1. You must have a plan: Figure out which direction you are going in with your home school education plan before you start. Do your research to see what is available and make a choice. Day 1 of home schooling is not the time to scramble around looking for school work for your child.

2. Have a scheduled time for school work: Yes homeschooling should be flexible when you need it to be for Doctor appointments, shopping or special occasions but try to keep to some type of schedule and stick to it. Pick a schedule that works best for you and your child and stick to it. It will be so much easier for you and your child if they know they have a set time to get their work done.

It will be much harder if every day you are trying to find the time to fit school in when it really should be a top priority.

When we decide to home school our children we make a commitment that we need to take seriously. It only hurts our child if we do not teach them as we set out to do. You only get out what you put into it. It is so easy to just put it off until tomorrow. Children can easily fall behind too, so scheduling is important.

3. Have a set bedtime: This is important in our house because children can easily get off track and if they are going to bed at a different time every night it is kind of hard to stay on a set schedule for school. Also children need to be well rested so they can have a easier time understanding and retaining the information that is taught to them.

4. Establish consequences: Home school is not the equivalent of no school at all and children must be made to understand that from the beginning. No child is perfect and at times they may not feel like doing their work. They have to made to understand that home schooling is real school and if they attended a brick and mortar school they would have to do the work presented to them by the teacher.

At times in the beginning of our home school journey a couple of my children have had what I refer to as a home school is no school, type day.

I swiftly let them know that home schooling is just as important as if they were sitting in a traditional classroom and that they would face consequences if they did not complete their work as I knew they could.

Once they realized that they would lose privileges such as viewing their favorite television programs, playing video games on the weekends or even playing with their favorite toys just the same as if they neglected to do their work in a traditional school the problem cleared right up.

My children knew I meant business and they eventually adapted to our home school schedule. It can be a little hard on them at first especially if they are used to attending a brick and mortar school. What you view as school time they may view as complete freedom and a long vacation until they get used to and fall in line with the schedule.

5. Have fun: Home schooling can be a fun and wondrous adventure if you choose to make it that way. Enjoy the time with your child.

Make the lessons fun with activities that go hand in hand with what you are teaching them. Do science experiments. Teach your child to prepare easy recipes. You could have themed parties or fun times with arts and crafts like painting, working with clay, making homemade cards or jewelry etc.

You can also take them on fun educational trips. Young children love these type of activities and you can enjoy them together.Make the most of your home schooling education plan. It can be a wonderful experience for you and your child.

Alice Coaxum is a happily married mother of four beautiful girls a dog and one frisky cat. She home schools hers daughters and taking care of her family is a top priority to.

She is a partner with Vitamark and runs Wahms Beautiful Deals Traffic Exchange and loves networking and meeting new people. http://wahmsonline.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alice_Coaxum

Online Homeschooling Programs

There are a lot of different types of online homeschooling programs that you can choose from now. Some of them are actually for free, while you will need to pay for others. Regardless of which way you decide to go, free or paid, these lessons will be very valuable for you. This is because they will offer you more structure in terms of learning, timing and goals. Each of these areas has a framework that you can use to facilitate your child’s learning.

Homeschool Lesson Plans

You will find that a lot of these homeschool plans are actually quite easy for both parents and children to follow. Regardless of what subject is being taught, you will be able to find online lesson plans for it. Since there are so many different types of homeschool lesson plans available, you are going to have to take some time to carefully review them to ensure that they will suit your child’s needs.

Homeschool Computer Programs

There are also a lot of different types of computer programs and computer software packages that you can use to help your child get the most out of their learning experience. It is also important to note that sometimes homeschool lesson plans will be a part of the software that you choose but this will be dependent upon each individual software developer. Sometimes this software is free and will offer you and your child a refreshing alternative to the textbooks and printed worksheets that you will otherwise be using. Allowing your child to do some of their homeschool work online will also provide a different approach to learning. This type of an interactive experience will facilitate even more learning. It will also help to keep your child’s education exciting and fun since this will provide them with a hands-on approach to use.

