Focus on the Family has a great Christian character trait program called Character Crew. You can access it for free.
The program covers:
- Respect
- Citizenship
- Hope
- Compassion
- Courage
- Honesty
- Excellence
- Perseverance
- Responsibility
Tag Archives: homeschooling
Teaching Character Traits
Free Creation Science Videos
You can go to NWCreation.net for a large selection of free online creation science videos!
Amazing site!
Free Arctic Animal Pack
royal baloo is offering a free arctic animal pack. It is geared for toddler, pre-k, and kinder.
60+ pages of mazes, SuDoKu, writing practice, cutting, shapes, addition, subtraction, and more!
Free Composer Notebooking Pages
CurrClick is offering the following:
These Free Composer Notebooking Pages can be used with any composer you choose. Just grab a living book about your composer, and use these pages to write about all you’ve learned.
This set includes:
- Regular and Small Primary lined pages
- Cover Sheet
- General biography Pages
- Continuation Page
- Timeline Page”
Free Homeschooling Planning Pack
Free Homeschool Deals is offering a free Homeschooling Planner Pack.
Here is what the site says about the pack:
It’s 18-pages and includes:
- Frugal Homeschooling Assessment
- Frugal Homeschooling Planning Page
- Weekly Goal Sheets for Homeschool
- Monthly Goal Sheets for Homeschool
- Unit Study Planner (x5)
- Mom’s Master Planning List in 2-Colors
- Student Planning List (Boy & Girl)
To receive your free copy of the Free & Frugal Homeschool Planning Pack simply “LIKE” the facebook page for FreeHomeschoolDeals.com. You’ll find this sweet planner under the “Only Likers” tab.
I just downloaded mine and it looks good.
They also links to free cookbooks and a free book about incubation of chicken eggs. The chicken book is for your kindle, but you can download to your phone or iPad with a free app.The chicken book might make a great summer project or fit nicely into a unit study. We live on a farm, so we always have something hatching all the time…chickens, ducks, geese, and guineas. Fun times!
Spring Fever
The weather around my part of the world has been very warm…87+. I’ve actually given in and turned the air on. I can’t believe it is so hot so early this year. I love to open the windows and let the fresh air blow throughout the house in the spring, but alas, that’s not going to happen this year. We didn’t have much of a winter, so I rarely ran the heat, but summer is wide awake and blowing its humid, hot breath down my neck as I type. I feel the need to make a quick run to Sonic for a strawberry . What about you? Is it hot where you live now? Is the heat trying to blister you? How does that affect your schooling?
Dealing with the heat is one thing, but spring fever seems to also be creating a bit of a problem as well. My daughter hasn’t said much, but I’ve noticed a drastic reduction in her drive lately. It doesn’t matter if you are working on essay writing skills, drilling multiplication facts, or still trying to master phonics by playing short vowel games, springtime is calling us outside to enjoy a little fresh air and fun. It’s a great time to add fun P.E. activities into the lessons each week. What about going to the local pond to catch tadpoles, feed the ducks and geese, and look for insects? We have ducks and geese on our farm. They are such fun to watch and they make for a neat science lesson.
Share what you are doing to combat spring fever around your house. I am sure many of you have super ideas we could all benefit from hearing about. I look forward to reading your comments and learning a few new tips and ideas.
Importance of Spelling
Do you teach spelling in your homeschool? Spelling instruction has fallen out of favor in many classrooms in the last several years. I was never a great speller. I vividly remember being held in during recess to write my missed spelling words over and over. What a waste that was for me. Spelling is very visual for me. Simply writing the words over and over did nothing for me. If my teacher had known about learning styles, she would have encouraged me to write the spelling word in colors (consonants in one color and vowels in another) on one side of a blank card, and then have me draw a picture of how I visualize that word on the other side of the card. My daughter and I are both right-brained visual learners and that is the way I helped her learn spelling words. It works very well. I eventually conquered my spelling demons, no thanks to my fourth grade teacher. 
Have you ever spent time wondering about the importance of spelling?
Over the past decade when spelling education seemed to fall out of favor, teachers, administrators, and parents all across the nation learned just how important spelling is for literacy education. The proof was in the classroom! In places where teachers stopped paying attention to spelling, test scores dropped and schools began to experience failure with literacy education (Colvin, 1995).
I hate seeing misspelled words in print. Have you ever found mistakes in newspaper articles or magazines? What does it make you think about their editorial department? Have you ever looked at ads on Craigslist? My husband and I read ads on Craigslist for laughs. You will not believe the poor spelling and grammar. It is a great tool to use to help your child learn to spot and correct mistakes. If you use Facebook, read posts from your friends a little more carefully. I bet you will find small spelling mistakes. I see them all the time. You might not see them because your mind will correct many of them for you. Are you thinking those folks are just not using spell check? The truth is that spell checkers only catch between 30 and 80% of reasonable spelling mistakes. If you are a very poor speller, spell check is not going to be able to decipher what you are trying to spell. Spell checkers only catch about 53% of misspellings of students with learning disabilities.
Here is an excellent article from LD Online about how spelling supports reading. Bookmark this one for future reference.
Constitution 101
Hillsdale College is offering a free course to anyone interested.
Here is the information:
About Constitution 101
“Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution” is a 10-week online course presented by Hillsdale College.
Featuring an expanded format from the “Introduction to the Constitution” lecture series with Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn, Constitution 101 follows closely the one-semester course required of all Hillsdale College undergraduate students.
In this course, you can:
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watch lectures from the same Hillsdale faculty who teach on campus;
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study the same readings taught in the College course;
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submit questions for weekly Q&A sessions with the faculty;
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access a course study guide;
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test your knowledge through weekly quizzes; and
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upon completion of the course, receive a certificate from Hillsdale College.
How To Homeschool Part 2
Last week I shared an e-book about how to homeschool. I think it is big help to families new to homeschooling. This week I found a neat webinar on You Tube called 5 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Homeschooling.
5 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Homeschooling
The video offers great insight from veteran homeschool Moms. I like hearing from others what has and hasn’t worked for them in their homeschooling adventures. I have tried things that didn’t work for others, and lo and behold, it worked for me.
It is okay to experiment with different homeschooling techniques, curriculums, styles… That is the only way you will ever know what truly works for you and your children. It is also a great way to discover new techniques you never would have dreamed would work for you. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Don’t be afraid to fail…failure simply means you discovered something that doesn’t work for you and helps you pinpoint what does.
Dare to be different this year. Try something that is not in your homeschooling comfort zone. Share your experiences with others so we can learn from you.
If you have tried new and different things this year, please take a minute and leave a comment for the rest of us who are eager to learn from you!
