Archive for the 'Homeschooling' Category
You may have been reading the articles we are posting about homeschooling and we have several more to post. However, we’d now like to talk about another choice you may not have thought about – Boarding Schools.
Boarding schools are a small part of America’s educational system and are not just for the elite or troubled students. There are a wide range of philosophies, lifestyles and teaching modes to choose from if you would like to consider a boarding school as an alternate to public, private, and homeschooling.
Nowadays, there are schools for every need – no matter what your child’s interest or your families religious affiliation. If you are interested in having your child in a very strict environment such as found in the military there are military schools. Is your child interested in the arts and likely to pursue a career in professional dance or music; there are art schools. Schools are available in elementary and middle school grade levels. There are also schools for both special needs and behavioral and emotional needs.
As you can see, public schools are not our only option nowadays. Boarding schools also offer much smaller class sizes with a ratio of 8.6 to 1 and often as low as 3 to 1 in schools specializing in children’s academic problems.
An intense academic curriculum is available in boarding schools and the majority of the educators have advanced degrees. Evening study is also a part of the regular every day schedule.
Faculty in boarding schools lives on the campus in many cases and they are available to your children not only in class but throughout the rest of the day and each school has extracurricular programs to fit its particular culture.
Another advantage of a boarding school education is that it will give your children their first taste of independence ( in a controlled atmosphere), getting them ready for living away from home when they go on to college.
If you are interested in finding a boarding school or learning about further options you could visit this website: http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/researchschools.php. It will provide you with many links to help you in your search and decision making.
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Are you considering whether or not you should homeschool your child? You may not be certain that your lifestyle, current situation or your child can handle homeschooling. Below are a few tips for determining if homeschooling is right for your child.
1. Determine Why You Want to Homeschool. It’s important that you take the time to explore the reason(s) why you want to homeschool. For example, is it because you disagree with the governmental policies regulating mainstream education? Do you want to incorporate your religious beliefs into your child’s education? Does your decision have something to do with your childhood school experience?
2. Are You “Tough Enough” to Handle It? You have to be mentally tough if you make the decision to homeschool. Why? Because those who homeschool are under constant criticism by those who don’t understand it. So, you need to make sure you are mentally tough enough to handle the misunderstood and opinionated views that others will express to you.
3. Do You Have the Time? When you make the decision to homeschool, you will be making the decision to give up some of your time. The question is, do you have the time available to give up? It’s a great sacrifice to make, if you can. Just realize that it takes time to plan, teach and grade.
4. Do You Have the Money? While homeschooling isn’t going to cost you a fortune, you need to understand that it will cost you some money. You will be out money for the curriculum and school supplies on a yearly basis. You will also have other expenses arise along the way. For example, if you decide to take your children on a field trip to the zoo, museum or aquarium…these all cost money.
5. How Will Your Child Interact with Others? Since your child will be homeschooled, he or she won’t be around other kids on a normal basis…unless you get involved with another homeschooling group in your community. You can also get your child involved in other child-related groups such as youth sports like Soccer and Little League Baseball. There are also clubs like 4-H, Boy/Girl Scouts and church activities as well. This is important and worth consideration.
6. What Level of Education is Your Child At? Many parents make the decision to homeschool because their child is at a different academic level than his peers at school are. This may mean they have a learning disability or are exceptionally smart. Regardless of which it is, if your child is at a different academic level than his classmates, homeschooling may be the best way to give him the unique education he needs.
There are four tips here today for you to implement if you are a working home school parent. The first part of this article was posted on May 30th.
Make Smart Use of Your Daily Drive – There are a lot of people who home school and commute to work every day. One of their secrets is making smart use of their daily drive to and from work. Instead of making extra trips to the art supply store or library with their kids, they take the time to run these errands as they are going to or leaving work.
Assign Lessons to Children During the Day – Obviously, if you and your spouse are working daily jobs, then someone has to be at home with your children. You can assign your children lessons to do during the day and ask your childcare professional to oversee the work and make sure that it gets done.
Home school at Night – How many college students take night classes? There are many that do, so why can’t you home school your children at night after you get home from work? You can easily go over lessons at the dinner table or a couple hours before bedtime.
