Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category

Back to Homeschool Tips

Saturday, August 21st, 2021

back-to-homeschool-tips

My aim today is to get you revved up about starting a new homeschool year, so I will be sharing with you some back to homeschool tips.

One of my top tips to get kids excited about the upcoming homeschool year is to spread out all the hands-on, fun activities you will be doing over the school year on a table or on the floor. Whenever I did this, which was every year near the end of the summer in anticipation for the new school year, my kids would get so excited about what we were about to study. For example, I would collect all kinds of things pertaining to a specific period in history. If it was medieval times, I would have lots of medieval stuff.

In literature, we might be studying Around the World in 80 Days, so I would have some items from different countries from around the world that we would be studying. This way my kids would be excited about world travel, and they couldn’t wait to start the school year.

The same was true for the science concepts we would be studying. One year we studied botany, and we had so many plant-related items! We even got some carnivorous Venus flytraps and other cool plants in a new terrarium, just to spark interest in plants.

Here is a super short video, explaining my favorite back to homeschool tip:

If you want examples of this, watch me spread out lots of hands-on goodies for different time periods:

Another idea for back to school is to make a fun pencil cake:

Make sure you have all your essential homeschool items. Here is a list of all the items that I love to have on hand for homeschooling:

And if you are stressed out about homeschooling, take a look at some ways you can de-compress while having a successful homeschool year:

Have a great new homeschool year!

Art Gallery: A Library of Creativity

Tuesday, September 8th, 2020

art-gallery-creativity

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an art gallery is like a library of intricate creativity. It makes an intriguing field trip for your kids to be exposed to greatness. Most art galleries in large cities have rotating exhibits that feature famous works of art from well-known and loved painters and sculptors of all time. Recently my family went to a Norman Rockwell exhibit, where row upon row of Life Magazine covers were displayed, capturing the essence of many decades of history.

My kids pointed out intricate details in the sketches. They noticed humorous and emotional scenes of various kinds. We saw presidents from the past 70 years or more, all with the themes of the day behind them, depicting wars, mundane life (hanging clothes to dry on the line), and the mischief of children.

I have taken my children to many different exhibits over the years. Two of our favorite artist displays were a collection of paintings of Rembrandt and the inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci.

When my children were very small, I had a large packet of postcards of famous works of art, so my children were already familiar with the artists before we went to the exhibits. This made the exhibits even more meaningful to our kids. I highly recommend taking your family to a local art museum so that you, too, can experience some of the most creative minds of all time.

advantages-of-art-galleries

I would like to leave you with a poem I recently wrote about an art gallery:

Art Gallery

The eyes of a portrait
Peer out from a canvas
Hanging larger than life
In a hall where people pass

Suspended in time
People from long ago
In elaborate costumes
In row upon row

Framed in splendor
Trapped in stone
Each masterpiece
Cries out to be known

Looking closer
Details can be seen
Inside the masterpieces
That look like a dream

Leaving the gallery
No longer night
Back to reality
Blinking in light

————————————————————————————————————-

More posts about classical art:

  1. Da Vinci
  2. Rembrandt
  3. Monet
  4. Van Gogh
  5. Picasso
  6. O’Keeffe

Mixing-with-the-Masters-600

Best of the School Year | Homeschool High School

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020

best-of-the-school-year

Today I will be sharing with you the “best of the school year,” including some of our favorite activities, field trips, and curriculum that we used for homeschooling high school this year. This will include unique and interesting field trips for geography and astronomy, and some fun psychology skits. Even through the quarantine, I will show you some activities that we did to tie our homeschooling to current events.

Best of the School Year | Homeschooling High School

Watch the following video to hear about some of the most memorable highlights for our 2020 homeschool year:

The math curriculum we are using is Teaching Textbooks because there is no teaching or grading required by the parent, since all of it is done on the computer. This was especially helpful for higher math.

If you want to see all of the curriculum books we used for all the other subjects this year, I wrote a blog post earlier this year to show what we would be using:

high-school-homeschool-geography

We made up our own geography, which I show you in the video. We made a scrapbook for each country of the world, coloring a map, writing a paragraph about the country from a video about that country, and gluing down a flag of each country. We went on a field trip to Canada, and while we were there, my daughter spent a day immersed in the culture of North and South Korea:

high-school-homeschool-astronomy

High school astronomy was also incredibly fascinating. We attended a star party put on by the local Astronomy Society. During that time, we identified many constellations, the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. We attended a workshop put on by a NASA representative, where we saw a real space suit, Shuttle EVA suit glove, small rocket steering thruster, a Martian meteorite, etc. We looked through a special telescope during the day to look for solar flares and sunspots, and we went to a planetarium. If you would like to see the entire set of books we used this year, here it is:

high-school-psychology

Probably my favorite subject to teach this year was psychology. We used 7 Sisters homeschool curriculum, and we brought it to life in this set of videos and blog posts:

Near the end of the school year (in April and May), while in quarantine, we did a lot of gardening:

We also cooked and baked many delicious foods for home economics. Here is a British cake my daughter made:

British-cake

We went on many walks, too, in order to get out of the house and get some exercise for PE. Here is a goofy walk that my daughter and I went on:

This school year is one of my favorite years of homeschooling. Yes, it can still be fun to homeschool high school!

back-to-homeschool-giveaway

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:
$200 to spend on homeschooling curriculum at Rainbow Resource!

I’ve teamed up with a group of homeschool bloggers that would like to bless a few homeschool families this year.  We will be giving THREE families $200 to spend at Rainbow Resource Center to buy curriculum, resources, and supplies for their homeschools.

To enter for your chance to win, simply use the Rafflecopter form below.  Now I know this is quite a few entries, but each of these bloggers has generously chipped in their own money to make this giveaway possible, so I hope you will take the time to do all of the entries.  And hey, the more entries you do, the better your odds are of winning!

Giveaway ends July 31, 2020 at 11:59pm ET.  Must be at least 18 years of age.  Must be a resident of U.S. or Canada to enter.  Selected winners will have 48 hours to respond to email notification to claim their prizes or another winner will be drawn.  By entering this giveaway, you agree to be added to the email lists of the participating bloggers (see the Terms & Conditions on the Rafflecopter form for the complete list).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

High School Psychology Series

Friday, April 17th, 2020

high-school-psychology-series

What a fun time we’ve had learning high school psychology! We’ve done so many hands-on activities, including: making a vegetable brain, a play doh brain, and a play doh neuron; placing foods on a tongue map; doing a perception activity involving snapping pictures of being chased by a car; drawing a large colorful chart of our basic needs; moving stuffed animals to re-enact various concepts; and performing many fascinating skits–sometimes involving costumes and props, and in one instance, a live cat.

We have thoroughly enjoyed using the psychology curriculum from 7 Sisters that you can find here: {affiliate link} Introduction to Psychology from a Christian Perspective.

Hands-on Psychology Activities

I thought I would make it easier for you by creating an index or table of contents for all these fun psychology activities you can do:

Psychology Bloopers

We also have some psychology blooper videos, if you need some merriment in your life:

Since homeschool parents need to buy curriculum for their high school students anyway, and psychology is one of your standard half-credit high school electives (it’s a one-semester course), you might as well purchase the curriculum here: {affiliate link} Introduction to Psychology from a Christian Perspective.