Homeschool Freebies

If you’ve read any of those college entrance surveys that are floating around the internet, you realize how few students turned out in schools today understand what’s going on in the world.  One of the many reasons people homeschool is that we feel we can give our children a more well-rounded education.  It’s imperative to understand what goes on in our communities, states, and in our country.  It is no less important for our children to understand these things because they will eventually be making the decisions that shape their environments and those of future generations.

McDougal Littell has a great current events website that is written for middle to high school level children.  It explains the news in succinct terms, gives a glimpse at past events that have shaped our current environments, and will give our students the knowledge they need to shape the world of their future.

Head on over to check it out.  It’s all current events all the time and could certainly enhance social studies for all of your middle to high school students.

Serendip , an information exchange dedicated to providing support and exploration in science, education and social organization, has provided excellent resources for teaching biology.  Although they have many other educational resources, the Hands-on Teaching Activities for Biology are excellent and engaging.

The “hands-on, minds-on” approach of the activities provided caters to the philosophy that students will learn and retain more if both their hands and minds are actively engaged in the learning process.  The biology activities and lessons were written by a retired professor at the University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with a grad student at the same school.  Creationists take note:  These are secular lessons and activities so if you stumble across something you don’t like, don’t flay me.  You were warned.

Most of the activities and experiments listed can be performed with few supplies, but any supplies needed also reference places to obtain them.

All of the teaching guides for the are made available in PDF format and are available for download/printing.

Topics and activities are listed in a sequence that would be suggested for building a solid foundation in biology.  You do not need to follow the sequence; it is simply recommended as an effective building block sequence.

A few of the covered topics include:

• Is Yeast Alive?
• Cellular respiration in Yeast
• Genetics
• Mitosis, Meiosis, and Fertilization
• DNA
• From Gene to Protein-Transcription and Translation
• Evolution by Natural Selection
• Antibiotic Resistance

Head on over and take a look .  Comments are welcome on their site, and they use feedback from teachers and those who use the lessons to improve and update the activities periodically.

I know it’s the weekend, but I came across an interesting site today, so I wanted to pass it along before I forgot about it.

Looks are often deceiving and the Story It website is no exception.  Although the website isn’t much to look at (and parts of it, like the Comic Sans font EVERYWHERE, are actually painful to me) I still wanted to pass it on to you because the site has a LOT of great stuff.

Story It is chock full of story starters, poems, stories to read, nursery rhymes, and word games.  It could be a good way to get your child into the story writing mode, or even just let them have a bit of fun with the word games.  The entire site is geared toward providing ways to explore language arts and would be a great addition to your list of internet resources for those days when you just need to change things up to keep your kid’s attention.

Well, the contest for the one year subscription to EverythingHomeschooling.com has officially ended.  And we have a winner.

Many thanks to those of you who entered for letting me know what ages you’re teaching as well as your style of homeschooling so that I’ll have a better idea of what to post here.

In order to choose the winner, my super awesome hubby got assigned the task of drawing a name from the hat.

So, without further ado, the winner is:  Laurel Santiago.  Laurel has her own homeschooling blog, “Hope for Homeschoolers”, chronicling the trials and joys of her journey through homeschooling her children.   Congratulations, Laurel.  I hope that you find the resources on Everything Homeschooling useful for your family.

Thank you again to the very generous Sherri Linsenbach for sponsoring this giveaway!

Did you know that people are AWESOME?  You didn’t?  Well, they are.  Why?  Because awesome people make great programs and websites like Spelling City.

I found Spelling City the other day and I’m totally delighted to be sharing it with you today.  Seriously. Great. Website.

So, here’s the dish on Spelling City .  The website is simple to navigate and clean!  Plus it has a really cool city skyline in the header that appeals to the webby geek in me.  I’m not even to the good part yet.

On the site, they have an embedded application where you can create a spelling list, create a test on it, and administer the test to your child (or just challenge yourself).  The lists and tests are easy to set up and it grades your child on how well they did.  The test requires you to click a button to hear the word, and then it is used in a sentence, so you will need your volume turned on.

After you’ve finished the test, you get to view your results.  If you missed any words, click “Teach Me” next to the word and the word is said aloud, printed on the screen correctly, and broken into syllables.

There are sample lists and you can save your own as well.  Once you have a list saved or choose an existing list, you can create printable pages for handwriting practice, play games using the word list, or get taught the spelling of the words.

Also, if your child passes the spelling test, they can enter their name and print out a personalized certificate.  Cool, huh?  Might be just the incentive your struggling speller needs.

Head over and check things out.  If you get stuck and don’t understand how to set up your list, there are short video tutorials that give you a screencast demo of the program and its features.

