One of the main goals I set early on in our homeschool was to give my children a love of learning. Creative homeschooling is the mode I’ve used to successfully do that. Don’t think that you can never put your child in front of a textbook or computer screen to homeschool creatively! Instead, think of it as offering your children curriculum and styles to meet their needs. Sometimes that will be a textbook or computer class. Other times, it may be a unit study, living literature, field trips, games, project-based learning, co-op classes, or interest-based studies. These articles show you how. Be inspired!
Hubby and I celebrated Valentine’s Day on Saturday, so I decided to do a family Valentine’s Day celebration on Friday. To get the excitement rolling, we ditched the math books and used little sweethearts to create graphs and find the mean, median and mode of candy that I gave them. We spent much of the…
The time has come to set out some winter learning centers. Even though the kids get outside almost everyday still, it’s just too cold to stay out for long. Without friendly reminders around the house, one of my sweet children will do nothing but beg to watch the TV for hours. So, in different places…
Great December Reading Oh, and have you met God? Apparently Eli has! Every time he gets his busy little fingers on a Santa ornament he says, “God.” (Very reverently, I might add.) His innocent little eyes looking up at us with complete seriousness that he is holding God right in his chubby little hands. …
These turned out so cute, and they were fairly easy for a beginning to intermediate sewing project. Draw the shape onto a piece of felt, making it about 1/4″ bigger than you’d like the finished product to be. Double the felt and cut out the front and back pieces at the same time. Decide…
Our Monthly Book Club We take part in a Book of the Month Club for elementary homeschool students that we just love. Our family had never heard of this month’s assigned book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. What a great surprise…my children and I LOVED it and now consider it to be…
October/November = lots of falling leaves and lots of candy. What better to do with both of those things? Math, of course! Whether you have extra M&M’s, Skittles, Smarties, Runts, or just a big bunch of assorted candy bars, take a few minutes to turn those sweets into more than cavities. Even little bitty ones…
Remember the Field Trip Journals? We’re still using them this year and I couldn’t be happier with them. They are proving to make great writing assignments, and I’m finding the kids absolutely love looking through them for the memories. I love to watch the kids sort through brochures, ticket stubs and pictures trying to decide what to include and how…
Summer break has officially begun for us, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. Have you ever met a bored child in the summer? That’s one of the worst types of children to be around! 🙂 Children homeschooled Charlotte Mason-style are usually good at keeping themselves busy, but I have a trick up my sleeve…
Mahayla and one of her best buds have been planning a camping trip since January. Yes, that’s FIVE months! After many revised lists, faxes to one another and late nights on the phone planning, the trip finally happened this weekend. The two girls and two other best buds (along with a couple of Dads and,…
School is officially out for the summer, but that won’t stop us from taking advantage of many great learning opportunities! This week we visited our local water treatment plant and the neighboring electric generation plant. If you’ve ever read The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks, then you’ve visited our water treatment plant! 🙂 I…
As a fitting end to our Keepers At Home year, we had a little scrapbooking party. What great memories come from this group! (And, yes, even our boys have fun. But, ahem, shooting a foam deer with a bow and arrow in his Contenders of the Faith class at co-op was MUCH more manly! Thank…
Creative Memorization Ideas My all-time favorite creative memorization tool so far has been Times Tales! My oldest daughter had struggled with the upper multiplication facts for months. In ONE day of this program, she knew the facts! I’m not kidding! It uses little stories to tell about each fact. After doing the program with her, I still…