But for those of you looking for great homeschooling resources, Diane Flynn Keith has been ferreting them out for years. Check out her lists:
The Best of ClickSchoolingAnd best wishes on your family's homeschooling adventure!
ClickSchooling Yahoo Group
Don't miss it! Pop over to the Homeschool Freebies site for free downloads galore. Time is limited, so act quickly --- the fun ends Monday night.
[Image created using Wordle.]
When things calm down, I plan to get back to posting mini book reviews each week. For now, I'm doing good to get anything posted at all! But I have been looking for an excuse to play around with the Wordle online "toy," so I copied the carnival of homeschooling into it, just to see what came our. (If you have trouble reading the fine print, click to enlarge the image.) This ended up taking much more time than I thought, because my old screenshot capture program couldn't handle the java image. I had to install Jing, which worked like a dream.
This week's homeschool blog carnival celebrates women's suffrage. Stop by and enjoy the history and the wide variety of carnival entries:
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
This week's freebie from CurrClick is just the thing for my 4th grade daughter. We can print these on index cards, clip them together with a linking ring, and practice on the go. (It seems like we are always on the go to somewhere. What ever happened to home schooling?)
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by S Baker.]
Ah, the joys of antique equipment! Between computer problems and an urgent list of things that need to be done before school starts (okay, I missed that deadline!), blogging has become temporarily impossible.
While I'm gone, I hope you will take some time to browse some of the other excellent educational blogs out there. Here is a list of edublog carnivals, copied from the sidebar widget on my math blog.
What is a blog carnival?Carnival of Education
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
In the treasure-hunting game of Geocaching (pronounced "geo-cashing"), players use GPS systems to locate boxes hidden at different geographical locations across the country. Now, the creative people at Mathbits.com have created online activities for junior high and high school students, called MathCaching. Students solve mathematical problems to find hidden "boxes" on the Internet. Each box reveals clues to the location of the next one.
Here are the MathCaching levels now available:
MathCaching for Basic Math Skills
The "BasicCaching" game covers prealgebra skills such as fractions, ratios, percents, order of operations, signed numbers, exponents, sum of angles in a triangle, mean, median, and probability.
Algebra
The "AlgeCaching" game challenges students with order of operations, equation solving, integer and consecutive integer word problems, slope, distance, midpoint, area, radicals, exponents, factoring, quadratic equations, and rational equations.
Geometry
The "GeoCaching" game requires knowledge of angles, reasoning, parallel and perpendicular lines, triangles, congruent triangles and proof, quadrilaterals, area and volume, polygons, similarity, circles, and transformations.
Algebra2
The "Alge2Caching" game tests such topics as absolute value equations and inequalities; radical equations, functions, logarithms, exponentials, quadratics, complex fractions, asymptotes, rational equations, sequences and series, Binomial Theorem, and probability.
Trigonometry
The "TrigCaching" game covers right triangle trig, angle relationships, conversion between radians and degrees, reference angles, exact values, area of triangle, Law of Sines, Law of Cosines, amplitude, frequency, period, vertical shift, phase shift, inverse trig functions, and identities.
PreCalculus and Calculus levels are coming soon.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
The 137th Carnival of Homeschooling kicks off the school year with a trip down 'homeschool memory lane' with a collage of photos from several years of raising kids and home-educating them.
"The memories are priceless... and I wouldn't have traded ALL my burnout, stress, or bad days for any one of these smiles in the pictures."While not priceless, the many articles by homeschooling bloggers are well worth browsing, too. Here are a few of my favorites:
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by ldcross.]
Be sure to check out this week's freebies at:
The Homeschool Freebie of the Day
Each download is available for one day only, so don't procrastinate! These are wonderful resources.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by anomalous4.]
Are you concerned about your child's (or your own) spelling skills? Even good readers can find spelling difficult. Unfortunately, spell checking programs donut work two will fur a week spiller, if ewe no watt eye men.
We all know that people judge us by our spelling. Poor spelling creates a bad impression, and no one wants to look stupid. But what can a weak speller do? Whether you are an adult who has always struggled with spelling or the parent of a child who needs spelling help, here is a website that you may find useful:
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by youngthousands.]
Oh, dear! My computer has died again, and I'm afraid this time it may be for good. It has been hobbling along for the last 2-3 years, throwing occasional tantrums but usually working well enough. I will certainly miss the beast! Fortunately, I can use my daughter's computer to check email and other emergency stuff --- but I may not be able to put together a blog post for awhile. See you later!
While waiting for the Carnival of Homeschooling, I read some other posts at The Homeschool Cafe. And discovered a link to this hilarious online questionnaire:
An announcement from The Teaching Company, one of our favorite resources for high school history:
Ancient Origins of the Olympic Games
"In celebration of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, The Teaching Company is proud to present a pair of free commissioned lectures.You can download Ancient Origins of the Olympic Games any time until September 4, in mp3 or iPod format. Enjoy!
