Posts Tagged ‘Home’

Finding Top Quality Home School Programs


Most people would be of the opinion that the idea of having home school programs is a fairly recent phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth. Up until 1852, when Massachusetts passed a compulsory school attendance law, children who received any education followed home school programs. Parents used the Bible as a tool to teach reading and writing, and other skills were learned through life experiences and the tutorage of elders. Public schools began to be established during the 19th century to provide education for orphans who had no parents to educate them. Before public schools were introduced, lots of children were educated with home school programs or in private schools. Illiteracy was rife at this time, and the majority of children were never adequately educated. By 1918 similar compulsory education laws had been adopted in all states. Little opposition to these laws occurred until the 1960′s and 70′s when parents began to question the public education system. They began to investigate alternative methods of educating their children. As a result, home schooling is legal in 50 states. Regulations and laws vary state to state and if you are considering home school programs you need to check your state laws carefully. Who chooses to home school their children? Many parents choose to run home school programs for religious or moral reasons. Some parents have concerns about the school environment (drugs, bullying, or safety) or have other reasons to choose home school programs. Apart from instructing your children in reading, writing and math, you need to address their social development as well. This can be achieved through interacting with other home schooled children, or through church and sporting activities. Education is not only about literacy and numeracy instruction. It is about ensuring that your child develops socially, emotionally and psychologically in a well-balanced manner. Whatever the reason you have to choose to home school your children, you must follow a curriculum to ensure that your child receives a good education. Parents are not trained teachers, and they need specialist help in delivering lessons. If you wish to send your children on to further education, they will need to pass standardized tests. In order to pass these tests your child must follow the state curriculum. There are many programs available to help parents to home school successfully, and many teachers in regular schools use these resources too. Classroom phonics programs are a very valuable resource for teachers and parents. Mcruffy Press publish great resources for classroom phonics that can be used for home school programs. Teaching your child to read needs a sound base that can be achieved through using phonics activities. The web site details the resources available to use to teach classroom phonics when you choose to home school. Included are teacher’s manuals that detail daily lesson plans that are easy to follow, work books that cover spelling, phonics activities, comprehension and assessment. The resource pack contains flash cards necessary to use with phonics activities. Mcruffy Press was founded by Brian Davis, a former elementary school teacher. The products offered by Mcruffy Press help parents as teachers to deliver lessons appropriate to their children’s learning styles. The web site allows you to download a sample of the programs available, which is an excellent way to preview the resources. Classroom phonics and phonics activities are not the only resources available from Mcruffy Press. They offer grade specific products focusing on reading, math, science, handwriting and spelling that cater for traditional classrooms and home school programs, targeting students from kindergarten to grade 4. Many schools throughout America choose these products for classroom phonics instruction.

The Many Benefits Of Home Schooling


Sending your child to a public or private school can bring with it many problems. Your child will be exposed to other children who are sick, who have not been vaccinated, and who do not have the same beliefs and values as you. You may find that your child is coming home from school with ideas and thoughts you do not agree with. Children are extremely impressionable and having peers with different beliefs is an issue for many parents. By choosing to home school your child, you will be their primary enforcer and can teach them the beliefs and values you want them to learn. You will not have to worry about your child interacting with other children you do not know. Your child will still be able to have social outlets, as that is an important aspect of growing up, but you will be able to know and meet their friends.

When home schooling your children, you have the option of enrolling them in an online school. These are extremely beneficial for children who are home schooled as they offer support to both parents and students. Online schools hire credentialed teachers and staff to assist your child when needed. Your child is also held accountable for assignments. Each student must complete assignments on time and be responsible for completing them. Online schools are wonderful for parents who also work outside the home and are not able to spend their entire day with their child but still want the benefits of home schooling. Many parents complain of the difficulty in getting a hold of their child’s teacher. The staff at online schools is available by phone or e-mail so many parents actually feel they get better responses from them than they did when their child actually went to school.

Many parents find that the relationships within their families improve when their children are home schooled. While many may worry that siblings who spend so much time together will fight and argue more, the opposite is actually true. Siblings who are home schooled tend to get along better and find their relationships are stronger than those who are not home schooled. While each child will still have peers of their own age, they will spend more time with their siblings getting to know them better and finding they have more in common than they may have previously thought. Parents also find their relationship with their children greatly improves. By being the primary teacher in your children’s life, you will find that they respect you in a different way than they did when they thought of you as just their parent. Your conversations will be enhanced as you begin to teach them in a way you want them to be taught. You will find that your children will be more open with you and look to you for encouragement and wisdom.

