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Why Most Homeschool Curriculum Tips Are Useless

May 26, 2015 | 11 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Choosing homeschool curriculum can be one of the most thrilling things about homeschooling and at the same time be nerve-racking.

Getting ready to graduate my second homeschooler and using completely different curriculum with him than I did with Mr. Senior 2013, I have come to appreciate why most homeschool curriculum tips are useless.Don’t get me wrong. Having homeschooled from the beginning, I too have pored over volumes of books and blogs to discover that one piece of advice that will push me from reality to lightning striking revelation.

It might sound a bit over dramatic but what is really absurd is the overwhelming and staggering amount of tips on how to choose homeschool curriculum.

It’s not that we don’t like them, but we would like to read them in this life time.

With a limited amount of time to pick homeschool curriculum over the last few years, I have tried to simplify my method to choosing curriculum.

Instead of depending on flashes of brilliance from numerous blog posts about curriculum (I really do love them but I need simple), I have found that if I follow a method to choosing curriculum for my family that it works for both me and my sons.

From Homeschool Insanity to Homeschool Sense

Look at these 3 questions and tips that make choosing curriculum a cinch each year:

1. Your Teaching Style Is Not Just Important, It Is Paramount.

Homeschooling momma martyrs are common, unfortunately. As teachers we can shove aside things that help us to be an excellent teacher and solely focus on a child’s learning style.

While a child’s learning style is important, it should not have greater weight until a child is learning independently for a good portion of the day.

For example, you may be at a point in your journey where you thrive with a boxed curriculum but your child is a huge hands-on learner.

How do you marry the two styles? It is much easier for you to teach with a guideline and fill in with hands-on ideas each day than to come up with your own lesson plans for a hands-on learner.

This will eliminate your hunt for curriculum that is just a bare framework where you are suppose to fill in with hands-on ideas. It just won’t work for you if you need a more fleshed out curriculum.

Again, using a homeschool curriculum that supports your teaching style and which you have to tweak a bit to fit your child’s learning style gives you a much better head start for the year.

A homeschool curriculum may receive a rave review, but if it does not support your present teaching style, you may burn out mid-year, too.

Again, I cannot stress enough that you as the primary teacher needs to be over the top excited about a curriculum that encourages you and makes homeschooling lively.

Banish boring days by beginning it with a curriculum that fits your strengths and shores up your weaknesses.

2. Your Child’s Learning Style Matters Especially Around 6th Grade.

Switching on you here because I am giving you a method in how to evaluate homeschool curriculum, but the next significant factors to consider are the ages, maturity level and learning style of your child.

When children are young, a good rule of thumb is to use a curriculum that is suited to your teaching style and mix in the activities to tweak it to fit your child’s learning style.

As they grow older and become more independent in how they learn, which generally is around 6th grade, then it’s time to evaluate again.

Sixth grade is important because it generally is the time for another leap in a child’s maturity.

This doesn’t mean it happens automatically, but I wanted to give you a specific way to measure.

Only you can answer these questions:

During the 6th grade year, does your child need another year of momma teaching and are thriving with you tweaking your present curriculum? or
Was this past year one where there was more head butting than head way made? If so, is it because you were determined to use curriculum that you felt was rigorous and met your learning style instead of your child’s learning style?
Can you give your child more choices this year? It is time to give up control but not the authority, which is a fine balancing act.

Decision making by your child is a learned process.

Releasing decision making is easier and better done slowly or a little at a time.

Do not all of the sudden one year expect your child to choose all the curriculum.

Though at the 6th grade age, they may seem like they are ready for making all the decisions, they are immature and still inexperienced. Too, as the parent, you have the authority to make the final say on all the decisions.

The only way for your child to gain experience and maturity is to start with small things and build up when it comes to choosing curriculum.

Just like you have allowed them free choice in their reading material while they still read the books you choose, curriculum is the same.