Just a reminder that you’ve only got two days left to enter to win the One-Year Subscription to EverythingHomeschooling.com .

It’s free to enter, and not many have entered, so your chances of winning are high!

I just love finding websites chock full of great (and I do mean GREAT) resources for homeschoolers and teachers to use.  Math is a touchy subject for many students, but it doesn’t have to be.

MathEbook.net provides math resources for your children from kindergarten clear through high school.  The website is fully interactive with all of their worksheets in a PDF format that allows your child to enter their answers directly into the document without ever printing anything.  For those of you trying to go green or just save a bit of money on printing supplies, this is a perfect solution to getting great materials your kids can use without breaking the bank for printing.

On the home page of the site, they have a ladder with rungs (duh, all ladders have rungs, right?) that correspond to the general grade levels.  Click your desired level and you’ll be taken to the corresponding grade level page that has the link for all of the virtual e-workbooks for that level on the left side of the page.  On the right side of the page near the top, you’ll find a banner that you can click to see video tutorials for math lessons.  If math isn’t your strong subject and you have to teach tricky topics to your child, these video tutorials will be a life saver for you (or at least a pride saver when you have to explain to your child that you don’t have a clue).

In addition to the workbooks and video tutorials, there’s also a math dictionary as well as a download section.  All of the workbooks/worksheets are downloadable and if you want, you can save and print off pages you want to use or let your child work digitally.

As always, if you like what you find, leave the folks at MathEbook.net a bit of feedback to let them know they’re doing a great job !

The Home School Mom is one of my favorite sites for homeschooling resources.  They have a wealth of information, freebies, and resources on everything related to homeschooling.  There are planners available for free, lists of academic contests, information about homeschool laws and issues that effect us as homeschoolers.

The site in itself is a wonderful find for any homeschooler, but the page I want to focus on today is their new addition to the Schoolroom .  The newly added “States of the USA ” page is a pretty basic page…a map of the US and states listed below.  It’s what you find once you click on a state that’s the great part.  On each state’s page you’ll find information about the state including the state’s pertinent facts, famous people from the state, important events that shaped the state’s history, as well as a list of resources (internet resources) and websites where you can learn more about the state.

But wait!  That’s not all.  On each state’s page, there is a list of homeschool groups, classes, and events for the state. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about your state, this list could prove invaluable to you if you ever need to find a local group or some support for your homeschooling endeavors.

Head on over to The Home School Mom and check out the States of the USA page.  While you’re there, sign up for one or more of the three newsletters they send out (form is at the bottom of every page).  I get them and they are worth the read!

Also, don’t stop at the States page.  There is so much information on The Home School Mom that you could use that it’s almost wrong not to have a look around.

Don’t forget to drop them a line if you find something useful.  Everyone likes to feel appreciated for their efforts!

It’s a bright new day, a brand new week, and today is the Chinese New Year .  Do you have plans to learn a little about Chinese culture today?  Learning about cultural holidays is a fun way to expand your history and geography lessons.  Know a Chinese friend that could talk to your children about the history of the Chinese New Year?  It would be a great way to reinforce cultural awareness in your kids.

If you don’t know someone who would be willing to step in and explain the back-story of the Chinese New Year, head on over to Activity Village where you can get information about the history of the Chinese New Year, printables , games , crafts , stories , and other activities.  In addition to the Chinese New Year’s activities, there are also many traditional Chinese games , so you’ll probably find something new and fun to do with your kids to help them relate better to the history and geography of the region.
Also, just a reminder that there are just two days left to enter to win the one year subscription to EverythingHomeschooling.com.  Enter here for your chance to win!

I click a seemingly endless number of links during my travels through the internet every day.  I always find something great.  Today is no exception.

While on one of my clicking sprees early this morning I found an incredible site that I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of before.  The kids and I have been glued to the site most of the morning.  What has my kids glue to the computer screen?  Cartoons?  Nope.  Games?  Nope.  TV shows online?  Not this time.

Science.  My kids soak up science like my carpet soaks up spilled koolaide.  We’ve spent the morning watching presentations on how to teach science topics to your students.  The website is K8 Science and if you don’t have it bookmarked you should head there now!

K8 Science is jam-packed with goodies for your whole family to enjoy.  There are streaming video presentations that will guide you through ways to teach science and the topics they cover in the streaming videos have slide show presentations that you can use to teach the lessons to your children.  There are downloadable PDFs with resources you won’t want to pass up.

Although the site is intended to be a resource for school teachers, it would be an invaluable free resource for homeschoolers or individuals interested in refreshing or enriching their science knowledge.

If you like science at all, make sure you free up some time before visiting K8 Science because there is such a wealth of information on the site, you’ll lose track of time as you dig through all that’s available there.