Our First Hackathon and more adventures

PUSH the LIMITS

TRY Something NEW

These last two weeks were VERY hectic for us. I can't believe I was able to work a full-time job in between. I fell into bed on Sunday and didn't move til 10am, barely making it to church on time. And this past Sunday, we didn't make it at all as I completely forgot it was a holiday weekend.

HACKATHON

 The Team

 Talking to the Subject Matter Experts

 They really did a great job at asking questions and interviewing the customers with the different challenges. The team split up to do it and my girls decided to do their questioning together.

 The Team's 1st ONLINE MEETING using GOOGLE HANGOUTs
My 19 yr old is the Team Leader. Squeezing this in between working full-time and graduate school.

 RUBICs CUBE while attending the online meeting.

They had some challenges with their first online meeting, but now they have the hang of it it's become a good experience for all of them.

We signed up for this at the last minute. I asked my 19 yr old daughter Rose if she could lead a team so that her 15 yr old sister would feel more comfortable.

Rose jumped at the chance to do it. They have 1 month to create a solution. They decided to work on a web-application for the disabled.

DATE WITH HUBBY CRASHED BY DAUGHTER

Well hubby and I wanted to go to my favorite restaurant after dropping my daughter and her friend off at the Greek Festival. Right after I sat down, Rose texted me to pick them up.

They got to share some of the great Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory with us, after Hubs and I ate his Jambalaya Pasta. Yum!

DAVE & BUSTER's 1/2 WEDNESDAY and MEETUP with Homeschool Co op

The kids were so excited to be meeting up with other homeschoolers their age. We belong to two homeschool groups and we are just getting to know the folks on this one. This group stays busy and thankfully they do things in the afternoons, evenings and weekends sometimes. It has allowed me to be able to schedule them for over 8 events this year.

And... THEY DID AN OVERNIGHT GAMERs PLAY NIGHT

My wonderful hubby, partner in teaching, took the kids to the Gamer's overnight. His job is a bit more flexible at this time than mine is. The kids prefer him going to these types of activities anyway as he enjoys video gaming more than I do.

Last minute, I had to change their schedule and lighten their load when I realized all the activities they had this week.

SPEED RACER's WEEK

12 yrs

Changes! We had a SITUATION with our LANDRY ACADEMY Algebra 1 class. The teacher changed the book the week before class and we purchased the original book noted on the course signup. LANDRY IS WONDERFUL and gave us our 'generic' online course back, and allowed me to register him for another class. We elected to do the Algebra 1( which is SAXON Algebra 1 at home using the Dive disc) and to take a Logic course in the Spring.


(7am-8:30am) Online Live Class
Landry Academy Classes

Writing ER: is on Monday's.  He now is waking himself up for his morning classes! He does the homework on Saturday evenings since he said he didn't want to do the work on the Weekday's. We will see how this goes.

Python Programming is on Wednesday's: This class gave him a bit of a challenge, he doesn't like the reading homework, but I read it with him later in the day to get him engaged. He does a bit of the weekly homework a little each day.

(9 am-11am) DAILY Independent
Study.com
Psychology, Sociology, Macro Econ, Physics and Information Systems he now has these down to 10 MINUTES per course with finishing of the quizzes of 5 questions with 4 correct or more. He decided that if he didn't past the quiz after 2 tries, he would save this work for the WEEKEND (seems he doesn't mind weekend homework).

Algebra 1 (Saxon with DIVE dvds): He does a Lesson a day, watches the DIVE video, does Problem set #1 evens or odds. Then he gets a test every 10 lessons that mom or dad administers. He actually likes Saxon better than he liked Abeka's Algebra 1. He told me that he thinks Saxon gives you a slower start and more explainations than Abeka Algebra 1 did.


(11am-12:30am) Online Live Class
Landry Academy Classes

Spanish  is on Thursday's: This teacher posted a Quizlet list for the kids to go over daily with homework. He started working through the list on Monday. He does a bit of the weekly homework a little each day.

Online Classes
IXL (Language Arts) is on Monday and Wednesday and it takes him twenty minutes to finish. He doesn't like it, but realizes that it reinforces his grammar skills.

