Studying ancient Egypt is an exciting adventure for both you and your child, especially when you immerse yourself in the period through the help of great books. BookShark covers Ancient Egypt for several weeks in both Level 1 for ages 6-8 and Level 6 for ages 11-13, so your children are exposed to this fascinating period twice during their elementary and middle school years.
We are huge fans of the library and can hardly pass a bookstore without going in. But sometimes I run into issues about what kinds of books the children choose.
I am not a fan of fluffy books in which the characters talk about body fluids or boyfriends. And I have reservations about books with disrespectful characters.
I don’t want to stifle my children's desire to read, so I begin an internal dialogue: "Is reading a fluffy book better than reading nothing at all? If my children read fluff instead of higher quality books, will their education suffer?"
The weight of textbooks in our backpacks is often more memorable than the textbooks themselves. Not that they aren't chock full of information. On the other hand, books like the fiction and non-fiction literature that make up the BookShark curricula conjure up images, characters and narratives. Certain books are so meaningful and memorable that when recalling their stories, the characters feel more like real people who you knew in your life than constructed characters from lines of text.
Once you complete your study of Ancient Egypt and move on to Ancient Greece, this list of video supplements will come in handy. Add a video or two each week to appeal to visual learners and to enrich your study of ancient history with BookShark Level G for ages 11-13. Some videos may also be appropriate for students using our younger World History Program—BookShark Level B for ages 6-8.
Don't worry about matching the videos perfectly with your history readings. It's okay if your children see something in a video first and then read about it a few days or even weeks later.
Recently I inherited a stack of treasures my husband’s mother had saved from his childhood school years. Artifacts included handwriting samples, artwork, and test scores. Although it was fun to see, my home was already bursting at the seams with collections of my own children’s past work. It piles up very quickly.
That is why we decided to go digital with our homeschool portfolios.
There is nothing I enjoy more than taking my children on field trips. These educational excursions get us out in the world and put whatever we are learning about into a real-life context. We get to see first hand how things are interrelated and broaden our horizons in ways that complement the books we are reading in our homeschool curriculum.
Unfortunately, our budget does not always allow for us to travel; particularly when there are so many places from around the world that we’d love to see. One way we get around this limitation is to take virtual field trips through the power of the Internet.
After parents have been homeschooling for several years, the routine of lesson plans, read-alouds, and record keeping can start to feel monotonous. Even parents who embarked upon homeschooling with loads of enthusiasm may start to view their family’s learning lifestyle as commonplace.
While settling into a homeschooling routine can be a good thing, losing joy in teaching children at home is not.
Choosing to homeschool will change the way you think about a lot of things. The longer I homeschool, the more the lines between school and life blur, and that makes it hard for me to answer the question of whether or not we are year-round homeschoolers. Maybe you have this problem, too?
I don’t assign math in the summer months. June through August, I don’t ask my sons to save their work or projects in a three ring binder in our homeschool closet.
Has a home ever really been lived in if no one has homeschooled within its walls?
Homeschoolers know how to live in a house. Every single square inch is commandeered for a purpose, or four or five. The kitchen is, at different times or all at once, the cafeteria, science lab, art room, nurse’s office, dinner theatre, and debate stage. We have even staged an epic fire drill in ours. (It was actually less of a drill and more of the real thing than I care to admit, but you get where I am going with this multi-purposing of rooms.)
Every space is prime real estate for sibling rivalry, and at times, the walls may feel as if they are heaving, cartoon-like as nooks and crannies become reading corners and LEGO stop animation studios.
When I attended public school as a child, I never thought about how much money my parents had to spend to make that possible. Naturally, my biggest concern was getting the right pair of sneakers for my first day of class.
Now that I’m a parent, budgeting is one of my biggest concerns. Having tried both homeschooling and public schooling for my own children, I’ve learned firsthand the different costs associated with both methods.