Darius has been writing online for a while now and has a lot of different interests. You can check out some of his websites at http://www.usedrestaurantfurniture.org and http://www.meridianphonesystem.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Darius_Raeisi

First you will need to organize your car so you can bring all the necessities, and then add your educational items. Car clutter is the enemy and will quickly turn your road trip into an energy sapping chore for which you will find yourself dreaming about being back at home. Invest in a roof top carrier such as a Thule to store travel items that you will not need immediate access too. If your budget allows, also purchase a second cargo hitch storage compartment to store even more items that would otherwise be taking up valuable space inside your vehicle.

You will find that there is now much more space inside your vehicle. Use it wisely by taking advantage of some great car organizers on the market. There are items that organize your DVD’s, Kids car organizers, back seat organizers that are insulated and hold snacks, travel trays with pockets that hold art supplies, toys, and more snacks, floor stand trash litter bags, 12V car vacuum cleaners and more. We always take advantage of organizing and consolidating our items in the car so everyone has access to what they need while we are on the road for days at a time.

Begin packing your entertainment and educational items for the kids. Our kids love to read, but reading while traveling can cause motion sickness, so we discovered Audio Books on CD. The selection is endless from fun classics, to educational audio books. We found that when we travel to a specific destination such as following the Oregon Trail, it’s good to bring a couple of movies and audio books on the subject. The kids are actually learning, while having fun. CD’s and DVD’s don’t take up much room when you store them in a CD visor organizer and provide hours, and even days of entertainment.

The kids always want to do arts and crafts, so be sure to bring some coloring kits and a lap tray travel desk that they can use while they are creating their back seat master pieces. I don’t usually recommend a deck of cards, but we picked up some interesting wildlife picture cards while driving through Wyoming that the kids still love to play with. They quiz each other on the names of each animal, and have even created their own, go fish type of card game for predators and prey cards. It’s amazing what kids can come up with on their own!

For the older kids, have each one bring a journal, and or sketch book to document their experience in. We actually brought along a science sample collection kit so my son could collect dirt samples from each state we drove through. The colors varied from deep black soil, to bright red dirt in Utah and he now has an intrinsic interest in geology from that one road trip.

For the little kids, it’s always good to bring a favorite or familiar toy along especially for those long trips. If there is some fear of losing the toy along your journey, carry a backup identical toy to completely eliminate a potentially traumatizing experience for your youngster.

Once you have packed your entertainment and educational items, put together your car menu and food storage system. Since our kids have severe food allergies and can’t take the chance of eating out, we carry all our food with us. I have organized a system for food storage and use some great food storage organizer bags to achieve success in this area. We always bring our homemade car snack food items like organic fresh fruit and veggies, to homemade granola, sandwiches, nitrate free jerky, homemade trail mix, and snacks. I also bring main course meals along that I can cook in our hotel room or at the camp site. Like everything in life, practice makes perfect and each time we travel, I find new ways to prepare meals, and add new entrees to our travel meal menu.

Now you are ready to get out and see the world, or at least North America on your Road Trip with the Kids. With maps, audio books, journals, coloring kits, toys and more, you will be outfitted for a successful car schooling trip with your family. Not only will you enjoy being somewhere other than home, but you will be able to teach your kids in a fun and exciting way about other States, wildlife, agriculture, and more.

Happy Travels!

Linda Walsh is a mother of 3 young children – one with special needs and a forth child on the way. She is also a family travel expert who has developed a unique system for traveling with babies and young kids, budgeting money, cooking from scratch on the road, managing life with special needs, and living an organized lifestyle to get the most miles out of raising her family. If you would like to find more ways to simplify and organize your travels through life with your children, visit her website at http://www.familytravelgear.com or her blog at http://www.blog.familytravelgear.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Walsh

First of all, in making a weekly schedule for home school, you must list down what are the necessary things that you need to do or events that you have to attend. From Monday to Sunday, ask yourself whether you have certain outdoor activities that you need to attend to like shopping for your grocery, attending some meetings or participating in certain occasions. Knowledge of these outdoor activities is very significant in making the schedule.

