Homeschool Math: Grab your Roadmap to Success BEFORE you spend a moment worrying about math curriculum, let me share a secret. I didn’t understand where I was supposed to go until I’d been on the road almost 20 years. It’s crazy that it’s taken me almost two decades to truly understand this thing we call MATH. … Read More »
High School Electives for Homeschoolers Like chocolate and vanilla ice cream; teenagers and electives are meant for one another! What better way to take the reins of their learning, than to allow our teenagers to have a little bit of creative control over their future and learning. What is an elective? Homeschool electives are homeschool high school courses the help supplement core subjects or are geared to your child’s interest. Electives are a fantastic ways to teach your teen life skills. …Read More »
10 Things You Need to Make an Epic Living Room Forts with your kids Lies. Big fat lies! Living room forts are NOT just for little kids!! Call all the kids and announce you have a plan that requires zip ties, boxes, blankets, and food. Then watch their faces. Your big kids may look at you funny. That’s ok. If you dangle the correct snack, they’ll jump on board too. Once the BIG kids get on board, prepare yourself for some EPIC fort building! …Read More »
Math Games: Thanksgiving Divisibility If you need awesome division Activities Worksheets and Centers for your students, you’ve come to the right place. I just finished the newest Divisibility Math Game, and it is ready and waiting to help your kids master their divisibility rules! Knowing divisibility rules is a HUGE time saver when kids are reducing fractions and solving those multistep problems. I like to make learning these rules fun with hands-on games, jokes, and fun activities. This divisibility game is meant to be printed and then stored in a manilla folder for easy access later. Learning division and divisibility rules can be FUN! Roll a numberIdentify what it is divisible by :_______Play a fast board game Math mastery for the win! Included: Game boardMy number is divisible by ____ cardsDivisibility quick reference cardsFolder set up Additional Math FUN
9 Tips to help Kids write Fabulous Essays 9 Essay Tips to help you write a fabulous final draft Writing an essay is like tuning a piano. In order to write an excellent essay, you need to understand your audience. In our home, we refer to this as a tuning fork. In the old days, piano tuners would ping a tuning fork and listen to the pitch of the note as they fine tuned a string on the piano. When the tone from the string matched the tuning fork, they’d know they had made the key sound the right way. …Read More »
College Proof Your Faith with Jay Seegert In this wonderful conversation with our guest speaker, my son Sam and I are glued to our seats as we glean wisdom about how to college proof our faith. (Or, life proof for those of us past college) This is a rough cut transcript of the AMAZING conversation we had with Jay Seegert with The Starting Point Project at A Better Way to Homeschool on Facebook. …Read More »
ABW 10: Teens and Business with Abby THE CHALLENGE: Help our Teenagers Launch their own businesses while earning High school Credit! Hold on to your hat! This one’s gonna be fantastic! Abby Banks with Making Room 4 One More will be here to give you quick tips and resources to help your kids step into the business world successfully! Bring your teens along for this one!
