Homeschool Link Up Party

Thank you for joining us this week at Finishing Strong Homeschool Link Up Party that focuses on middle & high school students.

This week, we are featuring Heather from Blog She Wrote, one of the eight bloggers who host Finishing Strong every Wednesday. She is sharing many of her amazing resources to help you educate your older students.

I’m Heather Woodie of Blog, She Wrote which has been around since 2007. Formerly a middle and high school biology teacher, I have a lot of experience with teaching adolescents.

Ready to Finish Strong

For the upcoming 2014-2015 academic year we’ll be homeschooling an 11^th, 9^th, 7^th, and 4^th grader which puts in the thick of Finishing Strong!

Our homeschool style is eclectic, authentic, project-based, and student driven whenever possible. How we do school has changed a lot over the years from the time we had many young children at once who required more structure and more teacher driven instruction to the student driven, mentoring relationships I have with most of our students now. The blog posts at Blog, She Wrote reflect this transition as well. Lately, I’ve been enjoying updating old posts to make them new.

Popular Posts & Blog Specialties

• Blog, She Wrote is home to The Geography Quest– A themed based geography challenge for all ages in your homeschool. With roughly 35 to choose from and more being published, you can send your students on a Quest to learn more about the world they live in.

• The Ultimate Guide to Establishing a Reading Culture in Your Home– I feel strongly about providing our kids with a print rich environment from the start, but this guide will help you to encourage reading at any age from birth to graduation.

• Teaching Science as Inquiry– I speak on this topic whenever I’m given the opportunity. Enjoy a look at how we incorporate science into our everyday lives without worrying if our ducks are all in a row. Relax and just explore together! Yes, even in middle and high school!

• The Ultimate Guide to Teaching Sewing in Your Homeschool– You will find many posts on teaching sewing at Blog, She Wrote. My daughter is an aspiring fashion designer who started sewing at age 8. There’s something here for everyone from the novice, non-sewing mom to the expert mom who doesn’t think it’s easy to teach her student to sew. Projects, ideas, how-tos on instruction and mentoring. I blog frequently on this topic!

• The Crafty Side of Math– Do you have a creative soul in your midst? Another of my specialties is helping my creative daughter apply math as she gains skills- even TO gain math concepts and skills.

• The Ultimate Guide to Coaching Writers in Your Homeschool– My approach to writing is to meet my kids where they are and to coach them to be the writers they need to be. Our goal is clear written communication. Kids start in different places, but the end goal is the same. I love to share how we approach writing instruction in our homeschool.

We are all about helping our kids to find their gifts and carve their niche in the world. I’m on a journey to help other families do the same!

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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<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button-Featured.png" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button.jpg" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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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.

We are so glad you are here at Finishing Strong, THE place to get ideas and encouragement for homeschooling your middle & high school kids.

We are continuing our in-depth look at the eight bloggers who host this awesome link-up each and every week. Today Tina of Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus is sharing a bit about herself and her site(s).

Don’t forget to add your middle & high school focused posts after you read all about Tina!

Hi y’all. I am Tina Robertson and I’m just a wee bit obsessed focused on organization. So I have created the 7 Step Free Homeschool Planner with over 200 beautiful forms in color.

I don’t throw one huge .pdf planner at you organized in the way my weird brain thinks, but I gently guide you step by step to pick and choose forms on my blog that work best for you.

Also, I am the co-author of New Bee Homeschooler, a program for new homeschoolers.

I have been helping new homeschoolers for many years both in person through workshops and through my web workshops.

I blog over at Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus and New Bee Homeschooler. I know, Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus is such a long blog name, but I couldn’t shorten it any because each word is full of meaning for me and it keeps me stoked about homeschooling. Dynamic is a word that I value because it describes how I feel about my friendships that I have made while homeschooling. Lively, energetic and moving are words I like to keep in mind too when humdrum homeschooling hits my homeschool day.

The word homeschool means so much more now than it did when I started homeschooling my oldest son, Mr. Senior 2013. I am blessed to have recently survived celebrated the graduation of Mr. Senior 2013.

Too, I am still in the trenches with you homeschooling while sharing tips on my love of unit studies, history and geography for all homeschoolers.

Also, helping new bee homeschoolers is part of who I am and I have a whopping 31 Day Free Boot Camp for New Homeschoolers on my blog to show them some homeschooling love.

Last, but by no means least is our love of hands-on learning, which includes numerous free lapbooks that I share. One of my fixations is turning any worksheet into a minibook and having a worksheet free homeschool day.

The lapbooks add the plus to our day. And no, I don’t view myself as the crafty loving mom which is why I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone and into creating lapbooks for my sons. Lapbooks are a creative hands-on tool and they are not just for younger learners. A lot of my free lapbooks can be used for middle to high school students.

Scoot by because I would love to connect with you!

Don’t forget to check out all of the co-hosts – Aspired Living, Blog She Wrote,Education Possible, EvaVarga, Milk and Cookies, Starts at Eight, and Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus.

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!

<br />
<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button-Featured.png" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button.jpg" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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+.

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!

<br />
<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button-Featured.png" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
<p>

<br />
<div align="center"><a href="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/" title="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus"><img src="https://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Finishing-Strong-Button.jpg" alt="Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
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