Free books

There is a wonderful site that has thousands of free books, even some for kids. The site is called www.gutenberg.com and it is made up of older books, mostly where the copyrights have expired. Some are in pdf format, some in html and others in plain text format. You can view from the page or download and save for later.

There are many classic authors such as Machiavelli and McGuffey here as well. It is great for anyone pursuing a classic education as well as someone with a love of classic reading or a thirst for knowledge and a tight pocketbook.

Give it a look-see. I'm sure there is something you'll enjoy here.

Teaching A Child To Read

I'm not sure exactly how I managed to teach my oldest daughter to read, she picked it up fairly easily. My middle daughter learned from my older daughter - I thought she was struggling because she hid the fact that she could read, but she had a 2nd grade reading level at her first kindergarten PT conference - much to my surprise! But, my youngest - having the problems with dyslexia - was one heck of a challenge.

When she was struggling in kindergarten, I did a lot of research on the internet and spent a lot of time at the library and book store. I found one book that blew everything away for us. It's called
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and has been a god-send for us. It is a whole reading curriculum in a book, you don't need anything else if you don't want. And for a newbie to homeschooling, it was stupid-proof. You read what was in red and the child reads what was in black. You can start kids on it as young as 4 and when they are done they have a 2nd grade reading level. Each lesson takes about 15-20 minutes.

I recommend that everyone read the introduction in the beginning of the book that explains the theories of the author and the system it uses. It was very helpful and informative.

I really can't say enough good things about this book. Much to a child's demise I even began buying it for people for their kids' 4th grade birthdays. lol The kids always look at me as if I've lost my mind, but the parents know. What greater gift to give a child than the gift of knowledge!

Learning Games

We try to play games to help my youngest with her reading and numbers. They like Uno and Bingo the most. I've also taught my girls to play chess which has been proven to boost IQ scores.

I was able to find a Bingo game at the local homeschool store that deals with sight words, but there are websites which are available either for free or for a small fee that lets you create bingo games using your own words.

A creative parent may also find a way to make an Uno game with sight words instead of with numbers. Or other games as well.

I've not done this one in a while either, but when my oldest daughter lived with me we got Mad Libs games and played them to make up funny stories. That was a hit for the whole family too.

Motivation

Motivation has been an ongoing issue with my girls. I'm always on the lookout for ways to keep them going and not fighting me on the homework issue. I have come up with something that works well for us.

I layout the lesson plans for a week at a time on a chart that looks like a chore chart. Each day has a row and each subject has it's own column. I put written and reading assignments in the boxes. Each time they finish a box, they get to pick something out of our treat box.

Our treat box is a decent size plastic bin with a lid. I fill it up with gum, candy and small party favor types of toys that I find at the dollar stores and at Wal-mart in the party section and cheap section of the toy aisle. The toys I put in are like silly straws, bubble rings, lip gloss rings, pencils, erasers, cheap sunglasses, hair ties, etc.

We also use the treat box for chores and for when they do something very good. It's been a great addition to our family routine!

Saxon Math

The only part of our curriculum that we do not get from Alpha Omega
is our math program, which we get from Saxon Math. I would have to say that the Saxon Math program is very intensive, and we don't follow along with it exactly. We tend to do more than one lesson in a day instead of one lesson per day 4-5 days per week.


Saxon Math, for our purposes tends to be a bit of an overkill. For a lot of families, it is excellent however. It ensures that children that may struggle with math a bit will get a more comprehensive hands-on grasp of the concepts. Math is not a struggle for our family so the girls tend to be more bored with some of the activities. We will probably switch over to the Alpha Omega
math curriculum next year because we enjoy the format more. It is more student/self-directed than teacher/parent driven.

As a last note on Saxon Math, you are going to need to buy a variety of manipulatives for the curriculum. I found some at Walmart and some at the local homeschool supply store. Things like practice clocks and blocks that snap together. I already had an abacus for the girls to demonstrate place value and addition/subtraction. Crayons and pencils will be needed and I bought a pad of the lined practice paper for the girls as well. Once you have all of the manipulatives though, you will be able to reuse most of them for the different grade levels.

Intermission - or Winging It

It took a bit of trying to wing-it with the curriculum before I admitted to my confusion. I decided then that I needed to find an all-in-one boxed type of curriculum to guide me. I spent a good two months reading review sites and catalogs, calling companies and drilling poor operators, haunting the local homeschool stores and questioning family members before I narrowed it down to 2 companies: Alpha Omega
Publications and A Beka. I really liked how much A Beka offered, but thought about my kids and our lifestyle and chose the LIFEPAC
curriculum from Alpha Omega. I did this because the girls wouldn't have to lug around a bunch of books, their workbooks and textbooks would be combined into one and then broken up into easy to handle and carry booklets.

I wish, for my kids' circumstances that I had chosen a higher grade level for some subjects, but also that I had gone with the Switched-On Schoolhouse R²
computer based program for my older daughter. Next year if we continue to homeschool I will be going with the Switched-On Schoolhouse R²
program for her (she will be in the 4th grade). I think it will keep her more drawn to her studies.

So far, I have not regretted my choice of going with Alpha Omega Publications and I plan on continuing to use their products. I love that it is all inclusive, simple enough for the girls to understand but also challenging enough to keep them occupied. I heartily recommend this company as a wonderful beginning curriculum for any homeschooling family.

The Beginning

Always having been an admirer of homeschooling, I was driven into the decision by the public school system. My youngest of 3 girls was in kindergarten and having a rough time. She had fallen off of the monkey bars at school the day before Thanksgiving vacation was starting and ended up in a children's hospital overnight. After another fall off of the dreadful play equipment I took her to an optometrist and found that she had a slight birth defect with her eyes. So slight that it had gone undetected. After many verbal and written requests for the adults at the school to keep her off of the equipment, she was still going on them and still falling off of them.

Now, add the fact that the teacher and I were in agreement that the same child showed all of the signs of having dyslexia, the school system refused to do further testing or offer any help until she repeated AND failed a second year of kindergarten. Through intensive work at home, the only thing milestone that she was struggling with to pass to first grade was the names of 6 letters. The names, not the sounds mind you. The teacher said she was sorry but the rules were clear... even though my daughter was much more advanced in other areas than the other kids (she could already do addition and subtraction in her head and on an abacus), since she couldn't keep from mixing up the names of those 6 letters, she was going to have to repeat kindergarten.

So, rather than let my daughter fall through the cracks like so many other kids did and do, I pulled her out that day and went down to enroll her in the homeschooling program. It was a big decision, one which I wonder about every day.