Category Archives: Our Homeschool

Daniel Boone

According to the special days calendar, June 7 is “Daniel Boone Day”, though October 22 is his birthday (1734). This American pioneer/frontiersman/explorer, is an interesting guy to study any day. Below are some links for free Daniel Boone teaching resources.

Biography, word games, quiz, and printables http://gardenofpraise.com/ibdboone.htm

Daniel Boone Quotes http://www.rugusavay.com/daniel-boone-quotes/

Daniel Boone Coloring Page Printable http://www.patrioticcoloringpages.com/american-history/027-daniel-boone.html

Wilderness Trail Interactive Map http://danielboonetrail.com/trail-map/

Information and photos from Cumberland Gap National Historical Park https://www.nps.gov/cuga/index.htm

Animated Biography http://www.watchknowlearn.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=8624&CategoryID=1710

Maps and Audio tours of The First Frontier https://www.firstfrontier.org/tour.html#maps

Pioneer games and activities for outdoors http://pioneerexperience.com/fun-games/pioneer-activities-outdoor-games

Wilderness Survival Skills List for Kids http://thesurvivalmom.com/wilderness-survival-skills-kids/

Unit Study with Printables for Lapbooking or Notebooking http://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/exploring-to-revolution/div-daniel-boone-north-american-explorer-div/

betty jo

Free Teaching Resources of the Week!

Leave a reply

These are some of the links to sites which we tried out and learned from this week. We’ll be visiting these sites again, they’re all great!

The younger boys practiced math facts with pumpkin patch math games from http://www.fun4thebrain.com/index.html

We played the Daniel themed word games from http://kidsonlinebiblegames.com/

We started a couple of research projects using this interactive information site with over 900,000 topics! http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/

This music site sells music, but has free lyrics and a short sample of the songs. We read and sang the October themed songs. http://www.songsforteaching.com/themeunits/octobersongs.htm

The younger boys and I enjoyed some short stories from http://www.short-story-time.com/

I got some awesome craft and lesson plan ideas from http://www.franw.com/

We all played dictionary games and even submitted some made up words to the “Build Your Own Dictionary” from this Merriam-Webster site. http://www.wordcentral.com/home.html

The kid from this poetry competition responds to the accusation the he has been brainwashed. Brainwashing is a topic that comes up occasionally when discussing homeschooling. It was a wonderful presentation to share with my high schoolers. http://www.collive.com/show_news.rtx?id=27292&alias=my-parents-brainwashed-me#.Ul-DAOWOMog.facebook

Every day free resources are posted in the homeschooling social media groups. If you’re interested in finding your own great links for free teaching resources, need some advice, or have something to share I recommend joining these homeschool networking groups.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/210519735725683/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/567122276640599/

I hope you had a productive and fun homeschooling week. Enjoy the weekend!

betty jo

Our Homeschooling Week Ending October 11

8 Replies

This past week was our fall break, and let me tell you, we enjoyed it. Once I got the 1st quarter grades recorded, that was it for school! We stayed up late and slept even later. The kids and I watched movies, played games, and spent a good deal of time outside. I never took so many naps in my adult life as I took this week. I should have been working on a few things, but resting and relaxing is what a break is supposed to be about, and I took full advantage of that.

However, we did finish the new mural on the chalkboard wall! This was the first time trying silhouettes. I think I like drawing/coloring by erasing! With the week off now over, I hope the kids are ready to get back to our regular schedule for they may need to motivate me. I so enjoyed my break from lesson planning and teaching.

I hope you had a terrific week and that you’re enjoying the weekend.

For more about our chalkboard wall see https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/one-of-our-favorite-things-the-wall/

betty jo

Free Educational Links of the Week

Leave a reply

This week was our fall break, but not a break from finding some terrific educational resources. Below are the best of “new to me” sites that I have saved for next week when our studies resume. It’s my hope that you can use these too!