Prodigy (Math Game) Tuesday and Friday and he really likes it. He said sometimes he has to watch the time because he would stay on it for too long.

CTCMath (Algebra): on Monday and Friday. He does this before his Study.com work and says it helps him to understand or review anything that he didn't do well on with the Saxon/Dive lessons.It takes him about 30 minutes.

(12:30-1:00pm) - lunch

(1pm-2pm) DAILY Independent

Membean we lowered this to 10 minutes of training a day.

Geometry (Teaching Textbooks) he is whizzing through this and I asked him if he wanted to put it aside, he said it helps him with understanding his Abeka Geometry, and gives him more practice.

Speed Reading & Comprehension with Ace Reader he is almost finish this tool. I will have to find him another Speed reading activity tool at this rate.

(2pm-2:30pm) DAILY Independent


Copy work is doing Great Writer's Quotes in cursive, he writes so well in cursive and to think he's a lefty! It takes him 10 minutes

(2:30pm-3pm) Snack Break

(3pm-4:00pm) DAILY with Mom / Dad or Sibling assistance.
Geometry AbekaAcademy he finished his test and got a 78% but still had some concepts he needed help with. We called the student tutoring line which seemed to put him back on track.

Sequential Spelling  still seems a bit easy for him (I think membean is really helping). I am considering giving him the chapter test to see if I should just move him on. This takes about 10 minutes.


(5pm) Martial Arts  or Soccer
Soccer & Martial Arts: Which he loves having something to do everyday to break the school monotony.

PE Is done 6 days a week. He is in Civilian Airforce Program (or CAP), Young Eagles on Saturday's and now wants to add dance (not happening!)

(6:15-6:30pm) 2 days a week with Mom / Dad or Sibling assistance.
3-minute devotional for guys is on Wednesday and Friday's. He reads the lesson with his dad and now insist on saying the prayer.

(7-7:30pm) Dinner

(7:30pm - 8:15pm) DAILY with Mom / Dad or Sibling assistance.
Chemistry with Abeka he didn't do to well on a recent quiz, so I sent him to watch some CRASH COURSE videos to help him to better understand concepts. I give him the quizzes pretty much open book, but the test are closed book.

(8:15pm-8:30pm) DAILY with Mom / Dad or Sibling assistance.
Wordly Wise he finishes these pretty quick and have been making between 75% and 85% on his test.

(8:15pm-9:15pm) 3 or 2 days a week with Mom / Dad or Sibling assistance.
English Literature and American Literature he takes pretty good notes during these classes and seems to be somewhat interested in the literature. I am not making him do some of the required papers since he is taking the Landry course.

Weekend Plans: Both CAP and YOUNG EAGLES programs were cancelled as was his SOCCER game.

Tiger Lilly's Week: High Schooler /Dual Enrolled 15 yrs old

All her classes are in full gear and we made some additions to her schedule.

(9 am-10:30am) DAILY
Landry Academy
Network Pro she has class on TUESDAY and does her homework daily in this class. The homework (Mon, Wed, Thu, and Fri) takes her about thirty minutes.
 
10:30am-11:30am - 2 days a week
Software Development class (Homeschool Class by mom) She is working on building a web application for the Hackathon - mother assigned :-D They are working on Wordpress, with JAVA and PHP to build their website and app.

See the Light Art Class 2 days a week and she shows off her Art in our 'living room gallery'. weekly.

11:30am-12:30pm- 3 days a week
Calculus with Saxon & Dive and CTCMath She only worked on the CTCMath these last two weeks. She also has been resorting to Khan Academy to further understand some concepts.

1:30pm-4:30pm- 3 days a week [Dual Enrolled College Courses with UMUC.edu]
Nutrition she noted that the adult students aren't doing that great of a job on their Discussion questions. She was shocked considering how much work I made her put into hers. I explained to her that everyone shoots for a different grade and for her to keep shooting for the best. She had a discussion post of about 200 words to do and a paper. Then a quiz.

Relational Database Design This course she had another project and a discussion post due. The project I had to help her out by googling some stuff she couldn't seem to find. She emailed the teacher who further directed her.

