Homeschooling for His Glory

Today on day 3 of the Homeschool 101 hosted by The Schoolhouse Review Crew, we are tackling Home Management. Again, this is a topic that has a lot to do with your personality. Some of us are type A moms and some of us not so much. That said, a house has to be maintained. Noone likes to live in a place that is messy and dirty. When it comes to managing the homeschool home I have six pieces of advice: Be realistic (unless you can't help it): As homeschoolers, your home is where your kids learn. If you want your kids to be free to learn and explore you cannot be an overchiever when it comes to tidiness. There will be messes, there will be days when the house will be in the shape that you cannot stand. JUST EXPECT IT! A Place for everything. If you want to keep a house tidy, this is my #1 advice: Make sure everything has a home place and stick to it! It is easier to put things away if they have a home. It is easier to teach your kids to clean after themselves if they know

On day 2 of the 5 Days of Homeschool 101  hosted by the Schoolhouse Review Crew, we are talking about planning. There is a lot written on the topic of planning but I will try to give you a quick overview of the essentials of planning, not that I am a expert or anything, but I have nearly 9  years of battling the planning battleground in my own homeschool under my belt. When it comes to planning, a lot of it has to do with your personality and the curriculum that you decide to use. Some personalities cannot function without a well laid out plan in front of them. These types of homeschoolers usually (not always) favor curriculum that come with a planning schedule already set out. In those cases your task is simply to make sure that that plan is followed through, and the task of planning is reduced to daily, weekly and yearly scheduling of your different subjects. If you are more like me, and are not the kind who like to be told what to do and are more free spirited, your curricu

Today is the first day of the second bi-annual 5 Days of .... on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog . Over 36 of us will be sharing on the basic components of homeschooling over the next five days. Today we start naturally with the curriculum. Nowadays, the choices for curriculum are limitless. Someone just starting homeschooling can get quite overwhelmed looking at the amount of choices placed in front of him. Even as veteran homeschoolers, sometimes we still find ourselves quite overwhelmed as there are so many different options that can accomplish the same goal. So how is one supposed to navigate this field? I have a few tips I would like to share with you today, which I hope will help you narrow down your choices and ease the task for you. Know what you want to accomplish:  One way that has helped me to make choices in my curriculum is knowing where I am heading with the boys. When you have a goal in mind it is easier to plot a path, than wondering aimlessly along that same p

Math is one of those school subjects, that we want to make sure our children master. Some of us homeschooler, are either comfortable teaching it, some others not so much. There are lots of Math curricula out there, but CTCMath has been, for the last 3 years or so, a favorite at our house. CTCMath offers you a complete online Math curriculum geared towards kids K-12. We received a full year subscription to their  CTCMath Homeschool Membership . As an online program, you need a computer, an internet connection and a log in to use CTCMath. The program works on tablets as well. It is very easy to set up and very easy to navigate and use. The program consists of video lessons, followed by sets of exercices or practice questions. The video are a good reasonable length. They are lectures, by an Australian teacher, whom you do not see but only hear. The practices consists of a set of practice problems. You have instant feedback as to whether or not you got the answer right, along wit