more information on a certin topic or when he or she will be speaking again.  Sometimes those contacts may lead to other learning opportunities for your family.  By taking advantage of the resources available at your community library, you will find that your children’s learning opportunities will be enriches, without breaking your pocketbook.

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.

How Did We Go From 13 Colonies to 50 States?

Who Were the Native Americans?

Find Answers to These Questions and Learn More About Our Nation with This Fun Interactive.

The United States History Map is an interactive website where kids can learn about the geographic features, regions, and history of the United States. The site is broken down into five major sections: From Sea to Shining Sea, 50 States, Indians, Colonists, and The Nation Expands. Each section provides background information on the topic, an interactive, and a timed quiz.

Product Description: “Become a geography whiz as you learn how the United States was settled. Discover how the continent was irrevocably changed by European colonization, the events that caused the wholesale displacement and decimation of the land’s original inhabitants, and how the 50 states came to be formed.”

In addition to the U.S. history interactive, you can choose from other subject areas as well, which are located in the upper right corner of the site. You can pick from a list of subjects, including math, science, language, and additional history topics.

Uses: Use this interactive to teach or supplement a variety of history topics, as well as any other subject of your choosing. This particular interactive makes a great supplement for teaching children about the 13 Colonies and Native Americans. It’s also good for use with geography lessons relating to North America and the U.S. The use of interactives makes learning about history much more fun, especially with children. Rather than pouring through books and listening to drawn-out lectures (yawn), interactives allow children to take part in the lesson, bringing the topic at hand to life and making it more interesting.

Content and Safety: This site and its content was designed for upper elementary and middle school grades. However, all ages and grade levels can benefit from and gain a basic understanding of the United States and its history. The site requires Internet Explorer 5 (and higher) and Mozilla 5 (and higher) as well as the latest versions of Flash player.

Using the Product: I had the opportunity to explore this site and found it to be quite interesting—seems you’re never too old to learn (or re-learn). In the first section of the site, From Sea to Shining Sea, kids get a chance to learn how to read and interpret a map of the United States in order to understand its geography and how it has influenced our history. They will also be asked to identify major mountains, rivers, and oceans of North America.

The 50 States section focuses on the various regions and individual states. The other three sections focus on the original inhabitants of North America. Many distinct Indian tribes originally inhabited each of the regions that are now part of the country, and you can learn more about these various tribes in the Indian section of the site. Life for North American Indians began to change with the arrival of Europeans—or the Colonists, which kids will also learn about.

Under the Nations Expand section, kids will learn how the United States grew into the 50 states, expanding from the original 13 colonies. After reviewing interactive overviews in each section, you can test your skills by answering questions relating the U.S. history map in a series of timed quizzes, which will be scored and can be printed off for review. Check out my score and yes, I could use a bit more review!

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product: I did not find any specific tutorial for the site; however, once you get there, it is pretty much self-explanatory. You simply read through the sections following the “Next” link (or arrow) located on the bottom right side of each page.

Summary: I really enjoyed this interactive and look forward to checking out some of the other ones on the site. I think children will greatly benefit from the information, and the interactive lessons are good for holding their interest. Although much of this might already be familiar to older kids, they can still revisit and appreciate our history with this site. You may even learn something new, as I did.

This post was written by Nikki P., homeschool mom and Lesson Pathways contributor. You can find this original review of this product posted at ChoosyHomeschooler.

If you’re looking for some insightful articles on homeschooling, be sure to check out The Homeschool Connector newsletter. It’s FREE to subscribe too!!! This month, they are featuring the following articles:

• Top Ten Reasons to Homeschool
• Homeschool Field Trips – 7 Essentials on How to Plan and What to Take
• How to Enjoy Homeschooling
• Technology in the Homeschool Classroom
• And More!

Your Homeschool Connection