Technical Writing This class required her to write two Discussion points that she had to give directions on how to use products. Then she had to watch an Ikea video of someone putting together a bed and then she had to create the written directions to the activity.

5pm-6:30pm - 3 days a week - PE
Soccer and Martial Arts (we got her to try a Friday class).


7pm-8pm - 4 days a week
Japanese with 1.5 hr tutoring and I added some daily IMMERSION cds.

8pm-9pm - 2 days a week
3-minute Devotional for Girls we are moving steadily through the devotional. However, she isn't asking as many questions as I'd like.

WORKING PARENT's LOG

Meals I basically through something together for dinner the days I had to cook. My girls cooked a few days. My oldest son bailed on cooking.

Cleaning. Started a new routine that has the main rooms of the house clean (almost) daily. The bedrooms are wrecked until Saturday night when we clean up.

Work & Life Balance. I am still dropping off my two oldest kids to work on my way to work. It takes me 1 hour to do so and makes my work time erratic. So right now, my hubs has been taking over most of the evening teaching and coordination.

Lesson Planning. I believe I finally have our schedule settled. That will make it easier to get the lesson planning solidified.

Rest. Now it's easier to get to bed by 10:30pm. If my husband takes over I get in bed by 9pm. Now if I could just convince myself to go right to sleep.

Marriage Check Up. Well our date got crashed by two lovely ladies, my daughter and her friend. We still had a blast sharing cheesecake with them.

Our 2015 to 2016 Curriculum Plans

A New Year Already!

2015-16 School Year Curriculum

Here's our line-up for our FALL season

Our Method to The Madness

We don't do a typical Middle or High School. We blend our middle school and high school in order to prepare our kiddos for Dual Enrollment Courses or CLEP test which are accepted by our local Community College.

Therefore, you will see many grade levels spread over several subjects for our kids. The focus of subjects outside of Math, English and Science is based on their interest.

Here's the Plan

Three Semesters: Fall/Winter/Spring

Speed Racer - (11yrs) our Blended 7th-9th grader.
 - Block Schedule - some classes are only 1 / 2 or 3 days a week
 - Total Hours Of School a Day - 5 to 7 hours

This was our original schedule - 3 weeks after school started, I re-evaluated and changed it to the one below:

Independent Work:
Scratch (Landry Academy) moved to Winter
Language Practice (IXL.com) moved to Winter

Python (Techrocket.com)
Vocabulary Word Usage (Membean.com)
Typing (TypingWeb.com) moved to Winter

Writing (Time4Writing.com)
Math Review (CTCMath.com)


Work With Parent:
English 7th - Grammar - Spelling (AbekaAcademy.com)
Algebra 1 (AbekaAcademy.com) moving to Winter semester
Spanish (Middlebury Interactive and Mango Languages)
US History (AbekaAcademy.com)
African American History (Movie Based)
American Government (AbekaAcademy.com)
Economics (AbekaAcademy)
Logic (Compass Classroom) Moved to Spring
Biology (Abeka Academy)


His new schedule will be the following:

We are able to get through all of these within 5.5 hours

Does in the morning:
CTCMath (for Math lab): M-F (Independent)
TechRocket (for Python programming):  M-F (Independent)
Membean (for Vocabulary building):  M-F (Independent)
Time4Writing (online): M-F (Independent)

Do in the evening:
English/Spelling/Reading - (Abeka) :  M-F (with Mom/Dad or Homehelper)
Saxon (Math 7/8): M-F (with Mom/Dad or Homehelper)
Biology (Abeka): M-F (with Mom/Dad or Homehelper)
Economics (Abeka): T-Th (with Mom/Dad or Homehelper)
American Gov't (Abeka): M-W-F (with Mom/Dad or Homehelper)

Tiger Lilly - our Blended 9th-10th grader.

 - Total Hours Of School a Day - 6 to 7 hours  at least 1 day of the weekend for homework

Tiger Lilly's schedule is packed. She asked for the Homeschool Courses as they are her passionate interest in becoming a Video Game Designer. The last 2 years of homeschooling, she was able to succeed with this amount of coursework, so we are giving it a try provided her Dual Enrolled courses don't suffer.

