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One of the benefits of homeschooling your children with a Charter school is the yearly trip to Catalina Island. The kids take off from Long Beach Harbor and head on out to open sea. They are gone for the weekend and come back refreshed with a new outlook on life, but exhausted from the many activities and wonderful events on the Island.
Some of the activities are kayaking, dissecting squid, snorkeling, hiking, campfire stories and roasting marshmallows. You should bring flashlights, sleeping bags, warm clothing, bottled water. If you get seasick they have Dramamine for you. My children had a wonderful time and they recommend bringing lots of friends and pillows.
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Here are some great sites you should check out:
Design YOUR Homeschooling Approach
To suit YOUR family!
Homeschool Experiment Results - Why we started
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It is fun to pick a sport, learn how to play it and then get all the equipment and go play it. We would pick a sport that we all wanted to play, such as tennis. I would make up a workbook with some questions in it and give the kids a booklet on the basic rules for playing. We would get as much equipments, clothing etc. as possible so we could get into the spirit of the sport and then we would play for at least a couple weeks until we felt like we knew the game.
Some of the sports we played longer than others, usually because we played it better, or because it was more fun.
You can do this with bowling, tennis, baseball (though you will need some other homeschooling families to join you for this), basketball, badminton, Olympic training or any other sports you may be interested in. Plan on doing your “sport” daily for a couple weeks before you start a new one. Be sure to have a few weeks where you let your kids choose the sport they want to do that day, so that they can go back and play some of the sports the enjoyed before and brush up on their game.
I love hiking. We pack up a few back-packs with first aid kits, emergency kits, lots of water and highly nutritious snacks. We put on layered clothing and wear a good sturdy pair of shoes with good socks. Taking a day hike is a great way to clear your head and to relieve stress. We usually take cameras with us and capture the beauty that surrounds us. Be sure to know where you are hiking, have maps, plenty of water, a compass and for safety tell everyone where you are going and stick to your plan. Register your hike with a ranger for added safety. Check with the locals to see if there are any other dangers that you may not be aware of.
We live in California and have to watch our for mountain lions and coyotes. Learn about the animals in your area and listen to your instinct. If you feel like you shouldn’t go down a certain trail, then don’t do it. Many people who end up in trouble say they knew they shouldn’t have done it, something inside told them to turn back or go a different way.
Before you go hiking get books on survival skills, dealing with wild animals and also scents. It is good not to wear strong smelling soaps, perfumes, colognes, etc. If you are on your period, it is better not to go hiking, or camping in a wilderness situation. Use common sense, your intuition and most of all just enjoy nature. It is wonderful to eat a picnic lunch after a nice hike, no matter what you are eating it tastes like a meal, fit for a King!
If you have a lot of money and time and are willing to truly devote yourself to teaching your children no matter what little rabbit trail they take you on, then the world is at your disposal. You can go on trips, purchase amazing educational toys, science equipment, educational materials. You are able to even hire a tutor to teach your children music on whatever musical instruments they admire. You can purchase the best “teaching software” for use on the computer. There is no end to the type of education you can give your children.However, if money or time is a problem then you really have to rethink this Homeschooling decision you have made. You need to get involved. You will make many trips to the library, parks, local museums. You will use the internet to research your subjects and print out worksheets. It can be done with a little creativity and ingenuity.
Don’t expect your children to do it on their own, you need to be involved in the process no matter how much money you do or don’t have. If you are working and trying to homeschool, it will be difficult. Your nanny will have to be prepared to be a teacher as well. Remember to get your children out of the house often. Even if it is a just a walk to the park, you can turn it into an adventure. Make life exciting for your children, they are only young once and before you know it they will be grown and out on their own. Make lots of wonderful educational memories to treasure for a lifetime.
Always use whatever interests you child has at the moment as your best “educational tool”. If they are interested in photography, do whatever you can for them based on your budget. Start them off with some inexpensive equipment. I would say a digital camera would be cheapest in the long run, no more developing pictures. There are plenty of gorgeous websites on the internet that show beautiful pictures, that teach you how to take those beautiful pictures. Be sure to be enthusiastic about your child’s work. Children need to be nurtured in a loving way. Criticizing will only give your child low self-esteem. Praise and a pat on the back will help your child to get better and better each time.
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Check out his site. It has a lot of great advice and reasons for homeschooling:
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Holidays are the perfect time to explore history. Finding out how holidays originated can be fun as well as educational. Tomorrow we celebrate Veteran’s Day with a day off from school. Take time to tell your children what Veteran’s Day means to our country and to your family, personally. Without the brave men and women who have fought for our country, we would not be where we are today. Thanks to the
people who have served our country, we enjoy freedoms like no other country! Use the day to take a field trip to a museum, memorial park or possibly visit our “forgotten” Veterans who are in the many Veteran’s hospitals.
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I sincerely believe in taking our children to plays and shows with live actors. It is so wonderful to see people, up close and personal, acting in front of you.
Tonight we saw the Gourmet Detectives. Talk about interaction, fine dining and great actors! If you have a chance take your kids!
Dress up for the occasion and make it a Night To Remember!
The food was wonderful and the timing is perfect. The actors are also the waiters and they interact with the audience as well. They make you feel like you are a part of the show, and we were all considered suspects! It was an all around wonderful experience that I would recommend to EVERYONE!
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I love homeschooling because you can actually live life amidst learning. It was my sister’s birthday, so we baked a cake, printed out some pictures, stopped by the dollar store and got some frames, a beautiful candy jar, some candy, and cards. My sister loves family photographs so we put a recent one of the family into the 8×10 frame and the Halloween one of the kids into a beautiful 4×6. The jar was used for the candies and we made a label that said “Youth Formula” and decorated it with pretty flowers and vines. We stuck the label on the jar and headed on over to her house to surprise her. We called her on the phone out in front of her house and sang happy birthday to her. I told her that a surprise was supposed to be coming and to listen for the door. She sounded excited! So as I was still talking to her, we walked up to her door and knocked. She said, “Oh, I think it’s here!” We waited for her to open the door and then e yelled “Surprise!” She WAS surprised. We gave her the gifts and wished her Happy Birthday, gave her hugs and had to head on back home! Now was that educational or what?? What a fun way to make someone’s day!
This article is so true. EVERYONE should read it!
| EDUCATION WEEKSeptember 6, 2006
The Truth About Homework Needless Assignments Persist Because of Widespread Misconceptions About LearningBy Alfie KohnPara leer este artículo en Español, haga clic aquí.There’s something perversely fascinating about educational policies that are clearly at odds with the available data. Huge schools are still being built even though we know that students tend to fare better in smaller places that lend themselves to the creation of democratic caring communities. Many children who are failed by the academic status quo are forced to repeat a grade even though research shows that this is just about the worst course of action for them. Homework continues to be assigned – in ever greater quantities – despite the absence of evidence that it’s necessary or even helpful in most cases.The dimensions of that last disparity weren’t clear to me until I began sifting through the research for a new book. To begin with, I discovered that decades of investigation have failed to turn up any evidence that homework is beneficial for students in elementary school. Even if you regard standardized test results as a useful measure, homework (some versus none, or more versus less) isn’t even correlated with higher scores at these ages. The only effect that does show up is more negative attitudes on the part of students who get more assignments. In high school, some studies do find a correlation between homework and test scores (or grades), but it’s usually fairly small and it has a tendency to disappear when more sophisticated statistical controls are applied. Moreover, there’s no evidence that higher achievement is due to the homework even when an association does appear. It isn’t hard to think of other explanations for why successful students might be in classrooms where more homework is assigned – or why they might spend more time on it than their peers do.
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