ABW 10: Teens and Business with Abby Teens and Business: Heck Yes! THE CHALLENGE: Help our Teenagers Launch their own businesses while earning High school Credit! Hold on to your hat! This one’s gonna be fantastic! Abby Banks with Making Room 4 One More will be here to give you quick tips and resources to help your kids step into the business world successfully! …Read More »
ABW 7: Growth Mindset Hacks with Meryl Growth Mindset Hacks with Meryl van Der Merwe from FundaFunda will be here to give us tips, tricks, and resources for our own growth. …Read More »
Despite What You May Think, Writing Doesn’t Have to be Boring Inside: 3 Writer’s Skills that Students should learn long before heading to college. 3 Important but “Unfun” Skills Every Writer must Know 1. Paraphrasing 2. MLA Citation 3. Plagiarism– How not to get caught. {See the answer at the end of this article} I told you they were unfun. But they are necessary skills, just like driving defensively, CPR and cooking homemade pizza. We want to raise up writers, not thieves. Right now two of our five sons are chopping wood with their dad. They were driven to a dark scary piece of land with a borrowed trailer attached to our SUV. Once they were far off the beaten path they were directed to the freshly cut giant. My husband enthusiastically wielded a chainsaw and cut the trunk into manageable 500 pound pieces. Maybe, they were lighter. I couldn’t tell you for sure. I was delegated to watch the boys “hump the logs” out of the wood. (That’s men talk) Those very heavy logs were carefully brought home. Enter my hero: My husband. He takes the boys to the hardware store and buys a couple of axes. While my husband looked the other way, each son looked at me with pleading eyes. “Save me mommy.” I said nothing. I trust that my husband, a manly man, is much more equipped to teach I trust that my husband, a manly man, is much more equipped to teach boys how to be men than I am. Plus, I had a cup of coffee to enjoy with my bon-bons. An hour later, the door bursts open and my wood-chopping sons walk in with a very distinct swagger. Lumberjacks in training. They were all wearing sawdust covered jeans, work boots and flannel shirts. You could taste the testosterone in the air. “Mom, that was AWESOME!” Funny how being taught to do something challenging and dangerous leaves a “lovely glow” on the face of a growing boy. Our young men need to swing axes. Even if it’s metaphorically speaking. I wish it were that same for basic writing skills. Writing is one of those skills that many of us have been forced into against our wills. But we shouldn’t group writing into the same category as forcing our 11-year old sons to shower daily. (I swear my kid believes that water will melt his manliness.) Just like forcing our kids to bathe is good for their health, their appearance and our nose, writing is good for their education, life preparation and is often our final exam as homeschoolers. How embarrassing is it when our kid shares on facebook, “I be so exsited! I git to go to diz-knee-land!” 40+ Types of Writing to Teach Your Kids Text messaging Facebook posts Twitter tweets Instagram Descriptions Linked in Profile emails Friendly letters Grocery lists Birthday cards Comics strips Write to a prompt Letters to their Future Self Recipes Directions to the zoo Instructions for making the perfect cup of coffee Review a play Word webs Speech Writing Book Report Alternatives Cornell notes Outlines Essays Research Papers Poetry Music lyrics Mentor Sentences Newsletter Books Short stories Journal entries Captions for pictures Resumes Job applications Cover letters Paraphrasing MLA citation Works Cited pages Blog Script writing Autobiography Comparison Chart Scattergories! Believe in yourself. You can teach your kids to write. Believe in your kids. They have it in their hearts to become excellent writers. Believe in fairies. Because fairies make life magical. Related: 3 Insanely Simple Secrets to Teaching Kids to Write So what is the trick to plagiarizing and avoiding getting caught? Easy- do not plagiarize in the first place. Almost every child can write. Take them by the hand, expose them to something amazing, and teach them how to capture that moment on paper. Join me in raising writers, not thieves. Things for you to add to your teaching tool belt. These also make great additions to your emergency file. (Also known as “mom is sick and needs you to work independently today”) Download your 44 Writing Ideas {Printable} Download your guide to teaching Kids to NOT be thieves (MLA Citation) Grab your “Friendly Letters to Me” Pack Thanksgiving Writing Prompts worthy of making their way to the “keep me” pile. The GOAL of all writing is clear communication. Here are some of my go-to creations to help your kids embrace their writing journey.
The Real Secret to Teaching Homeschool Algebra and Higher Math Inside: The real secret to Teaching Algebra in Homeschool. I’m a liar. What is worse? Getting caught by my 9th grader. Now, I never meant to lie, most surely I did not. … Read More »
Letting Teens Go Too Soon= Disaster By the time our kids reach high school, we can bend to the pressure to “let them go” and “cut the cords”. photo by Erik Scheel Teenagers need the help, guidance, and strength of their parents even more than toddlers do. The transition from middle- schooler to adulthood is like running a medieval gauntlet. … Read More »
3 Insanely Simply Secrets to Teaching Kids to Write Inside: Simple Secrets to teaching kids to write plus 44 Writing Ideas and a tool to help take the guesswork out of grading writing. There I was, trapped in the back of the car, seatbelted and wind-whipped. I was terrified because the teenage jerk behind the wheel thought it was hilarious to speed down the road at over 100 miles an hour. Out of control, scared and trapped, I tried everything but couldn’t get him to slow down. … Read More »