 Homeschool Classes

Japanese (Landry Academy)  - Wed. Only (do homework on that day)
C Programming (Landry Academy) - Tue. Only (do homework on that day)
PC Pro (Landry Academy) - Mon. Only (do homework on that day)
Java (TechRocket.com) - Thu
Unity3D (TechRocket.com) - Wed
Animation 1 - (theanimcourse.com) - Tue 

Community College Dual Course

Psychology (online) - Tue (Fri-Sat for homework)
US History 1 (online) - Wed (Fri-Sat for homework)
Computer Applications for Micro Systems (online) - Thu (Fri-Sat for homework)
College Math (In Person) - Fri (Tue and Thu for homework)

Classes I changed:
Game Programming (DigiPen Academy)  Her Associates Degree Program has classes
SAT Review (Landry Academy)  She wanted to study on her own

Why this Challenging Schedule?

We grew into it. My kids had been used to a 7 hour school day. Each class was about an hour long, they also had homework that they would do in the evenings and weekends.

When we started homeschooling, we started slow, but they didn't have any screentime on the TV, video games or cellphones until after dinner.

So when they finished their assigned work, they started asking for more things 'to do'. That's when I came up with Independent work that were online work that they could do and I could check when I had a chance.

Also, they liked changing things up after a few weeks.

Where's the Fun?

Yep, with their schedules, they love their sports. They do a sport daily which takes 2 hours out of their day, gets them out and chatting up with their friends. The weekend, My Tiger Lilly is in a Girl's Who Code and CyberJitsu girls club where she interacts with other girls. My Speed Racer loves dancing, martial arts, gymnastics and lacrosse.

Working Parent Juggling?

Both my husband and I work. However, my older two kids are living at home this school year.

Dad works from home a few times a week, Mom works a 40 hr work week and the college students are home at various times.

School Schedule:
A.M Schedule - Dad is the Instructor
Afternoon - Rose or Razor Ray will be home with students
Late Afternoon - Mom is the Instructor
Evening -  Dad take Speed Racer and Tiger Lilly to sports - Mom is cooking dinner
Late Evening - Dad is the Instructor

Chores - Kids clean up before bed. All others will be done on Saturdays and Sunday after church
Meal Planning - Prepping of meals will be on Sunday (1) Crockpot (2) Grilled (3) Oven Baked
Marriage Checkup - Friday Nights are date nights for Hubba and Me.

Excitement and Mayhem!

I hate them! I love them! VIDEO GAMES has become an addiction with many faces in my home.

This week, I figured I'd give my 10yr old a reprieve from his video-game punishment.

DRAWBACKS OF VIDEO GAMES for ALL AGES

When I hear people say that they let their kids play video games for hours and hours, all weekend long I cringe.

I'm a techie myself, and design large computer systems - even had dreams of writing and creating my own video games one day. YEP.

Until I realized as a parent how much time this sucks up and the NEGATIVE aspects of being a full-time gamer can be.

HAVING AN OLDER CHILD who plays mature games is detrimental when you have a younger child who can't.

What happens? Well the younger child, watches their sibling play (even though they aren't supposed too). They also sneak and play themselves (even though they aren't supposed too.)

And HAVE YOU - yes YOU - the PARENT actually sat down and played and watched these games with your kids?

Oh, and if your kid can't watch an older sibling play - they WATCH GAMERS ON YOUTUBE show them things that they can do in the game that may not be easily figured out.

Did you also know that your kid can (1) search for inappropriate websites on their game systems - and you the parent will never know? (2) meet people and devolve things about themselves and the parent will never know? (3) experience and see things at a much younger age than even on TV?

So, my kids are on another 3 month video game sabbatical. And when their older brother leaves for college - they may not see a video game system for the entire school year. 

SO. THIS WEEK WAS FRUSTRATING

We had to devise yet another way to rid my 10yr old of his video game obsession after realizing that he'd been sneaking downstairs at night while everyone was asleep to play video games in wild abandon.

