It’s Freebie Friday at AussieHomeschool!

Some excellent free Maths resources, courtesy of the National Adult Literacy Database (Canada)

Money Math ~ PDF
Section one includes personal finances, and setting up a budget. Section two is on saving money and compound interest. Section three covers consumer math and helps students learn to calculate discounts, tips, gas consumption and cell phone options.

Home Math ~ PDF
Section one, Measurement in Your Home, covers area, perimeter, circumference, temperature and time. Section two, Environmental Math, shows how to help the environment and save money at the same time by cutting down on water consumption, electricity use and garbage. Section three, Paying Bills, deals with handling bills for utilities, credit cards and mortgages.

Simply Math ~ PDF
Written in plain language, it covers basic math skills, fractions, decimals, percentages, metric units, and measurements.

Kitchen Math ~ PDF
Section one is Shopping for the Kitchen, which includes comparison shopping, finding the unit cost of an item and buying large appliances. Section two is Using Measurements which includes doubling recipes, comparing ratios, and using metric conversions. Section three is Nutrition, which covers calories and teaches learners to read food labels.

FREE Math eBooks  (more at this link)

Enjoy!

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Many homeschooling families have packed away the festive decorations and have sharpened pencils, arranged books and craft supplies in readiness for the new school year.

One the forums we are sharing our schedules for Middle School and High schoolers. Maybe you’d like to join us or just have a glimpse at what others are doing. You can find the threads here:

Course of Study for Years 7-9
Course of Study for Years 10-13

From Art Appreciation, Biology and Chemistry to Science, Woodwork and Zoology… our members have ideas and resources for it all!

If you haven’t looked at the forums yet but have organised your course of study for 2012, why not leave a link to your blog so others can take a look?

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As a mother of young children . As a family on one income it was hard to make ends met. I often looked for ways to save money without compromise. And I had a friend. We worked out how to save a little bit of money, to be of service to each other and to see our children educated in an area that was a weakness of us each.

We bartered!  We swapped subjects! And it worked a treat.

My friend wanted her daughter to learn the piano. I could teach her, but as a homeschooling, busy mama when would I fit it in? So we simply swapped jobs! I taught her daughter for 30min or more per week and my friend did my ironing!

All it took was a little bit of creative thinking and a few logistics to figure out and this system worked well for quite awhile.

Maybe you can’t teach music but you love to teach a subject that a nearby friend does not. Maybe you could swap! If you like Nature Study and your friend isn’t the most motivated person for Nature Study yet she loves Art, Cooking, Sewing or History maybe you could do a Lesson Swap!

The benefits of Lesson Swapping are numerous. You don’t have to each everything – especially the subject you’re either not interested in or know nothing about.

• Your child gets to learn from someone who is passionate in that subject.
• It’s fun!
• It’s motivating!
• The creativity and sharing sets a great example for your children.
• It’s a good way of tackling the subjects you don’t like but want your children to have a basic knowledge in.

Do you swap jobs or subjects with another family? If you are already involved in something similar, please leave a comment and share with us. The more ideas, the merrier!

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If you are an Aussie and a homeschooler, then you will want to check out what our talented partner, Homeschooling Down Under, is doing for you! Aussie curriculum within the Australian National Curriculum!

The Australian Curriculum to be phased in by 2013 is available online and Michelle has spent time reading through the documents in an effort to understand how it can work for Australian home educators. Only four subjects are currently available; English, Math, Science and History—the geography curriculum is only in a draft phase but is still helpful for planning.

For those homeschoolers who do plan on following the new curriculum Michelle  believes it is very achievable within a homeschooling environment.

If you want to see more of Michelle’s observations and plans (and believe me, you do!) then pop over to her site, specifically the page on the Australian National Curriculum.

P.S. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you can automatically receive updates as they are posted!

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The National Year of Reading 2012 is about children learning to read and keen readers finding new sources of inspiration. It’s about supporting reading initiatives while respecting the oral tradition of storytelling. It’s about helping people discover and rediscover the magic of books. And most of all, it’s about Australians becoming a nation of readers.

Nearly half the population can’t read with any fluency. It’s a shameful and worrying statistic. TNYR has identified three goals which will help turn Australia into a nation of readers and encourage a reading culture in every home:

• For all Australians to understand the benefits of reading as a life skill and a catalyst for well-being;
• To promote a reading culture in every home; and
• To establish an aspirational goal for families, of parents and caregivers sharing books with their children every day.

2012 will see a whole heap of amazing, fun, reading activities taking place around Australia and online, so people of all ages, from different backgrounds, can discover and rediscover the joy of reading.

