)
Head over to How To Homeschool For Free to get all of the details on how you can get a completely free $10 credit for educational products and games to use at Educents when they launch next month!
More great Freebies & Samples!
FREE $10 Credit For School Games & Educational Products!
Mar
25
2013
Monday
Head over to How To Homeschool For Free to get all of the details on how you can get a completely free $10 credit for educational products and games to use at Educents when they launch next month!
FREE Homeschool Planning Resources {How To Homeschool For Free}
Aug
7
2012
Tuesday
In my opinion, one of the best things you can do for finding peace of mind about your homeschool choices is to set goals and write them down. I’ve had years when I didn’t keep track of any thing (gasp!) and years when I had daily checklist. My children learned though all of those years, in spite of my organizational skills, or lack of them. I do know, though, that my own peace of mind during the years that I planned things out were the least stressful for me. This past year, I bought a planner that everyone was raving about. I spent too much money on it for how often I use it. I tend to do most of my planning online, so I rarely get it out.
Before you buy an expensive planner, I suggest trying one of these free planner links below! You can make it fancy with a personalized scrapbook-like cover and get it laminated and spiral bound at an office supply store. Maybe you would rather put it in a 3-ring binder. The great thing about these planners is that you can put them in the format that works for YOU! You might opt for the online planners that are available instead. Whatever you want to do, here are some free choices.
Five J’s
Joy over at Five J’s, has several helpful resources for planning out your year. Here is a Weekly Assignment Planner and a gradebook for free download. Check out more of her homeschool planning posts here, including a great post for Home School Inc, which is worth the time to check out. You’ll definitely want to print out anything that Joy made herself – she is an excellent graphic designer!!
Homeschool Skedtrack
Homeschool Skedtrack is a free online lesson planner, scheduler, and tracking system rolled into one. One of the main features is their automated scheduling of activities. If you miss an activity, Skedtrack frees you from the headache of rescheduling everything. I think this is something worth paying for, but it is FREE! It meets so many needs in one place. You can keep track of high school transcripts, courses, grades (by automated calculations!) and so many other things. You really need to check it out if online planning is for you.
Donna Young
Donna Young doesn’t just give you printable forms, she has numerous tips and advice on how to plan, how to use a planner, and how to assemble her free planner pages to make it useful to you. I have mentioned DonnaYoung.org several times now in this series of How to Homeschool for Free. This site has an incredible array of forms and other necessary things for the home school family. I love Donna Young! I use it all the time, year round for more than my homeschool needs.
Highland Heritage HomeSchool
Highland Heritage HomeSchool has two sections where you can find planning forms. The first is the teacher planning section. It has schedules, calendars, attendance, grade logs, report cards, conference records, co-op planners, lap book rubrics, and many more things for your planner. Print the ones you will use and leave the rest. The second section you will find useful is the Student Portfolio forms. It has checklists of things you can plan to assess and record in the student folders. I also found a student self-evaluation form that I think I might use for my kids.
Homeschool Launch
Homeschool Launch is a free, file-sharing community. It is not just about planners, but I was very pleased to find a huge amount of planning choices. These are pages that actual moms and dads have created for themselves and have shared this in this forum. I saw planning pages for block scheduling, Charlotte Mason planning, Heart of Dakota plans, and so many more that I cannot possible list them all here. You do have to register to view and download files. You may also share your own once you are a member, since that is the service the site is designed to provide.
The Homeschool Mom
The Homeschool Mom is a go-to for any home schooling mom for advice and help. The planning pages are thoroughly comprised and will meet the needs of many home school moms. It is free for personal use. Weekly planner and menu planner pages include FlyLady compatible weekly and menu planner pages, Calendars, High School Course Planner, Chore chart, Weekly Planner page for use with Weekly Assignment page or Unschooling Record Keeper, Assignment Sheet, Reading List, and several more choices for your planning pleasure.
