Relaxed Homeschooling Blog | Relaxed Homeschooling

Ideas to make your homeschooling exciting

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:23:03 -0500

One of my friends shared about THIS BLOG that has a wonderful list of 101 ideas to add spice to your homeschooling. What a great list!

We try to incorporate a lot of these in our homeschool day if we can-

reading outside

taking walks

nature journaling

playing music in the background

getting chores out of the way first so home is ready for schooling

etc.

But check out the list HERE - some great stuff! Enjoy!

Homeschooling and Socialization

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:50:17 -0500

As you've probably heard from me before, I think one of the BENEFITS of homeschooling kids is the socialization aspect. Most people throw out the question "but what about socialization" assuming that kids who are homeschooled are missing out on building relationships with other kids in the classroom and school setting.

I see it as a benefit because homeschoolers are typically socialized with multiple age groups instead of just being peer dependent. In other words, most homeschooled kids (at least the ones I know) have the ability to enjoy and hold an intelligent conversation with a wide age range of people - not just hang out with their friends all the time. In our local homeschool support group, for instance, it's not all that uncommon to see a couple of teen girls sitting down for a piece of pizza with a 7 year old, a 2 year old and a grandma - with all of them talking together and very interested in what each person has to say.

That sounds to me a whole lot more like the real world than what I see in most other settings - in particular teen kids who, when confronted with someone outside their peer group have a tendency to drop their eyes and their vocabulary becomes limited to "uh huh" and "um" and "grunt". I'm generalizing here but you know what I mean!

I found this site today that sent me over to another post on the topic by Dr. Laura who has some nice things to say about homeschooling as well. Enjoy!

Interesting sidenote

Mon, 26 May 2008 18:26:57 -0500

I've been getting several notes and emails about the Subway writing contest for kids that completely excludes homeschoolers and thought I'd post here as well so others will know about it as well.

Now mind you, I think it's fine for a company to make up any rules it wants to -it's their contest and my kids are too old to participate in the contest anyway. But I'm wondering what the motivation is behind excluding a group of kids who are being educated and, surprise, who can actually write good stories, and, surprise, who probably frequent Subway (or at least they used to)?

Here's what their contest page says:

Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.

And on the full details page:

ELIGIBILITY. Contest is open only to legal residents of the United States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted. Employees and members of their families of Scholastic and Subway, their parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates, and their advertising, promotion and production agencies are not eligible to enter. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

We love a good Sub and of the places we frequent, Jimmy Johns, Pot Belly, Quiznos and Subway, we like the bread choices at Subway the best for the price. But when they make decisions like this... to exclude a pretty large population of kids just because they don't sit at a desk with a bunch of other kids during a school day - hmmmm... I think we'll try the other places first from now on.

Menu Planning 25% off!

Thu, 22 May 2008 21:43:59 -0500

Podcast

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:29:56 -0500

Stay tuned for homeschooling audios - just for you!

Another great homeschooling resource site

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:05:39 -0500

I was looking for some specific worksheets for the kids today when I googled and found this great site. At first, to be honest, I wasn't that impressed because the site isn't that attractive to the eye. But once I started looking around a bit I found a wealth of information and it's now in my homeschool websites bookmark folder for future viewing.

Click here to visit the site LoveToLearnPlace.com

I went there looking for a new book report type form for the kids to fill out. My girls love to read and I'd like to have some different ways for them to keep records of what they're reading, particularly when it's historical fiction. I found a nice thorough 4 page form on the site that covers some great stuff and takes them beyond just writing up a synopsis of the book itself. They enjoyed filling it out and I think it'll be a helpful form to us in the future. They've got other similar forms for various things there as well.

Anyway, just wanted to pass on the good resource. I hope you enjoy it!

The Homeschool Bag Lady

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:39:16 -0500

I just got done reading THIS POST done by a very clever homeschool mom and I laughed like crazy because I remember the days where I felt like I had so many bags and "things" on my shoulder every time I left the house that my back was going to break!

You know the feeling - "I can't forget that" or "someone might need this".

I could go on and on about the bags I carried but Mrs. Taschek tells it so much funnier than I ever could so head on over to her blog at taschek.wordpress.com to read more! Enjoy!

Virtual Fieldtrips

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:03:16 -0500

Boy am I glad I have my google alerts set up to search for fun homeschooling sites. Today I linked up to this great site that offers virtual field trips. Talk about a great way to work through a unit study or some super tools for a lapbook or notebook.

There are some great field trips for Art, Geography, History, Literature, Math, Music and Science and even a category "Just for Fun" that includes a virtual field trip for Roller Coasters! Fun!

Take a look!

Click Here for the Virtual Field Trips site!

A great find for notebooking

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:25:12 -0500

One of our favorite ways to keep our homeschooling relaxed is by notebooking - simply keeping a notebook of our studies, etc. It's kind of like "school scrapbooking" including all the fun and creativity - combined with learning and documenting what you've learned.

Today I stumbled on a great site that has some fun free and paid resources for your notebooking adventures. If you're in to lapbooking or notebooking you definitely have to check this out.

Click HERE for Notebookingpages.com