There is a simple way to organize a legitimate high school credit in guitar (music) for a home schooling high school student. Good documentation and class-like scheduling can yield a fine arts credit in music for guitar. Here are seven key aspects needed to put together your high school level, credit worthy, home schooling guitar course.

First, you need a guitar. Many students begin with a low-cost beginner’s guitar for about $100 or so. You can select either an acoustic or electric guitar. If you have the funds, I recommend offering to upgrade to a better guitar if your student sticks with it, and significantly improves in guitar playing skills, for one year.

Second, set up a half-hour weekly lesson with a guitar teacher, usually at a music store. It is nice to have one recommended that is a good fit for your family and goals. Some music teachers and home school groups offer class guitar. However, they are not nearly as effective as a one-on-one instructional setting.

Third, you need a written course description to be a part of your portfolio. This is your overview of the guitar course, so you need the guitar instructor to either write one for you, or dictate the details to you, or give you a list of the things that will be included in the lessons over the school year. The course description should also include your manner of grading and the weight each part will have in calculating your final course grade.

Fourth, schedule a half-hour of practice for four days a week. With the weekly lesson, this will yield a total of two-and-a-half hours per week, which is 90 hours for a 180 day school year. You can lengthen the practice time if you need more than this total amount of time in your state. It works best to include this practice within the home schooling course daily schedule. This will better insure a disciplined, documented, and graded course. Having this in a student daily calendar log as part of your course portfolio is critical.

Fifth, the instruction part needs to be graded by instructor each week to have in the portfolio. You should talk to the instructor about a grading system and his or her cooperation. Offer to provide grading sheets for the teacher to use to accurately and easily give a weekly analysis and grade. Make them simple but thorough. Get the grading criteria that the guitar teacher thinks to be important and create those sheets. A weekly graded sheet should be completed and sent home with the student. Your guitar student’s progress and skill development will be a key part of the final course grade.

Sixth, the practice sessions should be graded by parents. Some suggestions for grading are things like character evidenced, consistency, and effort. These grades will be part of the final portfolio.

Seventh, the final grade can be computed from the teacher’s weekly grades, the parents’ weekly grades, and the final “exam” recital grade.

Your final full course documentation and portfolio will include: a copy of the daily log of practice and lessons (providing evidence of the total number of hours for the course work) done the same way as any other course work (Math, Science, etc.); parental grading documents; skill tests conducted by the guitar teacher; possibly a final performance/recital to serve as a final exam; tests can be given on scales, chords, songs, reading music, reading tablature, playing by ear, playing with teacher; pictures of the student, teacher, music store or practice studio can be a good addition; a video or recording of the student playing could be used; then the final grade and how it was computed.

To summarize these seven key parts: (1) guitar, (2) guitar lessons, (3) course description, (4) daily practice schedule, (5) instructor grading, (6) home practice grading, and (7) the final grade. May your student learn to play the guitar well and earn a high school fine arts credit!

To Your Home School Success!

Go to my website for two helpful guitar tools. They are chord finding internet links: http://huntbiz.ws/Acoustic_River. Email me with questions and ideas: huntbiz.ws@gmail.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=J._F._Hunt

What is Your Child’s Dominant Learning Style?

Learning to read with phonics is the proven way to go. Knowing your child’s dominant learning style can help tremendously with the journey. There are four main learning styles which most children and adults fall under. They are visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic. It is possible to learn best within more than one of the groups, but one group will usually be dominant.

When you play a phonics game with your child, it is important to focus on the learning style that she is the most comfortable with and that produces the fastest and easiest results.
I will share some tips with you to help you figure out which one of the four learning styles (visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic) is your child’s dominant learning style.
It’s all about being able to recognize the subtle clues your child is displaying for you. When you work with her on other lessons and in different subjects, you will be able to make it much easier for her and a lot more fun!

Next I will show you the language and behavior of the “visual” learner, followed by the language and behavior of the “auditory” learner. After that we’ll discuss the “tactile” learner. And finally, to wrap up this review on the four learning styles we will discuss the “kinesthetic” learner.

The Visual Learner

To determine whether your child’s dominant learning style is visual notice if she easily gets distracted by clutter or others moving around while she’s working on her phonics reading and trying to concentrate. Does she prefer seeing pictures, words, diagrams, charts, videos, slide shows, and wall posters? How about if she prefers using picture clues and verbal instructions rather than just verbal directions alone when you are playing games?