How to Begin Homeschool Teaching With Minimal Tips

Does that wonderful and new curriculum that you are excited about allow your child to work independently for part of the day if he is ready?

Through the years, I have learned that it doesn’t really matter what curriculum you use.

I don’t want to seem flippant about how hard it is to choose homeschool curriculum, but what matters in the long run is if the curriculum fits your child’s learning style best.

3. What Do You Want the Curriculum to Teach? Concepts and View.

The answer to this question is not obvious because I am not talking about wanting a science curriculum to teach science or a history curriculum to teach history.

Look at another example.

If you have a science background and maybe even have a degree in science then you have a preferred way to teach science.

Science can be taught generally or in a spiral method each year or you can focus on one field like Chemistry, Physics or Biology.

As a science teacher, you may want to cover deeper concepts instead of broad strokes.

What difference does it matter if the newest science curriculum is hot on the homeschool market if it does not fit with the way you want to teach science?

All the homeschool curriculum tips can be useless and overwhelming if you are not looking to teach science the same way.

History is no exception. If you want the details of history, then why look at a history curriculum that will cover history in generalities?

The same question or mind-set should be examined when you think about the approach.

How important is a Bible based curriculum, or would you prefer something light on Bible content so that you can add your own resources?

As I scrutinized my method for how I chose homeschool curriculum easily over the past few years, these three questions have helped me to slice and dice the huge amount of information on the net.

Focus on tips that work for your family and leave the rest of the tips to other families that need them.

Hugs and love ya,

How Can I Achieve Simple Homeschooling?
Eliminating 3 Non-Essentials to Homeschooling
When My Homeschool Curriculum Has Lost that Loving Feeling

Relax! How to Easily Add Art and Music to Your Homeschool Day

May 24, 2015 | 9 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

How to easily add art and music to your homeschool day is well – so not easy. Also, look at Fun Facts About the Phantom of the Opera & Styles of Music Unit Study.

They tend to be subjects that can be left out.

Although we have good intentions, it just doesn’t happen.

Besides art and music are really what stirs the imagination and are creative outlets.

Relax! How to Easily Add Art and Music to Your Homeschool Day

I’m sharing tips on how to easily add them to your day without a lot of planning.

One secret tip to easily add art and music to your day is to not schedule them.

As fixated as I am on schedules, I am equally fixated with homeschooling simply.

6 Ways to Add Art and Music to Your Homeschool

Look at these easy ways to fold in art and music to your day simply without adding one more subject to your day.

1. Add Art to Writing or Composition

With the growing list of homeschool subjects that comes with each grade, it is easy to run out of homeschool day before you do subjects.

I learned this double duty tip when Mr. Senior 2013 was first beginning to write.

Kindergarten Art @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

I learned he was very much more interested in writing when he could express his words through pictures.

Instead of scheduling a formal time for art, he just folded it in when he was writing.

Because I was developing his imagination and love for creativity, having a story to go along with his picture gave him the spark he needed to create.

When I started, I used the whole series of Draw Write Now.

These books allowed a small part of writing and then drawing to strengthen fine motor skills.

And these books are absolute keepers in my homeschool world.

2. Music or Art can be added to your current study of history.

As Mr. Senior 2013 grew and had a similar love of history, I allowed drawing of history scenes or battles as a way for him to express himself.

Again without having to add in drawing, we just covered history along with drawing.

Then the love of simple drawing morphed into a full art study in high school.

We loved the series Draw and Write Through History in the early years.

Additionally, looking up what is the music during a history period is a perfect introduction to the history period.

For example, we’ve also used Music in our Homeschool Courses.

For example, look at the list of music courses below which you can teach in your homeschool.

Too, with science there is no need to make a choice between science and art.

3. Add Art to Science.

Find creative opportunities to add in art.

(Draw a cell and label it.)

If there is a way to illustrate a science concept, let your child do it.

He will remember projects and the content too for many years after he is older and especially when he can add in an artful element.

