Keeping collections is good for children. The benefits of collecting do not come from the type of collecting done on the Internet with a credit card. That thinly veiled consumerism is not what I mean by collecting. Beneficial collecting is also not the hoarding of valuable things in hopes of reselling them later for a…
“A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” ~ Abraham Lincoln Don’t we all want to raise children who LOVE to read? Reading is a gift we can give our children that will NEVER leave them. It is the gift of travel, fantasy, knowledge, and so…
No matter where you have decided to educate your children (at home or by sending them to public or private school), as their parent, you have many opportunities to help them learn at home without using formal schooling methods. These six activities are easy to include in your family life and can be a wonderful…
Every human being loves attention and praise. Many of us even crave it and feel less than confident when we are not reassured by affirming words. As parents, we have incredible influence over our children through the words we use with them. Unknown to many parents, some types of praise are actually counterproductive to hard…
We typically enjoy lunch time at our house as a break from the academic school day (or a chance to enjoy an educational video). However, from time to time, we use lunch as a learning opportunity. Ways to Incorporate Learning into Lunch Time The food pyramid and other nutrition topics this meal is from…
As parents, we all know how frustrating it can be when our kids are not listening to us, when they have tuned out and our words have become nothing more than noise. Is there anything more aggravating than repeating ourselves a thousand times a day? Our children’s attention spans are more fragmented today than ever…
If you have a child in school or you are homeschooling, chances are that you might have a need to work on spelling words in your home. Although, I do know that there are some homeschoolers that don’t use weekly spelling lists, but rather feel that children will learn to spell just by being immersed…
Punctuation, along with its companion visual cues of capital letters and spacing, captures key aspects of language that go beyond words themselves (such as posing a question, emphasizing an idea, pausing, and so on). The tools for representing this information (periods, question marks, exclamation points, etc.) are generally not taught until the children are way…
Educating your children at home doesn’t have to be expensive if you are willing to be creative. For example, an ordinary magazine can be used to create weeks of language arts and math activities. Most children will love being able to cut up or write in a periodical to do these unique activities. Language Arts…
Recognizing words and knowing immediately what it says is important for children to properly learn to read. Visual memory is what helps a child recognize a word. Parents often want to know how to improve their child’s memory and improve their reading skills. (For a more in depth description of all the techniques needed to…
