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Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party {Homeschooling Middle & High School Years} #37.

November 11, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Finishing Strong – Homeschool Link Up Party {Homeschooling Middle & High School Years} #37

Welcome to Finishing Strong. We’re glad you’re here. We are a link up that focuses entirely on teaching middle & high school students.

There were many fun and practical ideas shared last week. Hopefully you were able to take time out of your busy homeschooling day to read some of them. We always find new ideas and plenty of encouragement for schooling our older kids at home through the stories you share with us.

Co-hosted by: Aspired Living, Blog She Wrote, Education Possible, EvaVarga, Starts at Eight, & Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus.

Have you read these four popular posts from last week?

Science Sunday, #1: Chemistry Lessons from All Things Beautiful

I Kicked My Son Out of My Homeschool from Classically Homeschooling

“You Were Right, Mom!” – 5 Things Kids Learn from Natural Consequences from Homeschool Your Boys

Homeschooling in the Middle Years: 5 Tips for Teaching Independence from The Sunny Patch

Keep reading to see what great things get shared this week!

Easy Details to Remember & Even Easier Guidelines.

The link up party goes live at 5:00 a.m. CST each Wednesday and stays open until the following Tuesday at 11:55 p.m.
Each week we will pick our favorite links as features and share them.
You can link up to 3 posts. Please do not link up advertising posts, or other link ups, or parties. I will remove them. Homeschool related reviews are permitted and of course all topics related to homeschooling middle to high school students.
Grab a button to add to your post after you link up and if you were featured, grab an “I was featured” button.
By linking up with us, you agree for us to share your images and give you credit of course.
That’s it! Glad to have you here and let’s party!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Trail of Tears Vocabulary Words

November 11, 2014 | Leave a Comment
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

The Trail of Tears vocabulary words is the next minibook I have ready today. We are almost ready to start placing them on the file folder. So I will have that for you next so you don’t have to guess where to place them.

I will have to hunt down some file folders because I have not been able to find any yet, but again, even construction paper or scrapbook taped together works too instead of a file folder.

Also, I don’t want to confuse you but because of my love for options and because I know you have children of different ages and abilities too, I try to keep all my minibooks flexible.

For example, with this minibook, I have 2 different ones. The first one (pictured above) has vocabulary words already selected. The second page (pictured above) also has the definitions typed out. Simply research and glue them under the tab.

The second minibook (not pictured) is blank. The second page (not pictured) is blank too so that your children can write in the definitions.

With options comes the ability to use the minibooks for the various ages and abilities of your children. For example, you may want to use the definitions already filled in with a younger child or like me, you may be using the lapbooks for enrichment and so there is no need for tons of writing.

Maybe you want to use the minibooks for writing if that is what you are focused on.

You are teacher and you decide with each of my lapbooks what is best for your children at the time. So I try to give you options and want to keep lapbooks fun, easy and not stressful.

More Trail of Tears Activities

How to Get the Free Trail of Tears Lapbook

Now, how to grab the free lapbook. This is a subscriber freebie.

That means when you sign up to follow me, you get access to my subscribers library and this freebie.

However, not all my freebies are in the library (wink).

I like to keep up to date with what is valuable to you so I can give you more, some freebies you must sign up again on the form below even if you are already a follower.

And it’s the only way I have of freely delivering them to you. Just follow the steps below.

► 1) Sign up on my list.
► 2) Go to your inbox and confirm your email from the automatic reply I sent you. If you’re already a confirmed subscriber, you will not have to do this. You’ll receive the freebie instantly.
►3) Last step. look for my reply AFTER you’ve confirmed your email.

Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling

November 10, 2014 | 10 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

With our move to South America, I had two suitcases to pack with what was absolutely essential to living in South America. Included in our two suitcase maximum for each person was not just clothes, but homeschooling books.

Non-Essentials In Homeschooling

Eliminating non-essentials was utterly crucial to making a smooth transition. The line between absolutely vital and unimportant became very clear.

Homeschooling is similar because there are just some things that are not required to raising life long learners. Instead of a homeschooling help, some things can become a hindrance.

Look at these Tips to Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials in Homeschooling.

Assigning a Book Report – Non-Essential. I did it too. I assigned my boys books reports in the beginning of my homeschool journey only because that is what I did in public school.

