Need some help teaching your child? Looking for products to make your life easier? Want ideas for making homeschooling life a little easier? Check out the articles below for some great ideas.
Year-Round Homeschooling: Pros, Cons, and How-tos
Ever considered year-round homeschooling?
If you aren’t familiar with the term, it means that instead of having a long summer break, you schedule short breaks throughout the school year and educate your kids all year round.
For some families, it is truly a blessing. It provides them with the flexibility they are looking for with a homeschool schedule.
For others, it just isn’t a fit. It may not suit their living style or doesn’t work with their curriculum of choice.
Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly (Well, maybe not ugly. Let’s switch that to How-tos.) of year-round homeschooling. Read more…
Lessons Learned: Putting Children First
I was inspired recently by an article on Hip Homeschool Moms. In it, the author, Darcy, says this:
“Enjoy your kids today and love them,” his departing words to me, as he goes off to work.
After eighteen years of marriage, he knows me well and he knows that sometimes I forget. Not that I forget to love them, for I love them something fierce. However, to enjoy them? That’s a different story. Sometimes, I do forget.
I forget too.
I’ve been guilty of putting the work before the child. I’ve made the assignments a higher priority than my kids’ needs. I’ve been the slave driver and the taskmaster. I’m not proud of it.
Fortunately, mistakes are for learning.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes so I must have learned a lot, right? 
Well, I’m taking all of those bumbles that I’ve made and I’m evaluating them and determining the right path to take. Here’s what’s going in my big book of Lessons Learned about putting children first. Read more…
How to Homeschool ADHD Children
It’s no secret that ADD and ADHD children are special.
They have boundless energy. (Wish I could bottle some of that up.) They’re enthusiastic. They’re spontaneous. They’re humorous. They’re just downright fun! (Wish I could bottle that up too.)
You can take advantage of those wonderful qualities when helping them learn.
On the flip side, ADHD children also have many challenges to deal with such as learning self-control and increasing their attention span. It is possible to help them improve in these areas. While they may never have the degree of long term focus that some other kids have, they can increase their attention span.
In order to homeschool ADHD children effectively, you have to perform a balancing act. Yep. Just like a tightrope walker. Welcome to the Homeschool Circus.
You need to balance: Read more…
The Power of Praise in Your Homeschool
Praise is a blessing to any homeschool.
A mother in an online group helped me to remember that. She said:
“I think sometimes I forget since I am teaching the girls at home that they need pats on the back.” — Tracie C.
Beautiful.
It’s easy to forget to use praise with our children sometimes. We get so involved in trying to correct their bad behaviors that we fail to remember to honor the good ones. I’ve been guilty of that.
Thankfully Tracie’s quote serves as a reminder to pat our kids on the back for all the work that they do.
Here’s some prose and poetry on using the power of praise in your homeschool. Read more…
The Best Free Homeschool Resources Online
Homeschoolers are always on the lookout for good educational resources. They seem to have some kind of radar for finding them. It turns on automatically when they are out shopping. I know mine does. When I see a little something that could be used as a teaching tidbit, my eyes light up. It’s really wonderful.
When I can find a little academic treasure for FREE, it’s even better. It makes me do a happy dance.
That’s what I like about the web. It has tons of free homeschool resources. So much so that it can seem overwhelming at times. That’s why I decided to go looking for some really helpful sites for homeschoolers. I scouted out the web by school topic to see what I could find. I was blessed by what I found and decided to share it with you.
Want to know what I discovered?
Then keep reading to see the free homeschool resources I found online for you and your kids. Read more…