Homeschool Geography - 5 Tools You Need to Teach Geography

We hear statistics all the time about how people on the street are asked simple geography questions and aren't able to answer them correctly. We certainly don't want our home school children to be part of those statistics. With the right tools, any child can learn a great deal about the world around them and how it functions. Here are the tools you need to teach home school Geography:

1. When you hear of countries or places that you haven't heard of before when listening to the news, reading stories or just hearing others talk, get out a good map and find that place with your children. There is no reason to be ignorant of other places in the world when we have some of the best maps available in our country.

2. When going on a trip allow your child to plan the route and find interesting places along the way. Have them keep track of how many miles you travel. You can even do this for shorter trips in your area. This helps your child be more aware of the world around them.

3. Talk about geography terms. When you or your child encounter new words like plateau, delta, or reservoir, find out what they mean. You might even be able to find a picture of this geography term to better understand the definition. Geography is not only about locating places. You can also explore statistics for a certain area, photographs, and type of land in your study of geography.

4. Use the Internet, computer software games, and even board games to teach geography. Games teach a tremendous amount of knowledge, sometimes without the child even knowing it. When competition is involved, many children will do or learn anything to win. Games make learning fun. Use them once a week or so to spark a love for geography.

5. Get maps and geography tools like atlases and almanacs. Children always want to know where they are on a map. You can start there and point out where other family members live in relation to them. When you are reading a story about a far away country, look it up on the map so your children can see where it is in relation to where they live. If you go on a long trip, when you get back show them how far you traveled on the globe. This will give them a good understanding of how big our country is.

Take advantage of the many great resources and ideas and enjoy your exploration of geography. When you are interested in the world around you, your children will catch that interest.

Author Info:

For more tips on homeschooling, grab your free report "How to Homeschool using the Best Resources" at http://www.homeschool-how-to.com Heidi Johnson specializes in helping families find resources to simplify and improve their lives.

What Families Who Homeschool Can Learn at a Farmers' Market

In many parts of the country, spring means farmers' markets starting again. Farmers from all over the region come to these open-air markets to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to customers. These markets offer a great opportunity for families to buy produce that's often fresher than what they can get in stores, and at great prices.

Farmers' markers also offer a great opportunity for homeschooling families. In fact, a full day of learning can happen for homeschool kids who go to a farmers' market. One of the great parts of homeschooling is that learning doesn't just happen in the classroom. It can occur anywhere.

So what can homeschooled kids learn from this outing? Here are just a few of the concepts that can be taught or reinforced while visiting a farmers' market:

• Science. Talk to a farmer about what it takes to make the fruits and vegetable grow. Growing produce takes the right combination of soil, water, sun, time, and human care. No one is better equipped to tell your kids about the process than a farmer.
• Math. Homeschoolers can practice several math concepts at the market, depending on their grade level. Young children can practice counting fruit, or simple addition (as in 3 apples plus 2 more apples equals 5 apples) or subtraction (take 5 squash away from this group of 8, and what's left?).

Older kids can work on more advanced math skills. They can estimate weights (how many apricots in one pound?). They also get an opportunity to handle the money during the trip. This also helps solidify the idea that we exchange money for the things we need and want.

• Social sciences: Money-handling is also part of social science learning. Money is an essential part of many of our social interactions. For example, a farmer's job is to grow crops he can sell. Kids can answer the question, what do people in my family do to make money?
• Language arts. Kids can match pictures of produce with the words that go with them. That week's spelling words can have a connection to the farmers' market. Children with journals can write numerous entries about the sights and sounds of the market.
• Physical education. A trip to the farmers' market is a perfect opportunity to talk about the role of good nutrition in our lives. Children can do research on the food pyramid to find out how many servings of fruits and vegetables they need every day.
• Social skills. A market is a great place for children to learn how to ask questions politely. (How much does this cost? May I have 2 of those?) Kids get an opportunity to practice waiting for their turn. Also, they can work on behaving well in crowds, and especially the importance of listening to their parents in a crowd.

This is just a small list of what kids can learn at a farmers' market. Possibly the best part of learning in these situations is that it isn't just theory, like doing worksheets, or reading information from a book. It's using the ideas and concepts that kids are learning at home in real-world situations.

Kids who see the connection between what they are learning and how they live are more likely to remember what they learn. So plan a homeschool "field trip" to a farmers' market near you!

Author Info:

Richard and Jennifer Jarman are homeschooling parents of three great children, and they publish a free e-mail newsletter for parents. The newsletter features short articles on subjects that parents care about, and news about toy safety and other parental concerns. Subscribe today and receive a FREE report, "The Right Way to Discipline a Child," by going to http://wholeheartedparents.com/Newsletter.html

Homeschool Curriculum - Tips For Choosing Books Or Curriculum - Is This What I Should Buy?