Homeschool Tracker
Homeschool Tracker is Microsoft Windows-based planning and organizing software designed to track your lesson planning and records. With the free, basic version, you can keep track of field trips, grades, assignments, and attendance. It allows you to generate report cards, and a few more things. The PLUS version is the one that is not free, but it does have more features than the free version, as you would expect. It will not work on Mac computers unless you have Windows Parallel.
New Beginnings
New Beginnings has a free curriculum planner. The moms here will show you 7 steps to customizing your planner to suit your needs. It includes Lesson Plan Pages for ALL your children, Calendars, Attendance Charts, Class Schedule, and Teacher Schedule. Again, print the things you need and don’t bother with the rest. I like how the moms here don’t make you feel like you have to do it their way. Personalization is important and they tell you how to do it and make it work for you.
Happy Planning!
Be sure to check out the other posts in the How To Homeschool For Free series too!
Homeschooling Through The Summer 2012 Olympic Games
Jul
28
2012
Saturday
The Summer Olympic Games are definitely an exciting time for most people! It’s so much more than gymnastics and swimming, or whatever your favorite sport to watch happens to be. Each new location for the summer or winter olympics provides an excellent opportunity to learn about the country’s culture surrounding the games. From July 27 to August 12, 2012, the Summer Games will be happening in London, England. Will you be watching? What do you already know about them? What do you want to want to learn about them? Sounds like a fun project to me! I think we will start out with a viewing of “Chariots of Fire” and a discussion to follow.
Project Britain
Project Britain and the 2012 London Olympics provides an excellent opportunity to engage students all round the world in learning about Britain and the countries within (England, Scotland and Wales). There are some suggested activities and ideas for exploring the theme across the curriculum. The website has things that will interest kids and adults alike.
Teaching English
Teaching English has free teaching resources based around the London 2012 Games. There are lesson plans and activities on themes such as the Olympic and Paralympic sports and values. Each week they add a new resource. The website is dedicated to teaching people of foreign language to speak English (British spellings), but the worksheets and activities are still good for lesson plans.
Australian Olympic Committee
Australian Olympic Committee provides this thorough resource for the London 2012 Olympics. It is produced by the Australian Olympic Committee in consultation with teachers and educational advisors. The resource contains over 60 primary cross-curriculum lesson plans and student handouts themed around the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England across lower, middle, and upper elementary grades as well as high school. It is a part of the a.s.p.i.r.e. school network.
TES Teaching Resources
TES Teaching Resources is where teachers can share and download free lesson plans, classroom resources, revision guides and curriculum worksheets. You do have to register, but it is free. It appears that there is a subscription based level of membership, but I was able to join for free and download several lessons without being asked for any sort of payment. I found 34 lessons related to the 2012 Olympics, from Greek history to current events. There were over 2,000 with the keyword search of Olympics. I narrowed it down a bit!
Kids’ Soup
Kids’ Soup is a paid membership site, but you don’t have to join to use the free resources on this page. If you scroll down the page a bit, you will see there are several free links to printables as well as activity ideas for younger students.
EdGate
EdGate gives you the Gateway to the Summer Games. Keep the spirit of the Games alive as you use these themed lesson plans for your summer learning. You might notice that some of the lessons refer to Athens as the home of the summer games, which it was in 2004. Most of the lessons, however, are not dependent on the year of Athens hosting the games. Read through the ones that sound good and change any reference to the 2004 games to London 2012.
Lapbook Fun
Summer Olympics 2012 Unit Study & Lapbook has a reading list and links to another lapbook about England. Combine the lapbooks with this page here of fun activities and you will have your kids wishing the Summer Games were every summer!
Cheerios & Lattes
MacKenzie from Cheerios & Lattes has a great list of “teachable moments” that occur throughout the Olympic Games. She has them listed by category: Good Sportsmanship, How Different Sports Are Played, Geography, Time Zones, Being Gracious When Winning or Losing, Team Work, Hard Work, Being A Role Model, and Math. There are lots of great things to talk about as you watch the games!