Visit the Project pages for details of their exciting upcoming campaigns. And yes, you can keep up to date with them on Twitter or Facebook.

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Sonlight is a literature-based homeschool curriculum provider. Families around the world enjoy the literature-rich, internationally-focused curriculum. The goal of Sonlight curriculum is to empower parents to nurture enthusiastic, life-long learners who are motivated and equipped to follow Christ wherever He leads and in whatever He calls them to do. The curriculum has an Evangelical Christian perspective.

Sonlight offers complete curriculum in all subjects for Preschool through 12th grade. Their specialty is the Core Programs, which are literature-based packages that weave together History, Geography, Bible and Literature.

All your lesson plans are done! Discover Sonlight’s complete homeschool curriculum packages.

But wait….

Considering Sonlight? Don’t buy yet! Read 27 Reasons NOT to Buy Sonlight first.

Pop on over to Sonlight and learn more about it today. Or you can visit our Sonlight/Literature Based Learning forums and chat to other Sonlight users.

See the Disclosure Policy.

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Is there anything better than the Chronicles of Narnia in audio format? Yes there is! A *free* Chronicles of Narnia audiobook, read by a real person!

Head over to AncientFaith website and download the free audiobook files of the complete Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. If you don’t want to download the audiobook files, you can also listen to the books in your browser.

Pssst! You can pick up a fairly inexpensive set of paperback from the Book Depository for a good, regular price. But ChristianBooks have a fantastic special. But get in quick. Sale ends soon.

The Chronicles of Narnia, Boxed Set Digest TradepaperBy C.S. Lewis / HarperCollinsThis handsome set includes all 7 of the Chronicles of Narnia series: The Magician’s Nephew; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. Book covers are beautifully designed and illustrated, and each book includes a color map of Narnia on the inside back cover. Includes the original text illustrations by Pauline Baynes.

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by Maribeth Spangenberg

I admire the person who can visualize a concept in their head and then transfer it unto a blank sheet of paper. The woman who is able to mentally match swatches of colored material and turn it into a beautifully, decorated room has my greatest compliments. However, considering that I have lived in my present home for ten years and I still sleep in a white walled bedroom, shows my limitations in this area.

But as much as I lack in artistic ability, I have come to realize that creativity has many forms. It includes the small child building castles in the sandbox, the young boy setting up toy soldiers in strategic positions on the family room floor, and the teenager putting together a power point presentation on the computer. All of this involves a creative mind and a child utilizing his/ her imagination.

One day I made a conscious effort to take special notice of signs of creativity in my own family, so I could better encourage each of my children in this area. I was amazed at what The Lord showed me.

My son, Andrew, is a doodler. Every school subject has little scribbles in the margins, mostly of cartoon characters. So, when I noticed in a particular homeschooling magazine that they were searching for submissions for a future cartoon column, I brought it to my 15-year-old’s attention. Through encouragement, my son “created” a fictitious homeschool family for laughter’s sake. He spent two weeks drawing and designing a father, mother, young son and daughter, and toddler. He experimented with faces, statures, and expressions. This learning opportunity also prompted him to do a research paper on “The History of Cartooning”. Although we are still waiting to hear about his submissions, the whole experience for him was fun, educational, and creative.

About this same time, my husband bought a new video camera. My 14 year-old son asked to have our old one. Amazingly, he was able to fix it. As a result, he, his 12-year-old brother, and some friends used it to make their own movies. They spent hours writing scenes, rehearsing, designing props and costumes, and filming. For the most part, their sitcoms were battle scenes, gunfights, sword duels, and bank robberies.

I was intrigued at the creativity they used in the settings of woods, tall grass, open fields, and marshy wetlands near our home. My laundry load increased, but I was glad for an alternative to television and video games.

The Lord also brought to my attention my 18-year-old’s ability to cut hair, even her own. It is a tremendous help to me on Sunday mornings when she takes the initiative to French-braid or style her 10 year-old sister’s hair. This interest for styling seems to go right along with her tastefully decorated bedroom. Pictures, shelves, knick-knacks, and dolls, all intermingled with a lighthouse theme, reflect her ability to design.

Music is another form of creativity. I enjoy listening to my oldest daughter play the piano. God has given her a great gift in writing songs and putting Scripture to music. She has now learned to incorporate graphics and overhead projections to accompany her songs.

Watching my youngest children I was amazed at their imaginations. My 12 year-old frequently designs and builds LEGO creations and then explains to me the purpose of each planned part. Some of his creations were so impressive that I photographed them. His building interests also extended to outdoor, wood forts and crafted replicas of guns and swords. Each project required thinking, planning, researching, and, at times, seeking the advise of his father.

