Author: Amanda Bennett

Don’t waste your time on textbooks! If you are trying to choose homeschool curriculum here are some creative tools for learning!

Trying to Choose Homeschool Curriculum? Here’s What I Want You To Know

For those of you that are puzzling over curriculum choices, here is some food for thought: an educational model that uses textbooks is not one that fosters creative thinking or innovation, and more egregiously, it is limiting our children’s knowledge base to one that is below that of a modern day robot. While robots don’t threaten me, the thought that our children are spending the first eighteen years of their lives learning a fraction of the same content that a robot was programmed with before these kids were born is mind-boggling.

Consider this – robots already “know” this same information in textbooks or how to access it. When your child goes out into the “real world” many of the jobs that are now done by people will then be completed by robots. Right now, there are robots that drive cars, read x-rays, build things, fly an airplane, and so much more. They are programmed with knowledge, and LOTS of it (look up artificial intelligence) – much of the very same knowledge that textbooks teach a child, over and over again, for twelve years.

Homeschooling With The End In Mind

While robots will replace many human workers in the near future, the jobs they will not be replacing are ones that require creativity and innovation. These jobs will require the people that can creatively solve problems, connect concepts in creative new ways, and keep the “human” quotient in the future working world. Why use the centuries-old textbook model of education when new educational models and tools are at YOUR fingertips? #dumpthetextbooks

I had one of those aha moments the other day. Over and over again, I’m told that kids love our interactive studies much better than textbooks and that they tend to remember the lessons learned for a long time. At the same time, I watch as parents get frustrated teaching math or spelling or (fill in the blank) and are thrilled when they find an app or online resource to help their child.

Textbooks vs. Technology

As an engineer, I am also very much aware of the exponential growth of robots in the workplace. In the meantime, parents are wasting those vital twelve years of education using textbooks that are boring and already out of date the instant that they are printed – textbooks that could someday be created by a robot, having gathered and formatted the content, inserted images, and then printed it.

And that thought alone brought a sense of urgency to my message – dump the textbooks and use the twelve years to teach them to think, make connections, create, explore, and much more. They will thank you for that step one day in the not too distant future.

Here to help,

Here are our best tips for homeschooling with a toddler in the mix! Our three children cover a ten year age span, so I know just what it means to try to keep a VERY active toddler busy while the older kids are studying.

Our Best Tips for Homeschooling With a Toddler In The Mix

1. I learned to plan our school day around the toddler’s nap schedule. When he slept (or was supposed to be sleeping), I worked one on one with the older kids with subject areas that required individual attention with each child.
2. When the toddler was up and roaming, and yes – he was a VERY busy toddler – I learned how to entertain him while we worked on unit studies. He might be busy with building blocks or rearranging magnetic letters on a cookie sheet, or he might be enjoying a math lesson with an older sibling from books like “M&M Addition” or “M&M Multiplication.”
3. I learned to limit the toy cars that were constantly zipping across the floor during reading time. Since he couldn’t sit still for long, he would quietly send the cars flying across the room. I learned to leave only a few out at a time – recycling them so that there were always a few he hadn’t seen in a while.
4. I learned (the hard way) to make sure that some of our school projects included things for him to do – whether it involved log cabin construction with craft sticks or creating Bethlehem using modeling clay on the kitchen table.
5. I learned the importance of keeping a toddler involved with the big kids – better learning opportunities for everyone. And memories more precious than gold, with plenty of pictures to keep us laughing for years to come.

More Homeschool Resources And Support

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling – where standard is not the goal:

• What is a Unit Study?
• Unit Studies with Multiple Ages
• How Does this Method Compare to Others?
• Take the Tour: Learn About Unit Studies
• 3 Tips to Start Your Homeschool Day: What About You Mom?

Helping parents follow that new path now for over 20 years and blessed to be be able to help.

