Homeschooling:  'Subjects'

On this page:

Introduction
Free Materials
Subjects on this page

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Introduction

Because most of us were educated in schools, we tend to think of our learning as consisting of 'subjects.'  In reality Life is a continuous flow, and not a series of compartmented 'subjects' that we 'take.'  Despite that, it is easy to see why 'subjects' arose.  The idea of trying to educate large groups of children, simultaneously and without segregated categories of information, would be chaos. 

"The House That Jack Built" perception of 'Subjects'

As beings who live in Time, we have the minor problem of usually being able to do only one thing before we do another, and then only linearly:  starting, proceeding, and finishing.  Because of this 'minor' glitch we find ourselves 'gardening,' and then 'cooking,' but usually not considering that 'gardening' may be 'pre-cooking' in that it provides the raw materials for the meal.  Stretching the analogy, I could say that raking the lawn in order to put leaves in the compost bin, the result of which winds up in the garden bed to feed the plants that produce the food, could also be seen as a step in the cooking process.   This stretched analogy reminds me of old cookery recipes that began,  "First, find a chicken . . ."  Eventually 'it' all fits together, but in the meantime (and in some states) we need to stuff our little pigeon-subjects in their appropriate holes.

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Free Materials

The following are resources that parents can use to educate and entertain their children as they grow.  We all have to do 'something' while we're 'here,' so we may as well enjoy ourselves as best we can, because there's enough grief and anxiety to go around, and have leftovers.  This resource list is made up only of the online pages I've found that looked interesting (my kids are grown, so I haven't had the chance to try out most of what follows).  The list is not complete and will always be a work-in-progress (I like finding stuff).

Other links in the Subjects area also provide some free materials, but not all.  These links are free general information links.

Free online curriculae are linked from this site's Curriculum page.

Free online encyclopedia:  Wikipedia

Free online libraries: 
Awesome Library
Bibliomania online books and study guides
Digital Book Index 
Internet Mathematics Library
Internet Public Library
PDF Planet E-books Archive
Project Gutenberg
University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
World Wide School (click on "Library" for the books page which has titles in the public domain)
 

Online Libraries with mix of free and for-purchase texts
The Baldwin Project
Bringing Yesterday's Classics to Today's Children
Children's Books Online:  The Rosetta Project (downloadable antique texts)

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Subjects On This Page

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Archaeology
Art

 

B

Business

Back to Subjects On This Page

C

Civics
Cooking
Curriculum in general

 

D

Driving Education

 

E.

English:  see Language 

 

F

Field Trips/vacations
Foreign Languages

 

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G

Grammar -- see Language
Geography

 

H

Handwriting
Health (on Science page)
History
Home Ec/Independent Living

I

International Relations

J

K

L

Language (includes Grammar, Phonics, Reading, Literature, Spelling and Writing)

 

M

Math
Music

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N

O

P

Phonics -- see Language
PE
Public Affairs

Q

R

Reading -- see Language
Religion

S

Safety
Science (a separate page within this website)
Social Studies
Spelling -- see Language
Sports

T

U

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Unit Studies

V

Variety

W

Writing -- see Language

 

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Archaeology

• Archaeology on the Internet
• Pharaonic tomb find stuns Egypt (2006; BBC) video link at site

 

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Art

    Visual Art

• books for young children by MaryAnn F. Kohl
• books for young children by Lucy Mickelthwait
• Dave's Snowflake Page
• The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
• hint: listening to an audio book or to someone reading aloud while drawing, sculpting, painting, etc. will keep your logical Left Brain busy and stop it from horning to to boss the artistically creative Right Side around.

• KidsArt  "KidsArt On-Line art teaching supplies features how-to books, art history, gallery and enrichment created especially for kids, from preschool through teens."

