Search Results for: blog can you homeschool through college too

What a Character! Character-Building for Home Learners

This week, Paul Tough of the New York Times wrote an article called, “What if the Secret to Success is Failure?” He references the work of Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, psychologists who have studied character traits and how they shape a person’s success in life. I heartily agree with his line of questioning. What if we don’t learn best by sailing down the smooth path of life? What if we can learn much, much more from our mistakes and the challenging situations that make us pause, worry, and cringe? What then? You see, there’s this worry parents have about … Continue reading →

Teaching Business by Being a Business

As I go through my day I am teaching my children about daily life. They learn about paying bills, dealing with siblings, parenting, how to handle frustration, making dinner, doing laundry and all the homemaking chores required to run a home. These are important skills to teach both boys and girls. These are skills best learned on the job and not conducted in a classroom setting or at the dining room table. My children learn how to make dinner by making dinner. My son learned how to become the best pancake maker in the house by doing every step from … Continue reading →

17 Essentials of College Planning by Carolina Pad

Planning for college is exciting but it can also be exhausting and overwhelming. The most important tool in planning for college is organization. When I was in school I once had a teacher say that proper organizational skills alone could raise your grade. Over the years I have found that logic to be sound not only in school but in all areas of life. College is a very important step and scribbling notes on Post-Its or the back of a gum wrapper will not cut it. You need to order your steps to see the greatest success in this process. … Continue reading →

My Homeschool History

People often ask me how I got in to homeschooling. The answer is simple –it’s how I was raised. My parents started their home school when I was a baby. My sisters were having difficulty in their public school settings. The two oldest were getting propositioned in the hallways, and the sister next in line was struggling so much in her third grade class, she was getting ulcers. Each day when my sisters came home from school, they were nervous wrecks, and my mom was at her wits’ end to know what to do. She began to notice a pattern. … Continue reading →

Timed Tests Help Concentration

If you are a homeschooling parent you may or may not give your child tests in general much less timed tests. Many homeschoolers do not see the benefit in giving tests to their children. I agree that a test is not the end all be all of intelligence or mastery over a subject. I was also a homeschooler who did not give or rely on tests to weigh the level of mastery achieved on a subject. Recently, I have decided to change my homeschool to include tests for my older children. Before this year I had only given spelling tests … Continue reading →

But I don’t know how to teach organic chemistry?

One of the biggest criticisms of homeschool naysayers and one of the biggest concerns of homeschool parents are one in the same. Each asks how it is possible to teach a subject you do not know. If you are homeschooling a preschooler through elementary student, you not have asked yourself this question just yet. However, as time goes on and you are responsible for the education of a junior high school or high school student you may begin to tremble in fear at the thought of teaching higher math or science. You may feel lost when teaching the importance of … Continue reading →

In a Rush to Graduate Your Kids from Homeschool?

My family had a conversation last night about when we would graduate the kids from homeschool. We started talking about SAT scores for my son that we should receive on Tuesday and the fact that we couldn’t graduate him next year if he took the PSAT and qualified for the National Merit Program (he took the SAT first as a practice for the PSAT). Because the PSAT had to be taken in your Jr. year to qualify for the National Merit program, we were trying to figure out if he had to wait another year to graduate even though he … Continue reading →

Why Drama is Important in Homeschooling

As I mentioned in the last homeschool blog post, Carnival of Educators -Drama Club Edition, I am in the middle of tech week for my kids Drama Club which is an extention of their once a week homeschool program. As a quick refresher, my kids attend Artios Academies which is a once a week homeschool program where kids learn about a different time period each year through the arts. (This post explains the program in more detail. You may notice there was a name change for the “school” my kids attend.) They study visual art, music, drama, dance, etc, of … Continue reading →

Carnival of Educators -Drama Club Edition

Welcome to the November 17, 2009 edition of carnival of educators. This is the fourth edition of the Carnival of Educators. For those new to carnivals, they are basically blog or column posts that include links to tidbits from dozens of other carnivals. Each week the carnival is hosted at a different blog to spread the wealth and the work around. This weeks edition is the Drama Club edition. In the past two weeks, I have been to numerous homeschool and school productions, and my own kids are in the middle of Tech week for a play scheduled for five … Continue reading →

Should Kids Move Out at 18

A blog post at timberdoodle.com asks Is it time to kick the kids out of the house? Moving out at eighteen is a fairly recent, definitely cultural idea, one which regardless of the spiritual implications makes no economic or ecological sense… Why are some people getting their knickers in a knot over the emissions of cows while ignoring the massive impact this exodus of young people has on carbon footprints? …There seems to be a campaign afoot among relatives and friends to boot our adult children out of our home. The writer continues by stating that while her kids are … Continue reading →