Everything Homeschooling - All You Need to Succeed

Homeschool Newsletter

May 2008 Newsletter

Information and Help to Keep Homeschooling Easy and Successful!

NEW for MAY:

* Over 900 Learning Activities! We have over 900 learning activities online -- right here, right now! And that doesn't include the Weekly Challenge Activities, Hands-On Activities, Daily Activities, Virtual Field Trips, Unit Studies! Start enjoying online learning with over 900 Educational Activities today! Just click Grades K-2 Lessons, Grades 3-8 Lessons, or Grades 8-12 Lessons in the menu on the left of our Everything Homeschooling home page.

* Lessons and Hands-On Activities are Showcased on our Examples page for Visitors. Our goal at Everything Homeschooling is to make your homeschool experience as easy as possible. We welcome suggestions from Visitors and Subscribers, so please feel free to contact us.

* New Weekly Lessons are added each week! The New "Weekly Lessons" provide a fun, educational start to the year that children enjoy and remember! Plus, great book suggestions to make lessons even more interesting! You'll be amazed at the Hundreds of Fun, Educational Activities provided in just the first four months of the Homeschool Year! To see a preview of the lessons, visit our Homeschool Message Board and click on the threads about "NEW Weekly Lessons." Click Here for our Homeschool Message Board.

* Weekly Challenge Activities! The new "Weekly Challenge" page features a new, challenging, thought-provoking, hands-on activity each week! The purpose of the "Weekly Challenge" is to provide fun, stimulating activities, designed to keep minds and skills sharp. The "Weekly Challenge" will encourage children and teens to expand their knowledge, their creativity, and their horizons, every week! Just click the "Weekly Challenge" button in the menu on the left of our Everything Homeschooling home page.

* The Daily Activities Calendar provides learning ideas that correlate to historic, scientific, mathematic, or literary events for the month of May. This is a great way to branch out and research different topics each day. Check the Daily Activities Calendar here.

* New "Hands-On Learning Projects" have been added -- including Cool Science Experiments, Physics & Gravity, Buoyancy, Sound Vibrations, Static Electricity, Better Bubbles, Strange Matter, Holiday Crafts, Leaves, Baseball, Plants, Fungi, Mushrooms, Insects, Spiders, and Hummingbirds! Plus, more on Wind, Salt Formations, Seeds, Creative Measuring Tools, Mold Terrariums, Volcanoes, Erosion, Waterfalls, Creating Lightning, and more. Click our Hands-On Activities page. Use the Activities to branch into further areas of investigative interest!

* Unit Studies: Choose a unit study project for week-long or month-long learning, such as The Little House on the Prairie, The 13 Colonies, The Presidents, Pets, Weather, and more: Unit Studies.

* Fun Learning Activities! We've begun adding a new Fun Learning Activity each week, in addition to our regular Weekly Lessons. The purpose of our new Fun Learning Activity is to provide more variety, more learning, and more interesting paths to explore each week. The new Fun Learning Activity is on our Weekly Lessons pages. It's another good reason to check the new Weekly Lessons every week! Just click on Grades K-2, Grades 3-8, or Grades 8-12 Lessons in the menu on the left of our Everything Homeschooling home page.

* 365 Daily Creative Writing Ideas, Writing Prompts, and Story Starters are available to keep your children thinking, writing, and enjoying it, every day! The Writing Ideas are educational and relevant, and most include drawing or creative activities, too! Be sure to click the "Daily Writing" activity each day: Daily Writing.

* Virtual Field Trips: Enjoy taking field trips, such as Virtual Trips through the Human Body, or through the White House, or across the Transcontinental Railroad! Just click here: Virtual Field Trips. (You can use our Field Trips Log to describe your field trips, too.)

* Reading List: New Suggestions have been added to our "Books to Read" list. See interesting, helpful books -- for you AND your children -- that you can find in your library or used-book store. Examples: Book Smart, Teaching Science, Nature's Playground, Grandfather's Journey, The Cabin Faced West, How Children Learn, Artful Reading, What Do Authors Do?, plus fables, classics, and more! Just click the "Books to Read" button in the menu on the left, or Click Here.

* Preschoolers Place: Now your preschoolers will have fun activities to do, too! Start with the coloring pages, songs, and poems at our Preschoolers Place. Plus, learn math skills, reading skills, creative skills, science, and more: Click Here.

* Teens Place: Teens have their own place here, where they can teach themselves new skills or hobbies, learn about current events, prepare for college or career, learn about new technologies, and more! Just click on Teens Place.

* Homeschool Forms & Worksheets: Remember to document your Experiments and Projects on our Science Experiment/Project Worksheets, Biography Sheets, Journal Writing Pages, or Field Trip Logs, available on our Worksheets page. And record your daily projects or unit studies on our Homeschool Forms, Weekly Planner Sheets, Reading Logs, and other Records. For Worksheets, click our Worksheets page. For Homeschool Records, click our Homeschool Forms page

* Our Homeschool Articles describes How to Get Started Homeschooling, Cope with "Burnout" and Spark New Ideas, Make Math Easy and Entertaining, Ideas on Learning History and Geography, Hands-On Fun and Learning, and much more! Click our Articles page.