Children’s activities and crafts and more (warning – this site offers so much you will need to make sure you have a lot of time to spend browsing around) http://krokotak.com/en/

Thousands of lesson plans and worksheets http://lessonplancentral.com/

Health and science resources for all grade levels http://classroom.kidshealth.org/

Plants, animals, fungi, ecology, geology, and more http://www.backyardnature.net/index.html

Fun poetry resources http://www.poetryteachers.com/index.html

Great education articles from NSA’s weekly newsletter including “Strategies That Motivate All Students to Participate”, “Art Therapy Exercises”, and ” Childhood Damaged by Over-testing” http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8fb495371ca5be23e1601ecc0&id=a2a873085d&e=3bba501884

Have a great weekend!

betty jo

World Sight Day

4 Replies

According to the special days calendar for October, the second Thursday is World Sight Day. This awareness day is sponsored by WHO (World Health Organization) and was established to draw attention to blindness and vision impairment. Below is a collection of free resources for teaching about the human eye and blindness.

Printable human eye diagram and eye vocabulary list http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/anatomy/eye/

Follow a videotaped dissection of a cow eye and then compare and contrast what you’ve seen with an interactive diagram of the human eye. http://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/lsps07.sci.life.stru.coweye/cows-eye-dissection/

These are articles written for middle and high school levels which discusses how the eye works, the causes of blindness, and what doctors can do to detect and treat visual problems http://kidshealth.org/kid/health_problems/sight/visual_impaired.html# and http://www.planet-science.com/categories/over-11s/human-body/2010/12/let-there-be-light.aspx

Interactive quiz to test eye knowledge http://kidshealth.org/kid/quizzes/EYEquiz.html#cat20913

Vision experiments http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chvision.html

There are many Bible verses relating to the eyes, blindness, and healing of the blind. However, Isaiah 42:16 is what I have selected for our homeschool Bible discussion, copy work and journaling

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known,
    along unfamiliar paths I will guide them;
I will turn the darkness into light before them
    and make the rough places smooth.
These are the things I will do;
    I will not forsake them.”

To conclude our World Sight Day study we’ll be watching this informative video about the history, training, and use of seeing eye dogs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udUWaXxGo_U

Human Eye and vision resources and videos http://www.franw.com/2015/08/the-human-eye.html

BIG List of Special Days in October, 2018

betty jo

Monday’s Homeschool Humor

4 Replies

This week is our fall break! And after near flooding over the weekend and very little sleep I’m thankful this morning that we are out of school for a few days. Also over the weekend, we were greatly blessed by our “life group” from our church. Some of those sweet people came over and worked on my car! They brought the parts and everything! There’s still a couple of other things left to be done for it but soon we will be able to get to the library and our homeschooling activities again!

I’m wondering what kind of learning and reading is going to be happening over the next few days. It seems that some of the best lessons learned over the years have been learned without any planning, record keeping, grading, or scheduling.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that this week will be a great one!

Blessings,

betty jo

Our Homeschooling Week Ending October 4

11 Replies

This was an easy week for our homeschool. My husband and I were not feeling well and with our car still broken, it was a good week to stay home. Also, this was our 9th week of the homeschooling year so we’ve been finishing up a few loose ends and testing before starting our fall break.

The highlight this week has been the chalkboard wall. With our pirate studies being over it was time to erase. J had been asking to do that for several days, so he was excited to get that job started.

We have decided that the next mural should be a fall scene and agreed on a big full moon with a silhouette tree.

We’re saving a couple of blank spaces in the moon for other silhouettes, perhaps a bat, an owl, and a spider.

Perhaps we’ll get it finished over the weekend or early next week. Until then we will have to deal with a dusty mess.

Our keyhole garden science project is still ongoing. The tomato plants are about finished but the peppers are still producing like crazy.

E and B have started back with SALT (homeschool creative ministries troop) and are loving being with their friends again after some time off to settle into the new school year.

I hope you had a good week and that you enjoy your weekend.

betty jo

Free Educational Links of the Week

Leave a reply

Once again this week, we have made great use of free educational sites from around the web. Below are the links to some awesome sites we have been using for some of our homeschooling lessons.