4. Add Music to every day learning.

Music was no different. We folded it into our day naturally too.

Music can be done while exercising and too some children learn better while listening to music.

Add music to every day learning.

Early Learning Music Resources @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

I rounded up the DVDs I created way back (I’m not that old but in this day and age with technology you feel that way) when I had “opening” in Preschool and Kindergarten with all of my boys.

I rounded up learning songs and arranged them in the way I wanted to so that my learning day could last longer with music.

We sung these songs every day as a way to learn our ABCs, days of the weeks, continents and even math.

I used resources like Sing to Learn and Rock ‘N Learn:Addition & Subtraction Rap.

Too, though I had no musical background when I first began to homeschool, it was up to me teach them how to read music in between their music lessons.

5. Music can be added to phonics.

Do music instead of phonics one day.

Right away, I learned that music is like learning another language.

Many days we simply sat together in the living room and did music theory.

Not only did we learn about the musical notes but the rhythm helped my boys to learn about the “beats” or syllables when reading.

I never felt like I was skipping on their reading for the day but giving them another way to feel the beat or syllables within each sentence.

All of my boys not only managed to read above grade level, but learned music theory in the process.

6. Fold art & music together for the subject.

Focus on a musical composer.

We did lapbooks using Zeezok to study a composer, some language arts, geography and hands-on activities.

Instead of feeling like I was only covering music for the day, we added in writing about the composer, the history of the time period they lived in and geography when studying about the country the composer lived in.

Instead of scheduling separate assignments for art and music, let those areas embellish the every day things that your child needs to learn.

More Homeschool Music Curriculum Resources

Art and music have a way of presenting up learning in an alternative way and of finding a way into your child’s heart that makes learning fun.

Homeschooling a Left-Brain Child a/k/a Socially Awkward and a Bit Nerdy

May 21, 2015 | 7 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Homeschooling a left-brain child has been a joy, but a bit of an adventure.

For example, right when the minister said we are assembled together in this funeral home for this sad moment of the passing of our dear sister, my left-brain child burst out in laughter.

Then, right before Kindermusik classes started, he asked the homeschool mom sitting beside me if she ever changed her baby’s diaper because he sure stinks.

Besides being moments where I wish I could crawl under the seat, I realized early on that I was homeschooling a child with a quirky personality.

Back when I started homeschooling, I didn’t fully appreciate the power of being informed about learning styles or personalities.

Homeschooling a Left-Brain Child a/k/a Socially Awkward and a Bit Nerdy

What I didn’t know immediately was that I was homeschooling a left brain child.

What I did know was that he had some of these traits:

He was perfectly content to be alone and was truly happy;
He preferred to read an encyclopedia for knowledge instead of a fiction book;
He read early and was advanced for his age and it was hard to tell others how advanced he was;
He had a hard time expressing his feelings in a gracious manner and he felt that unless he spoke his mind in a direct way that he was not being sincere;

And he had these 5 traits as well.

He thrived with details and did not like being rushed;
Routine was a comfort to him and he needed to be “warned” if I changed our routine suddenly;
He didn’t like loud noises or a lot of people talking at the same time;
He preferred his school area neat, cleaned up his room without me asking him and his written assignments were even neater;
He was seen by others as being aloof or “different”, which really meant a bit weird.

Knowing that my son preferred adult interaction or older children over friends his own age, I knew that I would have to educate myself to help him to be well-rounded .

One thing I am glad that I did not succumb to even at the coaxing of my family was thinking that something was wrong with him.

Having family members who are more laid back about deadlines, prefer to be outside or lap up music, art and craft activities, they just knew his behavior was not normal. Well at least to them anyway.

It was not easy, but I had to find a common ground to not change the way my son came wired. But i wanted to help him see that certain behaviors are seen as rude and uncaring.

Homeschooled Child’s Learning Personality

Do you know your child’s learning personality? Let me help you through my self-paced online course at my sister site How To Homeschool EZ. Here is what you’ll learn.