My older dd too is hit with the Minecraft bug, but that's not all she sneaks and plays either. She too is going on vacation from video games as she's been playing Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and Grand Theft Auto (all games belonging to her 19yr old brother)

Sheesh! I hate being the meanie parent that has to pack up video games and systems and hide them - locking them away for months.

SO. THIS WEEK WAS EXCITING
Hubba and I went off to a Marriage Retreat! Lovely! After 21 years of marriage we enjoyed mentoring younger couples. We even joined up with 2 other couples we went to college with.

I ordered NEXT YEARS MATERIALS! Woot! Woot! I really think I am a bit of a curriculum junkie.

Also, ordered....

Tynker.com for my 10 year old to use next week because I just found out about it and ... ALL OUR SCHOOL LESSONS will be done next week (happy dancing!)

Speed Racer's finishing up test and quizzes with Abeka, his Currclick Spanish 3rd week and he asked for a break from Xtramath.com where he is starting on Multiplication.

BRIDGE SCHOOL TIME

Since most instruction will be ending for both next week we are doing a lighter schedule.

Keeping instruction time to the following:

Speed Racer (10 year old) - everything online from April-June
2 hours and mostly independent

Time4Learning (all subjects)
Tynker.com (computer programming concepts for kids)
Xtramath (multiplication)
Music Appreciation (Education-Portal.com and Easy Peasy High School)
Art Appreciation (Easy Peasy High School)
Logic (workbooks for his grade)
Writing and Rhetoric (from amazon Workbook and Teacher's guide)
Teaching Textbooks (TT Math 6th)
Spanish (Currclick live and Education-Portal.com)

Tiger Lilly (13yr old) - focus on studying for CLEPS
3 hours and mostly independent

Java Programming (youth digital)
Game Design 2 (youth digital)
Biology (Thinkwell)
Aleks math (College Mathmatics - since she finished Alg 1 and Geometry this year)
3 weeks focus on one of the following CLEP test (English Literature, American Literature, Humanities, College Math - using Instantcert, SpeedyPrep, REA.com, Peterson's Review Test and Quizlet)

Bite off a Lot Lately?

Well I did! Woot! 

This week work at the day gig almost did me in. I love, love, love my job. It wasn't my first choice for a career but as a 2nd choice it way fits me.

Not only that, but Mom takes the evening shift since Hubba has to work late due to taking the morning shift with kids. So what does that mean? Only I have to drive the kids to all those activities I've got listed for them below (every day of the week they now have one)

However, it totally stuck a fork in my plans for my HOMESCHOOL and my poor little Tiger Lilly paid for it.

CLEP and DSST Testing Diary

Tiger Lilly crammed for 2 weeks and sat for her COLLEGE COMPOSITION CLEP and we got her scores back with a PASS! Woohoo for her :-D

However, with me working overtime this last week, she sat for her DSST TECHNICAL WRITING test, pretty much cold because she and I was supposed to study this week and got very little of it done.

Work = Overtime = too many darned activities (we added Lacrosse this week and martial arts) = Failed test...

So, she failed her DSST TECHNICAL WRITING test by 5 stinky points!!

Now what?

She wants to do the retest before she leaves for Summer Sleep Away camp. With DSST you have to wait 90 days before you can retake the test.

Tiger Lilly told me she is glad she took it. That know she knows what to expect and it will be easier for her next time - > as long as she gets at least 2 weeks to study. (Mom learning lesson from kid? Yep. Always.)

Lessons Learned:
1) My girl needs at least 2 weeks in between test to study
2) Move the test date if you are not ready
3) Retaking a test doesn't freak her out, she doesn't mind and sees the benefits in it
4) Her retaking a test - SHOULD NOT freak mom out.

OUR WEEK OF HECTIC MAYHEM

Other than the cramming for test, we got a lot accomplished.

Tiger Lilly:
She finished up the following subject.

Geometry - Thinkwell is pretty much finished. Just 2 chapters. She has a lot to do with Teaching Textbooks Geometry though and finished 4 lessons of it this week.

Algebra 1 - The Abeka Algebra 1 DVD course is about 120 lessons in of the 170 left. She finished up 3 lessons this week and plans to do the work from 2 of them over the weekend.

Java with Youth Digital - She loves doing this more than the Game Design 2 so she did this 4 days this week, finishing up Module 4.