Other things to consider is if she remembers the faces of new friends and where their play date was pretty easily but then forgets their names, uses words often that ask you to show her rather than tell her something, finds it hard or boring to listen to instructions for more than a few minutes at a time, and finds it easy to conjure up vivid pictorial scenes from her imagination.
If you agree with many of these questions, you’ve got a visual learner on your hands!

With her learning style in mind, here are some tips on how to teach her phonics reading skills and beyond:
1) Use picture cards and moveable alphabets more to help her learn phonics reading.
2) When she gets older, give her the “big picture” of what she is studying and then fill in the details. Teach her how to work with mind maps. Give her the tools she needs to use symbols to represent ideas and organize information. The images will help her to focus and visualize data.
3) If she has to memorize information, have her close her eyes and see what it is that’s she’s memorizing. Tell her to pretend her mind is a camera and she can take pictures of what she needs to memorize.
4) Learning meditation would be an asset too because it will teach her how to “tune out” distractions that would take away her focus.

I think you get the idea…it’s all about teaching visualization and being creative in how you present phonics lessons to your visual learner. Next let’s discuss the auditory learner…

The Auditory Learner

Let’s go through a checklist to see if your child is giving you clues that she’s an auditory learner:
1) Does she easily gets distracted by random sounds or noises while she’s working on her phonics reading and trying to concentrate?
2) Does she prefer listen to a story being told rather than flipping through the pages of the book and looking at the pictures?
3) Does she ask you to “say that again” or “tell me what you said”?
4) Does she prefer you to give her verbal instructions rather than written ones?
5) Does she ask you to play sounding out words more often than not?
6) Does she enjoy listening more than speaking?
7) Do you notice that when she builds words using the picture cards and moveable alphabet…she spends more time in the phase of sounding out the words rather than building them?
Does she seek to “hear” and “think” more often than not?
9) Do you notice that she repeats information that she is learning out loud and focuses on what she is repeating intently?

After going through these questions, if you answered the majority of them ‘yes’ then your child is most likely an auditory learner! Here are some tips on how to teach your auditory learner phonics reading as well as other subjects:
*Use tape recorded lessons to help her fully understand at a deeper level whatever lessons she is working on.
*As she gets older and begins studying for her school assignments, quiz and coach her by practicing with oral exams and playing recorded lectures and speeches.
Try to avoid having unnecessary noises in the background while she is studying. Although, it would be a *great idea to play soft classical music that she enjoys because they would enhance her learning.

Next, let’s discuss how a tactile learner will learn the best…

The Tactile Learner

I’ve put together a checklist for you to review to determine if your child is a tactile learner. Please answer
the following questions:
1) Does your child easily get distracted by random movement and activity around her while she’s working on her phonics reading and trying to concentrate?
2) Does she prefer to write down words or write out a story as she has perceived it or wants to tell it?
3) Does she prefer to touch and feel story books with the raised fabric on the pages rather than listen to the story or just flip through the pages and look at the pictures?
4) Does she like to express herself with gestures and movement?
5) Does she like to write her words to see if they feel right to her after she has put them down on paper?

If you answered ‘yes’ to the majority of questions in this checklist, then your child’s dominant learning style is tactile! I have compiled some tips for you to use with your tactile learner for both phonics reading lessons and more:
1) Use flash cards and memory games to help her learn her lessons.
2) Allow her to act out through role playing whatever she is working on…this will make it much easier for her to understand it and to remember it.
3) When she is older and studying for her school assignments, quiz and coach her by enacting scripted plays of what she is working on.
4) Let her build models of what she is studying. This will yield great results!
5) It’s okay to have noise in the background, more than likely, that will not bother her.

It will be hard for your tactile learner to learn if she is forced to sit still for long periods of time. Schedule much needed breaks for her to move around. Also, get her involved in sports, martial arts, dance and the like because anywhere she can move and learn will be her cup of tea.
Finally, let’s discuss how to teach reading with phonics to a kinesthetic learner…

The Kinesthetic Learner

How do you know if your child is a kinesthetic learner? Answer these questions:
1) Does your child easily get distracted by activity around her when she is working on her phonics reading and trying to concentrate?
2) Does she constantly feel the need to get up and move around the classroom?
3) Does she have high energy and enjoy action oriented play?
4) Does she prefer figuring things out on her own rather than following directions?
If your child is a highly energetic, go-getter that needs to move around to be stimulated, you have a kinesthetic learner!