• Mommy! It's a Renoir.  The guide book, also known as "Mommy It's a Renoir," presents a series of graded activities using small prints of famous artworks. Preschoolers begin with enjoyable matching games. The exercises increase in complexity as older students pair different paintings by the same artist, then learn to group paintings by features such as artist, style, school and subject.
  by the same author: Child Size Masterpieces by Aline D. Wolf

• National Gallery of Art websites for kids

• Tesselations, and images by their most famous practitioner, M.C. Escher

 

    Physical Art

        Dance

• The Nutcracker Ballet

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Business

• free office suite -- open source program for 'business' needs

 

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Civics

• Why Study Civics?  and farther along in the website the page on Public Education (not for the faint-hearted).

• Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, Chapter 9: "Reach Out and Elect Someone"

• Commissaries Help to Raise Voting Awareness

• Federal Voting Assistance Program

• HEARTS
  This is a discussion list for H.E.A.R.T.S., which stands for: Homeschoolers Educating, Assisting, and Reaching-out Through Service. Begun in New Jersey by a homeschooling activist named Michele Pulis, this program encourages homeschooling families to get involved and to help make a difference.
  
  H.E.A.R.T.S.' purpose is to unite a very diverse group of homeschoolers
  in community service projects; and to generate increased public
  awareness, understanding, and acceptance of homeschoolers and
  homeschooling as a single focus - unrelated to any other issue.

• Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results
  Election results presented by 'population maps' rather than only a 'geographic map'

• Media, Politics and Deception
   

 

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Curriculum in general

• Also see the Curriculum page of this website

• Direct Instruction

• The classic, I, Pencil

• World Book Parent Resource Center

 

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Driving Education

• Driver's Education Manual for Parents from the Connecticut DMV

• Parent-taught driving guidelines from Texas

• Op/Ed:  Advocates of higher speed limits are distorting the facts about road deaths  It is useful for new drivers to know which situations are represented in most accident statistics. Be careful entering or exiting traffic streams.

 

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Foreign Languages

• Fokus Deutsch (German), Destinos (Spanish), French in Action (obviously French): websites for the video programs from the Annenberg Foundation.  Some of the lessons (half-hour long) are viewable online (Video on Demand -- VoD icon) and have supporting downloadable files (registration required).  This is an immersion course, not a translating course.  A good introduction to the languages, making listening to the episodes easier, would be though The Learnables.
   

• Power-Glide program
  You should learn a foreign language the same way you learned your own natural language. We use diglot weave stories, puzzles, games, songs, and other fun activities to draw out the natural acquisition the way children do.
   

• German
  Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm
  American proverbs from German immigrants
   

• Do-it-yourself cheap(er) foreign language instruction
  
  Using the link under "University of Florida Literature for Children (PDF facsimiles of antique books)" readers can find links on the page to pop-up screens with the text translated into foreign languages. If a reader has a basic understanding of the language, and here I put in another plug for the Learnables, the reader could couple the U of FL books with the free Read Please program, a program that also sports a talent for reading foreign languages.
  
  So, if you put together an elementary understanding of a language, plus a known-text, plus a read-aloud service, you can cheaply (the purchase of a computer & online access being a given) expand your vocabulary and some listening-fluency in a target language.
  
  
   

 

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Geography

• Geography Coloring Book

• Geography Studies
  "This group is for homeschoolers, teachers, and other educators of children of all ages. Make learning fun. Take a train ride, horse ride, airplane ride, boat or ship ride across the ocean, etc. to each state or country."

• Green Geography
  Greenmaps.org "Green Maps (both printed and online) utilize Green Map Icons to highlight sites of natural and cultural significance. Around the world, each map is created locally in a unique way. Click the continent to find out about each Green Map project and our collaborative effort to cultivate community health and citizen action."

• Map Machine from National Geographic

• Postcard kids: "Geography postcard project for children. Started in October 2002 to help children enhance their Geographic studies and even some history through sending postcards from their local area to other postcard kids around the world learning about their home of residence around the globe. Track the ones you get by tacking a pin on to a State map or create a scrapbook album. Kids, teens, school classroom, home schoolers, even a grandparent can join to help out."