This post is part of the How To Homeschool For Free series!
FREE Online Audio Book Resources
Jun
26
2012
Tuesday
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Two of my most recent posts have been about summer reading and learning styles. In this one, I’m taking into account the kids who need a little more than paper & ink for getting their information. Reading doesn’t have to be boring, especially if someone else is doing the work! Listening to audio books can improve reading skills and struggling readers might be able to read along with an unabridged audio version of a book to help fluency and build confidence in reading a story. I have always been a good reader, and yet I remember falling asleep to those “Long-Playing-records” with my record player that automatically shut off at the end of the story. (Yes, I’m that old..) One of my daughters fell in love with audio books and loves listening to them to fall asleep to every now and then. One of her favorite things is actually the old radio show, Father Knows Best. I tried to include all kinds of audio book references here. They are not all British, nor are they all public domain books and I think you’ll find something here to enjoy. I did! I am filling up our ipods for the 6-hour drive to summer camp! Also remember that your local library is a fabulous resource for audiobooks on CD that you can take along on your road trip, too. Just don’t lose them or the fine will be ridiculous… ask me how I know! Enjoy!
LibriVox
LibriVox is probably the most popular of free audio book sites. Volunteers at LibriVox record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. It is non-commercial, non-profit and ad-free. If you are also interested in reading a book from the public domain and recording it, you may submit it to them. Their goal is to have audio for every book in the public domain. There is a section with Children’s Literature, but it hasn’t been updated in a while. You can still search for specific titles if the one you want isn’t there.
Online Audio Stories and Tales of Time
Online Audio Stories and Tales of Time are sister sites as they share some of the same stories. You can pay to download on the Tales of Time site, or listen to streaming stories for free from either. The 3 free stories from Tales of Time have bonus sound effects and music. To get them, enter your email address in the form box and the download link will be emailed to you.
Storynory
Storynory has published an audio story every week since November 2005. The stories are listened to by families, and in schools, nurseries and hospitals the world over. You can download the mp3 file and transfer it to your favorite listening device. All our stories are beautifully read by professional actors and recorded in broadcast quality sound. All of their stories and audio books come with a full English text.
Kiddie Records
Kiddie Records allows you to download or stream classic stories and songs from old vinyl records! These are the stories I remember from listening to at my Nana’s house. The original Winnie the Pooh Songs is one I know I heard and fell in love with as a child. I can’t believe these are free. What a find! Many of these are read by the celebrities at the time they were made. Even if you don’t use these for school, you might want to listen to them on road trips this summer!
Books Should Be Free!
Books Should Be Free is a great site for finding classic audio books. I was able to easily download a few books via iTunes and transfer the to my ipod without any trouble. The books will downloaded as a podcast, so when you go to look for it in your library, look there first.
My Audio School
My Audio School was created to be an aid for dyslexic students. It has proven to be enjoyable to students of all ages and abilities. My Audio School offers a large number of free audiobooks. There is a paid version, but I think the free titles could keep you busy for a long time!
Robert Munsch Books
Robert Munsch is one of my favorite authors. His books are funny and my kids have always enjoyed them. (One of them even makes me cry – Love you Forever.) These are available with streaming audio or by download. If listening online, you can’t back up or pause, so you have to start over every time you want to go back. I recommend downloading if that is something you need as an option.
Storyline Online
Storyline Online is not the usual audio book website. Choices are limited, but it is all presented in a fun video with a celebrity reading the book. The video link goes to a YouTube video that shows the pictures in the book as well as clips of the celebrity reading it. I found that the books have fun activity guides to download and print if you want to make lessons out of reading time.
This post is part of the How To Homeschool For Free series!
Classic Literature {How To Homeschool For Free}
Jun
18
2012
Monday
Be sure to check out the other posts in the How To Homeschool For Free series too!