Like most new homeschooling teachers I associated books reports with good readers and writers.

The longer I homeschooled, the more I realized that my strategies like reading aloud, practicing writing each day, acting out stories, creating puppets with the boys when they were preschool age and debating an author’s viewpoint in the high school grades was incredibly more powerful.

It has been my experience that forced book reports do not fuel the love for reading and especially with wiggly boys.

Also, I learned that if I just had to assign one for the language arts teacher inside of me then assign a book my kids don’t like. Who really wants to be forced to use literary analysis on a book they love?

Instilling the pleasure of reading or lingering over vocabulary for the love of words has to be cultivated with other equally pleasurable tasks.

When you are doing copywork with your children, talking orally about the plot or rising action of a book or researching about an author, information in a book is then absorbed and retained.

More important reading is associated with pleasure and not drudgery.

College Degree – Non-Essential. As you homeschool longer, you realize that all that is needed is the ability to learn alongside your children.

Here is a little secret I learned while conducting my homeschooling workshops.

Quite a few of the public school teachers in my workshop didn’t want the other moms in the workshop to know they were teachers.

Of course, I was elated and enthusiastic to have quite a few public school teachers in my workshops because I savored our time together as we shared teaching tips.

However, many (not all) of the public school teachers turned homeschool educator felt that their college education hampered their ability to think outside the box.

Appreciating their candor and vulnerability, I realized we all struggle with things that make us feel inadequate.

A parent’s degree or lack of it has very little bearing on the success of their journey.

Check out the article The Myth of Teacher Qualifications by HSLDA.

Knowing All the Answers – Non-Essential. We may think we need to know all the answers, but when I have been honest with my boys by letting them know that I don’t know all the answers, they appreciate that I am human too.

What I have found is that knowing where to go to find the answers or how to connect with other homeschoolers has been more essential.

Too, a dogged determination, willingness to work hard and an unwavering dedication to your children's education have been the keys to successfully homeschooling.

Eliminating the clutter as I packed and weighed each bag carefully for our move, though stressful at the time, allowed more room for what was really important.

Only so much will fit in a bag and only so much will fit into a homeschool day.

Looking back now, unloading all that clutter and eliminating the non-essentials has allowed me to maximize the time we have together by savoring what we brought with us.

You'll love my other tried and true tips through they 20+ years I've homeschooled.

What about you? Have you overstuffed your day with non-essentials?

Hugs and love ya,

Patience, Confidence, Knowing all the Answers – NOT Required to Homeschool

3 Homeschooling Myths Debunked

Things Homeschoolers Know

Why Purge Your Pinterest Boards When You’re A Blogger

November 9, 2014 | 2 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Like our home, clutter can pile up too on our Pinterest boards. And though the search to find pins on your boards has become easier, like me, you probably have pins that have not received any repins and likes.

Why purge your Pinterest boards when you’re a blogger though goes beyond just organizing, cleaning and purging for the sake of doing it.

Those reasons are certainly worthy of spending time deleting old pins because like any purge project, it can lighten the load because we are not wasting time searching for pins.

However, there are more significant reasons why you want to purge your Pinterest account as often as you can and especially if you’re a blogger wanting to grow your Pinterest following.

Look at some of these reasons to purge and types of purge to perform regularly.

Because Pinterest ranks as one of the highest social media platforms, you always want your most attractive pins serving as your bait for new followers.

Followers are now Pinterest savvy and do not want to spend a lot of time weeding through useless or boring pins.

Your boards are all about your followers. This means you have specifically created your boards with your blogging niche in mind and want to use your popular pins as a way to grow a loyal following.

Don’t make potential new followers work at finding those popular pins by having loads of useless pins that are not popular.

Popular is a subjective term too, but again, if you are using Pinterest to grow your blog following, then you know which pins are your popular ones. They are the ones your followers are pinning over and over again.

But this brings me to my next thought which is how to make the pins that you want to be popular get noticed.

If a pin that you feel is important has not received any action, then keeping it on your board only lessens the effect of it.

The way to rekindle an interest in whatever pin or topic you are promoting is to purge it either by moving it to a secret board or delete it altogether until you spice it up. How? Well, since Pinterest is a visual driven social platform, then the most basic of steps is to change your image and if need be to increase the image size.