How to understand the way your child prefers to learn so that you can teach him in a way that he enjoys learning;
How to pinpoint your child’s learning personality;
A starting point in understanding (barring any special learning challenges or disabilities) and accepting your child’s preferred way of taking in information;
Understanding when the learning personality emerges; and
Teaching tips for each learning personality to stop the head-butting.

Socially Awkward to Socially Acceptable?

I was not only concerned about helping him to over come social difficulty but to challenge him because he had an amazing memory and vocabulary.

Look at some of these things I did to help him socially and at curriculum I used:

1. I switched to a mastery based math to align with his strengths.

First, I switched from a slower pace math program, which is good for a lot of kids, to the mastery program of Singapore Math Practice, Level 1A, Grade 2.

This fed his love of math early and as he got older I added in a spiral math program to help with review because I just wanted to be sure I covered all learning bases.

However, as he grew older, it was evident that Math stayed as his favorite subject and a subject he stayed advanced in. He stayed with a master program through to high school.

2. In addition, I gave up an all-in-one program.

Moreover, I gave up boxed curriculum because my son needed to move to higher level chapter books. But not just any chapter books. I had to feed his desire to expand on his knowledge and research skills and still read living books.

I came across a series call the Whole Story with books like The Hound of the Baskervilles (Whole Story) which were literally a life saver at the time.

Each book has generous pictures, notations, diagrams and extra information throughout the side margin. He could both read and research within the book and it kept him off the computer when I couldn’t supervise him.

3. Keep the social circle limited to a few persons.

Next, when he was younger, I limited the number of kids he played with.

This allowed me to intervene when he felt that a kid was being “childish” (he was).

I was able to use a fight as a teaching moment to teach my son how to be a friend and to give in to his friend even if my son was wrong.

Being wronged builds character and more important, I wanted my son to learn to be peaceful and to relate to the feelings of his friends.

For the sake of precious friendship, it is okay to not have to prove your point all the time.

4. Hone in on weak subjects to reduce a perfectionist mindset.

As he got older, I realized he needed help with creativity and particularly with writing

Unlike a child that loves creative writing, he did not. No, it wasn’t because he struggled with penmanship. Quite the opposite, he could write pages and pages.

The problem was he wanted specifically what I wanted from him in terms of content and form.

I followed what Susan Wise Bauer said about giving kids concrete examples of what to write about and models to follow. I found Classical Writing Aesop and other similar type of beautiful copywork.

And again had great success with it because it used a model for my son to follow as he learned to write.

5. In addition, give your child an outlet for strokes of creativity.

Not only was I interested in his academic development, but I wanted to foster a love for his imagination through art.

He took art lessons, but I chose a teacher that would not only give him art, but would add crafts to his day.

Determined to help foster the creative side of his mind and to deepen his love for people, I organized a homeschool co-op.

I was not going to just invite friends over to our house but I was going to be sure he had interaction on a regular basis.

These are just a few things that I could change right away.

How did my left-brain son turn out?
Not only does he love people and they love him, but I feel he has matured with a deep fellow feeling for people and a love for learning that he is feeding on until adulthood.

Focus on having your left-brain child accept himself and to be the kind of person that you want him to be and not whether other people will socially accept him. Then, your parenting will be well worth all the effort.

Rules for Homeschool Co-ops. Essential or Excessive?

May 20, 2015 | 3 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Whether rules for homeschool co-ops are essential or excessive shouldn’t depend on whether you are the hard working homeschool leader or the appreciative homeschooling attendee.

Unfortunately, this can be the case when you have a structured homeschool co-op.

There are several things that can affect whether a homeschool co-op has rules that literally fill up a booklet or they have informal guidelines.

One thing that can affect rules, which are hotly debated go to the very root of parenting style.

Understanding why rules are in place always helped my family to not let it sour us about attending homeschool co-ops.

Not only do some leaders have rules in place because a tragic incident may have happened before, but when you rent a room, normally the establishment has rules in place too.