Happy homeschooling,

If your child outgrows their shoes, what do you do? Make them keep wearing them? Of course not – you replace the shoes with a pair of shoes that fits, and childhood continues. But, shouldn’t this apply to their curriculum, too? 

When Your Homeschool Curriculum Doesn’t Fit

Sadly, I see people doing just the opposite with curriculum that just isn’t working. The child hates it, and the parents hate using it – the year is lost and that time can never be found again. Forcing a child through ill-fitting curriculum can build resentment toward learning in the child – a resentment that is tough to turn around.

If you are struggling with curriculum that just doesn’t fit – your child, you, or your current situation, please consider trying something else that could bring the joy back to learning again. I know just how it feels to be where you are, frustrated parent and child bored to tears – I have been there. Textbooks just weren’t working. They were boring, and the retention of the material was minimal. Within a week or two, the information the child had to memorize for a test had vanished, only to be replaced with new information for this week’s test.

The Homeschool Unit Study Advantage

All of this led me to find an answer that would help our children love learning again – putting an end to the “how many pages do I have to do TODAY?“ routine. That’s when I began writing unit studies that kids love – first for our children, and then for yours.

I’ve worked hard to create complete unit studies (no simple outlines or task lists that you, the parent, have to prepare for). I’ve worked hard to create studies that are easy to use, complete and ready to go – no prep required, and definitely affordable.

I made a decision to spend this time homeschooling our children to help them love learning, not battle boredom. This is not a dress rehearsal, and the comment “we’ll just power through this curriculum because I’ve spent so much for it” just doesn’t work any more.

If you find that your homeschool curriculum doesn’t fit, Try a few of my unit studies – perhaps Oceans or Incredible Insects – and see if you notice a change in their enthusiasm for learning.

A love of learning is a gift that you can give them that will last a lifetime, and we are here to help.

Blessings,

Trying to be standard is not the goal in homeschooling. The dreamers, healers, builders, and inventors are never “standard”. Give your children the chance to discover their God-given talents and gifts.

Every time I see this text from an Apple ad from more than 20 years ago, I think of homeschoolers and the fantastic potential that they have:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.  About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.”

Trying to Be “Standard” is Not the Goal in Homeschooling

Homeschooling provides untold opportunities to awaken their creativity and give them the chance to discover what their God-given gifts might be. But you, the parent, have to be brave enough to step away from a “standard” education. The dreamers, healers, builders, and inventors are never “standard”, and the sooner they could move away from “standard”, the sooner they were able to explore the universe, create things, connect ideas, and chase their dreams.

More Homeschool Helps

Learn more about the unit study approach to homeschooling – where standard is not the goal:

• What is a Unit Study?
• How Does this Method Compare to Others?
• Take the Tour: Learn About Unit Studies
• Using the CAT Test for Homeschool Testing
• A Mom’s Helpful Homeschool Habits for Standardized Testing
• 3 Tips to Start Your Homeschool Day: What About You Mom?

Helping parents follow that new path now for over 20 years and blessed to be be able to help.

Happy homeschooling,

Find 3 tips to start your homeschool day. Practical and encouraging for the day to day to help you take care of yourself so that you can be your best – to take care of your crew!

When I was young, I remember my mother getting up before daylight, quietly going to the kitchen and making coffee. She would sit at the kitchen table with her coffee, staring out of the back window into the woods, enjoying the silence for a while, before we all woke up. I never understood just how important this time was until I had my own children, and now I appreciate her exasperated look when one of us would wake up early and wander out before daylight!

3 Tips to Start Your Homeschool Day: What About You, Mom?

Here are a few ideas to help you begin taking care of yourself so that you can be your best to take care of your crew:

• Try to get up early in the morning to have some quiet time before everyone wakes up – read the Bible, pray, and listen.
• Keep a journal — write in it every day. Not only does it help you see all that has been accomplished and record the daily happenings —the simple act of journaling provides a constant steady reminder of the passing of time. As homeschoolers, we tend to get wrapped up in marking time by years until graduation, instead of enjoying the value of each and every day.
• Make time to see just how far you have come. Go back through photos from the past occasionally. Look back over goals from years past. See just how far your family has come, and you will also notice some new directions that need to be taken.

