Middle School

Green piggy bank with gold coin image for a post about Economics in the Homeschool

Economics in the Homeschool

Sadly, the formal study of economics is left out of most of the curricula I’ve run across in my 11+ years of homeschooling. An understanding of economics is EXTREMELY important as our children grow up to care for a family, learn to tithe and give, and become the financial leaders of our country. Unless we took…

Planning a Large Unit Study

(This post contains affiliate links.) In this final installment of my unit study series, I’m going to share with you how to design a unit study that is fairly in-depth.  For those of you new to this series, you can catch up by reading… How To Plan a Unit Study Unit Study Projects Planning a…

Planning a Small Unit Study

We’re finally into some practical posts in my series about unit studies! In my first post, I wrote about how I design unit studies for our homeschool. In the second post, I wrote about incorporating project-based learning into the units. Now, I’d like to share a very short and simple study we completed on magnets….

Project-Based Learning Ideas

I’m a huge believer in project-based learning! Keep reading to learn why and to get tons of project-based learning ideas for your homeschool! Just what is project-based learning? Quite simply, it’s a learning method in which your children dive into a subject and complete a project to show what they know.  Projects can really be…

Economics for Kids blog image with Pancakes book and economic book report in the background.

Economics for Kids: Productive Resources

(This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) Target Age Range: 3rd-8th Skills Covered: economics, productive resources, natural resources, capital resources, human resources, sorting Last January, I took a professional development class on incorporating economics into your classroom.  Yes, apparently homeschool parents can take professional development classes…they knew I…

Play Dough Geometry

Learning math with play dough geometry is so much fun! Middle and high school students like to play, too, and this series of lessons gives them a great, hands-on overview of beginning geometry. Concrete learning (actually touching, building, and manipulating things) is so important to solidify a real understanding of otherwise abstract concepts. Play dough…

Graphing: Facebook Birthdays

  Target Age Range: 4th-12th grades Skills Covered: gathering data, graphing, technology, keyboarding When I used to teach in a classroom, it was easy for my students to gather large amounts of data for graphing…there were 24+ people in the room at all times.  As a homeschooler, it takes a little more creativity to gather…

Living Math Series

Beginning next week… October 15-26… a series full of practical ideas for incorporating more living math into your school days! Join me here daily!  Better yet, add my feed to your feed reader so you’re sure not to miss a post!

Cove Springs Nature Walk

While we love simple nature walks around our home, we also love taking the time once a month (sometimes more often) to go somewhere interesting for nature study.  This post highlights our autumn walk through the wetland trails of Cove Springs in Frankfort, KY.  What a beautiful afternoon! We were blessed to have my parents…