Always Plan – For those who work outside the home and want to home school too, planning is essential. You need to make a weekly schedule that clearly dictates when lessons will take place. This will save you a lot of time and make homeschooling go much more smoothly.
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It’s not uncommon for people to think of homeschooling families as those with a stay at home parent, most often the mother. However, this isn’t necessarily always the case. It is actually possible to work outside of the home and home school too.
However, many mothers feel as if they have to choose to either, home school and stay home or to work and send their kids to public schools. In fact, you may be one of these women. If you are considering homeschooling and currently have a job away from home, know that it’s possible to do both. Below are a few tips to help.
1. Change Your Perspective – The majority of those who think about homeschooling think that it has to work just like the public school system, as far as time is concerned. Many people feel that homeschooling will take all day and needs to be done during the morning to mid-afternoon, but this isn’t the case. In fact, you’ll be surprised to learn that homeschooling often takes less time than traditional schooling.
How? First of all, you don’t have to wait for children to arrive as they are already there and secondly, you aren’t going to be teaching large numbers of children – just your own. Therefore, homeschooling works much quicker than traditional education does. In fact, it can actually be done in under an hour each day!
2. Choose Your Curriculum Wisely – Not all homeschooling curriculum is hard to understand and complicated. Therefore, if you want to work outside the home and home school also, then you should look for curriculums that present information in an easy-to-understand way. For example, look for a curriculum that has short lessons that don’t take up a lot of time. Also, be willing to consider a curriculum that doesn’t teach “lessons.”
Part two of this article will be posted on June 6th – watch for it!
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As a concerned parent you will want to understand the importance of using quality materials as often as possible. While quality is more important than quantity, sometimes it does costs more. However, sometimes you can compromise quality, but there are other times in homeschooling where you can’t. Therefore, it’s important that you understand the times when quality is crucial and when it isn’t.
When cost is an issue you will find you have many resources to help cut the cost and still get quality materials. By making heavy use of the library, used book sales, borrowing, and common materials on hand, one can do an adequate job with minimum cost.
Packaged curricula and video courses come higher, up to several hundred dollars per child per year (this is still much cheaper than a private school), but do your research using the Internet and/or talking to other parents and homeschooling groups to help you locate quality yet less expensive materials.
Parents who have to purchase used materials or look for things online will spend more time and energy finding those items, but they might have a greater sense of accomplishment and be teaching their children how to manage their money well.
Educator’s Family Services puts on conferences and book fairs several times yearly at various locations. State homeschool support groups often sponsor book and curriculum fairs yearly in conjunction with conferences and workshops. These are open to the public (there is a cost) and are wonderful sources of teaching materials. Some local support groups operate libraries, too.
Of course, extras such as dance, art, martial arts, voice or instrument, public speaking, sports, horseback riding, or summer camp can add much more to the bill, but most parents would choose at least some of these for their children even if they were in a conventional school.
Often the cost of homeschooling can depend on a parent’s goals. If their goal is for their child to attend an Ivy League school when they graduate, then they will need to spend a lot more than someone who either doesn’t want to attend college or is able to earn their degree from a less prestigious university.
When you have decided on your books and other teaching materials remember to help keep learning fun for your toddlers by incorporating a few quality children’s wooden toys to encourage creative and fun play.
ImagiPLAY, located in Colorado, is a company that makes quality toddler learning toys including 3d wooden puzzles and wood blocks. One such item that kids will enjoy is their Safari Stacking Blocks.
Safari blocks are multi-functional toy blocks and children will use these wooden blocks as individual animal toys for all sorts of creative fun play. These wooden children’s toys are stackable for even more fun. Visit All I Can Imagine to explore all our other kids toys!
One of the best ways to make homeschooling less expensive is to take advantage of the free educational resources in your community. For example, the local library offers a ton of free resources for homeschooling families.
Spend time getting to know the librarians; there are even some librarians that are willing to help homeschoolers find the books and materials needed to teach various lessons thoroughly. Other places to look for free resources include churches, homeschooling groups/societies and the internet.
Take care not to spend so much that you can’t change course while you take time to plan for the future. Take advantage of opportunities to borrow materials or to get some free supplies outright.