• NASA Visible Earth photographs from satellites and the space stations

 

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Handwriting

• Italic Handwriting

• Hints for handwriting from A to Z Home's Cool with a section for left-handers

• Donna Young's pages

• Handwriting Overview from the Zaner-Bloser website, with a handy 'plug' for the Z-B style.  Links are included at the site for Palmer, A Reason For, McDougal-Littel,  Harcourt Brace, D'Nealian, Getty-Dubay, Abeka and Paterson Directed methods of handwriting.  The site also has a compact style comparison sheet.

• Samples of alphabets are shown at the Educational Fontware website.  This site apparently sells computer software that mimics the styles of handwriting listed so that worksheets for children can be printed in the style of handwriting the children are learning.

• The Write Fonts from About.com.  The page has links to sites with free font downloads.
   

 

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History

World History
Local History (history from the perspective of people who live in an area)
American History

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World History

• A Book In Time

• Ancient History in the Movies

• For younger readers: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, the first Newbery Award winner
  For older readers:  Asimov's Chronology of the World

• Calliope

• Dig (Archeology)

• Reading lists
  Historical fiction list with a British accent
  Historical fiction list from the Boulder libary

• French Revolution
  To Quell the Terror: The Mystery of the Vocation of the Sixteen Carmelites of Compiegne Guillotined July 17, 1794, by William Bush
  A Tale of Two Cities
  The Scarlet Pimpernel
  Robespierrre:  the voice of virtue

• Jackdaw Publications
  Hands-on primary source material

• Learning Through History magazine

• Monterey Institute for Technology & Education AP Courses
  Advanced Placement United States History

• The Old World historical fiction booklist from Ann Arbor

• Old News
  "Perhaps the most peculiar newspaper in the United States. . . ."

• Old Time Radio shows at RadioLovers.com
  We offer hundreds of vintage radio shows for you to listen to online in mp3 format, all for free.

• Parodies (keeping in mind that if you don't really know the material being parodied, you won't 'get it' and you'll be left out of the joke.)
  1066 and All That by W. C. Sellar, R.J. Yeatman
  The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) : A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

• Science through History:  Joy Hakim's (A History of Us) new series, The Story of Science
  The story of science is the story of people—some really interesting people—who continuously question the world around them. In the first book of her six-part Story of Science Joy Hakim invites readers of all ages to meet the forebearers of modern science and share in their exciting discoveries in astronomy, math, and physics.

• The Great Conversation
  Yahoo discussion group, and information about it
   

Back to History
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    Local History

• Chernobyl today My name is Elena. I run this website and I don't have anything to sell. What I do have is my motorbike and the absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and the speed demon take me.  I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.

• Local History and Awareness of our surroundings and how pre-readers 'see'
  4 Jan 04, Cambridge, Mass. CBS 60 Minutes, The Eyes Have It
  Book by the subject of The Eyes Have It, Prof. John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic

 

Back to History
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    American History

• American historical fiction for children

• American History
  Books for teens and adults by Thomas Fleming:
  One small candle; the Pilgrims' first year in America
  Liberty! : The American Revolution
  1776, year of illusions
  First in their hearts : A Biography of George Washington, Illustrated with Photographs and Engravings
  Benjamin Franklin; a biography in his own words
  The man from Monticello : An Intimate Life of Thomas Jefferson
  Duel : Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America
  The Louisiana Purchase
  Band of brothers : West Point in the Civil War
  The Illusion of Victory : America in World War I
  The New Dealers' war : Franklin D. Roosevelt and the war within World War II
  The Secrets of Inchon : The Untold Story of the Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War
  Harry S Truman, President
  Behind the headlines : the story of American newspapers
  . . . and more

• d'Aulaires' books on famous Americans

• Childcraft's "Great Men and Famous Deeds" 

• A Chronology of US Historical Documents, University of Oklahoma

• The Civil War Homepage

• Cobblestone

• Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Footsteps (African-American heritage)

• Founding Brothers
  We're all well-accustomed to the Olympian descriptions of the important people present at the founding of the United States.  'Supermen in knee-breeches' wouldn't be a mis-statement of how many people see them.  But were they really supermen?  This historical account lends depth and humanity to the men who worked, usually together, to put together the first group of united states.

