Tag Archives: home school

Have You Considered Homeschooling or Unschooling for Your Toddler’s Preschool Experience?

If you are a parent who is planning to home school or unschool your toddler instead of sending him to preschool after his third birthday, this post is for you. As your toddler grows and develops right before your eyes, you may from time to time find yourself wondering whether you will be able to provide enough of an enriching environment for him once you begin your homeschool or unschool “preschool” years. This sense of uneasiness may come from a couple of sources, namely the fact that many parents send their children to preschool and the questions and comments from often well … Continue reading →

Day Care Experiences–Baby Steps

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This past Sunday, Lily had her very first day care experience. The church my wife and I attend has a nursery for children ages three and under. Parents are welcome to leave their little ones there while they attend Mass. My wife and I thought this would be a good test for Lily before we tried dropping her off at a real day care for an entire day. It actually went better than we thought it would. Neither my wife nor I have family in Atlanta, so Lily has never been watched by anyone but the two of us. In … Continue reading →

Pushing Younger Kids Beyond Their Comfort Zone

When I first started home schooling my last three girls, two were in third grade and one was just starting preschool. It was a challenge wondering how I would present the lessons when there was such an obvious age gap between the older girls and the youngest. Being able to home school our kids allows us a lot of freedom though. Kids don’t have to be pushed ahead when they aren’t ready or held back when they are. What I did was to offer the same exact assignment for all of my girls, always at the age level of the … Continue reading →

A Case of the Flu Becomes Homework

One time when I was home schooling my girls I came down with a horrible case of the flu. Although I usually work right through illnesses, this one just about knocked the stuffing out of me. I spent most of my time in bed or in the bathroom. The first day was the worst so I just let my kids have the day off, took time out for myself, and figured we could make up the work another day. By the second day I finally felt I would survive the flu bug, but still didn’t have the strength to put … Continue reading →

History Across The Curriculum

In previous posts I mentioned how I try to get as much “across the curriculum” learning out of a subject as I can. Why have separate reading, history, art, writing, and science projects when you can take one subject you’re studying and make it work for all areas? This is being frugal with your time and kids can really immerse themselves in the topic at hand rather than having their minds jump from one completely different subject to another. Another positive aspect of taking one topic and applying as many assignments to it as possible is that you can often … Continue reading →

Self-Paced Learning When Your Nerves Are Shot

In a previous blog post I had mentioned how I home schooled my kids using the Charlotte Mason method. I found it to be very thorough yet relaxed at the same time. It also gave me the opportunity to let my kids do a lot of the assignments on their own without me hovering over them every moment or answering a long list of questions that I knew they could answer on their own if they thought about it for awhile. Each weekend I would simply make a curriculum schedule for the week, get them started in the morning, then … Continue reading →

A Whole World Curriculum – Learning About Other Lands And People

I lived in Maryland when first homeschooling my girls and the school board is pretty relaxed with the curriculum. You can use a traditional curriculum and workbooks or create your own, as long as the children are given an overall education. Truthfully, my kids were bored to tears with workbooks and textbooks, so I decided to make a curriculum that would really stimulate their senses and be fun at the same time. I knew my daughters liked learning about other lands and people, so I bought a world map and taped it to the dining room wall—-our makeshift classroom for … Continue reading →

In a Rush to Graduate Your Kids from Homeschool?

My family had a conversation last night about when we would graduate the kids from homeschool. We started talking about SAT scores for my son that we should receive on Tuesday and the fact that we couldn’t graduate him next year if he took the PSAT and qualified for the National Merit Program (he took the SAT first as a practice for the PSAT). Because the PSAT had to be taken in your Jr. year to qualify for the National Merit program, we were trying to figure out if he had to wait another year to graduate even though he … Continue reading →

How to Encourage Social Skills in Your Young Child

Ask any mom of young kids and they may tell you about having concerns about their child’s social skills. Playing and identifying with their peers helps children feel secure. It also helps get them ready for their eventual time at school. Here is a guide to how you can encourage social interaction for your young child. The first thing that you can do is to give your child plenty of opportunity to have social interactions. Join a group in your area, such as a moms club, a moms church group, etc, to plan out play dates. Or just get to … Continue reading →

Becoming a Multi-Species Household

Hard to believe it’s been eighteen months since I moved cross country with the dogs! A lot has happened in the last year and a half, which I guess is what makes the time fly by so quickly. I’m at lease renewal time, and have been talking with some friends about possibly sharing an apartment (and cutting down cost of living for all involved). Great plan, right? There’s only one catch. My friends have cats. Lally has become quite the kitty hunter since we moved. She gets such a thrill out of flushing cats out of the bushes around the … Continue reading →