Archives for 2012

The best part of homeschooling: Enjoying them

by on December 19, 2012
in inspiration · 38 Comments

Written by contributor Sarah Small of SmallWorld at Home

As I write, three teenagers in Santa hats are in the kitchen loudly singing, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” It is 7:15 a.m., and I hush them because I don’t want them to wake “the baby.” The baby is almost 12, and like most tweens, he likes to sleep in.

We’re a long way from reading quietly during the baby’s naptime. We’re a long way from making handprint wreaths and salt dough ornaments.  My daughter and her friends are making their lunches before they head out to co-op, where they’ll have a full day of classes: ecology, American literature, American history, geometry, ACT Prep, and drama.

They leave. My 12-year-old still snoozes; the cat snores softly on the couch. The house is almost perfectly quiet. There is not one single toy visible to me, not even a Lego guy head.
[Read more…]

Using YouTube for homeschooling

by on December 14, 2012
in curriculum · 12 Comments

Written by contributor Lora Lynn Fanning of Vitafamiliae

Late one Sunday night while lesson planning, I discovered I’d neglected to obtain the books I needed for the following day’s lesson.

I couldn’t make it to the library and I wanted to keep us on schedule. So I did what any mother in the 21st century would do: I went to YouTube.

First, I gave myself a quick crash course on our topic:
[Read more…]

Reflecting & refining: Lessons learned in 2012

by on December 12, 2012
in organization · 7 Comments

Written by contributor Hillary Boucher

The last few months flew by and we’ve had a lot of fun homeschooling. With our oldest children being eight and five it feels like we’ve come into our own as homeschoolers. Since we’ve never done this before we are continuously feeling things out, learning ourselves and always ready to celebrate when we find comfortable pockets of happy learning and living together.

Looking back I see a few things that contributed to finding our homeschooling rhythm these past few months.

Organize, organize, organize!

[Read more…]

Facebook friends: How to see my updates on Facebook

by on December 11, 2012
in links · 1 Comment

Our Simple Homeschool page on Facebook has nearly 10,000 likes.

Over the past year this page has become a well-visited virtual community–where I ask questions from readers, give links to posts, mention giveaways and other items from the web I think you might be interested in. You also share your thoughts and advice with other readers there, too.

Honestly, that page totally redeemed my faith in social media (of which I have only a little!).

Recently, however, Facebook has changed–they are not consistently showing status updates in your feed merely because you “like” a page.

If blog or business owners pay to promote a post, then FB show it to more people. But for those of bloggers not rolling around in piles of money to do this often, it often seems that up to 95% of readers who have liked the page may not see my updates.

Kind of disheartening!

Thankfully there is a way that you can easily continue hearing from me on Facebook. Take a look at the screen shot below and you’ll see what to do:
[Read more…]

Holiday homeschooling back in the day

by on December 10, 2012
in inspiration · 17 Comments

Written by contributor Jena Borah of Yarns of the Heart

My homeschooling days are now in the past, and I’m glad I have piles of journals, full of memories. Here’s a look at my entry fourteen years ago as we were preparing for Christmas. The kids were 9, 6, and 4.

November 19, 1998

Today was a good day. Meg (age 6) is making progress in reading. We played reading games and I changed the clue word for the letter u to “up” instead of “umbrella” because sometimes she pronounces it “imbrella.” I made signs with the word up and arrows and put them all over the house.
[Read more…]

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