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Classic literature is not as boring as you might think… or as your kids might think. What makes a book a classic? Answers will vary, depending on your experiences. Is it a classic because it is old? Is it a classic because it changed history for someone? For each of us, we have classic literature experiences from our own education. There are books I will have my girls read because I enjoyed them as a child. There are some I was never interested in that other people just rave about. Honestly, I don’t think that being labeled a classic makes a book good literature. It’s different for everyone, and you need to choose what you want your kids to absorb through books. The links for this week are for studying classics that might be really old, or maybe just a little bit old, like me. You choose what is a classic for yourself. If it changed your way of looking at the world and the characters are still with you, well, I say that is a classic worth sharing no matter when it was written.
Bibliomania
Bibliomania has over 2,000 free Online Classic Literature Texts. There are Book Notes, Author Biographies, Book Summaries and Reference Books to go along with the texts. You can read read Classic Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Short Stories and more. There are Study Guides to the most read books and Help for Teachers. This site has a request to register before you can get to the list of books and authors, so if the link above doesn’t work for you, copy and paste this link here: http://www.bibliomania.com and go to the link to Register. It’s free and you get instant access.
Millstone Education
Millstone Education is full of resources for literature. Glen Draeger is a homeschool dad who enjoys literature. This site is run by a homeschool dad named Glen Draeger, and his site has plenty to keep you busy and it is easy to find what you need. Each Unit uses a classic work of literature or a book about a classic work or author. It is designed to enhance the understanding of the work and give parents and teachers a resource in one location that will give a substantial amount of information regarding the work being studied. As always, you can choose to use as much or as little of the unit as you want depending on the needs and desires of your students. There is a page to tell you how to use the unit to meet your schooling needs.
Mountain City Elementary
This list is from a public school website, and is a mixture of old and new books. I don’t think all of them are classics according to my standards, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth reading. These teaching units were designed by various teachers in the school system, so the format for each link is a little different. In general, though, each book link should have activities, vocabulary lists, and study questions. At the bottom of the page, there are some links to Bonus Jeopardy Questions for a few books.
Ms. Effie’s English Class
Ms. Effie has a compilation of her best lessons from her 34 years of teaching English. It has been updated this month, so the links on the lessons should be working. The lessons I took a look at had activity ideas and questions for study. Some of the lessons don’t have very much organization, but I do think this is a good resource for finding information for teaching the books. The classics on this site include Beowulf, Catcher in the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea, and other literature links and helps.
Glencoe Literature Library
Glencoe Literature Library is an extension of McGraw-Hill publications. Each study guide includes background information and reproducible activity pages for students. The guides are in pdf form. The study guides are designed to be used with the specific textbooks from McGraw-Hill, you can use your own book and ignore the page number references.
Grade Saver
Grade Saver has free ClassicNotes, which are written by Harvard Students. Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. My opinion is that this is one of the best-organized website for free help with literature analysis. There is also a forum for asking questions about the books where elements of the stories can be discussed. If this was available to me in college or even high school, my stress would have been so much less! Very good resource.
Ambleside Online
Ambleside Online is a website I come back to every now and then. I really like the book lists and suggestions they have for every age. You don’t have to subscribe to their scope and sequence to appreciate the work put into these lists. There is a general kind of test you can administer at the end of each sememster. Not all grades have them, but it’s likely that you could edit one to suit your needs. I find this site most helpful when I am at a loss of what book my child could be reading. All I need to do is look up that grade level and know what to put in the schedule.
SparkNotes
SparkNotes is a popular place to find study notes for literature and other subjects. As long as you are viewing the pages on line, it is free. There is a section for practicing the AP Literature SAT. (and other subjects, too!) As a word of caution, if you are letting your younger kids use this website, is that the SparkLife section is full of secular ads and articles. This site is full of useful resources, but take caution when leaving your student unsupervised.
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age.