When you begin to take care of your needs, your children will learn a valuable lesson — that everyone has needs that are very important. As parents, our needs tend to get pushed to the background and set aside, and this isn’t healthy for the individual or the family.

You know the safety talk that the flight attendants give, just before you take off? They always remind us to fix out own oxygen mask first, then take help a child with theirs, should the oxygen masks come down during the flight. This is so that you are prepared to take care of the child with a clear head and focused thoughts. That same principle applies in many areas of parenting.

More Homeschool Mom Helps

• Help for the Anxious Homeschool Mom
• Devotionals for Homeschool Moms
• Just Step Outside: A Break for the Overwhelmed Homeschool Mom (take a quick walk!)
• Relaxing Art Activities for Busy Moms
• Homeschool Mom Helps
• How to Make a Schedule for Your Homeschool Day
• A Homeschool Mom’s Routine

I hope you enjoy these tips to start your homeschool day. As my mom is always reminding me, I will pass her question along to you. My mom is wise. What can you do to carve out a bit of time for yourself?

Blessings,

One of the best ways to approach learning in your homeschool is through a cross curricular unit study. In this post, we walk through how to use a unit study in your homeschool, using our “Ocean Study” as a guide. 

Remember the first time you “heard” the ocean in a seashell or felt the sand shift from beneath your feet as the surf washed by? The cry of the gull, the steady rhythm of the waves on the shore, the sting of salt on your face—all of these and more remind us of the tranquility you can experience when seeing the ocean.

When warm weather approaches, the call to the water becomes louder and more appealing to families everywhere. We think of vacations and heading to the beach, while the children imagine who will collect the most seashells, climb to the top of the lighthouse first, build the biggest sandcastle, and kick the surf the highest!

The ocean was the topic of the very first unit study I attempted because it was just a short walk from our door, and the children were enamored by the beach and the water. They have always been so curious about the things we found or saw on the beach. I had a new baby with severe colic that was soothed by long beach walks, two fascinated and eager students anxious to leave textbooks and busywork behind, and a huge field trip arena at our doorstep—the Atlantic Ocean!

Interest-Led Learning Through Unit Studies

I always try to begin a unit study by asking the children what they’d like to know about the topic at hand, if they haven’t already demonstrated specific interests or mentioned questions in our daily conversations. We have already determined that we would investigate sea life, so here are some of the questions that they had about this topic:

1. What is the biggest animal in the ocean?

2. What kinds of animals live in the deepest part of the ocean?

3. How long can a dolphin and whale stay underwater?

4. Where does the great white shark live?

There, that’s four questions that we can tackle during this travel through the Oceans Unit Study Adventure!

From this point, I would proceed to the study outline and find the portions that would provide answers to the children’s questions as well as stretch their interest into other applicable areas of the topic.

Ocean Unit Study: Resources and Activities 

What do I do next?

After deciding on the areas we would address in our study, I would start selecting appropriate resources from the Reference Resources section of the study. (This list contains numerous books for the various outline sections, including the grade level suggestions, publisher information, etc.)

Choosing Resources

Here are some suggestions of what I might choose to investigate their questions and interests:

•     Fish, Shark, and Whale, all from the Eyewitness Books Series, Grades 4–12. Published by Alfred A. Knopf (Subsidiary of Random House).
•     Let’s Investigate Slippery, Splendid Sea Creatures, by Madelyn W. Carlisle, (Let’s Investigate Series), Grades 3–7. Published by Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
•     Don’t Blink Now! Capturing the Hidden World of Sea Creatures, by Ann Downer, (New England Aquarium Books), Grades 5–8. Published by Franklin Watts.
•     How Did We Find Out About Life in the Deep Sea?, by Isaac Asimov, Grades 4–7. Published by Walker & Company.
•     Strange Eating Habits of Ocean Creatures, by Jean Sibbald, Grades 4–8. Published by Silver Burdett, Simon & Schuster, Inc.
•     Deep-Sea Vents: Living Worlds Without Sun, by John F. Waters, Grades 5 and up. Published by Dutton Children’s Books, Division of Penguin USA.