• The History Net

• History Matters:  A US Survey Course on the Web

• Homeschool Radio Shows "Classic Educational Programs from the days of
  Old Time Radio Especially for Homeschoolers!"

• The Library of Congress, American Memory:  Historical Collections from the National Digital Library

• National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Digital Classroom

• The Teaching Company's course, Early American History: Native Americans through the Forty-Niners (although this is labeled as a high school course, I found it quite suitable for children from ten years of age through fourteen or fifteen)

• USS Constitution Museum

 

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Home Ec/Independent Living

• Books for younger children:
      Christopher, Please Clean Up Your Room by Itah Sadu, illustrated by Roy Condy
      Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon! by Pat Cummings
      Dirt Boy, by Erik Jon Slangerup, illustrated by John Manders
    Home Sweet Tree, by Stan and Jan Berenstain
      Three Nasty Gnarlies, by Keith Graves
      When the Fly Flew In by Lisa Westberg Peters, Illustrated by Brad Sneed

• Book for older readers: 
      Home Comforts:  The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson
  (and an antique version of the same type of book: Mrs. Beeton -- a name I remember from older English mystery stories)
   

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Language

    Grammar
    Literature
    Phonics
    Reading
    Spelling
    Writing
 

• Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
  The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.

• A. Word. A. Day
  The music and magic of words -- that's what A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) is about.
  We are a community of more than 550,000 linguaphiles in at least 200 countries.

• Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (with an English accent)

• What in the World is a Homophone? (scroll to bottom of page)

 

Back to Language
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    Grammar

• Analytical Grammar

• Diagramming Sentences  (kids who like logic puzzles may like diagramming)

• English Languishing

• Grammar Slammer

• Hartford, CT Community College's Guide to Grammar and Writing

• The Grammar Lady

• MadLibs

 

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    Literature

• See the Books pages on this website:
  for grownups
  for very young children
  for little children
  for older children
  for pre-teens
  for teens
  adult literature

• Core Knowledge Teacher's Guides

• English as Second Language website:  Commonly-used Proverbs

• English as Second Language Main Page

• Teaching Company literature courses (many libraries stock these courses; if they are not in your local collection, try requesting them through an inter-library loan)
   

 

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    Phonics   

• Basic Phonics
  "According to Basic Phonics, we learn to read by actually reading, by understanding what is on the page. Most of our knowledge of phonics is the result of reading; the more complex rules of phonics are subconsciously acquired through reading (Smith, 1994). "
   

 

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    Reading

• Beginning Reading:  "Directionality" is a primary skill children need in learning how to read English because it isn't obvious from text alone that English print is to be read from left to right.  Chinese writing runs from top to bottom and Hebrew runs from right to left.  In looking for useful websites I found a wonderful example of what I'm hoping is an unintentional demonstration of 'directionality.'  The text is difficult to read because we're not accustomed to looking at it in this manner. 
  
  Another important aspect of learning to read is the realization that each word is indeed a word.  The mind must have the technicalities of the exercise demonstrated in order to comprehend the mechanics.  Reading aloud to a child sitting next to you or on your lap, pointing to words and moving the finger under the word as it is pronounced indicates where to look on the page to find the portion of the text that is being spoken.
   

• See also Books:
  for very young children
  for little children
  for older children
  for pre-teens
  for teens
   

• Babybug

• Cricket

• Ladybug
  (unless the policy has changed, Cobblestone Publishing accepts donated subscription payments for young readers who can't afford a subscription)
   

• Reading Lessons article in Home Education Magazine
• Reading level assessment articles from HomesCool
   

• Batchelder Award (children's book translated into English)

• Belpré Award (Latino/Latina)

• Caldecott Medalists (picture books)

• Coretta Scott-King Award (ethnic multi-cultural)

• Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (authors who made a significant contribution to children's literature; look for their books)

• Newbery Medalists (American literature for children)

• Sibert Award (informational books)
   

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    Spelling

• Spelling differences between American and British English
  No, this isn't to push for Briticisms in American studies, only as a reminder that spelling is an arbitrary system of making sounds visible.  Being a good speller doesn't make one morally superior to one's less-letter-sensitive peers, although it does make you look good on paper . . . or computer screens.