Knowing what home school curriculum books or resources to purchase can be an overwhelming task. There are so many things to choose. How do you know which one to choose and whether it will be right for your family? Here are some questions you can ask yourself when looking at different home school resources:

1. What is my child's learning style? Does this book or curriculum fit in with how my child learns?

2. Is this resource a formal textbook, workbook or unit-study support material?

3. Do I know anyone else that is using this book or curriculum? What do they have to say about it? What positive and negative comments do they have about this book or curriculum?

4. Does this resource look like it's easy to use? Can I just pick it up and teach from it or do I have to spend some time reading through the manual to prepare?

5. Can I view this curriculum at a bookstore or homeschool conference?

6. What does my child say about it after they have looked over it? You don't have to put as much stock in this answer as the others, but sometimes your child has some insight into whether you should use this or not. Children tend to want to have the easiest work possible, so you will need to use your judgement about whether your child should ultimately use this curriculum or not.

7. Is this book or resource secular or Christian? Is this fact important to you or not?

8. If you get confused or frustrated with this resource, is there parent support available?

Once you answer all these questions, you will have a better idea of whether this book or resource will fit in with your educational and family goals or not. You will invariably purchase some things that you don't need. Every veteran home schooler has purchased books or resources that they didn't like or need at some point over the years, no matter how closely they looked at what they were buying. You just move on and learn from those purchases. But, for the most part, these questions should help you make an informed decision of what you should purchase for homeschooling this year.

Author Info:

For more tips on homeschooling, grab your free report "How to Home school using the Best Resources" at http://www.homeschool-how-to.com Heidi Johnson specializes in helping families find resources to simplify and improve their lives.

Homeschooling - Do It Right or Don't Do It At All

When it comes to homeschooling your son or daughter, it is important to realize that you are assuming a huge responsibility in the shaping and molding of his or her education. You really do not have that much time or flexibility to try out a hundred different approaches and programs until you hit on the right one. You need to have some guiding mechanism which insures that you are achieving your objectives. If you don't, the one who suffers is your son or daughter.

Homeschooling has to be one of the most challenging and all-encompassing responsibilities of our modern world. To think that a parent would rather assume this responsibility than to leave it in the hands of our educational system says a lot about just that---our educational system. Yet I think there is more of an implication here: with moral depravity and negative societal influences at unprecedented highs, it is easy to understand why a parent might want to assume the educational caretaking role until at least the formative years have taken place and the child's mind is on the right track. Too many children, by attending ordinary middle and high schools, get caught in the peer pressure track, and suddenly engage in negative behaviors that have serious ramifications on both their emotional development and ultimate educational success.

Thus if you decide to take the plunge and homeschool your child, more power to you. Just make sure that you do it right---or don't do it at all. Be mindful that less is sometimes more: don't try to cram too much information down your kids' throats. Understand that you would be better off getting to the heart of the matter with every subject and topic you teach them. Twenty-five years was the time it took me to fully understand this concept. Yet however long this indoctrination took, it was well worth the time. For now, I have the ability to teach and help others with methods that have "ripened" like a sweet fruit in the most precious of groves.

To reiterate: hone the basics. The three R's are not what they are for nothing. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are essential to any child's education. You would be surprised at how many people tell me they are struggling in their math course, which may be precalculus at the college level, because they never learned the fundamentals. They sought of slip through the cracks, one at a time, and then find themselves struggling more and more. Hone the basics and the rest will be easy.

Once you have your child on strong academic fundamentals, they will be ready to steer a long way, using the previously learned tools to guide their way. Once your kids are on the right track, there is less likelihood that, should a bump in the ride occur, they are suddenly derailed because of faulty learning.

See more on my ebooks, which can help steer that ride, at these links:

Cool Math Site

and

Homeschool Math Ebooks

Author Info:

Joe is a prolific writer of self-help and educational material and an award-winning former teacher of both college and high school mathematics. Joe is the creator of the Wiz Kid series of math ebooks, Arithmetic Magic, the little classic on the ABC's of arithmetic, the original collection of poetry, Poems for the Mathematically Insecure, and the short but highly effective fraction troubleshooter Fractions for the Faint of Heart. The diverse genre of his writings (novel, short story, essay, script, and poetry)-particularly in regard to its educational flavor- continues to captivate readers and to earn him recognition.

Joe propagates his teaching philosophy through his articles and books and is dedicated to helping educate children living in impoverished countries. Toward this end, he donates a portion of the proceeds from the sale of every ebook. For more information go to http://www.mathbyjoe.com.