The next thing that you have to do is to assess the energy level of your child. As a parent, you already know the time of the day where your child is very energetic. From what you have observed, you can make this time as your schedule for doing your lessons and book reading. Usually, it would happen in the morning as soon as your child has properly rested and eaten breakfast. You need to make sure that this will be the routine of your child for 5 days in a week.

Follow the subjects on the home school curriculum that you have planned for this year. In your schedule, divide the subjects accordingly throughout the week. It solely depends upon the time that you have planned but you have to make sure that you will take up all the subjects in a week. You can follow what is done on usual campuses wherein different subjects are taken every day. For instance, you can maybe spend two hours in a day for science and another two hours for Math.

You must not only make a schedule for doing pure reading and writing. Home school education must include your child to have a break and be involved in fun, play and other extra-curricular activities. Try to explore activities that will still arouse the interest of your children in learning. If you are learning about History and early civilizations then spend a half a day with your child in the museum. You must include outdoor activities so that your child will still be exposed to what is outside.

You can follow this very same schedule for next week but with different planned outdoor activities. Once you follow this schedule, your child will also form a habit in managing the time for studying, playing and helping out with household chores.

This is how you make a schedule from the home school curriculum that you have planned for your child. Having a schedule helps you organize the time that you will spend for home schooling.

Home school education is one of the methods that parents use today in providing the learning that their children need. If you want to home school your kids, you have to be ready for a lot of tasks that you need to do. Visit http://homeschooljewel.com/ and learn more about your tasks and how you can handle them well.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Walter

For twenty-one years Basic Skills presented the Winter Home Schooling Workshop. Sono Harris was among the many speakers who made regular presentations. Sadly for us, on July 4, Sono passed away after battling cancer.

My wife Jenny and I met Gregg and Sono in the early 80’s when the home school movement was just beginning. While Sono was in the habit of saying “no” to a number of invitations to speak at various functions and events, she always said “yes” to our conference.

Many mothers came simply to hear her. While the men had something worth listening too, they were, after all, still men and did not (or could not) relate or address the topics these mothers needed to hear, to where they were living. While all of our speakers were respected, appreciated, and their expertise recognized and helpful, Sono was all of the above but more importantly, loved.

In the early 90’s she addressed basic, practical topics. But as the home school movement grew, her children as well everyone else’s grew up with it and her focused changed.

Mothers came not so much to hear her teach how to do something, but how to live. Sono filled with them with hope, and that’s what they needed. Many were ready to quit and were tired. But just being around her helped them stay the course. She was gracious, and she lifted spirits. She shared insights that could only be truly understood as spoken by one mother and wife to other mothers and wives. They listened to her because she was completely invested in whatever she was involved in.

I think of Sono when I read the kingdom parable described in Matthew 13:44. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, went and sold all he had and bought the field.” She was like that merchant. She held nothing back when it came to her Lord, family, and again, to whatever she committed to. She was, as one of the titles of a talk she gave, a “Joyful Mother of Children.” She invested deeply and completely.

Because of this, her life experiences were rich. She had a way of pulling back the curtain of her life just enough and then inviting the mothers in her seminars to get a glimpse. She related in such a way to those she spoke to that at times it was like having a personal conversation with her. She had the ability to distill ideas into something her listeners could easily take in and remember. If she felt she needed to present a correction (attitude, point of view, etc.), she did so in a way that her listeners did not feel scolded or reprimanded.

As I mentioned before, in her later presentations her topics and focus changed. Near the end our twenty-one years of home school conferences, she spoke more about the difficult issues of life that she and other mothers had in common. Mothers felt she identified with their struggles.