The benefits of home schooling your children are many. Deciding to home school your children is a choice only you can make. While many families continue to send their children to school, you may find that home schooling your children is a better choice for them and for you. You children will be as prepared for the future as their peers in regular school, if not more so. You will feel confident knowing your children received the greatest education possible, as you were their primary educator.

There are numerous benefits to home schooling and choosing the proper home school curriculum for your child. For more information about Home School and Curriculums, please do visit our site – http://www.homeschoolcurriculum.org/

Deciding to Home School – The Do’s and Don’ts


If the idea of home schooling is something that you and your family are considering there are a couple of important things to make sure to decide before you make any decisions. This decision is something that will affect your children for years and needs to be taken seriously and not on a whim or when you are upset with a current situation. Following are a couple of do’s and don’ts when making the decision if home schooling is right for you and your family.

Do’s:

Learn the laws for home schooling in your state. The home school legal defense group, hslda.org is an important stop to make while you are making your decision on home schooling. Another great support system to find is local home school group in your area, visit some and find one that you feel comfortable in. One last stop in helping you make a decision is to find and visit a home school conference, there will be a lot of information presented to you and lots of different schooling options. Just don’t bring your checkbook, make no purchases. You will be tempted but that is not what you are there for, its education for you to make a decision you need to seek right now.

Make sure you and your spouse both agree on your decision. For the most part if you make the decision to home school there will be only one income coming into the home. Even if only one of you do the teaching you will need the support of your spouse. There will be naysayers about your decision so you will need to present a united front.

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This can be a very exciting time for you and the kids. But before you do anything else write down a mission statement. What are your personal reasons for deciding to home school? What are some goals you want to accomplish the first year what are your long range goals for your home schooling. You will need this statement to fall back on when you are having rough days. There will be times when you doubt yourself and the decision you made to school at home. Believe me, there were times that if I hadn’t of had that paper to look at I would have quit many times.

Don’ts:

Decide to home school and work outside of the home. This is the education of your child; they deserve your attention and leadership for their education. This will be especially important the first year of home schooling no matter what grade your child is in they will need your help in knowing how to adjust to this new phase in their lives. And mom and dad this will be new for you and you will need to do some learning about how to home school yourselves.

Jump right into textbooks. I know this sounds like I’m now giving you the conflicting advice but as you will soon learn on your home schooling journey there is so much more to education they textbooks. If you have little ones play games that will teach them, read books and play. If the kids are older and have been in public school they may need some down time, some time away from textbooks, maybe some educational computer games, sports. Some free reading time, spend some time connecting with them and forming a relationship. Find their learning style so you can use it to help them love learning again. Warning: this is not permission to let the kids turn on the TV and zone out all day.

So I hope that these tips will help you and your family in making the right decision about home schooling. It will be a wonderful experience if you make the decision to do this. But if you can’t honestly say that you can make this the most important thing in your life, before your job, what others say about your decision or anything else, then maybe home schooling is not for you.

Choosing the right Science curriculum for your home school program


The Science curriculum is one of the most vital of subjects to understand as the realm of the Sciences intertwines with all the other core subjects necessary for a well-rounded and complete general education during the K-12 years. Nevertheless, fear not as there are simple, but detailed methods in place to help you select the best programs for your children and to enable them to apply the subjects of their Science curriculum to the many aspects of adult life after their home schooling is complete.

Before beginning to map out your children’s Science curriculum and its content, a few tasks need to be accomplished to ensure you find the best home school solutions for your child.

1. Determine your child’s grade placement – If previously in a public or private school, get the lesson plans, or at least subject areas, of their Science curriculum instruction before home schooling.

2. Determine who will be conducting the home school classes – If it is one parent or both, some other family member, or even a hired teacher. Since they are an integral part of home schooling and developing the Sciences curriculum, they need to be in the following steps in determining the curriculum or any other curriculum they may be teaching. If hiring an outside the family teacher, this will ensure they know your expectations of them.

3. Find the your state’s Board of Education (BOE) content guidelines for your child’s Science curriculum or one of the many home school websites that have full curriculums for your child’s grade level – Determine the content requirements for the coming year and the next three years of public education; example: if this is grade level 3, then also get the content guidelines for years 4 through 6. This information is necessary in developing the Science curriculum in the next step.

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4. Compare at least three to five Science curriculum and home schooling sources for the course content requirements in Step 3. Find the sources that either somewhat overlap, refresh, or begin the next progression of the curriculum. This can be augmented by placement testing for the learning level. Placement tests are easily found through search engines and many are free to download. Some may contain tests for Bible studies, but the remainder of the tests helps determine your child’s knowledge level without reference to religious or secular factors. They also identify where your child is in relation to the BOE grade requirements before going to Step 5 in developing their Science curriculum program.