For example, one place we rented had a very busy parking lot. With cars backing up and constantly going back and forth, we had to have rules in place for the kids’ safety.

Though none of the girls serving on the board of the homeschool co-op I led were helicopter parents, we would never want any harm to come to any child. We had to make rules, like a child could not go alone to the bathroom or wander around alone at the building.

Middle and high school kids did not have to be accompanied but you would be surprised at how many parents thought it was okay for a younger children to go accompanied because they felt their child was old enough to watch for traffic. Maybe so or maybe not.

Too, our group was responsible for cleaning the bathrooms after the co-op. Many moms expressed their gratefulness for cleaning a bathroom where young kids were not left unattended. Enough said.

Another rule we were adamant about that would sometimes bristle the hair of new families attending our co-op is that our co-op was not a drop and run place.

We required the parents to be there for the co-op. We were not a babysitting service, the disciplining police or teen dating chaperones.

Some co-ops are very large and have parents assigned for those roles. However, because we chose to run our co-op informally and not a mini version of public school, we required parent attendance.

As the homeschool leaders we went to great lengths to treat every child like our own when they were misbehaving. Kindness and love is always the way to treat every child at the homeschool co-op.

What Keeps Your Homeschool Co-op From Getting Better?

However, when that didn’t work, mom and dad know their child best. Discipline has to be applied in the right measure with each child and because kid’s feelings can be very tender, it is a role for the parent.

Being reasonable is also a must for every homeschool leader. When needed we made reasonable exceptions to our rules.

For example, we had one family that was expecting another child and mom couldn’t attend one of our biggest co-ops of the year. She asked another family to be responsible for her kids who didn’t want to miss out on the fun.

We were more than glad to accommodate this family because all of their kids were so well behaved and supportive of the co-op.

The very basic rule for any of our excursions or co-ops was that children were well-behaved and showed up ready to learn.

Of course for toddlers, it was always okay for them to toddle around instead of mom having to fight and hold them all the time in her lap.

When our older children were still, whether standing or sitting, our toddlers eventually modeled the example of our older children as they grew older.

It is very normal in a lot of co-ops for toddlers to move around and we expect our older kids to learn the same way they do when they are home, which is to tolerate the little ones and learn to listen even if the toddler is a bit distracting.

It is different if a toddler is loud and crying, then our moms would address their needs. However, toddlers can learn early on that when we come together, it is for the purpose of learning together and it starts by letting them see what is going on.

Our toddlers were not in danger of being ran over because older kids did not rough house. We simply did not have to put up with kids that couldn’t behave.

Having a few, but meaningful rules was essential in our homeschool co-op. We always appreciated it when parents would ask the thinking behind the rules because we didn’t make them needlessly.

When the formal part of the homeschool co-op was going on, we expected the same behavior as if they were at home doing school. When the co-op was over and it was time to have fun and socialize, our group still followed the rules.

We were blessed to have a great group of moms and dads who cared about all the kids’ safety and understood that rules were in place as a protection.

How about you? Do you attend a homeschool co-op where you feel that some rules are meaningless?

Hugs and love ya,

Also, look at:
Unlocking the Homeschool Leader Within You
Look at my 5 day series of a Homeschooling Co-op Convert

Homeschool High School Transcripts – Anything But Typical

May 16, 2015 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Homeschool High School Transcripts @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

It’s that time of year again when graduation and high school transcripts can be on your mind.

Whether you have to carefully craft a homeschool transcript this year or need to prepare one soon, keep these tips in mind that will make preparing a homeschool transcript a cinch. Really!

Typical Homeschool High School Transcript?

When Mr. Senior 2013 entered the middle school years, I too started my search for typical samples of high school transcripts to use.

Soon, you realize that there are quite a few factors that make each homeschool transcript unique.

Homeschool transcripts are anything but typical. Each one reflects not only the values of each family, but the strengths of each child and the child’s future plans.