I remember one talk she gave which was titled, “An Anchor for the Soul” in which she introduced her presentation by speaking about the desire most wives and mothers have for stability. She then spent the rest of her session talking about change and in particular suffering. She said “motherhood is about change in a progressively painful direction.” She was talking about the separation we experience with our children as we move through the stages of life.” All of us go through this.

At the end of this particular session, she posed the following questions, “What am I to do with this, how am I to manage this? How am I to handle this suffering, loss, and pain.” She talked about “increasing the sacrifices we make (as mothers) while reducing the expectation of immediate returns.” She said, “It’s about spending all that you have, and letting go. When we embrace God’s will, everything changes.”

In referring to the kingdom parable described in Matthew 13:44, she said the key word was “bought.” We must buy the field. Often we think the field God wants us to buy will be attractive and pleasurable, but it’s often bleak, with trouble, pain, suffering, and loss. But there is treasure in that field. The loss and suffering we experience drives us to the only dependable anchor for our souls, Jesus Christ. That is where our suffering finds its greatest meaning.

For Sono, Jesus was that priceless treasure, and now she is enjoying his presence in person. Sono Harris was and is a joyful mother of children.

If you’d like to make a donation to help the Harris family during this difficult time, an account has been set up at West Coast Bank. Donations can be made at any branch in Oregon and Washington. The account number is 1141007201 under Sono Sato Harris.

To read more about the life of this remarkable wife and mother, go to www.joshharris.com.

Thank you for reading.
Curt Bumcrot, MRE

Please feel free to forward this to home schoolers you think would benefit. Also, you have permission to copy this article to your blogs, forums, social network pages, or other websites. We only ask that you provide the live link at the bottom of the article that leads back to www.basicskills.net

Curt Bumcrot is the founder and director of Basic Skills Assessment and Educational Services. He has earned degrees in Biblical Studies from Grace Institute in Long Beach, California, a B.A. in English from California State University at Dominguiz Hills, and a M.R.E. (Master in Religious Education) from Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. He has been active both as a teacher and administrator in Christian Schools. He and his wife, Jenny, who home schooled their three children, currently reside in Oregon City.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Curt_Bumcrot

Even perfect strangers may express concerns over your ability to meet the needs of your child, but the needs of the parent are often ignored. Let’s address some of the concerns parents of high schoolers face.

Burn out

Is it possible for a loving, patient, attentive parent to become burnt out from the endless demands for their attention? I will allow for the possibility that there is one parent who is so extremely competent as to never face burn out. This is written for the rest of us.

What can you do to overcome burnout while homeschooling high school?

Remember you do not have to do it all. Have clear priorities. Stick to doing those tasks which are most important. Perhaps you will need to take a break from some outside obligations for a while. That is okay. Learn to say, “No.”

In addition, realize that as you homeschool high school, your student should be learning to work more independently. That doesn’t mean your role as a teacher is obsolete. You still need to offer guidance, answer questions, grade tests and record information, but you should also transition into the role of coach and counselor while helping your teen develop self-discipline and independent learning skills.

Expenses

As you homeschool high school, you may find that it can be a pricey endeavor. You are no longer making popsicle stick puppets. You’re dealing with some heavy-duty subjects with heavy-duty price tags. Your student will need to take Biology. Biology requires a microscope. And slides. And a frog that smells of formaldehyde. Just like clothing, school costs more when it comes in big kids’ sizes.

How can the average family cope with the expenses of homeschooling through high school?

We live in a glorious age where we have public libraries, online resources and Ebay at our disposal. Used curriculum can be purchased for a fraction of what it would cost new. If you have a homeschool support group, you may know people who would be willing to allow you to borrow or purchase their gently used curriculum.

Teaching Weak Subjects

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. It can be downright fun to teach a subject that is your cup o’ tea. Unfortunately, the school day isn’t a tea party and you must also cover the courses you dislike.

How can you make sure your child’s education is not suffering due to your weaknesses?