Since I have been on Pinterest from the beginning, I have a lot of drab pins to delete. I normally spend a few minutes each day on each board purging pins that have not received any action.

I always start at the bottom of my boards because those pins have been there the longest.

The advantage to deleting old pins is that you can now breathe life into new posts. Also because my following is significantly a few more thousand than when I started, then pinning an older pin will reach a much bigger audience now.

Sometimes it’s not the visual image of the pin that could be the problem, but it could be because of lousy timing of the pin.

I have a few pins that have smokin’ hot images but because I pinned them when I had a handful of followers, it didn’t get noticed. I need to pin them now that my following is much larger.

Also, there are at least two types of purges that I perform regularly. The one I have been talking about has to do with pins, but the other purge has to do with followers.

No, I don’t mean delete any followers. But if you want to grow followers that fit your unique blogging niche, then streamline your pins so that it will capture those followers.

In other words, grow your Pinterest board intentionally.

Let me give you an example because I have been doing a follower purge for the last 3 months or so. In the beginning when I hopped on Pinterest, it was new for all of us and we weren’t quite sure how to use it.

Like a lot of new pinners, I pinned more pins for my personal use because I wasn’t fully blogging at that time. A few years down the road, I know now that I could have probably used less personal interest boards and more blogging niche filled boards.

For some bloggers’ niche, personal and blogging boards are one and the same, but in my niche of homeschooling, there are many more boards related to education that are not really personal boards.

What I am saying is that many of my followers in the beginning where not unique to my homeschooling niche, but just to my personal boards.

For the last three months, I have almost completely cut off filling up my personal boards and focused on growing my educational boards because it is related to my blogging niche.

There is nothing wrong of course with having personal pins but when I am on purge, I am very picking about making them public.

Now that there are secret boards, one of the boards can be used for personal pins when you come across something you just need to save right then. This frees up space on blogging niche boards, but more importantly your blogging brand stays consistent.

Though my account has grown slower with new followers, it has grown more solid because they are my unique followers following my boards that fit my blogging niche.

As you can see, it is extremely important to purge and delete stale pins because you probably have put much time into growing your Pinterest presence.

Purge those Pinterest boards to make room for your unique pins and to keep them vibrant, dynamic and fresh for prospective loyal followers.

Hugs and love ya,

Grab some more tips to organize your Pinterest account.

How My 25K Pinterest Followers Avoid Pinterest Pandemonium

Pinterest Tips to Grow A Business From Just A Mom With 24K Followers

How to Grow Pinterest From a Few Hundred Loyal Followers to Thousands

Look at these other tools that make me a happy blogger!!

Linking up @ these fabulous places:

Laugh & Learn |Motivation Monday |One Project at a Time |

Gifts For Kids Who Are Wild About History

November 9, 2014 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Whether you want to keep history hands-on, are wanting to hook your children on history or you have a budding history buff, here are some ideas for gifts for kids who are wild about history.

1. BrainBox for Kids – World History Card Game

Though we don’t play the 10 minute version and changed this game around a bit, this is a great way to add to your history program or just to include all ages.

How many details can you remember?

2. Greeks (Ancient Civilisations Pop-Ups) A pop up book for the big kids too. With all the intricate detail, this will keep your child entertained for hours.

And though we don’t have this book, The Pompeii Pop Up, it is one we want.

3. Time For Kids: Benjamin Franklin: A Man of Many Talents (Time for Kids Biographies)

This is another series of books that has kept my boys loving history because the focus is on understanding some of the great minds behind history and not boring dates.
There are many to choose from too.

4. Educational Trivia Card Game – Professor Noggin’s Ancient Civilizations

This series of trivia card game has bailed me out on more than one occasion when our time spent doing history was going flat. Though it says it is for 7 years of age and up, we used our games for much longer.

Can you really know all there is to know about history? Check out the other games on history too.

5. Horrible Histories Special: Cruel Kings and Mean Queens If you want to capture your child’s love for history by laughter, he may like this series of books.

6. And don’t forget, history is all about studying fashion of a time period too. Check out the Project Runway History of Fashion Workbook. Your girls might love it.