Flexibility and Freedom to Learn

Flexibility and Freedom to Learn! These two concepts make a major difference in the home-school environment. Some families are still struggling with online schools or virtual school programs. Some children find virtual schools boring, uninteresting, or not challenging enough. Others find the blocks of time required for certain subjects to be restrictive or too limiting. These issues all hinder the real learning children could be pursuing.

Virtual school programs – as an alternative to face-to-face learning – might sound okay. To some, virtual schools might seem similar to homeschooling. But as most homeschoolers know, homeschooling isn’t “school at home.”

Homeschooling is a whole-child, well-rounded, natural way of learning that occurs every day – just as children naturally learned and acquired necessary skills from the time they were born, with guidance and care from parents. True homeschooling automatically puts your child’s happiness, health, unique learning style, innate curiosity, life skills, life goals, and real interest in learning first and foremost.

Keep Flexibility and Freedom to Learn in mind this week – and in all the weeks to come. If your child is interested in cats this week, read books, picture books, and illustrated articles on cats of all types – pet cats, domestic cats, feral cats, tigers, lions, cheetahs, panthers, cougars, leopards, jaguars, ocelots, pumas, and more in the Felidae family of cats and wildcats.

Watch cats in real time, online, at rescue centers or zoos, view images of cats and their anatomy, compare their likenesses and differences, compare their running speeds, distances they can cover, their habitats, their behaviors and characteristics, the way they care for their young, the challenges they’ve faced in the past and could face in the future.

Allow children plenty of time, flexibility, and freedom to learn all they want to learn about cats – or dogs, birds, bears, whales, fish, frogs, insects, spiders, snakes – wherever their interest lies this week, or next week, and in the weeks to come.

Maybe it’s robots that excites your child this week. How many different types of robots are there? Walking robots, talking robots, flying robots, swimming robots, crawling robots, one-legged robots, bipedal, tripedal, quadrupedal, hexapods. Who knew there were so many different types of robots!

What types can your child design or build? There’s wheeled robots, mobile robots, stationary robots, remote-controlled robots, autonomous robots, virtual robots, military robots, space robots, social-services robots, industrial robots, domestic robots!

Robots, alone, could encompass an entire month or semester of learning! And with freedom and flexibility, this one topic would include all areas of learning: reading, creating, drawing, describing, writing, calculating, programming, math applications, scientific applications, historic applications, creative thinking, critical thinking, analytical thinking, logical thinking, reasoning skills, inventive skills, and problem-solving skills.

All children deserve freedom and flexibility to learn about a wide variety of subjects and to pursue topics that capture their interests. That’s the beauty and the benefits of homeschooling!

Hundreds more learning ideas and educational activities are provided by EverythingHomeschooling.com for a well-rounded, interesting school year.

Happy homeschooling!

Lesson Plans, Curriculum, Educational Goals Explained

You might find yourself confused by terms such as Lesson Plans or Curriculum. Sometimes educational terms can be as confusing as legal terms. However, your Lesson Plan can be as simple as jotting down ideas and activities for learning this coming week. And your Curriculum can include the Educational Goals and Objectives for your children.

Here’s a few examples of a Curriculum and Lesson Plans: Your Science Curriculum for this coming year could include goals for your child to learn about Earth Science (earth’s composition, volcanoes, earthquakes, planets); Life Science (plants, animals, insects, humans); or Physical Science (magnetism, energy, motion, matter).

Educational Goals and Objectives for Earth Science could be: Learning the different layers of the earth; collecting and identifying rocks; learning the different types of clouds and their impact on earth's atmosphere; creating a miniature water cycle in your backyard; experimenting with erosion in your backyard; constructing an erupting volcano; plus reading and discussing books, articles, and photos on each of these topics/experiments.

Lesson Plans for these Earth Science topics could be: Creating an actual model showing earth’s layers; reading Rocks and Minerals and labeling various rocks collected; making a colorful display showing cloud types and tracking a week’s worth of cloud types and precipitation in your area; photographing the mini water cycle experiment and recording descriptions of how and why it works; recording the erosion experiment, then researching and describing the impact of larger-scale erosion on earth, river banks, seashores; reading Volcanoes and Earthquakes and discussing why, how, and where volcanoes erupt, plus constructing a volcano and recording its eruption.

In Conjunction with these Lesson Plans and Activities, children can describe each of the lessons and experiments in their own words, explaining what they learned, or describe the activities in writing or by drawing illustrations of the experiments. They could display their illustrations or photos of this week’s lessons and activities on a bulletin board, or do a few worksheets on these topics to add to their portfolio. And, always, they can be encouraged to pursue topics branching off from the lessons and activities they’ve done.

This Easy-to-Follow Format will help you create Educational Goals for your children, plus Lessons Plans on topics and subjects to support your goals, as you follow your Curriculum, which simply describes your Educational Goals, Objectives, Lesson Plans, and Learning Activities.

Many more examples are on our website at EverythingHomeschooling.com.

Happy Homeschooling!

Create a Snow Globe and Learn History

Make your own snow globe and learn the history of snow globes.

You’ll also learn about early 19th century France, the Paris Expo of 1878, the Eiffel Tower, the French Revolution, the first snow globes in America, and more.

When children are involved in hands-on projects, they learn so much more and retain what they learn for much longer, too.

See our “Today’s Lesson” at EverythingHomeschooling.com and have fun learning this winter!

Happy homeschooling and enjoy the Christmas season!

Free Homeschool Curriculum + Free Homeschool Lesson Plan Ideas

Free Homeschool Curriculum and Free Homeschool Lesson Plan Ideas are available at EverythingHomeschooling.com.

With the Current Free Homeschool Activities you can:

1. Create Amazing Artwork with Tessellations and Geometric Patterns

2. Learn About Ecosystems and Biomes

3. Cook Up Tasty Math Concoctions

4. Experiment with Magnetism

5. Explore the World with Famous Explorers

6. Experience New Adventures by Reading a Book-a-Day!

Enjoy learning this year with all that we offer at EverythingHomeschooling.com.

Happy Homeschooling and Have a Great Homeschool Year!