BookShark

In certain homeschool circles, audiobooks have a bad reputation. Listening to a book is considered a sub-par educational activity to silent reading. I find that to be nonsense. Audiobooks provide benefits to all listeners and can be especially beneficial to struggling readers. How can audiobooks benefit your homeschool and family?

Support Skills of Emerging Readers

How can it help reading skills if they aren’t reading? Listening to an audiobook allows them to hear fluent reading. This will help when they read aloud. It allows them to notice how punctuation affects the meaning of a passage and how we hear written conversation. They notice whether someone reads too fast or too slow. As a result, they can become better at controlling their own pace. All of these things will help them to become better readers.

There are no tags on any of my child’s clothes. When she needs new clothes, we spend hours in dressing rooms trying to find ones that are comfortable. Deeply intuitive, in need of quiet downtime, challenged by change, a perfectionist, she is not alone. There are, in fact, two people in my family of four who fall into the 20% of the population known for being highly sensitive. Elain Aron, Ph.D. is the author of The Highly Sensitive Child: Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them. She herself was often misunderstood and even shamed for being too sensitive.Elain writes, “… it is primarily parenting that decides whether the expression of sensitivity will be an advantage or a source of anxiety.”

Summer is upon us. For homeschoolers that may signal summer break, or it might just be another season where they continue their normal lessons. If you take a summer break, chances are that you are still looking for creative ways to keep your children learning.

As homeschoolers, we often look for lessons in everyday life and ways to make life an education, so it only makes sense that we want our kids to learn all summer long.

Are you ready for Shark Week? We get super excited about it around here because my kids love everything to do with this apex predator of the oceans. It's the perfect way to keep summer learning fun! We’ve already created our sharky library list and now I’m looking into documentaries. My kids adore documentaries as they add a visually compelling and storytelling element to my kids’ studies. Shark Week for Homeschoolers Comprehensive Video List Here is a comprehensive list of 25 shark documentaries and shark videos using YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.Read More

One of the greatest pressures of homeschooling is the weight of responsibility moms feel. They sense the need to check all of the boxes and cover all of the important topics. Even if the idea of exploring interests with less structure sounds appealing, it may be nerve-wracking to let go of the formal curriculum. However, if you take a break from school during the summer months, this can be the perfect time to experiment with a less formal approach to learning. First, start with a good YouTube video. Then, follow the rabbit trails of curiosity and interest that spring up.Read More

The concerts, award ceremonies, and end-of-the-year parties have faded, so it's time to take a deep breath. Summer is here, and the living is easy...or at least it used to be. Who has time to take a breath when you have to enroll in that sought-after robotics camp? Oh, and there are dance intensives and day camps for every imaginable interest. And let's not forget the traveling sports team. As homeschool moms, we may even feel the desire to get a jump on the new school year. This isn't a bad idea if your summer is miserably hot and you flock outdoors in the fall, but do we need to fill every moment with enrichment?Read More

I live in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan... a place full of shimmering waterfalls, continuous miles of shoreline of not one, but three of the Great Lakes, small-town charm, and if we are being real, six-plus months of living in a frozen tundra. Every year since moving back to the U.P. I fear that the winter will never end. But just when I am about to give up hope, the birds began to chirp and the snow melts away. In a matter of days, all traces of winter disappear, and I am left longing for lazy days in the sun with my children. Before I know it our homeschool schedule becomes more lax, and we are looking for fun additions to our routine. One of our favorite things to do when the weather is nice is to have a picnic. Of course, anyone can have a picnic at any time, but I like to incorporate them into our homeschool.Read More

Summer is about more than a change of season, it's about a change of pace. It's time to re-evaluate priorities, inject fun, and make memories. If you're a parent and you've done all the memory making you can come up with, jump into your children's world for inspiration, taking your cues from National Selfie Day, always on June 21. 

Stop! I Need to Take a Selfie!

We adults tend to poo-poo the lowly selfie. We've grown weary of pouty lips and duck faces. I'm not going to argue for selfies. I am going to challenge you to think outside the box and focus on the relationship with your teen. After all, isn't that one of the reasons you're homeschooling? You can do this, mom. So grab your teen and a smartphone and prepare to make some memories.

Summer is coming fast, and for most homeschool moms that means some kind of a break. Whether you take the entire summer off, or just a couple of weeks here and there, it’s time to start thinking about how to make the most of that summer downtime—not for your kids, but for you.

Even though we are pretty relaxed homeschoolers, I still find myself needing to take a week or two off. I give myself full permission to not think about whether the kids are doing educational activities or not, whether they are learning anything or not (but of course they always are). The only thing that never changes is reading aloud before bed. But other than that, letting myself off the hook mentally does wonders for my emotional and mental health.

I'm a homeschool mom of a child living with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I take every chance I can to share my love of books and reading with my children. Just like real life, books can be full of sorrow, heartbreak, and devastating tragedy. Some parents may shy away from reading books that make their children cry, but that is not the case for me. So why do I read books that make my children cry? Social Awareness and Understanding If you have known me for any length of time, you know that I am a self-proclaimed book hoarder. My house is living proof that this proclamation is absolutely true. I have eight bookcases stuffed full of books.Read More