Category: Homeschool

Nothing says Spring like baby animals and National Geographic Children’s Books’ new Baby Animal Pop! is — literally — BURSTING with LIFE-SIZE pop-outs of the cutest, cuddly babes on the farm.  

Do you have an artist in your home?  A child that is always coloring, doodling and using their creative juices to decorate?  I do.  Amber is always drawing something whether it’s on scrap paper, napkins, place mats or digitally on her computer.

Just recently Amber had a question in her FACS curriculum about her all time favorite teacher.  What made that teacher such a great influencer?  She mentioned her 5th grade teacher (who admittedly was an awesome teacher, she was nominated for Teacher of the Year, and she won for SD!).  When I pretended to be disgruntled because she didn’t say I was her favorite teacher, she said it was because her 5th grade teacher let them drop eggs in Science Class.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

When sharing about our experiences with Switched-On Schoolhouse offline with some homeschoolers, I was asked the question:

“Can I install Switched-On Schoolhouse on more than one computer?”

The answer is YES if you have a home network!

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

When I was in Junior High I took three years of Home Economics.  I’m dating myself by telling you it was almost 25 years ago.  We’re talking old school, girls only, cooking and sewing.  Now I can honestly say I did learn a thing or two.  I learned foundational cooking and baking skills that have served me well over the years.  I can also sew decently, the most important thing learned from those units being hemming since I am only 4’9”.  But that was the extent of our learning in Home Ec…cooking and sewing.

Yesterday I shared how we use our e-Readers for homeschooling.  I do quite a bit of searching for supplemental activities online.  One of the best websites I’ve found for that is Curriki.  It’s a non-profit site where educators share curricula that they have written themselves.  Some of the resources are already in a PDF format, but other times I create PDF files from them if they are uploaded to the site as a Word Document.  Other times I like to take a web page and convert it. 

At some point in the last year and a half, we have come to realize that our e-Readers are invaluable for homeschooling.  The hundreds of books that we are able to find online and borrow through the library system as well as the vast array of material from sites like Curriki, has increased the value of these devices in our home.  Yes, I said e-Readers, because we have three.  While all of the e-Readers that we own have the ability to import PDFs, only our Sony Reader can read Word Documents, which allows us to carry around a large amount of schooling material in a small 6×9 space.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

If you’re curious about the title of my post, it was just an inference that my daughter can be a Drama Queen on occasion (and then some!), and the simple answers that can be supplied, more often than not, turn into novels instead of one sentence responses, but now I’m the one that digresses…

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

Maybe you’re ready to switch curriculum in your homeschool, or perhaps you are bringing your children home to school them after they’ve been in a traditional classroom setting.  If either of these describe your situation, you may wonder what grade level or type of course to purchase for your children.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

I have been sharing my family’s experiences with the Switched-On Schoolhouse curriculum with you for the last eight months (I seriously can’t believe that we’ve completed eight months of school already!).  I’ve told you what we like about it, what tweaks our family has been