The BookShark Homeschool Blog

As homeschooling parents, our time is at a premium. Many of us are homeschooling several kids. In addition, we need to cook meals, grocery shop, clean the house, take kids to activities, and perhaps also work a part-time job. Life is busy. To carve out more time in their schedule, parents frequently ask these two

As a former teacher turned unschooling mom, one of the many things I love about BookShark is the variety of resources which spark interest in topics that might otherwise seem a bit dense for young children. For example, I recently had the idea to introduce my six-year-old to the wonderful world of ancient Greek and Roman history.

Ask any veteran homeschool mom whose kids have already graduated from high school, and she will reassure you: What a difference 10-15 years of hindsight makes! But you don’t have to wait that long. Let’s look right now at ten of the biggest and most common homeschool fears so you can face—and more importantly, conquer—them. 1.

I’m not a growth mindset mom, at least not by default. I’ve read all about the importance of developing one, and I’ve written about its benefits. But as many a homeschool parent can attest, being aware of a practice and its real life application isn’t the same thing as actually doing it. My kids know to put their dirty clothes in the

Are you one of those homeschoolers who watches dolphins at the zoo and calls it school? Here’s a secret: Sometimes we all are. Do field trips have a place on your homeschool calendar year? Are you on the fence about taking the time away from your books? Here are facts to get you off that fence and on that

If you homeschool for any length of time, you’ll inevitably struggle with the idea that a fresh curriculum might be better for you and your child even if you are having no problems with your current curriculum! That maxim about the grass appearing greener on the other side of the fence can apply to homeschool too.  Why We Chose

We all can recall that feeling from our days in public school when the teacher distributed a test full of letters to be circled and blanks to be filled in. Our sharp pencils would start to tap on our desks as we tried to recall something—anything—about what we had crammed the night before, but it’s

A psychological assessment I recently filled out for one of my children showed a clear bias towards public schooling with these kinds of queries: As both the parent and teacher, I had a lot of questions to answer. Some were almost impossible because I had no knowledge of my child in a traditional school environment. We’ve

My son rolled under the table in the back of the preschool room while his teacher read a book to the group, and I watched on in mild embarrassment. Why couldn’t he focus like the other kids? Why wasn’t he sitting and taking in the story as raptly as the others were? He’s just a

Having a child who has been diagnosed with dyslexia can be overwhelming for any parent. For the homeschool mom, it can seem especially intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Since homeschooling offers flexibility and individualized instruction, it is the perfect environment to foster learning for the child with dyslexia. Children with dyslexia process information differently. Therefore, they