A kinesthetic learner engages in whatever they are trying to learn with full body, physical activity.
When your kinesthetic learner is building words, nine times out of ten she will lie on her stomach and sprawl out comfortably and tune out everything else in the process while she works.
Kinesthetic learners learn as they do. They don’t think about it first and then try to figure it out. They just do it! They understand what they are learning when they are actually doing it.
Never try to pin your kinesthetic learner down to a seat. That would be a big mistake and cause her learning experience to be difficult and negative.

Kinesthetic learners are very creative and artistic. They enjoy and thrive when engaging in scientific experiments. Sports, dramatic play, and dance, are all things that are fun and easy for the kinesthetic learner.

Some other things to know about kinesthetic learners are:
1) Kinesthetic learners have great hand to eye coordination.
2) When they are older students, it’s great to teach them how to use their “mind’s eye” to visualize and recall their own body’s movements when they are trying to recall information from prior lessons. They will benefit greatly from learning this easy technique.
3) Playing music in the background when a kinesthetic learner is studying will be okay and not distract from their learning experience…especially if you are playing upbeat classical music.

Let’s Sum it All Up!

There will probably be some overlap between the four main learning styles that you will observe in your child. After you observe your child and figure out her dominate style, your approach to teaching her phonics reading will be easier and more effective. Were you able to discover which learning style you follow: visual, auditory, tactile, or kinesthetic?

Knowing your child’s dominant learning style is such a benefit because when you want to play phonics games with her, you can just use the games that are geared more towards her specific learning style. Scientific studies have shown that when you engage three senses while performing any given task it becomes permanent knowledge assimilated by the brain after doing it about five times. Thankfully there are products which can teach you how to utilize the four learning styles to teach your child in the best way possible.

I would like to invite you to view my blog for more information about the four learning styles as well as many tips on how to teach your child to read using phonics: http://www.phonicsreadingpro.com and my website http://www.phonicsreadingpro.net

Happy reading!

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

Homeschool parents are constantly seeking ideas to stimulate the mind of their children. One way to stimulate young minds is through the use of clipart and visual aids. Here are three ideas that can help LDS homeschooling parents utilize clipart in their daily lessons:

1. Clipart and Holidays
Young children in the homeschool enjoy celebrating changing seasons and holidays. Seasonal emphases can teach children about religion and science as they study culture and the reasons for changes out doors. Using seasonal clipart may also help the parent to organize materials.

For example, a parent might include the image of a Baby Jesus on each of the items that will be covered in December or a Easter bunny on items to be covered in Spring. Parents may use blank labels and print our their own custom stickers for this purpose using any of the free LDS clipart resources online.

2. Clipart and Science
Science is perhaps the most difficult subject to teach in the home school. Parents may feel they lack the resources to provide an effective science curriculum at home. Many science, including biological and botanical sciences, can be effectively taught with clipart images of animals. Search libraries and clipart galleries for illustrations of plants, trees, and animals. You may look for both full-color and black and white images.

Once you’ve found a usable image, print yourself a copy of any images with labeled parts. Then use a paint program to white out the labels and print that copy for your child. Your child can label or color the image and have both art and science lesson at the same time.

2. Using LDS Clipart During Religious Studies
Religious clipart can also be used in the LDS homeschool in ways that may not be permitted in a public school. Parents might use ideas from Primary websites or printables from Young Women and youth websites to help reinforce the lessons taught on Sundays at Church. Invite small children to color images of the Savior or Prophets while you read a story from the Friend Magazine or scriptures. Older children will enjoy receiving a mirror sign with a special message they can see as they prepare for the day’s activities.

In Conclusion
Many parents find themselves busy with daily life and church activity. LDS Clipart can be a welcome timesaver for homeschooling parents seeking ideas for their lessons.

Jenny Smith is a contributor to the LDS Clipart resources gallery at Mormon Share and to the LDS Primary ideas for children’s lessons.

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

Model for your kids that writing is fun, challenging and open to many avenues….

Start with a story topic such as Tell about a time you were nervous. Think aloud with your kids – when were you nervous? How old were you? Where were you? How did you overcome it or did you stay nervous?