As you homeschool high school, make use of co-ops, private tutors, or video and computer courses. I suggest that you earmark a larger portion of your homeschooling budget to cover your weaker subjects. For the mom who can’t trill a Spanish “R” to save her life, Rosetta Stone’s Spanish program on computer can worth every penny.

Feeling of Impending Doom

What if all of those skeptics were right? What if you really aren’t capable of educating your child at home and having that child grow into a happy, worthwhile adult?

How can you cope with your own insecurities while accomplishing what needs to be done?

Find some support. If you have friends who have already graduated a homeschooled child, learn from their experiences. If you have friends who are currently homeschooling a high schooler, lean on each other.

Even if you don’t know a single person in real life who falls into one of those categories, you don’t have to walk this path alone. Find an online forum for homeschooling parents. You may have to try out a few forums before finding one that feels like home.

Organization

How can you keep up with the necessary paperwork for homeschool transcripts when you haven’t even completed your student’s baby book? For those of us who are not naturally organized, that is a daunting concern.

You can overcome your organizational challenges and prepare professional transcripts for your teen directly from your home computer.

Follow this link for more information about preparing homeschool transcripts that will get your child accepted to college.

Follow this link for more information about curriculum, graduation, diplomas, prom, class rings and other challenges you may face as you homeschool high school.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carletta_Sanders

One very important part of college acceptance, especially when you are homeschooled, is having quality scores on the ACT and SAT. These scores indicate that you learned what you should have learned during the high school years. If your child gets a high score on these tests, being homeschooled or lacking official credits does not matter so much. Colleges understand that those scoring highly on these tests are the types of students that can handle college material with ease.

In order for your child to get a good score, you have to start preparing them as needed. The first bit of preparation is to make sure that you are teaching the subjects that are found on these tests. Generally speaking they favor high English, Reading, and Math based skills. If you have done well with these subjects with your child, most of these tests won’t be a problem for him or her at all.

These tests also have a certain format that your child will need to be aware of. This means that it’s important to take some practice tests so that your child will understand the dynamics of both tests. There are many practice tests that can be picked up at book stores or online. These will come in large books with a CD that will also have additional information and more tests.

Before your child takes the SAT or ACT have him or her sit down with these booklets as part of each school day and do some studying. The interactive CD will help quite a bit since it will quiz and tutor them showing progress or not. Doing this over time will improve these tests scores considerably.

Gill Tally enjoys baking bread. She has recently purchased the Zojirushi bread machine which she has written a review about. Take a look at her site at http://zojirushibreadmachineinfo.com to read this review along with other information and some great deals.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gill_Tally

In the 1940’s Yale students sailed pie tins through the air and played catch. Ten years later, Walter Frederick Morrison, a flying-saucer enthusiast, improved on the idea. Morrison and the company Wham-O produced and sold a saucer-like disk which they called a Frisbee. It was named after the baker William Russel Frisbie whose reusable pie tins in the 1870’s provided the original source of the fun.

During World War II, Britain’s radar system used microwaves to track Nazi warplanes. Several years later, Percy LeBaron Spencer discovered they could also cook food when he accidentally came into contact with a microwave that melted a candy bar in his pocket. Many experiments later, the first microwave oven was put on sale in 1954.

George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, returned from a walk outside one day in 1948 to find some cockleburs clinging to his jacket. He took one off and upon examining it under a microscope, he found a maze of thin strands with little hooks on each end that caused them to cling to fabrics. Eight years and many experiments later, Mestral had created a new fastener: Velcro!

So you say the point is… The point is that all of the above inventions are the result of thinking on the synthesis level, the fifth step of our hierarchy of questions we use to check our children’s understanding. Simply put, synthesis thinking results in the creation of something new and different. It is important to note that it does not take place in a vacuum; students typically first possess a level of skills and information and apply them with rigor and structure. The top artists, athletes, actors, and musicians spend innumerable hours studying, practicing, and perfecting their discipline before reaching the level of excellence that brings about regional, national, or even international notoriety.

