The BookShark Homeschool Blog

Guest Gretchen Roe from Demme Learning says that math is like death and taxes: you don’t get away from either one. She urges parents not to shortchange kids in their math instruction by claim they’re just not a math-family.   Learn how a mastery-based curriculum is student-centric, allowing a child to work at the pace they need

You might not be sure about homeschooling, not to mention child-led learning. I know that I had a skeptical reaction initially. As someone who came from a public school education, it only seemed natural that the teacher was the boss and that learning had to happen in the classroom.  But when it came to educating my own children, I

Think back to your favorite textbook growing up. You probably read it word for word, right? 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

When you homeschool, you have extreme freedom: You, as the teacher, are the one shaping your child’s education. Yet most of us homeschooling parents, especially those of us who ourselves attended traditional school, have trouble letting go of the brick-and-mortar school mentality. It’s deeply rooted within us, and we may not even realize how much it

When you first make the choice to homeschool, what you need and want most is support. And naturally, where do you look first for that support? Family, and almost always, your parents. Now if grandparents have been unsupportive and critical of your parenting decisions from the start, their criticisms of homeschooling probably won’t surprise you. But if, on

One of the allures of BookShark is rather than teaching history to your children from a dry, boring history book, your children learn about history through literature. Instead of merely learning the facts about Ancient Greek culture and events, your children learn through characters (both fictional and historical) in an engaging narrative. You can bring that knowledge to life even further by

Historical fiction is a big part of our homeschool. I believe that reading historical fiction greatly enhances both our understanding of history as well as our retention of facts from history. That being said, you would be surprised how that flame got lit. It started long before I ever had children, long before I ever

The idea of reading stories aloud to our children is almost as old as the idea of parenthood itself. Long before printed books were available, children learned history, language, and more simply by oral retelling. Now that many of our children are exposed to technology at a young age, reading stories aloud can seem a

Homeschoolers are record keepers! Depending on our state’s requirements and personal preference we fill folders and boxes, create portfolios and transcripts, write lesson plans, make charts, take hundreds of pictures, maybe even blog. Here in Indiana, even though I’m not required to turn records into the state, I keep my children’s projects, encourage their goals,

I’ll admit it; the giant blue binder that came with my daughter’s BookShark Reading with History curriculum was a little overwhelming. I remember unboxing day. While my kid flipped through her new books, excited by all the stories she was going to read, I unwrapped a ream of paper—my Instructor’s Guide (IG).  Never having had success with a boxed curriculum before, I’ll