Homeschooling Education Articles for Teachers - Page 4
Saving the Rainforest One Plant at a Time
The rainforest. It is home to half of the world’s plant and animal species. But in recent years, due to widespread deforestation, its surface area has decreased from 14% to a mere 6%. What isn’t commonly known about the rainforest, is that it helps to supply us with a great deal of our medicines....
A Royal Wedding: Facts, Figures and Basic Economics
On April 29, 2011, Prince William of Great Britain will marry Miss Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. Regardless of how you feel about the British monarchy, no one can deny that a wedding on this scale requires some serious planning and organization. I thought it would be interesting for m...
Diary of a Dinosaur: Making Writing Lessons Meaningful
My son hates to write. In fact, there was a time when he was so adverse to writing anything down that I thought he might have an allergy to pencils, paper, or both! All of my previous attempts at creative writing had been met with frustration and apathy. Each project would end in tears--usually m...
"Going Green": How We're Building a Better World
For centuries people have built their homes with nothing more than their own two hands and locally available natural resources. Necessity caused people to combine artistic beauty and practical form to construct adobe pueblos, Pennsylvanian barns, Mongolian yurts and Indonesian stilt houses, long ...
Homeschooling Chronicles - Top 10 Field Trip Tips
Homeschoolers enjoy nothing more than going out to explore the world. The word "home" may be in the word homeschooling, but often there is more time spent outside of home on experiential endeavors, than sitting at home doing book work. Visits to museums, factories and special events, are great wa...
The View From Up Here: The Language and Art of Clouds
John Constable, the English landscape painter, called the sky the “chief organ of sentiment.” Leonardo Da Vinci called clouds “bodies without surface.” But you don’t have to be a famous painter to appreciate the beauty of clouds. All of us have enjoyed looking up into the sky and “seeing” differe...
Homeschooling Chronicles - Snow Days
This year, the country has been besieged by angry, Old Man Winter. His fierce temper has blanketed most of the nation in heavy, white snow. While school children have enjoyed the treat of snow days, many adults have long since ceased to view the snow as a novelty.
On one of these many snow days,...
Homeschooling Chronicles - Impressionism
Students' first impression of the Impressionist Movement when they visit their local art museum might be that they are simply looking at “pretty pictures” without a deeper meaning. But this is not true. Impressionist painters and sculptors were seen as renegades in their time because they chose s...
Go Ahead, Take a Guess! Estimating in the Real World
One of the most useful, yet undervalued, math concepts is estimating. It is a practical skill for use in finding solutions to real-world problems and contributing to higher level math reasoning. Estimation teaches children to use their existing knowledge to figure out a problem. It is more concer...
Homeschooling Chronicles - Music in the Home
Music elevates the soul and inspires the mind. By encouraging musical training, you can help your children enhance their listening abilities, discover patterns, and foster creativity.
At my house, we have incorporated music into our curriculum every year since kindergarten. Initially, my kids we...
The Psychology of Flow: Getting Into the Learning Zone
Have you ever seen your child so completely engrossed in an activity that he or she loses all sense of time and place? For my son, it happens when he’s engaged in certain math games on the computer. An hour can pass and, to use a sporting term, he’s still “in the zone.” His key strokes are automa...
Home-schooling Chronicles - Unschooling
Unschooling can be a controversial topic, even for homeschooling parents. People are usually passionate about the subject. They either love the idea, or hate it. However, unschooling can be regarded simply as another method used to teach children.
The idea behind unschooling is that the student ...
The Beauty of Number Patterns
The world around us provides virtually limitless ways to teach number patterns to children. I found that our local place of worship, the mall, the park, and our public swimming pool were all wonderful places to investigate number patterns. We visited each place so my son could copy the pattern o...
Math Trailblazers and Their Modern Day Connections
It’s been my experience that students develop a greater appreciation of math if they can relate its significance to their own lives. Thus, when it came to teaching my own child about math trailblazers, men and women whose accomplishments made invaluable contributions to our world, I wanted to pre...
Homeschooling Chronicles - Insects
Bugs are not to be distained or feared. In fact, you can help your children discover the mysterious world of these bizarre and prolific creatures. Insects belong to the phylum Arthropoda, under the kingdom of Animalia. While some are pesky, and can be harmful, they are a crucial element in the fo...