Knitting, sewing, and latch hooking are special interests of my 10 year-old daughter. She finds great enjoyment in knitting scarves, designing pillows and doll quilts, and latch hooking rugs. She then uses them as presents to siblings and friends.

My youngest, at eight, can spend hours chalking on the driveway, creating with playdough, building army fortresses in the sandbox, and setting up roadways on the family room carpet for his small cars.

Making a conscious effort to look for creativity opened my eyes to its endless possibilities. In fact, I found that even I was able to be creative.

While attending our state, homeschool curriculum fair, I came across a vendor who sold bound books with blank white pages. I thought of my third grade son and his American history course. Taking a detour to the used book area, I found an older edition of his current history text.

“If, while I am reading to my son from his updated history book, he could be cutting out the corresponding pictures from the older edition,” I thought, “It may increase his understanding. And if I assist him by also clipping out important names, places, and phrases, it would enable him to retell the story and facts in his own words.”

The result was that my son eagerly looked forward to history each day, to be able to cut and paste. He even enjoyed it to the point of wanting to push ahead. His enjoyment increased his retention level and made him proud of his condensed, personal, history book reproduction.

Sometime later I was browsing our local dollar store and came across 11×17 scrapbooks. I again thought of the success that “textbook reproduction” had achieved with my youngest child and decided to adapt it to my 5th and 6th graders. Fortunately, I had also been able to find older editions of their history textbooks. As they completed reading and answering the questions in the newer texts, I would rip out the corresponding chapters in the older editions, instruct them to cut out any pictures of interest along with the typed explanations, and to thoughtfully arrange them on the scrapbook page. They could only utilize one 11×17 page per chapter, so I stressed that I wanted them to be particular as to what they felt was most important in what they had read.

Again, I found that it increased their interest and learning.

At the end of our school year, when I presented my children’s portfolios to our evaluator, per Pennsylvania’s homeschooling law, he gave us a glowing and encouraging report, not just for creativity and academics but also…. for our ART curriculum. He elaborated not only on our “textbook reproductions”, but also on my children’s LEGO structures, wooden crafts, movie scripts and choreography, knitted scarves, cartooning research paper, and even my highschooler’s doodles in the margins.

Without the aid of a preplanned or printed out curriculum, my children and I had unknowingly integrated art into other areas of our academics, making school fun, learning creative, and retention higher.

Art had become not just a separate entity, but one of “creative integration.”

When planning curriculum for the coming school year, or even if you are in the midst of one, make your load lighter by combining. School projects, crafts, and hobby interests can increase learning when mixed with the academics. I found that it doesn’t take much to be creative. If attentive and observant, you may find that it is happening naturally.

Resource for professionally bound, hard cover, 28 page blank books: Miller Pads and Paper – search for “bare books”; large books sell for $3.25 and small books sell for $2.25.

Copyright ©  2006 Eclectic Homeschool Association

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The power of a successful homeschool journey cannot be over emphasized. Every parent who home schools wants to enjoy the adventure, grow close to their children and have well rounded children at the end of it. But moms hold the power to sabotage their own homeschools and often they do not even know they are doing it. Here are some warnings (and remedies) for homeschooling parents so that you are do not become one of them.

Warning #1 – You have no systems in place

How do you know this is happening? You cannot find your school books, the children cannot find their pens and pencils, your laundry is piling up and you cupboards and fridge are empty.

Solution – Take one afternoon on the weekend to plan your meals, do your grocery shopping, get your books ready for the next week and get your children to make sure their desks and pencil boxes are ready for Monday. Set up a laundry system in your home to make sure that your family has clean clothing and linens.

Warning #2 – Your children take forever to do their work

Some children are slow workers, but many are dawdlers. If your junior grade children are taking more than a 3 hours to do their work or your high schooler more than 6 hours then chances are that they are wasting time.

Solution – Make sure that you are giving your children short lessons so that dawdling is discouraged. Ensure that you alternate a hard lesson for a easier lesson. Take the time to train your children in the habit of attention so that they learn the importance of giving something their full attention and completing work in a timely fashion.

Warning #3 – Your children spend more time on school work than life

If your children are spending more than a third of their day in formal academic pursuits, it is a sure fire way of producing burnout in mom and child.

Solution – Raymond and Dorothy Moore, grandparents of the homeschooling movement, make use of a head, heart and hand principle. They said that a child’s day should be balanced equally between these three occupations. Head refers to academic pursuits; Hand refers to work in and around the home like chores and entrepreneurial activities and Heart refers to spiritual and moral training a parent should impart.