If you want to get your students involved in humane education there are exciting and informative books, magazines, comic books, videos, posters and DVD’s available to teachers, librarians and other educators. Visit TeachKind to receive free materials. Membership is free.
Homeschooling Groups Save Money
When you are homeschooling, it’s important to join a homeschooling group as those involved in these groups often help each other out, especially with saving money. The parents in these groups are usually full of tips for saving money and also may be willing to trade teaching materials and supplies, as well.
Most homeschool families are connected with the outside world through their church, drama groups, 4-H clubs, and many other community organizations.
Your local support groups can vary in size from a few families to several hundred families. Support groups are often involved with arranging field trips and other activities where larger numbers of families can jointly participate in an educational experience.
During the difficult times that are sure to arise, you will find that your support groups will provide a dedicated network of homeschool families who can provide much need support and encouragement.
**For those of you who have toddlers in your home make sure to visit our website, All I Can Imagine for quality, safe educational toys and 3d wooden puzzles. These toddler learning toys, will keep your boys and girls busy as you are homeschooling your older children. Begin with a pretty alphabet puzzle and your child will have a tool in which he can gain self-confidence while learning his abc’s.
Look for Quality – Just because a particular curriculum comes with a lot of books and materials, does not mean that it’s better. You need to place more emphasis on your children’s learning style than how much comes with various curriculums.
If you are thinking that the curriculum of a public school will be superior to what your child would receive at home you may be surprised to learn that some of the books in schools have been found to have complicated illustrations and irrelevant photos that detracted students from learning the subject at hand.
Finding the best home school curriculum that fits the needs of your individual student is extremely important. School books and materials are available in several tried and true complete packages. Some can even be tailored to cover a large set of needs. This will mean a curriculum for home school that takes into account the abilities of a student as well as the specific learning objectives or interests.
If you’re lookig for a more religion/bible based education being provided then a Christian homeschool program may be right for you and your family. Some families are interested in Christian based education and as such, have turned to homeschooling.
Homeschool Supercenter can help your children get Bible based education that will be consistent with this goal regardless of the denomination of your faith. Here is the website for Homeschool Supercenter.
Christian home school curriculum, Sonlight Curriculum provides quality, literature-rich K-12 and related educational products, resources, and programs. Their desire is to instill in children a life-long love of learning, preparing them to engage new ideas in order to make a positive difference in the world. Sonlight selects engaging books and readers that cover topics such as Bible, history, language arts, handwriting, math, science, and more.
Donna Young’s website is wonderful and she has printable fraction manipulatives. I like that hers have the fraction, percentage, and decimal form on each of the pie slices.
You should also consider the fact that you may be able to make your own learning materials and not have to purchase them. For example, you may be able to make your own manipulatives instead of buying them.
***Selling your used curriculum is a great way to get some money to reinvest into the next school year.
Visit our toys website, All I Can Imagine and see our unique puzzle playsets. Choose from three wonderful topics, sea life, rainforest and dinosaur. These wooden kids toys will make a perfect addition to your toddler learning toys and will help you create interesting and fun lessons for homeschoolers.
This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on you and your situation. The truth of the matter is that homeschooling can be quite expensive, but it can also be quite small. It all depends on your family’s homeschooling needs regarding your time, effort and materials used.
Don’t Compare Yourself to Others – When it comes to homeschooling, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using the same curriculum as another homeschooling family you know. Just because someone you know has spent $500 on her family’s curriculum doesn’t mean you have to purchase curriculum that costs that much or more.
Depending on what type of curriculum you purchase, home schooling costs will vary from family to family. There are many places where you can sell or buy used home school curriculum.
Some families choose to buy resources from many different sources, others enroll in umbrella schools and others choose to buy complete accredited homeschooling curriculum packages.
Buying a complete curriculum package may cost you more money, but you also will have everything you need to home school your child, saving you valuable time and eliminating the guess work.
Always Check the Fine Print!
Most often when you purchase a complete curriculum package for a specific grade, you will receive all the workbooks, teacher’s manuals, tests and answer keys for each subject. As with any purchase you make, you will want to double check.
Sometimes you will need to purchase additional home school material or supplies for science experiments, or will need math manipulatives to use with your math curriculum or program. (Watch for our next article and get a link to printable fraction manipulatives.)