Spend lots of time discussing and sharing ideas. Let your children learn about your childhood by sharing stories like this. Take plenty of time to let everyone participate and share ideas. This discussion time is helping children think through their story and generate ideas to use in their writing.

Remind your children that when writing a story, it is okay to exaggerate and embellish the truth. Make the writing fun by making up details if necessary. Also remind your children that they can steal ideas from their siblings and their parent. The goal is for kids to write a good, interesting story full of descriptions and action. Creative, engaging stories make writing time fun.

To get started….

• Make a list of words you want to be sure to include in your story. As you write the words, ask your kids to help you hear all the syllables and make sure you spell correctly.

• Leave the list of words posted so that when children start to write, they can refer to these words for spelling help and for story generation.

• Next, use an organizer to help students think through their story from beginning to middle to end. Using an organizer teaches kids to focus on their topic, to think through their ideas and it gives them a place to write ideas as they think of them.

• Use one organizer and write one story together as a group. Model for your kids how to read aloud the organizer like a story. Model writing many, many times before asking kids to complete one on their own.

• When orally telling the story, be sure to use creative adjectives and vivid verbs.

• The more fun you have including detail in the story, the more your kids will start to add detail.

• Try to vary your sentences in the story – don’t start every sentence with the word “the”. Start a sentence with a verb or a phrase. Teach your kids how to use a variety of sentences.

Teaching writing is a process. The best thing you can do as a teacher is to model for your children that writing takes time, yet it is fun. Always ask your children to tell you their sentence before writing it. Telling it out loud requires them to think through all their ideas before writing. Encourage your children to always use an organizer and to stick to it.

Most importantly, have fun with your kids as you write together.

Elementary Writing Activities

Teaching Writing Skills

About the Author:
Alma has been an educator for over 20 years. In 1996, Alma wrote a teacher resource book called Writing Works. The purpose of this book was to give teachers a variety of fun, effective and integrated writing activities of varying lengths. The book has been reprinted many times and is still a top- selling book for Alma’s new company, Write More Education Resources.

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

For those of us who have larger families than normal, traveling by plane can add up quickly – minimizing the number of trips a family can take each year. We usually opt to travel by car, even if it takes a few days to reach our destination. The price is right especially when we camp along the way, and it allows us to take more vacations each year with our kids. Some parents worry about how to entertain the kids during those long 10 hour days in the car. Success relies on having a plan.

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

If you have decided for a home school education, you must learn to make a schedule at home and balance the time you will spend with home school activities, household chores and leisure for the family. Since you have decided to go for this method of learning for your children, you have the responsibility to make a schedule that will not disturb and sacrifice their education. This might be very hard to do especially if you are just starting but you can follow these simple steps in making a schedule.

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

Are you struggling to homeschool in high school? Just like with parenting, every new stage of homeschooling brings new challenges.

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

Frisbees, Microwave Ovens, and Velcro have something in common…

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.

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There are many instances where children can’t attend regular schools. Or their parents will choose to have the children educated in a different manner. Home schooling is the answer that many parents and children have discovered. These home schools can give your child the same teaching as if they were in a regular school. Accredited home schools make this task even easier.

Home schooling has it’s advantages and disadvantages that every parent and family should consider before jumping into it. Discovering and understanding your needs for your child is paramount. When this is done your family can move to the phase of evaluating home schooling curriculum.

These accredited home schools have the same type of program as ones that are found in convention schools. Unlike normal schools the students learn the syllabus according to their own pace. They also have telephone access to their teachers and receive the help that they need. However, depending on the subject of study will dictate the help that is granted. Each subject often times falls under it’s own rules.

The home schooling program is gaining popularity with parents. These parents have no desire to expose their children to some of the vices that are found in schools today. Besides using home schooling as a way of keeping your youngster safe, letting your kid learn from accredited home schools will be of great help.

Some of the advantages to home schooling are:

* Safety from accidental injury

* Curtailing serious illness

* Regulating children’s studies

To date there are over a million children who are receiving home schooling. The accredited home schools have the ability to keep track of their students. They will have a record of the students and their progress. This progression is updated and recorded for the future. This allows students to be admitted to university with a minimum of difficulty.

There is another reward of having your child enrolled in an accredited home school program. You will have help close at hand to deal with a known childhood school time virus.

