A Few of my favorite things for Homeschooling

I love teaching my kids from home. I wake up (almost) every day excited to get to the "schooling" part of our day. There have been a few adjustments that I have made over the course of the year, but definitely some things that I have found that I love! Here's a list of what I have loved, and what my kids have loved using!



1. Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl (I use this combined with Easy Grammar- short daily grammar review) I also use the Shurley method when discussing sentences from texts and books that we are reading.

2. Rapid Recall System by Little Giant Steps- A complete system to learning Math facts and skip counting. My kids enjoy this and I have seen Caitlyn improve dramatically since we have been using this.

3. Explode the Code series- all of my kids have enjoyed this. I start the "Get Ready, Get Set, Go for the Code" series before Kinder and so far, 3 of my kids have been reading before Kindergarten. We'll see how it goes for the last two.

4. The Institute for Excellence in Writing- We have only been using this method for a short time, but it has transformed writing around here to be FUN and not painful. Caitlyn will sit and write just for fun now!

5. Books! Books! Books! Reading aloud is fun for everyone. Even the little ones. During the second half of the year my kids have enjoyed The Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little, Homer Price (Micah especially loved this), and we are currently reading Peter Pan.

6. Memorize His Word- Greg wrote this program, so of course I love it! But seriously, my kids pretty much use it every day and it helps us keep track of all of the Bible verses that we have memorized!

7. Any basic readers without a lot of pictures. For some reason both of my kids do better reading without so many visual pictures in front of them. Perhaps their imaginations come into play more often and help them stay engaged.



Resources and ideas that have helped me as a homeschooling mom:

1. A Thomas Jefferson Education

2. Any Resources that teach me how a child's developing brain works. The Institute for Excellence in Writing has quite a few resources. For example, as Caitlyn has struggled with Spelling (she can memorize words for a test, but the next week will have lost it all!), I have learned that Spelling is better learned by sound. Our brains need to store each letter in order. SO, when we looked at a word on a page, our brain tries to process it as a whole "picture." When we learn it by listening to each letter in order, our brains can "file" it away in the proper order (This is exactly how students train for a Spelling Bee). Now, I record each Spelling word in my iphone and have Caitlyn listen to the proper spelling as she writes it on paper. Good bye workbooks! Also, even as adults we can recognize that when we learn information to music, we cannot retrive that information without going through the entire song. Kids learn better by repetition of facts without music!

3.Realizing that my kids learn better by short increments of information and discussion rather than hours spent on many subjects. We have "breaks" during the day and read aloud together, or we break up the day by doing physical activity and "brain games." There are a lot of brain developing games that you can do with a deck of cards or items around the house.

4. Reading and challenging myself with something new every week. A great teacher is also a great learner (I have only learned this by working with great teachers!)



I am sure as the years go by that I could add more to this list, but I really like the challenge of keeping things simple, yet creating a RICH academic environment for learning.