The problem we’re faced with as home educators is again textbooks and their “tests” that don’t move beyond the knowledge and comprehension levels. These publishers would lead us to believe that recalling the right answer is the ultimate measure of educational achievement, not realizing that such information should be seen as a launching pad for higher levels of thinking. But in all fairness, asking questions or assigning tasks that require thinking on the synthesis level isn’t easy.

Questions or tasks that require thinking on the synthesis level often include words such as:

Assemble
Build
Compose
Create
Develop
Devise
Design
Formulate
Integrate
Modify
Organize
Plan
Propose
Rearrange
Revise
Rewrite

Again, being able to respond to questions or tasks that require this level of thinking typically presumes the student has a degree of knowledge, understanding, application, etc. in the given discipline. Synthesis thinking usually doesn’t take place in a vacuum. In my next article, I unpack this a little more and suggest some specific tasks you can include in your home schooling day to stimulate this important level of thinking in your children.

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to forward this to home schoolers you think would benefit. Also, you have permission to copy this article to your blogs, forums, social network pages, or other websites. We only ask that you provide the live link at the bottom of the article that leads back to http://www.basicskills.net.

Curt Bumcrot, MRE
Director, Basic Skills Assessment & Educational Services

Curt Bumcrot is the founder and director of Basic Skills Assessment and Educational Services. He has earned degrees in Biblical Studies from Grace Institute in Long Beach, California, a B.A. in English from California State University at Dominguiz Hills, and a M.R.E. (Master in Religious Education) from Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. He has been active both as a teacher and administrator in Christian Schools. He and his wife, Jenny, who home schooled their three children, currently reside in Oregon City.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Curt_Bumcrot

We live in a world that likes instant gratification and immediacy, so time is not something that we like to wait on. But sometimes, instant gratification does not have the longest term byproduct. Think of the weeds that sprout up quickly in the spring. They don’t live very long, do they? In my back yard, we’ve had some particular challenges this year. A very cold winter complete with an overabundance of rain has wreaked havoc on our grass. Add to that the fact that we have two, yes two, Great Danes just a little over a year old, and you can imagine that the wear and tear on our lawn has been great. I see a lot of weeds coming up, but not as much St. Augustine this spring.

However, that St. Augustine grass is there. I can see pockets of it. It will need nurturing and extra care and attention, but it can come back. With a little effort, time, and a lot of patience, I will eventually be able to say that I’m tired of cutting the grass this summer, just as I’ve said in other years. But for now, it looks as if the weeds are winning the battle and may die out leaving me a lot of dirt.

This is similar to homeschooling in a way. As homeschoolers, we see pockets of growth in our children, but sometimes we focus on the weeds. We are busy instructing and training, but sometimes we exaggerate the weed-killer necessary instead of the fertilizer. Both are needed.

As a Christian, I regularly seek the scriptures for guidance, but on occasion, I will also look to the Hebrew texts. It was in the Jewish culture that Jesus grew, so the Hebrew texts can be fascinating. In the Hebrew Talmud, I recently saw an intriguing quote. It said, “When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.” Patience. Expectation for the future. These things take time, but as homeschoolers, perhaps it will be helpful to keep this in mind. We may be teaching our own children now, but it is those same children who will impact the next generation, so whether we see it immediately or not, we are indeed impacting the future – for many years to come.

We see this principle in the Bible, too – Luke 8:8 is the punch line for the parable of the sower. “Other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” So be patient in teaching. Take care to fertilize and pull a few weeds. Remember that homeschooling is not a quick fix, and above all, know that what you are doing to educate your children is a gift for future generations to come, even if you don’t see the immediate results.

If you would like to get more information on college prep, educational coaching, homeschooling, or curricula for middle school and high school, please visit our website, http://www.nationalhomeschoolacademy.com. To download your free “Casting Your Vision Statement” guide, click here. http://www.nationalhomeschoolacademy.com/default.aspx?name=nha.support

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Camille_Rodriquez