Pets, Animals, and Aquariums – information and resources http://animal-world.com/index.html

A week of groceries from around the world in photos http://realitypod.com/2013/05/a-week-of-groceries-in-different-countries-pictures/

Current Events – Government Shut Down http://htekidsnews.com/government-shutdown/

French, Italian, German, and Spanish interactive dictionary with audio http://www.chillola.com/index.html/

Editable handwriting practice worksheets http://www.handwritingpractice.net/handwriting/index.html

This site has several elementary subjects (My Z loves it for math and stories) http://www.netrover.com/~kingskid/

Several articles of interest from the Native Speakers Academy including, 22 Alternatives to Punishment, Moving to the Rhythm ‘Can Help Language Skills, and Police State Alert: High Schools Now Using Palm Scanners http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=8fb495371ca5be23e1601ecc0&id=e1f6607b16&e=3bba501884

And looking ahead to the rest of the month, these resources will be great!

For Columbus Day (Oct. 14) we will be working on this – free lapbooking and notebooking download http://marinecorpsnomads.com/2011/08/christopher-columbus-lapbook-and-notebook-study.html

This site is going to be a fantastic resource for Halloween printables http://www.myhusbandateallmyicecream.com/2013/09/over-450-halloween-printables/

Recently I was asked how I keep track of the links I find. I make a draft in my e-mail account and title it “Math” or whatever is appropriate. I add the link and write a brief description about the site. When the page fills up, I mail it to myself and move it to a file that matches the topic.

I hope you find these links both useful and fun. We did!

betty jo

Free Educational Finds of the Week

Leave a reply

The following links are to the free resources that we have been exploring this week as part of our homeschooling studies. And, this week the resources have been fabulous!

We gave this site a try this week and will be visiting again often for math games. Everything from counting to probability. http://jmathpage.com/

Literacy Lava PDF magazines for teachers that promote reading and writing with children of any age http://susanstephenson.com.au/free-pdfs/

Videos, lessons, and experiments for science class http://www.planet-science.com/

Social Studies and current events http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/

Just for fun! Free movies, videos, games and songs http://www.cornel1801.com/index.html

Crafts, recipies, printables, and more http://itswrittenonthewalls.blogspot.com/

Education News for parents/teachers http://www.nsa-slovakia.com/home

I hope that these links will be helpful as you look for something to make your studies a little more interesting and a little more fun.

betty jo

International Homeschool Spirit Week

1 Reply

International Homeschool Spirit Week starts Monday, September 23! In case you’re not yet familiar with what this is, I’ll give you a brief introduction. Homeschool Spirit Week is the last week in September. Homeschool families (from all over the world) join together as one big community to show their spirit. There will be opportunities for you to share your family’s photos and thoughts. Each day has a theme and a home education sponsor that will offer prizes and freebies. This year’s line up is this:

Pajama Day- Monday, September 23rd
Sponsored by CurrClick

Homeschool Away from Home Day – Tuesday, September 24th
Sponsored by iHomeschool Network

Crazy Hairstyle Day – Wednesday, September 25th
Sponsored by Hip Homeschool Moms

Volunteer Outside Your Home Day – Thursday, September 26th
Sponsored by Great Homeschool Conventions

Super Hero Day – Friday, September 27th
Sponsored by Free Homeschool Deals

Last year our family had a blast participating in International Homeschool Spirit Week! We were curious about what other home educating families look like and what they do, so we enjoyed the blogs and social media posts with photos submitted from other families. The week was a welcome relief from lesson planning. I made some long distance friendships with some lovely homeschooling moms. I picked up some great freebies, too.

For more information and suggestions on how to get the most from this opportunity click here http://homeschoolspiritweek.com/

Join in on the fun through Facebook, too! http://homeschoolspiritweek.com/

“We’ve got spirit, yes we do! We’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?!”

betty jo