Free Homeschool Resources

As I read posts on Facebook and other homeschool forum I am amazed to find how many homeschoolers that do not utilize all the free resources out there.  I thought I might mention a few that we are using in this post and then write about others in the past in a later post.

Having a high schooler we have to of course use some lecture material.  This can be expensive to purchase.  I did purchase US History lectures from The Teaching Company this year for T, on sale of course.  But for chemistry, algebra II and literature I've found some great free lectures and helps.

For chemistry and some literature I use You Tube a lot.  There are tons of free lectures and virtual labs that are well done.  It does take some time to weed out the bad videos but for the most part I have been extremely happy with what we have used, and I am picky.

One of my favorite set of videos on You Tube for lit is 60 Second Recap.  They are fun, informative
and just right to grab the readers attention.

Khan Academy is also a great source for math and science.  I use it to expand or further explain a subject in algebra II and chemistry.  Sometimes the original lesson just doesn't hit home.  So using a different approach or view of the concept is great.

I am planning another post with free resources I use for Poogie. Until next time...

Trash and Keep Pile

As I have done every school year since I began this journey I find myself making changes.  By now I have discovered what works for us as far as homeschool curriculum goes and what doesn't.  I am disappointed to find that some of the things we loved last year did not make the cut this year.  It may be we are just burned out with the daily repetition of some of these books.  It pains me to say that two of these are classical education curriculum's, Writing with Ease and Writing with Skill.  Both of these are great writing curricula, and we haven't ditched them for good.  It's just the day to day repetition of the curriculum has become tedious.  I do not feel that either one of my kids age getting any thing new out of these right now so on the shelf they go. 

Another casualty from the first quarter is the Novel Units literature guides.  Ug,  I have to say I did not like them.  There are so many reasons I won't take up time writing about it.  Let's just say that they were not user friendly.  I still had to do alot of prep on my own and some of the questions in the books did not line up with the novels.  I won't use them again. 

For Poogie history was a big flat failure.  I tried using The Story of the US and The Complete Book of US History.  They just didn't offer enough comprehsion and geography work.  So we are using something I already had, Abeka US history and geography.  I will be adding historical reading to go along with the time peroids. 

So things we are keeping but using as a supplement, such as First Language Lessons.  Great curriculum, but not our daily cup of tea.  We are returning to Easy Grammar for Poogie with FLL added for diagramming and extra practice.   Poogie will be using EG 6 since I had the teacher's edition. 

Poogie is also keeping Rod & Staff Arithmetic 5 but we are supplementing with Math Mammoth on subjects that she doesn't master in the text.  Right now we are doing a MM unit on fractions because she just didn't get it in R&S. 

For Poogie's writing we are going to give Writing Strands a whirl.  I have it already so why not.  For T I have ordered Jensen Format Writing to replace WWS.  We will use WWS but not on a weekly basis. 

I have decided to let T read the novels we have chosen and give him writing assignments and projects to complete for them from free sources on the internet.  The Novel Units just killed his love for the book, and mine. 

Finally, on The Well Trained Mind Forum I found a link to a free PDF of a curriuclum I have been wanting to try for reading for Poogie.  The Reading Detective from The Thinking Co. offers this.  I am going to try a few lesson with Poogie and then I may order the software version.  T has liked the Editor in Chief software so it would be fun for Poogie to have her time at the computer too.

I guess we just need to see how the next 9 weeks go...

ps please forgive the typo's spell check wasn't working and I've run out of time.

Writing resources...

Writing, ug, that subject that many dread to teach, me included.  Since the beginning of our homeschool journey back in 2006 I have tried many writing curriculum without much success.

First, we tried Wordsmith.  Interesting program, fun and pretty easy to use, but not a good fit for my T who was then in 4th grade.  Then, we attempted Rod and Staff writing that is part of their excellent English curriculum, again not for us.

I dabbled in a few small things here and there finally settling on Writeshop which worked better than anything we had tried.  It's well laid out, has excellent student and teacher instructions, but the exercises were not exciting.  How many times can you describe something, really.  What it did teach was the writing process in a very simple but methodical way.

Writeshop was not the answer to my writing curriculum prayers.  I was still  looking, and looking.  One day while looking for Poogie a good writing program, because I wanted to get her started much earlier than T, I found Writing with Ease.  Since we used this type of narration and summarizing in SOTW I thought, perfect.  And so far it has been a challenging but great writing program for Poogie.  But I digress, while looking at WWE I found a link to 7 chapters of a new program by Susan Wise Bauer, Writing With Skill for older students.  I quickly downloaded it and implemented into our schedule the next week. 

I would love to say it was easy and T loved it from the start but that would be a little white lie, lol.  It took some time to get used to how the program is presented and the methods, but when you do the rewards are worth it. 

T has always been a good writer, but summarizing and generalizing information is not his strongest skill.  These are skills he must master to write well written research papers, a must in high school.
We have been slowly changing over to the classical method of homeschooling and the effective use of these programs by Susan Wise Bauer means we are right on track.

Homeschool Record Keeping

As you may have read on my facebook page my computer got a virus last week and I lost the last 8 months of lesson plans on my Homeschool Tracker.  I love the program, and it was my fault for not backing up my data base.  I will use it again, but I' like to upgrade from the free Basic to the Plus. But thankfully, I saved all their tests and graded material. Plus, copies of all lesson plans printed out from HST.  I also planned this year using subject planners for each quarter.it was nice to see how the year would play out.   I love Donna Young's planners.  She has great sources for all homeschoolers.  She has plans for Apologia Science, handwriting and more.  Check it out! Short but sweet :)

Awesome Math Supplement

We are using Lial's Introduction to Algebra for T and loving it.  However, we hit a wall in Ch. 3 on slopes so in our house that means going back to work on what we had trouble with.  While researching for helps on the Well Trained Mind Forum, which I love, I found a suggestion by the same wonderful lady that suggested Lials. It's called InterActMath.com, and it's free.  All you do is go to the site enter it and choose your math text, there are lots of them listed. Then you can work through examples with help if needed.  I loved it.  Check it out.  I have been happy using the free Khan Academy videos but I think this is more of what T needs.  We shall see.

I plan on sharing even more free and fun supplements and homeschool material I find.  Let me know if you like it.