We will begin reading through these, both together as a family and as the children read and study them on their own.

In addition to reference resources that will help us learn more about sea life, I usually select some classic reading material that we can all enjoy. Looking under Reading Resources, I see that Moby Dick by Herman Melville and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway would be good choices to read together over the study. During a unit study, the children read plenty of fiction that relates to the topic, and here are some titles that they might like from the list:

•     Trapped at the Bottom of the Sea, by Frank Peretti, (Cooper Kids Adventure Series), Grades 4–7. Published by Crossway Books, Division of Good News Publications.
•     Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell, Grades 3–7. A Dell Yearling Book, published by Dell Publishing Co.
•     The Lighthouse Mystery, by Gertrude C. Warner, (Boxcar Children Mysteries Series), Grades 2–7. Published by Albert Whitman and Co.

Selecting Activities For Your Ocean Unit Study

Now that we have our reference and reading materials selected, it is time to begin planning some of the hands-on fun from activities included in the Activities sections. I always try to choose some that are “pre-made” (coloring books, models, simple projects that require minimal assembly) as well as some that we do all on our own. From the resources of pre-made activities:

•     The Ocean Book: Aquarium and Seaside Activities and Ideas for All Ages, by the Center for Marine Conservation Staff, Grades PreK–6. Published by John Wiley & Sons
•     The Marine Biology Coloring Book, by Thomas Nielsen, Grades 7–12. Published by Harper Collins.
  • Dover Coloring:
•     Whales and Dolphins, by John Green
•     Sharks of the World, by Llyn Hunter
•     Tropical Fish, by Stefan Bernath
•     Fishes of the North Atlantic, by Thomas C. Quirk, Jr.

Along with these activities, we would also work on some from the Activities Suggestions section. One of these recommends using fishing to supplement this study. Whether freshwater or saltwater fishing, there is so much that can be learned by spending time out with a fishing pole and a bucket of bait. The successes of different kinds of bait (natural and man-made), the concept of the food chain, the battle to catch a fish, as well as all of the fun to be had while watching life in the water are all part of the fishing experience.

Another activity includes hands on art lessons and tidal pool exploration!

The students can track their progress in fishing over the summer by keeping a fishing journal, detailing the variety of places that they try, the types of bait and results, the time of day, and other factors. In the journal, they can also describe their catches, possibly sketching the whole fish as well as the anatomy of the fish if they dissect their catches!

Internet Research to Complement the Unit Study

We realize that there are good and bad sides of the Internet as there are with any other resource, we have spent the time searching out “safe” suggestions that would add value to the learning experience, and they’ve been included in each of our studies. Our suggested Ask AI Prompts give you the latest research, so your study never looses it’s value!

Having been born and raised in Florida, I have spent much of my life within the sound of the surf and the call of the seagulls, and I find it difficult to function when I stay away too long! In this study, I have tried to share this broad and exciting learning experience with you—the history, the marine life, the explorers, the shipwrecks, the shells, and of course the sights and sounds we experience as we walk along in the sand.

I hope this article will help you see a small portion of the learning potential with Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett.

Grab a towel, a pail and shovel, throw some sand in the back yard, and come join the quest.

Part of the fun of summer is the pure celebration of the season! Make some memories with these best summer activities with kids!

Summer Traditions For The Whole Family

Consider adding a few new traditions-making the summer family friendly!

Perhaps a bike ride and ice cream sundae party every Friday evening or movie night and popcorn at home on Mondays. Summer is a great time for making memories together as a family.