— Robertson Davies
Learning Styles and Personalities {How To Homeschool For Free}
May
31
2012
Thursday
Be sure to check out the other posts in the How To Homeschool For Free series too!
A huge thanks to Jody Scott from Red Mixer Bakery for putting together this great series for all of us!
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One of the reasons public or traditional school is not necessarily for every child is because every child is different. I have 2 of my children who would probably fit well into that learning style model, while others are definitely outside of it.
What are learning styles? What do they mean? Do they matter? Well, if you have found a comfort zone and things are flowing smoothly for you, I wouldn’t worry about it. You have found your groove, so go with it! On the other hand, if the day comes when you are butting heads about math or spelling (or any other subject) you might have some research to do. Consider bookmarking this post to keep it as a reference for getting some help. I have a variety of links that provide free information related to teaching in different ways, as well as identifying what might be your child’s learning style or method of learning preference.
Homeschool Christian
Homeschool Christian presents three basic categories of learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. You will read that most children are kinesthetic when they are younger because the visual and auditory skills haven’t developed as much. As children get older, you can observe and determine which category your child is in.
HSLDA
HSLDA has a helpful page that labels learners as Lookers, Listeners, and Movers. It also explains how the teaching style should compliment the learning style as much as possible. I found that the list on the page that gives characteristics of the different styles was helpful because it also gives specific things that might be a struggle for each kind of learner.
Homeschool Views
Homeschool Views has designed 3 quizzes will aid you in identifying your child’s learning style, as well as your own. As a result, you can tailor your teaching in a way that best fits your child and discover how your family learns while uncovering both weaknesses and strengths. I had my oldest daughter (13) take the quiz and it confirmed what I suspected, that she is an auditory learner. She loves music and can plunk out tunes on the piano by ear. She had a good balance of the other styles as well, which explains why she can generally excel at whatever she has he heart set on.
Sonlight
Sonlight presents a thorough webinar on learning styles. It is a helpful video that is about 33 minutes long, so grab your coffee and a notebook to glean from this discussion by moms who have been around the block with different learning styles. From their website – “Do you and your child clash? Are you concerned about homeschooling because your student is just so different from you? You’re not alone! Each student is different and this can prove challenging to teachers. As a homeschooler, however, you have the unique opportunity to find tools that match your student’s unique learning style.”
Homeschool Buyers Co-op
Homeschool Buyers Co-op has this section on Learning Your Child’s Disposition and Learning Personality. You will find clever names for each personality that will hopefully help you learn how to relate to and help your children find an effective way to absorb the education being provided. The test that they offer is not free, but I found the characteristic descriptions very insightful.
Tips for studying
Here you will find tips for studying that are specific for 4 categories of learning styles: Kinesthetic, Visual, Audio, and Other Styles. They have a lot of great ideas that you can implement at home to help your children be more engaged in learning that might not be available in traditional school settings (for example, how chewing gum can help Kinesthetic learners!)
FamilyEducation
FamilyEducation works to assess your child’s personality so you can use that information to design your homeschool program to suit your child’s strengths. The article is quite detailed and you have to click to continue on to read all 6 sections. It is based on the Myers-Briggs personality typing system, which is widely accepted. “In the Myers-Briggs scheme, there are four basic elements of personality preferences. Each of these preferences is measured on a scale that has two “sides.” Knowing where a person’s tendency resides on each of these scales determines the person’s overall personality type.”
How to Enhance Learning Styles
How to Enhance Learning Styles is discussed in this link. If you scroll down, you will find a handy chart. Maybe it’s because I am a visual learner, but this chart makes a lot of sense to me so I plan to print it out and mark it up with my children’s names so I can remember what helps them to focus better. I do have 5 of them, after all, and I wouldn’t want to get them mixed up!
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In all of this research, I found that one book, The Way They Learn, was recommended repeatedly for dealing with the different learning styles. You can buy it on Amazon or look for “The Way They Learn” by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias at your local library!.
I hope this has helped you as much as it has me!