A homeschool transcript does not have to be complicated but it can be complex if you don’t have a direction in mind when preparing one.

From Complicated to Clear Homeschool High School Transcripts

Look at these 5 questions that will help you to determine what type of information (content) you want to keep up with during the high school years and how you want to present that information (form).

Do you want to use the standard 4 year approach? Instead of listing each year and the subjects covered, you may want to just list the subjects covered. This works well sometimes for a child that is done with high school in a few years or one that may have gotten behind because of sickness or just because they need to plod along at a different pace.
Do you have extra classes you want to list? To vary classes in high school because it really is the time to investigate strengths and weakness of your child, some kids will take one type of class for one semester and a different one for the second semester. They may have several ½ credit classes during the course of their high school. This takes room to describe the course. What this means is that you may have more classes to list than what some forms have allowed you space or lines to write on. If your child is taking several ½ credit classes, look for a form that gives you flexibility for adding more classes.
If your child will attend college, have you checked with the college to see what type of transcript is needed? Some college requirements may state they want a transcript from an accredited school. Though more and more colleges recognize the power of the momma transcript, some colleges are stickler for their policy. First, be sure you are not wasting record keeping for four years to only find out that the college your child wants to attend has a hard and fast rule about transcripts from an accredited school.
Do you want or need to include your grading system on your transcript? Most transcripts do but the system varies from family to family.
How will you keep a progressive transcript? When Mr. Senior 2013 started to drive, our insurance company needed his progressive transcript to that date. They ended up accepting a progress report which I was able to whip out in a minute because I had been keeping our information in a Word document. If you are an excel spreadsheet type of gal, you might like that method. I don’t care for spread sheets but preferred more of a diary entry journal method when tracking high school. So I just added entries in a Word document each week. Either way, you need to determine how you will track information informally and progressively so that at any time you can prepare a formal document. Do not wait until the end of 4 years or so and try to recall what your teen has accomplished at the end of high school.

Also, look at my YouTube video How to Easily Create the Homeschool High School Transcript to give you a great start.

Look at these samples and links for places to get started.

Homeschool Transcripts – There is a free version here that may suit your needs just fine.
How to Homeschool Today – Sweet! This is a free online transcript generator, which you save as a pdf.
Let’s Homeschool High School – Nice! Has some free editable templates.
Homeschool Curriculum Savings – If you love spreadsheets, then here is a free one in a spreadsheet.
HSLDA – Has free transcripts, detailed or simple in Word and Pdf.
Cindy Downes – More free forms here.
HSLDA – Free 30 day trial on software if you want to try it out.

How to Prepare THE Homeschool High School Transcript

Research is the foundation of a well-prepared transcript.

Be sure and check out my post about how to prepare your homeschool transcript Homeschool High School – How to Prepare THE Transcript (Editable). Also, I have an editable form that may be of help to you.

Preparing the homeschool high school transcript is anything but typical and normal because your journey was unique.

There are some things that I explain in my post Homeschool High School – How to Prepare THE Transcript that you want to keep streamlined to give your transcript some uniformity. However, there is much flexibility with each transcript too.

It is an art to both follow guidelines so that your transcript meets some of the norm, but so that it accurately reflects the unique goals of your family.

Do you have to prepare a homeschool high school transcript soon? Are you dreading it or dreaming about it? (or am I dreaming that you are dreaming about it,okay,okay)

Hugs and love ya,

Here are some more links to start your research. Don’t get overwhelmed, get informed.

10 Days of Planning a High School Homeschool Graduation
Creative Solution for High School When Life Happens
Accreditation Removing the Shroud of Mystery
Homeschool – How to Log Hours for High School

How To - - -

Why Most Homeschool Curriculum Tips Are Useless

From Homeschool Insanity to Homeschool Sense

How to Begin Homeschool Teaching With Minimal Tips

Relax! How to Easily Add Art and Music to Your Homeschool Day