5. Evaluate the new Science curriculum progression for the next two to three school years, or four to six semesters, to make sure there is a smooth and logical progression in the content for the remaining years of their home school program. This process should be done each year to allow adjustments for new course content or revised curriculum requirements.

6. Select the best Science curriculum for your child’s home schooling program. Congratulations! You are now done with the easy part. Teaching the content and staying on schedule is the difficult, but most rewarding part.

Some reminders and tips:

· The steps recommended above are suggestions. However, they can be used for any home school curriculum.

· Parents need to evaluate their child, who is going to teach the courses and select the Science curriculum that best suits their child and their teacher in their home schooling program. · It is imperative to remember the diversity and wide scope the Sciences include – Life Science, Natural Science, Information Technology, Biology, Earth and Space Science and many others.

· Because of the diversity, it is good to see what will be required in the coming years so that the child is prepared for the natural progression and as they gain the knowledge necessary to approach the entire Science curriculum that will be necessary in fulfilling their general education requirements through home schooling.

There are numerous benefits of home schooling a child. Benefits include choosing an appropriate and proper home school curriculum, which includes math, science curriculum, history, and geography for your child. For more information about Home School and Curriculums, please do visit our site – http://www.homeschoolcurriculum.org/

Your Role As The Home School Teacher And What It’s Like


When it comes to home schooling, your role as the teacher is of utmost importance. You naturally are a good teacher for your kids so adapting to this role as home school teacher should be a natural gravitation. Your job is to educate your child on the subjects that they need to learn, all while being there as a parent to help and support your kids.

To keep your child stimulated in the activities of home schooling, you should teach your child in a way that interests him. This is where your role as parent comes in as you should know your child’s likes and dislikes. Your patience with your child will have to be at a high level especially if they’re at a young age, as you will have to give them time to learn and adapt to the materials taught to them.

If you ever feel like your teaching skills as a parent aren’t up to par, then you should know that there are a ton of helpful home schooling resources readily available to you. You should use these home schooling guides to improve your skills as a teacher all while educating your child at the same time.

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There packages, forums, libraries, and even virtual schools that can assist you with your home schooling endeavors. If you’re a beginning home school teacher, you should take advantage of all of this helpful free information right now. There are also software available to track your child’s progress and that will help to organize your lesson plans also.

Local support groups can be of immense help also. You will find other home school teachers who have a vast amount of experience and education that will sure to benefit you also. Once you’ve gotten the hang of things and have used all of the helpful free advice, then you will find that your home schooling jobs are streamlined and simple.

One thing that you do want to avoid however when home schooling is not to get tired of doing it. This is called “home school burnout” and it happens to alot of home school teachers. This can occur for a number of reasons such as illness, an addition of a new family member, more responsibility, or the adapting change in the home schooling curriculum.

If you see that you cry for any reason or are lacking patience, then you may have this disorder. If you are burnt out about home school, the first thing you need to know is that it can be reversed. You want to lower your expectations and look for other things to try if something isn’t working the way you want it to.

Whenever tension arises, take a break. You may need to check your style teaching and revamp them to suit your style. You should never schedule alot of activities for your child just to help them get out and socialize. Having a depressed parent and a complaining kid is a bad mixture for home schooling.

You want to get as much support from your spouse as possible to try and help out with the situation. You may want to consider having your spouse check your child’s homework as this will alleviate some of the responsibility that you have to endure.

These tips will help to end your home schooling burnout and get your on the right track to teaching your child while being happy at the same time. Good luck with your home school teachings.

Should I Send My Children To Academy Home School?


An Academy home school offers a few advantages over public school. Private special education has become quite popular in our time because of the way they train and bring up their students.

 

Private home schooling may start from the beginning such as the preparatory course for children. It can continue up to high school, and by the time they reach the University or College, they are equipped with more than what they should have in order to stay competent students.

 

With home school, parents are able to spend more quality time with their children. They are physically present to assist, influence, train and mold them to become outstanding students and citizens of society.

 

Because of this opportunity, the bond between parent and child will have a strong foundation. They will draw closer to each other and establish a close and harmonious relationship until they become old. Children will have greater chances at showing respect and care for their parents.

 

Children or each child has the chance to receive individualized attention and instruction with Academy home school. In public school, one classroom may have 30 to 50 or more students, for every teacher. The attention that each student gets from his teacher is very short. Hence, the student may have to exert more effort to understand the lesson.