Warning #4 – Your children are allowed unlimited daily doses of TV and computer

Children should not watch TV or work on the computer everyday. It is an unhealthy situation as the stimulus that the brain receives from these two activities causes a dumbing down process where the child forgets how to entertain themselves, play out imaginary games and be productively and creatively busy – to mention just a few negatives.

Solution - Make a list of all the productive pursuits that your child can do and put to when they nag and ask for TV or their computer games. Ensure that you draw them alongside you in your day to day activities – and set the example yourself!

Warning #5 – Mom does not ensure that she is sufficiently rested

When a mom is tired, burnt out and running from play-dates to sports all afternoon and never takes a moment for a quiet cup of tea and a book, she is bound to be tense and overwrought. When mom has nothing left, she cannot give to her children and be a healing presence in her home.

Solution - Mom needs to set aside small moments in her day to take a breather. This can be a chapter of a good book, a walk around the garden, a cup of tea – on her own. It could also mean getting to bed earlier so that she can rise before her family with a small head start on her day. Mom needs to take time out monthly as well, so that she can set her hand to a craft or hobby where she can take off the “homeschooling mom hat.”

Warning #6 – The homeschooling parents talk of nothing but their children

Does it seem like whenever mom and dad go out or have a moment together, all they talk about is homeschooling and parenting? While there is time for that, it is also very important that they take time to remember that their relationship ranks right up there in importance.

Solution – Make a pact that you will do something special together, weekly or monthly, where you do not talk about homeschooling, parenting or household matters. Just enjoy being together.

Warning #7 – Parents control their children rather than build relationship with their children

This is a tough one… isn’t it? We want the best for our children; we want them to be all they were created to be and to achieve much in their lives. But often a parent will go overboard and forget that the reason they are raising children is so that they can be strong valuable members of a community.

Solution – Like a young sapling tree, protect your children as they need it. Train them in moral and spiritual guidelines as you take hold of those truths as well. As they grow and show maturity in certain areas, permit them to begin making their own decisions within the realm of what is permissible to your boundaries as a family unit.

Warning #8 – A homeschooling mom who spend too much time feeding on other lives

I left this for last because this one point can be the single most damaging thing that can happen to any homeschool. When a mom is always comparing herself and her children to what the next person is doing, what the other children have achieved, the projects that they are doing, instead of getting on and living her life with her children, she is bound to become frustrated and defeated.

Solution – Accept the season that your family is in – perhaps you have just had a baby and an in-depth unit study will sent your teetering over the edge! Perhaps your children have special needs and are not able to concentrate for long. Whatever the reason… accept the season. Also remember that each home and family is unique and your family has a specific flavor to it. When you try and bring in another family’s culture to your own, you dilute the beauty of your family.

Wendy Young is the homeschooling mom to 4 children aged 7 – 14 years. They have always been at home. She has been married for 19 years. Wendy’s website, Homeschool-Curriculum-For-Life,   is dedicated to helping moms choose curriculum, get organized, and enjoy the homeschool journey by equipping them as their roles as wives, women, and moms.

Source: http://www.homeschool-articles.com/8-ways-to-sabotage-your-homeschool/

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By Diana Waring

Premise: If the right curriculum can be found, it will perform the magic – the abra-cadabra – to transform a student from ignorant to educated all by itself.

As an experienced homeschool mom, speaker and curriculum writer, I’ve noticed that many believe this and seek earnestly for the genie, or the wand, or the catalog. And, lest you think I’m loftily looking down my nose, let me add that I was one of them. In the early days of homeschooling, I was convinced that there truly existed a perfect curriculum, and spent years on a quest, like those in search of the Holy Grail, to find it.

Most of us who invested way too much time and money on this zealous mission have found by now that there is no fantastic carpet ride — only increasing disappointment, discouragement, and often the end of homeschooling altogether. We wonder why all of our attempts end in defeat, in our children showing distaste and disgust at the results of our valiant effort to find the perfect curriculum. Convinced that it’s the curriculum that accomplishes the difficult feat of teaching, we continue to crawl toward the increasingly remote goal of enthusiastic, passionate, well-educated children. We end up calling the goal a fantasy when the mirage is too elusive.

What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe an answer will emerge from the following story.

Many years ago, my daughter, Melody, began violin lessons with a retired college professor. His first comment, as she unpacked her violin, was, “Melody, I can’t teach you to play violin.” As he said this, I startled in shock, since he had already auditioned and accepted Melody into his studio, and was charging a very significant fee. However, he quickly followed up this comment with, “But I can help you learn.”

I startled again, this time as my educational world leaped suddenly into focus. In that moment the perspective swung from the teacher and the books to the participation of the student. A good teacher is important, just like a good curriculum. However, the real magic of learning – the true abra-cadabra – is only revealed as the student engages the material: practices it, plays with it, dissects it, considers it, creatively reconfigures it, questions it, teaches it, and makes it his or her own.