Game Design 2 - Tiger Lilly has been slacking on this one and only squeezed in one lesson this week.

Technical Writing DSST Test - Only got to study flash cards and watch videos in 4 days. Took test on Friday and missed her pass by 5 points. Will table this subject until June when she retakes it with her College Math Clep.

Activities: Went to the Girls STEM day at the Naval Academy last Saturday.
Sports: Started Lacrosse, Martial Arts and is finishing up tumbling. Still doing Hip Hop Dance one day a week.


Speed Racer:
This week he is working well independently.

Overall he's finished up to Lesson 151 of 170 from Abeka's Academy's DVD/Streaming homeschool

So I'm slowing things down getting ready for his 'bridge' school year of subjects that will be a lighter load.

Bible: He finished 3 days of it this week

Math: He finished 4 days this week of Abeka, Teaching Textbooks Math 6, and XtraMath.com

Reading: Skipped Abeka reading and is reading his own book of choice to me outloud.

Penmanship: He's now just working on the exercises that don't require him writing spelling words in cursive. However, for a lefty, he's writing is superb.

Spelling: Got  a C on his spelling test. I think he's getting lazy with writing his words 3 times and putting them in spell city

History: Got an A on his History test! Woot!

Health: He's interested in this class at least and finished up 4 days of it. There's lots of quizzes and worksheets.

Spanish: We are using Standard Deviants DVDs, Education-Portal.com and now Currclick.com as a Live Class.

SPANIsH with CurrClick! A success. We just started this on Tuesday and he is LOVING it! The teacher is very good. And keeps the class engaging and in order. This was a win. win.

Activities: Visiting friends
Sports: Tumbling, Hip Hop Dance, Break Dancing, Martial Arts and now Lacrosse (shoot me now!)

BIT OFF A LOT, and GOT a lot done in spite of some hiccups.

I can say that even with the unexpected snow days, the extra work ours, the crazy test schedule, I am pleased.

I learned so much about myself and my kids during this week that I'll take the LOSSES and make them GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES for IMPROVEMENT.

How do you and your homeschool grow from these challenges?

Planning Forward Middle School to Graduation

My Umbrella Group encouraged me to sit down with my daughter and plan out a TENTATIVE curriculum for her through Graduation since I wanted her to be able to graduate by 17yrs as well as attend Community College.

Here's what we did.

ASK CHILD THREE THINGS THEY WANT TO BE 

Myself and Tiger Lilly sat down and she told me three careers she was interested in. (1) Veterinarian (2) Physical Therapist (3) Teacher (was changed to Engineer)

WHAT DO THEY WANT TO HAVE

Then I asked her what she wanted. We picked out cars, houses, a boat, and clothes.

BUDGET CHILD'S FUTURE

After she picked out and priced her new home, car, clothes and job income I walked her through the possible monthly budget and where she fell short.

Then she changed her career choices around. #3 became 'Engineer'

PLAN THE PATHWAY

After that, we went onto College websites and reviewed requirements to get in. My daughter didn't mind going to Community College for 2 years to be able to mature and add credits under her belt when she realized this little secret.

'Being a transfer student with an AA degree' opens doors. It takes away the requirement for an SAT or even a diploma. Also, it's much easier, cheaper to transfer to a prominent 4 year college with a degree than without.

Tiger Lilly 's Plan

7th Grade	8th Grade	9th Grade	10th Grade	11th Grade
English 7	English with Lit focus	Classical Literature	Writing Essays & Writing for the SAT	Community College
Algebra 1	Algebra 2	Geometry	Pre-Calc	Community College
Physical Science	Biology	Chemistry	Physics
US History	World History	US History 11	US Government
Health	Spanish 1	Spanish 2	Micro-Biology OR Essential & Comprehensive  Anatomy & Physiology
Game Design 1 (Youth Digital)	Java 1 Program	Visual Basic 1Program	C# Program 1
Game Design 2 (Youth Digital)	Java 2 Program	Visual Basic 2Program	C# Program 2
Typing	Music History	World Geography	SAT Review
Bible	Art	Economics	Adventure Novel (One Year Novel)