This virus is known as the procrastination virus. Since the assorted courses that you will find in the accredited home schools are designed to trigger the interest of the students, you will find this procrastination virus can be alleviated.

Although, home schooling has some desirable advantages, some of the disadvantages you need to consider are:

* Your time as a parent

* Lack of interaction with others

* Lack of organized sports and extra curricular activities

Home schooling is becoming more widely accepted throughout the country today. When looking into this type of program for your child take into consideration the above advantages and disadvantages. Learn all you can about the various offering and what the accredited home schools can do for you.

Make sure you look, study and understand the curriculum of your chosen home schooling. By looking into the curriculum and other details you can be assured and feel comfortable of choosing a curriculum that is right for your family. Reliable accredited home schools are tomorrow’s answer for today’s educational needs.

Get additional free home school information by clicking here Bowe Packer is an accomplished online information provider. He provides informative articles to over 50 websites. Visit his Home School site and learn what you need to know about home schooling for free

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Home schooling allows parents and family members to deliver content that they consider appropriate and important for their kids. Still, there is the reality that many home school students will enter the workforce and compete against students who attended larger institutions with more resources. How can families who have decided to home school add more breath and depth to courses at minimal cost? Below are five suggestions that can help make your home school courses more substantial and engaging.

1. Organize learning trips. To supplement the study of core subjects, organize exploratory trips to teach your kids real-world skills. For middle and high school students, organize trips to the bank. On these trips, have students open accounts, make basic transitions, and enquire about bank services and fees. Banking trips can work well with other math lessons. For elementary school students, organize trips to different food markets. Consider a chain grocery store, the farmers’ market, a kosher market, and a Chinese Deli. These trips can compliment lessons about budgeting, nutrition, or cultural cuisines. As a long-term goal, students can fundraise for out-of-state trips. These trips can be related to things they are studying (e.g. a fieldtrip to New York after a unit on immigration or a road trip through the state, chartered by your kids, after a course about geography and map reading).

2. Enroll in college. Courses at a community college can be an inexpensive way to add to your child’s learning. Consider enrolling your students in a community college for subjects such as literature or language. High-school-age students would especially benefit from such courses. Attending college courses will add texture to the school day. Additionally, attending these courses will offer accelerated study and it will give students exposure to a college environment. If community college is not an option, check within your network of family and friends for college professors. These professionals may be willing to give a lecture on a specific subject or allow your kids to sit in on a course.

3. Use the information superhighway. The Internet offers a host of resources than can make home schooling a breeze. From home school networks to online courses, there are many sites that can make your lessons more interactive and effective. For general home schooling resources, visit The Home School Mom’s website. For language study, consider purchasing a 1-year online subscription to Rosetta Stone. For beginning and intermediate math study, check out the resources on Math.com. For lesson plans and other teaching resources, check out Laura Candler’s website. (Search names to find websites).

4. Explore your community. Keeps abreast of speakers, performances, and exhibits by signing up for newsletters from local colleges, universities, and museums. You can organize a unit of study in preparation for an upcoming exhibit. Conversely, you can use a speaker’s visit or a performance to add levels of understanding to a unit of study you have already begun. PBS and NPR are two other great places to learn about events in your community.

5. Purchase plans. There is no need to re-invent the wheel, or lesson plans for that matter, when you can purchase them over the Internet. Websites such as Teachers Pay Teachers and We are Teachers offer a wide variety of lesson plans and curricula for purchase. These plans are especially useful when you are teaching the basics, such as paragraph writing or long division, or when you are teaching commonly read authors, such as Shakespeare or Toni Morrison.

Home schooling allows families a greater level of control over the content and the chronology of study. At the same time, families who choose to home school have the job of preparing students for a larger world context. To add texture and to give more breath and depth to your home school courses, use the suggestions listed above.

AUTHOR’S BIO

James Guilford has worked in education, as a teacher and a dean, for nearly a decade. He is the author of the young adult novel, THE PENCIL TEST. Guilford’s writing has appeared in The North American Review, Identity Envy, In The Fray, and other publications. Visit the author’s website at http://www.jamesguilford.com to learn more about his writing and his workshops. Purchase THE PENCIL TEST on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Pencil-Test-James-Guilford/dp/1440166439 ) or at other booksellers.

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