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Most educational institutions that offer home schooling are run by a religious organization, in which case, the students will have better chances of being influenced and trained in areas of philosophy and theology.

 

The home provides an environment conducive to learning, growth in morality and cultivation of values. Most students who go to public schools are exposed to harmful things such as immorality, disrespect to one another, bullying, moral deterioration, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

 

Students are exposed to such risks and there are greater chances of them being influenced wrongly. If they are at home, however, they can concentrate on their lectures. You can choose the type of exposure and influence you want for your children.

 

Students are more likely to show excellence in academia. This is because they have personalized education. Their professors can provide them their due attention, and they can focus their attention to more useful things such as their lessons.

 

The public schools follow a standard schedule of holding classes as mandated by the government. However, in academy home school, the schedule of classes is flexible to accommodate family activities like vacation and trips.

 

Safety is something that can be provided optimally at home. Public schools, although, they have good security, cannot 100% ensure the safety of each student, professor and staff.

 

Over the past years, we have been bombarded with news about school campuses being attacked by someone who went amok. The criminal could be an outsider who gained access to the school premises, or could be any of the students who was deeply depressed and hurt with personal or academic reasons.

 

Academy home school protects children from such happenings as they stay house, the place where they can always feel secure. Finally, students save time in preparing for school. No need for them to dress up.

 

Home school for your high schooler


Homeschooling at any age can be a challenge, but we have found that home schooling our high school aged children has been the most challenging.  We want to make sure they have everything they need for the real world, but also all the credits they need to get into college.   
The challenge is not so much with our children, but with finding high school curriculum for home schooling.  Most of the home school curriculum is younger grade based usually below 8th grade.  Yes there are some home school programs out there that have high school aged curriculum, but some of those can be very costly and when you are on a budget it makes it difficult.

We prefer to create our own home school curriculum rather than buy something expensive.  Creating your own home school curriculum can be interesting and fun, whether for your younger children or your high schoolers.  With our high schoolers we can include them in creating something they can be interested in and still get the number of credits for graduation.

Themed unit studies are one way of creating home school curriculum for your high school children.   You can determine your children’s area of interest whether it be Egypt, Civil War, Automotive, Cooking or any of hundreds of other options.  Themed units should be able to include reading, writing, math, history and science at least.

So how do I put a themed unit study together?  Research on the subject is key to creating a home school curriculum yourself.  Let’s take Cooking as an example for a high school themed unit study.  The children will need to read recipes and show basic understanding of using it to cook with, they will use math and science when measuring and combining ingredients and of course it is good to learn some history of cooking, techniques and styles.

As you can see creating a home school curriculum for your high schooler can be a challenge. Creating your home school curriculum takes some work up front, but in the end when you see how much more interested your children are in learning it is all worth it!  
This of course is just one example of creating your own home school curriculum for your high school children, there are many options out there and don’t forget the internet is a very informative place to find great ideas for home schooling your children.

For some great ideas check out www.homeschoolingprofessor.com we help you learn how to homeschool for next to nothing!

Applying A Home School Math Program


Math has never been fun, easy or interesting to many adults, who were taught math more than 20 years ago. Changes in teaching methods have altered how many children think about math, and their capability to do more complex math in their heads. These changes have been incorporated into home school math programs and the home school math books that you can obtain with any reputable home school math program.

Since you have decided to home school your child to provide a better education in a safer environment, you now must learn things you haven’t though about since grade school. If you think math still involves carrying, then your must review a home school math program before you start teaching your child. If you try and teach math with carrying your child will not be unprepared to master the tests necessary to obtain a passing grade. There are many home school math programs to choose from, you should carefully review your options.

Once you choose a program, you should complete it, before you start your child on the program. This will provide you an excellent opportunity to prepare to teach your child. Looking for a home school math program can take several tacks, the first being contacting the agency in your state that handles home schooling and asking for their suggestion for a home school math program. You can, and should, do a general browser search of the internet to determine what programs exist. You can contact a local home school support group and ask for their recommendations.

Once you have everyone’s suggestions for a home school math program, check each one out carefully. Check review on the different home school math programs and see what other people have used them say about them. As terrible as it sounds, not all home school math programs are good teaching material. The world is full of people who cannot teach math, but try to do so anyway. That carries over into home school math programs and can cause your child to lack an understanding of math.

A poor math teacher can hamper your child’s academic progress; don’t let that poor math teacher be you. What if you go through the entire home school math program and not all of it makes sense. This is a possibility; the new terms sometimes don’t mesh well with the math you learned years ago. Find the home schooling support group in your area and find out if there are any other parents who could be of help to you.