"Although the modern version of the Olympic Games has been around for over 100 years since its revival at the 1896 games in Athens, the Olympics have a rich and exciting history that goes back to ancient Greece. A crucial aspect of Greek culture, the ancient Olympics emphasized the ideas of heroism and honor established by Homer's epic poetry. The games were meant to celebrate physical strength, speed, and manhood. Most importantly, they embodied the spirit of competition (agon) that defined ancient Greek life.
"The games as they were played back then bear a striking contrast to the Olympics as we know them today:
- Athletes originally represented their families and not their communities.
- Women were not allowed to compete and only unmarried women could watch the games.
- There were no team sports; rather, individual athletes competed against each other.
"Despite their differences, the ancient Olympics were as celebrated as today's games. The first Olympics captured what it meant to be a citizen of Greece. The Olympics of today capture what it means to be a citizen of the world."
- The games never moved to different locations; instead, they were always held in the city of Olympia in southern Greece.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!How frustrating! I am having computer problems, so there will be no "Book of the Week" or new post today. But don't forget to visit this week's Carnival of Homeschooling at Consent of the Governed:
[Photo by gotplaid?]
Are your students eager to put their thoughts on paper? Or do they struggle, intimidated by that blank, white page? Or are they like me --- a little of both? Even the most reluctant writer may be motivated by knowing that a real person (not "just Mom") will read his creation. In case you missed the announcement a couple of weeks ago, I would like to highlight a wonderful opportunity for writers of all ages:
" The Book Arts Bash is a brand new writing contest for homeschoolers, unschoolers, upschoolers, and outschoolers! Our goal is to have fun writing and illustrating, and to stretch book arts across the curriculum.Browse the list of contest categories
"The deadline is October 1, so get scribbling! Explore 20 categories, and enter as many as you like! There are five age groups, from kindergarten kids to homeschooling moms and dads."
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by The Jamoker.]
Is your child ready to learn to read? Here is a downloadable program that can help your student make the transition from letter sounds to true reading.
Words are gradually introduced through the events on the screen that provide a meaningful context for their comprehension. Introduction of new words is carefully spaced out, so that previous words have become familiar, but there is constant learning... By the end of chapter seven, children will have learned 105 of the most common English words...Programs for Pre-Readers, Too
Bridge to Reading is fundamentally different from most of the educational games and 'edutainment' programs currently on the market. It has no 'shoot-em-ups', high scores or other distracting elements. In most educational programs, the reward, in sound and animations, is extrinsic to the action the child is supposed to perform; it is a treat given for a trick. In this program, the reward is intrinsic.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Photo by Ernst Moeksis.]
Princess Kitten finished her daily FreeRice and multiplication drill games and started exploring my computer. I peeked over her shoulder, and the two of us had a blast browsing my old bookmarks...
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
Frugal Homeschooling Book of the Week
Yesterday, I wrote about homeschool co-ops, so today's Book of the Week is devoted to that topic. Carol Topp is a homeschooling mother, Certified Public Accountant, and author of...
"Most people (and especially most homeschooling families) have at least a passing knowledge of the 12 labors that Hercules had to complete for Eurystheus. I would propose that, as homeschoolers, we face a no less daunting set of tasks..."So many interesting articles! Here are a few of my favorites, but remember, they are only a small taste of the smorgasbord:
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[Reprinted with permission from Home Spun Juggling.]
Summer is time for planning ahead to the next school year, which makes it a great time to think about starting a homeschool co-op. Would you like to get together with a few other families for semi-regular playtime or field trips? Or do you envision a large organization with several classes for each grade level?
As the Bible says, "Plans fail
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
[If video player doesn't work, click here: Periodic Table of Videos trailer.]
Learning chemistry? Or simply in the mood for a little excitement? Check out The Periodic Table of Videos:
They are the unlikely new stars of YouTube --- from Sodium and Helium to Lithium, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Argon. University of Nottingham scientists have brought the Periodic Table into the 21st century with a bang, by posting lively video clips about every single chemical element on a new website.More Online Resources for Chemistry Students
And ‘The Periodic Table of Videos’ has already proved a massive online success, appearing on the UK front page of the YouTube website and registering more than 106,000 hits in just a few days.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
I heard of this contest in an e-mail from ClickSchooling:
Kids, share your creative math ideas! Describe how you use math in any activity you love to do — a sport, game, craft, hobby, or anything else.Sounds like fun! If you want to enter, act quickly. Entries must be submitted online by July 30th. Visit Crazy4Math.com for more information and to check out the winners from previous years.
Send in a description of the activity and how it uses math, as well as any drawing(s) or diagram(s). There are many great prizes to be won. Please ensure you've read and understand our contest's rules and regulations before entering.
Subscribe to the Frugal Homeschooling RSS Feed!
