Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

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Tina Robertson

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party {Homeschooling Middle & High School Years} #17.

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Finishing Strong- Homeschool Link Up Party

Thank you for joining us this week at Finishing Strong–the link-up that focuses on middle & high school students.

Finishing Strong Link Up Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

 

This week we are taking the time to learn more about Heidi Ciravola from Starts At Eight.

Heidi Ciravola Finishing Strong Picture Bio

Hi, my name is Heidi Ciravola and I blog at Starts At Eight. I live in Upstate New York where we have 4 seasons and the weather is usually more cold than warm. I am blessed to be married to my best friend since 1998 and we share our home with 3 children ages 14,11,8.

Heidi from Starts At Eight

When I first started blogging in 2009 I wrote a post about “Why Starts At Eight?” It is funny how much has changed since then. Now my blog is almost all homeschool related and not so much a personal journal. My husband jokes that I need to start a new blog to have as a personal journal! LOL!

I have been homeschooling since 2006 when I pulled my oldest out of public school after completing her 1st grade year. I now homeschool a high schooler, a middle schooler, and an elementary aged student, so my curriculum and resources run the gamut! You can check out my interview, The Face of Homeschooling, to learn more about our family and why/how we homeschool.

Besides blogging at Starts At Eight I am also a member of the Hip Homeschool Moms Blog Team and I am an iHomeschool Network blogger. I enjoy getting to know other homeschooling families and learning from their experiences. I also provide Homeschool Consulting Services for those who are in need of assistance along their homeschool journey.

Homeschooling High School

I am just completing my first year of homeschooling high school. I have to admit that even though I had been homeschooling for 7 years already, starting with high school made me feel like a “newbie”. As I researched and learned things I realized that the amount of homeschooling high school information out there was significantly smaller than the early and elementary years. Thus I have switched much of my blog focus to homeschooling the high school years.

I started a 10 day series on homeschooling high school with a post called, So You’re Scared to Homeschool High School. I wanted to let others know that it isn’t as scary as you might think, and that you are capable of homeschooling your high schooler.

So You're Scared to Homeschool High School from Starts At Eight

One of the big changes in high school is the need to choose and participate in elective courses. While researching for my daughter I wrote about the process, from what exactly is an elective, to suggestions for fulfilling elective credits, and I created a FREE Printable called Plan Your High School Electives Pack for you to use to help you along the journey.

My daughter ended up choosing things like photography and Latin as electives. Photography is a fun thing that we can do together as I am a photographer myself. The Latin serves as a foreign language, great vocabulary SAT prep, and will help her with medical terms as she strives to reach her goal of entering the medical field.

Plan Your High School Electives: Free Printable Pack from Starts At Eight

One of the ways we are working towards college is by preparing for and taking CLEP Exams to earn college credit. This spurred me to write a series of articles about this option. The first one is called, What is a CLEP Exam?

Along with this, we have had the opportunity to check out a few options for preparing for these exams, thus opening up the world of dual credit (doing high school and gaining college credit). Both Dual Credit at Home and JumpCourse offer different and viable options for earning college credit while still in high school.

What is a CLEP Exam? from Starts At Eight

Fun Unit Studies

Beyond writing about high school I like to share about what fun unit studies I am doing with my youngest daughter. She is the most unschooled of all our children. We will often veer off the beaten path because of some new interest that has sparked her attention! Things like Canada, Chickens, Balto and the Iditarod, Johnny Appleseed and Teeth (a 3 part series).

One of our favorite unit studies is our Bug/Insect Units Using Eric Carle Books. This allowed us to study so many different bugs using different Eric Carle books, including ladybugs, bees, crickets and grasshoppers, spiders, caterpillars and butterflies.

A Bug/Insect Unit Using Eric Carle Books: The Very Busy Spider from Starts At Eight

I hope you will follow my family along on our journey through homeschooling and find some resources, support, and encouragement along the way! You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and G+.

 

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Easy Details to Remember & Even Easier Guidelines.

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Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus
Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus


When We Used Story of the World as our History Spine

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

When we used The Story of the World as our history spine in the younger years, it was one right choice I made for us.

Although loving history, my knowledge included only the history of the United States and it was pretty lame at that.

Because the The Story of the World came out around the time my oldest son was in the early grades and because I had read numerous good reviews, I used it. 

It ended up being a perfect fit for all of my sons.  We did begin with Volume 1 and worked our way through Volume 4, which is the whole series.

When we used The Story of the World as our History Spine

It is hard to find history programs for very young children that are presented in a story format and that make teaching history to young children easy. That is one thing I appreciated about the format.

I think it’s a must to have not only the story book, but the Teacher’s Manual which has the activity pages in them or purchase the activity pages separately for each kid.

STORY OF THE WORLD AS A HISTORY SPINE

The teacher’s manual not only has questions that help you to review the story but it has the answers right there too.  No flipping to another section to find the answers  That is a huge tiny pet peeve of mine about teacher’s manual.