 

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    Writing

Teaching children to write

One of the best ways to learn writing is to write.  This doesn't mean graded papers.  It also doesn't mean assignments.  Graded assignments can have a place, but for daily practice a less stressful practice method is having something to write about, and doing it.

Figuring out how to fit daily writing practice into homeschooling can intimidate parents, but it doesn't have to be a chore.  No grading is necessary, so the children can just write.  But, what to write?  Some parents create blogs for their children.  By using the privacy option at online providers such as Blogspot, the child's blog can stay out of the public eye, and only people who have the blog's web address can see it.

I found that using the Waldorf main lesson book concept worked well.  The children would pick one aspect out of whatever we had learned each day, then draw a picture and caption it.  Each drawing was about something that interested the kids, and they usually invested themselves in the job.  As time went by, their skills improved.

Page about trees in one daughter's science book from when she was about ten years old.

 

Page about optical illusions in the same daughter's science book from when she was about fifteen years old.

 

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Another way to learn to write is by hearing well-written language, and by reading it. 

Wikipedia article:  Fiction writing

Voracious reading

"You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader." [4].
 

Parents can help their children learn to 'write by ear' by reading aloud to them.   Listening can bypass the brain's internal language critic so that rhythm, cadence and syntax are effortlessly absorbed. 

We visited friend in England when the twins were ten.  Our son and our friends' son were watching a televised tennis tournament and their son was explaining the rules to our son.  (I'm not up on tennis terms, so bear with me later on)  We parents were chatting on the other side of the room, and we could hear the boys talking tennis.

Their son -- speaking in a not-too-broad Bedfordshire accent:  "[blah blah jargon tennis score] 'advahntage.'"

Our son -- who can't purposely do accents and speaks television-commentator American:  "[blah blah question about scoring] 'advahntage?'"

-- the parents suppress laughter --

Our son's established American pronunciation of words-in-common-with-his-English-friend never wavered.  The one word in the conversation that was new to him, in the context of tennis scores, "advantage" he pronounced in the way he heard it from his friend, "advahntage."  He didn't prefer or reject the way the word was pronounced by most Americans, he just absorbed it as it was presented.

Read-alouds and audio books are both good ways to learn 'writing by ear.'  After the child has some experience 'writing by ear,' then the mechanics of formal writing can be learned.

 

• Diagramming sentences
  Wikipedia article
  Mr. Helmer's page of diagrams
  Google results for "diagramming sentences"

• Get It Write Online:  Fifty First Tips

• Reach Every Child:  Get your Students' Work Published

• Technical handbook for high school and college-level writing:  A Writer's Resource, by Elaine Maimom and Janice Peritz

• Types of writing
  Creative writing
       Fiction
  Expository writing
  Journalistic writing
  Technical writing

• Writing exercises for pre-teens

• WriteShop
  WriteShop Discussion
  "This group is open to all homeschoolers who are interested in learning more about WriteShop. The focus of the discussion is to remain on-topic, with short friendly side comments allowed. We will discuss whatever items members want to bring to the group (questions, successes, comments)."
   

    Books about writing

• A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser

• The Elements of Style, by William Struk and E.B. (Charlotte's Web) White

• Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark
  Fifty Writing Tools: Quick List
   

 

 

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Math

Algebra

Cheap math tools: 
Fifteen Bean Soup:  soup beans are good math manipulatives because they are easily found (at the commissary), inexpensive, disposable, and in a pinch can be supper.  The beans are easily handled and visibly different.  A child can see the differences between a pinto, a lima, a garbanzo and a kidney bean but yet appreciate the 'bean-ness' of the whole.  One kidney plus one pinto equals two beans.  Eight beans taking away the three  Great Northerns leaves the five Limas.  Sets within larger numbers are easily seen (four rows of four beans makes sixteen beans yet each set of four within the sixteen, such as  Black, Jacob's Cattle, Navy and Pink, are readily identified).  4 x 4 = 16.  Division is also easily seen.   The big bonus is that if you accidentally vacuum up the spilled 'manipulatives' it's no big deal.