Knowing everything you need before buying, will help keep your home schooling costs controlled, eliminating any surprises. When it comes to spending money you want to know what you will get for what you are paying.
You will want to read each catalog descriptions carefully. It is recommended that you place a call to a company’s customer service department to ask questions. This is a great way to find out more information and learn about what additional items you will need when using their home school curriculum.
Doing your homework on the expected costs of materials and other expenses involved in homeschooling will help you and your family feel confident about your final decision of keeping your children at home and educating them yourselves.
Our next article will talk about finding quality curriculum. Watch for it and while you are here remember to visit our website to see our children’s wooden toys including indoor playsets and wooden toy blocks.
Our toddler toys make great additions to your home schooling lessons and will keep your children interested for a longer period of time. You and your children can play together and make up games with the educational toys you supply them.
Unschooling – This is also a form of alternative education. However, those who unschool don’t follow a curriculum, but instead take cues from their children regarding how, when and what to teach them.
The majority of parents who choose to enlist the help of alternative education want to give their children more opportunities, better education and more individual attention. Therefore, as parents continue to grow unhappy with the public school system, alternative education will continue to rise.
Here are some ideas others have used in beginning to unschool their children:
- When they were worried about answering people’s concerns that we were taking their son out of school, they memorized, “We’re going to try this and see how it goes.”
- When they wanted to respond to their children without bossiness but still tell them their concerns, they memorized, “I’m not sure about this, but let’s think about it together.”
Here is an excerpt from Sandra Dodd’s unschooling website:
What would you tell your pre-unschooling self?
Sarah Anderson-Thimmes
Back in the day, these are the things I would have told my brand new unschooling self:
Kids want to learn. They just do. Get the heck out of the way, and leave an interesting trail behind you.
If a child is happily playing a computer game or watching TV for the *entire* time that that child would have been in school, that child is infinitely better off than if she was unhappily at school.
The main goal is raising happy kids. Everything else is a bonus.
Worry and guilt are pretty much wasted emotions. Act from right now.
This is the second part of the first article I posted on March 25th. There will be twelve main articles we will be posting. You may receive the titles of all twelve articles and purchase them individually or as a set by writing us.
Before you leave our blog why not spend a minute looking through our kids toy blocks? We provide parents and educators crush proof, award winning ImagiBRICKS made right here in the USA. Our giant cardboard building blocks are manufactured from 50% recycled materials and are both strong and lightweight.
For the most part, any type of schooling that doesn’t fit within the traditional structure of public education is considered a form of alternative education. Alternative education can be designed to meet a number of different goals. For example, there are alternative educations that focus on college preparation, environmental education and around various religious beliefs. There are also alternative education styles that are designed to teach children who don’t learn well within a traditional education setting, as well as, those who have previously dropped out of school.
Regardless of what type of alternative education we’re discussing, they all have one thing in common – they are alternative forms of learning to give children more choices.
Forms of Alternative Education
Charter Schools – The majority of charter schools are funded publicly, but they work more similarly to a private school. Teachers have the freedom to teach in a style that works better for the children in their class and aren’t limited like educators in the public school system. These schools are becoming more and more popular.
Paideia, Montessori and Waldorf Schools – These alternative schools are those that educate based on a particular belief or philosophy.
Career Schools – These schools provide children with the basic education they need as far as academics go, but they focus more on various types of careers such as art, ballet, acting, law, radio/communications, etc.
The School-in-a-School – Many large schools around the country have formed smaller schools within the “big” one. This helps ensure that all children are getting the attention they need as these mini-schools have smaller class sizes.
Homeschooling – Homeschooling is also becoming more and more well-known as parents are becoming increasingly upset by the public school system. It is just what it says – a school at home, where the parents or an adult teaches children according to a curriculum they agree with. Children that are homeschooled do have to take evaluations to ensure they are progressing at the rate they should be.
This is the first of twelve articles we will be posting. You may receive the titles of all twelve articles and purchase them individually or as a set by writing us.
Before you leave us, please take a minute and visit our website, All I Can Imagine, and see our educational toys! Explore our beautiful and unique preschool learning toys for children including our octopus. He will help teach your toddlers to count one to nine.