Also, there are plenty of resources listed and choices for extra reading for a variety of ages.

It is a multi-age resource, which is a great find too if you are teaching more than one child.

If you are new to homeschooling or if you don’t have a huge background in history, The Story of the World  makes teaching history painless. It would make a great addition to your curriculum too even if your kids are a bit older. 

If your oldest kid is beginning middle school, I think this curriculum is still doable to teach all your kids if you have that circumstance.

Volume 4 is targeted for grades 4 to 8.  So if you have children in that age range and want to use this, just remember that Volume 1 was written for 1st to 4th grade.  I don’t see any harm in using it for your kids if they are older and can tolerate a bit of the language written in the earlier volumes for younger children.  It sure helps the teacher mom along.

The Story of the World is just an introduction to history and I think it does a fantastic job of hooking your children on history along with the maps and activities laid out in the program.  It helped us to form in our minds some major pivotal history points that the boys still refer to today.

It has slight Christian content, but we always added more.  I have said before I appreciate that fact about curriculum sometimes because we can cover Bible subjects at our pace.

Overall, The Story of the World is a keeper for us because of the ease of use, story format, use for multiple ages, teacher helps and having everything laid out.

On to more history spines we used through the years in my upcoming posts.

Hugs and love ya,

Want to read more?

Review of What Every Child Needs to Know About Western Civilization by BrimWood Press.

How to Use a History Spine to Build Your Study of History

When we used Notgrass World History as our History Spine

8 Ways to Teach Homeschool History Other Than Chronologically

Should Homeschool History Be Covered in Chronological Order?

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Teaching handwriting when homeschooling the early years. After the topic of teaching a child how to read, there is probably no other topic that can worry a parent more than writing. Also, look at my page Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum and The Dynamics of How to Homeschool Easily and Smarter for more tips.

Having taught all three of my sons from the beginning how to write, I am eager to share what worked, what was fun and oh yes, what was flat out dumb too.

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

Instead of jumping right into the ideas though, I think it’s important for you to understand some basic background information about the process of writing that I learned the hard way.

Picture Books Library Lists

Educating yourself about the process too will help you to avoid confusion as you talk about it with others, research options and generally try to educate yourself about this beautiful and intricate developmental process. 

Do You Make this Mistake in Teaching Penmanship

It is hard to appreciate this process too unless you stand back and take a panoramic view.

Handwriting must not be confused with composition. They are two different skills which are talked about as if they are one. They are not.

As your child grows older, handwriting could be a tool that either burdens or beautifies a budding writer’s creative process.

Composing thoughts becomes a life-long skill, but there is a very small window of time for you to seize the opportunity to teach him how to write. 

Eventually, a writer uses both the physical act of pushing a pen and the mental act of arranging thoughts in a well-laid out system. 

In the earliest stages, it’s all about the physical act.

Then there is much information floating around about whether we should teach our kids print first, cursive first or if we even need to teach handwriting. 

How to approach a very basic but important skill almost seems like a guessing game when teaching it. 

In this series, I’m sharing tidbits about those topics so you can make an informed decision of how you are going to teach handwriting.

Don’t “Fix” What Children Like to Do Naturally

What I have learned in teaching my sons and helping many other new homeschoolers along the way is that we need to trust the natural bent our children have to pick up a tool, and yes to even use their fingers to scribble.

I have never forgotten what I read by John Holt.  It resounded with me as I have had what seemed like major highs where I could accomplish any task after teaching my first son his  letters and having tears pour down my cheeks too when I felt defeated.

John Holt said, “The infants at home were bold adventurers. 

It soon became clear to me that children are by nature and from birth very curious about the world around them, and very energetic, resourceful, and competent in exploring it, finding out about it, and mastering. In short, much more eager to learn, and much better at learning, than most adults.

Babies are not blobs, but true scientists.”

Understand first that your child has a craving to communicate through scribbles. 

Teaching Handwriting When Homeschooling the Early Years Part 1

Unless there is a developmental delay, your job will be to guide him to the next stage.

Don’t make this harder than it has to be.  Like childbirth and I’m going there today, you simply assisted your body, so to  speak, at the time of delivery. 

No amount of worrying was going to speed up the process as if you were in control of it.  Of course complications and delays are quite different, but again I want you to know that you just need to be prepared.

When it comes to penmanship, your children will present signs of being ready.

More Homeschool Writing Tips and Curriculum

Will you be ready?

Coming up in some other posts, I will be sharing some signs and signals of writing readiness by your children, ways for you to plan (and not worry) about the penmanship process, pre-writing activities, and other ways to gently guide your pre-writer through this process.

Here are the other posts in this series to see how the process unfolds:

Hugs and love ya,

Homeschool Field Trip Journal Pages

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

I have been wanting to create some homeschool field trip journal pages for a while, but have been hesitant to create them.  Writing for most kids is something you have to sneak in.  So I have been mulling over even the smallest detail about the forms.  For the field trip pages I created that even meant  brainstorming the title.

