Satire and sarcasm from The Onion http://www.theonion.com/articles/increasing-number-of-parents-opting-to-have-childr,17159/
Have a happy Monday and a great week!
betty jo
Homeschooling Humor
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Tag Archives: homeschooling
Our Homeschooling Week Ending October 11
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
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
Monday’s Homeschool Humor
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
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
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
Mondays Homeschool Humor
Here are some funnies to lighten up your start to this homeschooling week!
I hope you have a great Monday and that the rest of the week is even better than that!
betty jo
Free Educational Finds of the Week
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
Homeschool Humor
Happy Monday! And happy “Pajama Day” (for those of us participating in International Homeschool Spirit Week)!
Here’s a few funnies to start off another homeschooling week!
International Homeschool Spirit Week’s theme for Tuesday is “School Away From Home Day”!
Wednesday is “Crazy Hair Day”!
Thursday is “Volunteer Outside Your Home Day”
Friday’s theme from International Homeschool Spirit Week is “Super Hero Day”.
For more about International Homeschool Spirit Week click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/09/22/international-homeschool-spirit-week/
Have a wonderful week!
betty jo
International Homeschool Spirit Week
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
Still Learning Something New 