* Remember: Our Weekly Lesson Plans provide educational activities for each day -- or you can use them for supplementing your current curriculum. For fun learning ideas that children of all ages will enjoy and remember, click on Grades K-2, Grades 3-8, or Grades 8-12 Lessons in the menu on the left of our Everything Homeschooling home page.

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* Homeschool Blog: "The Internet, Literacy, and Comprehension"
Sadly, there are some who may still hold the old-school belief that the Internet has little to do with literacy or learning, as a whole. However, the need to be proficient in using the Internet continues to grow exponentially, whether for reading, learning, challenging oneself, or pursuing nearly any type of career.

As Reading Specialists and Education Professors, D. J. Leu and C. K. Kinzer, explain, “As the Internet enters our classrooms and as we envision the new literacies that Internet technologies permit, it is inevitable that literacy instruction and networked ICT (Information and Communication Technology) ... will also converge”. They go on to explain that "global information economies will require students to be prepared to use Internet technologies to quickly gather and evaluate information, use that information to solve problems, and then quickly communicate their solutions to others."

Consider that statement more completely: "Global information economies [our global economy, our world] will require students to be prepared to use Internet technologies to quickly gather and evaluate information, use that information to solve problems, and then quickly communicate their solutions to others."

Without doubt, students today -- whether homeschooled or traditionally schooled -- will be required to be proficient in using the "new literacies of the Internet" -- not only for reading, but for education, research, comprehension, communications, information-evaluation, problem-solving, and advancement in life and career.

Of particular interest to education researchers is how well the youth of our current digital era can learn in traditional schools, through traditional means, i.e., textbooks, worksheets, paper-based quizzes. These traditional methods of learning are falling further behind the reality of today's digital era. And today IS a digital era, make no mistake.

Today's technology focuses on the daily use of the Internet, e-mail, networked computers, instant messaging, Web logs (blogs), electronic newsletters, online newspapers, cell-phone texting, gaming and video technologies. For better or worse, children today are raised in a technological world unlike any previous generation.

Children today are technologically "wired" almost from birth, and certainly from their earliest memories. They will never know what it was like to NOT text-message on a cell phone, or to NOT learn from an online tutorial, or to NOT read interactively on multiple Web pages.

As a result, the brains of today's children can't help but absorb information differently, process information differently, perhaps have shorter attention spans, perhaps have little interest in textbooks or worksheets. Their brains have simply been programmed differently, from birth, due to our highly technical society. Where a virtual world was once alien to the older generation, now textbooks and worksheets are just as alien to the younger generation. To our children, virtual worlds ARE the reality!

It's becoming more obvious, every day, that the child who does not have experience with digital devices, who has not had the opportunity to learn through digital means, or who has little comprehension of using digital technologies, will fall behind his or her peers. In this way, we homeschoolers are fortunate in being able to bring technological learning and experiences to our children, with our daily supervision, our guidance, and our pioneering mindset of being able to learn and succeed at home, with everything we need, virtually at our fingertips!

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* Previous Homeschool Blog: "The Container Model of Learning": Some educational methods are based on the "container model" -- viewing a child as a container, and pouring dates, facts, and figures into the child's mind, then screwing the cap shut on his or her mind.

However, "content" without "context" is meaningless. The method of trying to force facts and figures -- without context, without connections or relevance that a child can grasp and understand -- results in wasted time and dull minds.

As Robert Lindner said: "Our schools have become vast factories for the manufacture of robots." Don't let YOUR homeschool evolve into a school. Don't let your child become a "robot" or a "container."

Encourage your children to learn through methods that are meaningful to them! Encourage explorations, creativity, imagination, innovativeness! Read "Hands-On Learning" and "Sparking New Ideas" on our Articles Page and let your child open his or her mind and soar to great heights!

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We are currently seeking:

* Your children's creative projects for our "Creative Corner" page, such as poems, book reviews, short stories, short essays on favorite projects, cartoons or illustrations. Children will receive a "Nice Work!" certificate for their submissions and be published online. See: Creative Corner

* Your homeschool photos for our upcoming issues, focusing on children involved in fun projects. To send photos, see our Contact Us page.

* Your article submissions for our "Articles" pages, such as a "typical day" in your homeschool or articles on homeschooling ideas or educational activities. More information on article submissions is at our Contact Us page.

* Your tips or ideas for other parents for our "Busy Parents" page, such as organization tips, scheduling ideas, recipes or meal planning tips, housekeeping hints, or relaxation techniques. See: Busy Parents

* Your tips or articles are welcome for our "Unschooling" section. See: Unschooling Articles.

Thank you!

Thank you for all of the great articles, photos, and submissions you have shared! You help to make our online magazine a popular, helpful, and easily accessible resource for all homeschool families.

The community of sharing that is available through daily input and information via our magazine has been a blessing to homeschool families worldwide!

We hope you will continue sharing your ideas and continue letting others know about Everything Homeschooling Online Magazine.

Have a Fun, Happy Homeschool Experience!

The Editorial Staff
Everything Homeschooling Online Magazine
www.EverythingHomeschooling.com

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