I just couldn’t bring myself to name the pages Field Trip Report because it sounds so — well — like a report.  My sons enjoy writing for the most part and I want to keep it that way.  Finally, I settled on the title Field Trip Journals because I think there is freedom in the word journal for a budding writer.  It almost feels like you are not going to squash their creative ideas before they get started.  I appreciate some breathing room when I write and I extend that same liberty to my kids.

Instead of my sons reporting back to me, I prefer they want to write about our field trips.  Too, I wanted to use a more whimsical form so our kids could feel like they own it.

Homeschool Field Trip Journal
Field Trip Journal 1

I have created some boxes for them to write in and then created a few more smaller blank spaces if they wanted to share one or two more ideas.

Some kids are word whisperers and I was sort of that way growing up.  Jotting down a word or two that I heard lately either gave me a chuckle or invoked a serious side. 

More Homeschool Field Trip Resources

The most recent word my kids are getting a chuckle over is come-uppings.  Is that even a word?  I used it one time in talking to them and they haven’t quit saying it since then.  I don’t care if it’s a word or not because it gives them a cause to pause in the day about their vocabulary and a love of words.

Then we have kids, I have one too, that is a doodler, a scribbler and part designer.  Picture words reminds him of an event.  The blank space is big enough for a scribble or two even by big kids.

So the blank spaces allows your kids and mine to make the page their own.  Too, I didn’t want the pages too babyish so they don’t outgrow them by Kindergarten.

I have 2 pages that have more manly man color.  My boys have low tolerance for anything too colorful and I try to minimize the eye-rolling.  Then of course on the ones for girls, I go girl color crazy.  I have 2 color choices for them also.

I am excited about the forms because you know how much our kids enjoy field trips with other homeschoolers or just with the family.  It has always been the highlight of our month.

I hope this sparks a fun and whimsical side to writing for the kids because I think I give my boys enough reports to write about.

How to Grab the Free Field Trip Journal Pages

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You may also love to download these free printables!

13 Free and Fun BEST Printable History Board Games

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Today, I have rounded up 13 Free Printable History Board Games. You’ll love the other history games on my page. I think there is a great lack of fun history board games.

Besides learning history can be more engaging at times when the kids can play games with each other instead of touching an app.

13 Free and Fun BEST Printable History Board Gam

Don’t we have enough games where our kids play alone? I really try to keep the sibling rivalry camaraderie going too.

Not only do history board games fight the doldrums, but they make learning about history come alive. I know you’ll love one or two of these.

History Board Games

1. Viking Voyages. A board game about Viking Trade Routes at Ellen J. McHenry. While you’re there check out her other great games and hands-on ideas.


2. Then if you’re study Amercian history look at The Presidents Game. Find the .pdf towards the bottom of the post.


3.  Royal Game of Ur _ A History Game from Mesopotamia.  It’s a subscriber freebie. If you sign up for her newsletter, you  get the freebie.

4. Free printable Ancient Egypt Board Game by Homeschool Gameschool.

ancient egypt game

Free Printable History Board Games

Also, don’t forget to check out Home School in the Woods. They are on of my favorite hands-on history companies. I’ve used them a lot through the years.

DiggingUpGreecePic

5. Furthermore this free Printable Digging Up Greece board game by Ellen J McHenry is the perfect addition to a unit study.

Lewis and Clark Board Game

6. In addition, here is a free Printable Lewis & Clark Board game by Deceptively Educational.

Best History Board Games

s.Game for the Oregon Trail Westward Ho!

7. My Printable Board Game for the Oregont Trail is part of my free lapbook and unit study for the Westward Expansion.

More Kids Fun History Games

Moreover, you’ll love these other fun history games for kids.

13 Free History Printable Board Games. Looking for a way to make history exciting in your homeschool? CLICK HERE! You'll love these AWESOME games!

8. I also created a free printable Oregon Trail Game.

Ancient Egypt Collage

9. Next, this is pretty nifty though it’s not a board game, it is still a printable history game. or do online. In this game, your child has to spot the differences in pictures about the Hagia Sophia from Hello Kids.

The Basement Workshop Store


10. Then I created a free printable Ancient Egyptian snake game for us when studying about Ancient Egypt.

Free {Storming the Bastille} Game

11. Next,I also created one when studying about the French Revolution called Storming the Bastille that you can download too.

12. This game has to be coolest free thing I have found lately.

It is a vintage George Washington snake game which has the instructions written right on it.

George_Washington_snake_game

The game has American History pictures on it. 

For example, when you go over to see it at the link and choose one of the sizes to download, be sure to zoom in on it to read the rules. 

Though I have not printed it yet, I am thinking each part needs to be printed pretty big to read the rules.

13. Free History of Flight Printable Board Game. How fun!

And I know you don’t know mind if I add a few more!

14. Additionally, another fun one to learn the history of the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

15. Free Civil War Board Game at 123 Homeschool 4 Me.