The 20 Best Summer Activities with Kids

Here are a few of my favorite summer activities for kids for inspiration:

•Build tree forts together and watch out! This is always a very popular summer project, and the kids love to have input along the way. Let them “plan the fort”, then help them figure out lumber needs and work together with you for the construction of the tree fort that they will never forget.

•Take bike rides together, and don’t forget helmets or whatever else you all may need. Perhaps go down new streets or visit a new park.

•Sunday sundaes are something that they can look forward to, when they get to create their own ice cream masterpieces.

•Spend a day blowing bubbles or flying kites together. Remember to take pictures of the fun!

•One afternoon, go cloud-watching together. Watch the clouds for wild animal shapes while lying flat on your back in the grass. Take sketch books or notebooks along and let them draw the shapes that they see.

•Spend a day creating a make-believe town with chalk on the driveway or sidewalk together, letting imagination run free. Don’t forget to take pictures before the rain washes it away.

•Have s’mores nights throughout the summer. Enough said. S’mores can fix anything. 😉

•Laugh through watermelon seed-spitting contests in the back yard.

•See who can carefully capture the most fireflies in a plastic container (to be released that same evening).

•Spend as many nights as possible, getting out of the house to go star watching. Using a picnic table or blankets and pillows, build a comfy family spot to watch the stars come out at night. Be sure to take along a children’s book on constellations and stars, along with a flashlight and get them searching for constellations in the sky. By the end of the summer, they will be able to point them out on their own. Perhaps the end of the summer could be spent learning to use a telescope or binoculars, letting them see the rings of Saturn, and so much more.

•Make homemade ice cream with a hand-crank ice cream maker.

•Run through a sprinkler in the yard on hot afternoons, creating an obstacle course to run through while getting soaked by the sprinkler.

•Let every person decide a dinner menu for his/her Chef Night. They get to pick the dinner menu, make a grocery store list of the things they will need for their creation, and then go (with the family) to purchase the items they will need from their lists. Then, each person makes dinner one night a week for the whole family. This can be hilarious, and so what if they want to have ice cream sundaes for dinner? Just have fun with it.

•Our sister site hosts an Online Summer Art Camp! art gives children the chance to be creative, carefree, and engaged. Your child will gain self-confidence as they develop the skills and techniques to bring their creations to fruition. No artistic talent needed. Just an openness to creative expression!

•Summer Nature Studies at Homeschool Nature Study! Fireflies are fascinating! In this study, learn if there is a pattern to the light flashing. Enjoy an up close fireflies and moths summer nature study.

•Create a scavenger hunt for your back yard, writing down tips and hints and picking fun prizes for the winners. Pinterest has loads of scavenger hunt lists to help you out.

•Family jigsaw puzzles can be a great distraction when you want to leave the television turned off and the conversations to increase. Set up a card/folding table if you don’t have a place to leave the puzzle up for a few days, until it is completed. Use puzzle glue so the puzzles can be preserved and hung in the hall, basement, or wherever they can see them and remember the time together.

•Thursday Night Bingo Night can be fun, too. Collect some interesting small prizes and put them in lunch-size brown paper bags, stapling them shut as you collect them. When someone yells “Bingo”, they get to choose one of the paper bags to open and see what they have one. From flip flops to inflatable beach balls, funny t-shirts to wind-up model airplanes, the prizes can be so funny!

•Of course unit studies are perfect for summer and such a fun way to learn and to make memories together!

More Summer Fun Ideas: Making the Summer Family Friendly

• Summer Reading Inspiration for Your Homeschool
• Summer Homeschool Ideas and Encouragement
• How to Make a Homeschool Family Summer Wish List
• Summer Ideas for Kids: A Chalkboard List for Your Family

This summer will be memorable, and it is my prayer that you and yours make time for fun, set aside time to help others that are struggling, and pray together to share everyone’s concerns and praises.

Blessings,