Hint: Use M&M candies as manipulatives, especially when working on subtraction.
 

• A brief introduction to the Abacus
• Aleks
  Reasonable monthly fee, but recommended if an online program is desired
   
• Algebra
  Hands-on Equations program for purchase, ages 8 and up
  Math Relief  programs for purchase
   
• Chalk Dust (uses Houghton Mifflin texts)
• Comprehensive School Mathematics Program Preservation Project
  free online Primary and Intermediate Grades math materials
  Links to downloadable teacher's guides with daily lessons and multiple-intelligence explanations, and worksheets.  If you find this interesting, download all the teacher manuals and relevant information, and burn to a CD disk or a floppy,  to forestall losing the link because of information overload, crashed computer, or a reorganization of the website.
• Living Math
• Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Primary Extension)
  This is a math site with lesson plans for elementary mathematics instruction, with practice pages for each lesson available for downloading.  The texts are written in British English, so cross-cultural experience will be gained along with math.  Tests do not appear to be downloadable.
   
• Math-U-See
• Miquon
• Teaching Textbooks
• Saxon
      Saxon facts and rumors
• Singapore
  Placement tests (could also be used by parents to see 'where the kids are' concerning their math skills)
• Teaching Textbooks
   
• Teaching Company video courses:
  Basic Math
  High School Algebra I
  High School Algebra II
  The Joy of Thinking:  The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas
  Change and Motion:  Calculus Made Clear
  (many libraries stock these courses; if they are not in your local collection, try requesting them through an inter-library loan)
   

• Math:  Maths and Home Educated Teenagers

• Carry On Mr Bowditch

• Mathematical email:
  WHAT'S A BILLION?
  The next time you hear a politician use the words "billion" casually, think about whether you want that politician spending your tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into perspective in one of its releases:
  
  A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.
  A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.
  A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
  A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate Washington spends it.
  
  The Snopes site confirms the 'largeness' of the numbers and explains the computational discrepancies.
   

• Grandfather Tang's Story, a 'multicultural mathematical read-aloud'

• Highline Advanced Math Program for grades 5 - 7

• Living Math website; website has pages for 'real' books about mathematics, a year-long mathematics course using Web links, and book reviews for parents

• Math . . . and other tales of horror

• Math.com Pre-algebra, Algebra and Geometry & math worksheets

• Mathematics:  January 2004 Newsletter from the UK's Freedom in Education

• Pizza Fraction Kit
• Rethinking Midschool/High School Math
• Link removed: The Sonlight page with synopses of the various math programs has been moved or deleted from Sonlight's site.
• Tarquin Books (Tarquin's American distributor):
  Tarquin books are paper projects such as making a working lock, sundial, polyhedra, geodesic domes, paper airplanes and working mechanical toys.
• Times Tales memory system for learning the harder multiplication tables
• Verbal and Analytical thought combined:  Logic Newsletter
• Conned Again, Watson! by Colin Bruce (initially found at Bas Bleu)
  "Colin Bruce has cleverly disguised a series of lessons in math, logic, probability, and decision-theory—all applicable to everyday life—as Sherlock Holmes stories. ''The Case of the Unfortunate Businessman'' focuses on three common business fallacies; ''The Case of the Gambling Nobleman'' exposes some commonly-held gambling misconceptions; ''The Case of the Ancient Mariner'' explains the ''bell curve'' of normal distributions; and so on. The short mysteries make for amusing reads—plus, there's a high probability that you'll learn something!"  (Bas Bleu reviewer)
  Another reviewer who liked the book: +Plus Magazine
  A reviewer who likes some of it, but not other bits:  The Mathematical Association of America
  And another:  MathFiction 
   

 