Other classes we are looking to add (Per my little lady's request)
Japanese
Painting
Logic * after mom's suggestion
Film making
Script Writing
Public Speaking
Sign Language
Study of Animal Life, mainly sealife
African American History
American Indian History

Cool deviations from regular books and texts
Movie Based (Netflix) curriculum
Blog building per subject using edublogs.net
Exploration and discovery field trips
Visual Exploration using pinterest boards that student builds
Interviews and Family Tree Building

The curriculum we used are:

www.abekaacademy.com
www.thinkwell.com
www.myteacher.com
www.homeschoolprogramming.com
www.oneyearnovel.com
www.rapidlearning.com
www.chalkdust.com
www.youthdigital.com
www.time4writing.com
www.seethelightshine.com
www.typingweb.com
www.mathwithoutborders.com

SO HAVE YOU AND YOUR KID PLANNED IT YET? The future awaits~!

Great High School Homeschool Supplement Resources

Using an out of the box curriculum doesn't mean I have everything I need or want to use to school my daughter.

SUPPLEMENTS? WHY BOTHER?

Once you've paid for a curriculum that seems to have all you want - or even put several different curriculums together to create the best option for your child, it may not be enough.

Sometimes your student may need a different perspective or way to learn the same information. My kids always needed that, even when they were in traditional schools.

It improves their overall understanding of difficult subjects without boring them to death.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A GOOD SUPPLEMENT

When I've searched out a supplement to a subject such as Algebra, Chemistry, Biology, Writing or even History, I try to look for a compliment to the core curriculum.

I want it to be fun, fast, and reinforce the facts.


HERE's MY HOT LIST of SUPPLEMENTS I've used for my older daughter

1) Rapid Learning for Chemistry and Biology- https://www.rapidlearningcenter.com/courses.html - then I follow up with a more traditional DVD school program. My oldest daughter loved this quick approach.

2) Algebrator - (http://softmath.com/adv/algebra-class.html) breaks down any algebra problem entered by the student. Is a good tool/resource for any algebra program. Another good tool to do this is, Mathway: http://www.mathway.com/problem.aspx?p=algebra

3) Time4Learning - (www.time4learning.com) is now doing High School Courses starting in Aug 2013. (only used for remedial help and a change in look and feel of subject matter)

4) Time4Writing - (www.time4writing) I use in addition to the standard English Curriculum

5) SAT Review - Chalkdust (www.chalkdust.com) is what my oldest daughter liked most of her choices. Also a good resource is YourTeacher.com which also offers other great courses and references them to actual textbooks that is an option. Otherwise all the teaching is done online.

6) Currclick - (http://www.currclick.com/) online classes that are reasonably priced(I plan on using this for my kid's Spanish class - they have online courses)

7) Youth Programming Video Games - (www.YouthDigital.com) a great primer for more advanced programming topics

8) Homeschool Programmer (http://www.homeschoolprogramming.com/) I order this with the DVD and books.

9) Teaching Textbooks MATH- Yes, I use this as a supplement for high school Algebra 1 and 2. The subject matter in TT Algebra 1/2 only covers the 1st year of High School Algebra.We call it our 'MATH LAB' class. (www.teachingtextbook.com) I've tried to purchase this used but the prices almost match getting it new.

10) Kinetic Books - This is like having a living book to learn Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1 & Algebra 2. www.kineticbooks.com

11) Bagatrix - Pre-Calculus and Calculas tool that will walk through any Calculus problem you put in it. http://www.bagatrix.com/calculus.aspx

12) Froguts - use for disection like video for science, http://froguts.com/

13) Organizing Our Homeschool using WORKBOXES - List of different examples of the Workbox System, http://www.squidoo.com/workboxes

14) Online Music Instruction - I do this before the kid takes formal lessons to see if they are really intersted.  Guitar Lessons: http://youtubeguitarlessons.net/   Drum Lessons: http://www.drumeo.com/members/

15) Spanish Help and Free Curriculum - Main Page Link of Spanish Freebies: http://www.examiner.com/article/fabulous-free-resources-for-spanish-language-learning-for-all-ages