Perhaps, we can alter the original premise and find a true, attainable quest: A good curriculum will offer opportunities for students to dive into oceans of learning, will allow students to find interesting issues to pursue, will encourage their growth and understanding, and cause students to do the work of learning.

If this makes sense, then let us consider some ways in which we can evaluate our curriculum choices, realizing that though it will not “educate” our students for us, it is, nevertheless, a good assistant in this process.

Consideration #1) Does this curriculum encourage students to think about what is being said, to consider and ask their own questions, or does it simply require that students memorize and regurgitate answers in the mind-numbing mold of “Polly wants a cracker”?

I remember my high school experience as a second-year algebra student. Though I excelled in the class, successfully memorizing all of the theorems for the frequent math tests, yet they never gave me a clue that algebra is something people can and actually do use in real life. We were never taught to ask, “How does this work beyond the pages of my textbook?” Actually, we were never taught any more than to do the pages in sequence, take the tests and get the grade. It wasn’t until I was thirty-eight years old that I discovered algebra had a reason for existing beyond the confines of a textbook. And, to tell you the truth, I was both chagrined and surprised that no one had bothered to explain that during any of those months of algebra.

And language arts: name the noun; name the verb; write the sentence. No! Why not BE the noun; DO the verb; go outside and collect nouns and make them do stuff; cause them to obey whatever the prepositions demand of them. Keep going until the questions start — “What about this?” “Is this right?” “Can we say it this way?”

Consideration #2) Does this curriculum offer students the freedom to make individual choices, based on their interests, or does it demand that everyone march in lock-step through each page?

I can concede that math would mostly be sequential, but as a historian, I have often pondered the arrogance of requiring all students to know the importance of the Napoleonic wars, for example, while dismissing the comparative importance of learning about Beethoven, Robert Fulton or Louis Braille. These men all lived during this same era, and each significantly impacted the world. Who decided that it is more important to know geo-political history than musical, scientific, or blind-education history, to the point of excluding them from the history books? Why should we require students to know the impact of the battle of Waterloo, while restricting from them the significance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fulton’s effect on transportation and commerce, or the earth-shaking technology that opened the written word to those who could not see?

Rather than a forced march with a whip-cracking overseer through selected facts, why not give a basic understanding of an era of history, introduce students to the many fascinating people of the time, then set them free to dig more deeply into those people and events most compelling to them?

Consideration #3) Does this curriculum encourage active, hands-on, creative participation on the part of the student, or does it allow them to sit passively through the lessons as long as they can answer a certain percentage of the test questions correctly?

How would you define the difference between being a player on the field and a spectator in the stands? That is exactly the difference between being actively engaged in the world of learning and passively sitting by. When you are a player, you exert energy, get sweaty from the effort, and feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when the game is over. When you are merely a spectator, however, you expend the minimum amount of energy, try to avoid discomfort, and find satisfaction mainly through the game’s entertainment value. When it comes to a student’s education, if they move beyond the spectator position to becoming actively involved on the field of learning, they will find an entirely different, thorough-going and enjoyable experience.

How on earth can a curriculum help draw a student into this kind of active participation? Great question. . . Though there are probably as many answers as there are unique and individual students, there are certain characteristics in curriculum that will either assist or hinder reaching this goal of engagement.

Foundational to this is the “Wow! factor” – that elusive element that makes the student sit up and take notice. It may be the subject area (ex. some students relish science, while others gobble up literature), it may be the approach (ex. telling weird and unusual facts about bacteria in a biology book), or it may be something as simple as the fact that their best friend LOVES this curriculum.

Secondly, look for what opportunities are offered to interact with the material in creative, hands-on ways. (You can always add this in to an otherwise passable curriculum, though it takes more time and effort.) For instance, see if there are possibilities for: creating a board game out of what is being learned; building a Lego replica of the architecture of a particular geographic site; making a Play-dough display of a particular chemical element; doing a theatrical presentation of a piece of literature; and so on. Though, admittedly, it does take more time to be a player than a spectator, learn to recognize the overlapping learning experiences and note the lessons that will not need to be repeated. For instance, when a history search becomes a literature or writing project; when a science presentation becomes an art project; when art becomes history; when chores become mentoring; and when a math test becomes a prayer time.

So, rather than seek fruitlessly for the perfect curriculum, focus your search for a curriculum that will warmly invite your students into their own learning experience. Unlike the quest for the Holy Grail, this pursuit has a high level of rewards and daily value!

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