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Music

• e.MusicTheory.com

• Music for Little People

• Phonics 4 Piano

• The Teaching Company music courses  (many libraries stock these courses; if they are not in your local collection, try requesting them through an inter-library loan)
   

 

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PE

• At breakfast, the newspaper had a 'human interest section front-page headline' "Cup Game Stacks Up:  Schools embrace pastime as a new building block for today's students."  [note: the website often lists articles for about a week, plus the site requires registration for some articles]
  
  The article is about the PE class at Pearson Elementary School in Kansas City, Kansas.  The latest thrill is Cup Stacking. After reading the article I don't think anyone can question the legitimacy of homeschooling activities.  Mind, I'm not questioning the legitimacy of Cup Stacking as a public schooling activity (unschoolers accept broad ranges of human activities as legitimate educational experiences), only Implications From Others*  that homeschooling activities aren't quite up to snuff.
  
  * I was going to link to an anti-homeschooling article titled "Homeschooling robs children," but the publishers pulled it from their website.  And quickly, too, since the article arrived on my homeschooling chat lists just two days ago.  Still, the article was online long enough to get a reaction.
   

 

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Public Affairs

• US Postal Service Most Wanted 

 

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Religion

• Creation Science [note:  I am completely unqualified to evaluate the content of creation science materials.  You'll have to do a web search and use your best judgment.]

 

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Safety

• Smokey the Bear

 

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Social Studies

• History of comedy through watching movies
  
   

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    Civics

• Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids:  K-12 information broken down into separate pages for, K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and Parents & Teachers

• Monterey Institute for Technology & Education AP Courses
  Advanced Placement United States Government

• Hey Kidz!  Buy This Book, A  Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (hey, even military Brats need to know these things)

• Justice Learning
   

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    Current Events

• BBC News for Children
   

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Sports

• Home School Sports Network

• A to Z's Home's Cool:  Homeschool Sports

• California Athletics for Home Schools  (located in San Diego but sponsors state-wide activities)

• Georgia Football League
  
   

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Variety

Previous Fancies is a page of items that previously appeared on the site's front page.  The Fancies are fun things that caught my attention and can be loosely included under Subjects.

• AHA Homeschool Resources information

• Common Sense Press
  "Common Sense Press uses an integrated approach to learning with emphasis upon context. For example, in language arts, spelling, reading, vocabulary, grammar, handwriting and phonics are taught in the same lesson. Research shows clearly that language arts taught in this way is much more effective than when taught in the traditional isolated and fragmented manner."

• General 'skill levels' by grade, according to the authors of these websites (keep in mind that children develop at different ages, and at different rates within their ages, and probably even at different rates within their areas of interest as contrasted with things they find boring, and that there is no one Grade Level handed down from from Mount Schoolympus):
      K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
  
  A web search doesn't bring up anything that I'd have considered useful for the kids once they were past the age of most 8th graders except for World Book Parent Resource Center.  If this doesn't satisfy your need for specifics, you can do web searches for "9th grade skills," and so on, but be prepared to sift through a lot of edu-speak.
   

• Free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

• Guidelines for 'what elementary teachers' ought to know.  These guidelines are useful for finding titles of works, names of authors, or just browsing to see if anything interesting pops up.  They are not meant to be used as curriculum for children.

• IMAX DVDs

• Lyndsey's Mania Geography, math practice, dot-to-dots and matching

• Mazes, sharpen those thinking skills

• Scholastic website
• Standard Deviants
• Waldorf books that may be useful for anyone.
  The Form Drawing book is useful for developing small-motor skills.  This may improve handwriting, and it also gives the user a repertoire of designs that may be useful in decorating papers, producing artwork, or doodling while on the phone.
  
  The art sketch pads are useful for: sketching, of course, or making homemade textbooks through the child's own efforts.
  
  The crafts books are useful for art instruction, as well as producing quality mementoes of the homeschooling adventure.
  
  The Children's Year has ideas for year-round crafts and activities.
  
  You Are Your Child's First Teacher:  this book may be useful for new parents, or as a baby shower gift.

 

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