11 Valuable Tips for Homeschooling Your Child With Awesome Confidence

11 Valuable Tips for Homeschooling Your Child With Awesome Confidence

Homeschooling your child with confidence is extremely important. The children pick up on how confident you are while home educating them. If they detect you are nervous, frustrated, and confused, it will play into how well your homeschooling day goes.

In the home school article at Barbi Green Life Coach, I discuss eleven valuable tips for increasing confidence in homeschooling:

• Connecting with other families
• Using homeschool support groups
• Understanding regulations
• Using a finance budget for homeschool expenses
• Dedication of specific learning areas

Each of these areas will help to increase your confidence level while also increasing the confidence level of your child. Together, you can homeschool with awesome confidence! Before you know it, you will be a pro at homeschooling your child!

Read More: 11 Valuable Tips for Homeschooling

Do you have other ideas to help increase confidence in homeschooling? Are you new to home educating your child? Be sure to bookmark this site and my life coach website! I will be sharing alot about homeschooling over time from my personal experience of over twenty years.

Have an awesome and confident day in your home school journey!

July Teaching Themes for Homeschool

What is every kid’s dream July teaching theme?  How about chocolate!  July 7th is Chocolate Day, a great way to teach your children about the botanical nature of chocolate, the geographical location of most cacao plantations and how it is grown, processed and transported.  And if you want to be a homeschool hero, don’t forget to let the students sample the many ways chocolate can be used; from the cacao bean to cocoa powder, chocolate syrup, and the many different grades of chocolate bars.

Although many July teaching themes for homeschool revolve around Independence Day, I wanted to give you a few suggestions for some off-the-beaten-track themes.  Like National Recreation and Parks month.  What a great reason to explore the national parks in your local area and focus on identifying local flora and fauna.

One of my favorite fun July teaching themes revolves round July 10th — Don’t Step on a Bee Day.  Although it might seem a little silly, it is a great homeschool focus, as bees are fast disappearing from our gardens due to pests like varroa mites and hive die-off.  If our bees disappear, over 75% of the food we eat will go with them — a frightening prospect.  A July teaching unit on bees and bee society will not only introduce your students to the importance of our sweet insect friend, but hopefully foster a love for them as well!

June Teaching Themes for Homeschool

Wanna heat up the summer for your homeschool students?

Check out this June teaching theme — Hot Air Balloon Day is June 5th.  This is a great way to incorporate a physical sciences and meteorology into your curriculum.  Have the children construct a “lighter than air” balloon from materials around the house.  PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) offers a wonderful site dedicated to hot air balloons and races.  The site includes teacher resources, interviews and a virtual balloon flight.  Additionally, many communities offer hot air balloon rides that can serve as a reward for the successful completion of this unit.

Now that you’ve heated it up, cool it down with a June teaching theme for your homeschool that focuses on the wonders of frozen dessert.  It’s National Chocolate Ice Cream Day on June 7th!  This is a great June teaching theme for your homeschool that focuses on chemical science. Ice has to absorb energy in order to melt, changing the phase of water from a solid to a liquid. When you use ice to cool the ingredients for ice cream, the energy is absorbed from the ingredients and from the outside environment (like your hands, if you are holding the baggie of ice!). When you add salt to the ice, it lowers the freezing point of the ice, so even more energy has to be absorbed from the environment in order for the ice to melt. This makes the ice colder than it was before, which is how your ice cream freezes.

So, whether you are running hot or cold this summer, there is a June teaching theme for you!

Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers – Part Three

The final part of the Summer Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers series will focus on fun activities.

Although many of these activities will have an associated cost, they will definitely score big points with your children, one of the reasons they are on our list of summer field trips for homeschoolers.

These activities can range from miniature golf courses and rock climbing walls to horseback riding, sailing and roller skating.

First, determine if you want your summer field trip for your homeschoolers to focus on physical exercise or just plain fun.  If you choose exercise, think about kayaking, skating, boating, waterskiing, horseback riding and, for older children, even scuba diving!

If fun is more what you are looking for, consider water parks, amusement parks, and state fairs.  Many parks and state fairs offer a day that is discounted to the local population or offered with the purchase of meals or drinks at local restaurants.  Sometimes even “big box” stores such as Wal-Mart will have discount coupons at their check-out lanes for local events.

Remember, for the most successful summer field trip for your homeschooler, call ahead to determine hours and availability of food and drinks and, most importantly, have fun!

Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers – Part Two

This second part of the Summer Field Trip Ideas for Homeschoolers series will focus on plays and performances.

One of the very best summer field trip ideas for homeschoolers is a place where they can get an up close look at the performing arts.  Check your local listings for theater arts groups, puppet theaters, dance theaters, and auditoriums.  Many agencies that promote local performing arts are happy to offer discounted tickets to educational groups.

When choosing performing arts as a summer field trip idea for your homeschoolers, please keep in mind appropriateness of the subject matter for the age of children you are escorting.  Some performances that would be perfectly understandable to teens might go right over the heads of an elementary school group.

Finally, remember the musical arts when planning your list of summer field trip ideas for your homeschoolers.  Many towns have local symphonies and most towns even boast a youth symphony that might be instrumental in getting your children interested in playing an instrument of their own.  Youth symphonies in particular are amenable to allowing homeschoolers and other groups a more in-depth look into the “behind-the-scenes” activities of a symphony, making them a veritable must-have on your summer field trip list!

Summer Field Trips for Homeschoolers

Some great ideas for summer field trips ideas for homeschoolers will have them enjoying themselves as well as bringing joy to others.  I always like to ask my homeschoolers to get involved in at least one community service field trip project each summer.

One of the best summer field trips for homeschoolers for community service purposes is a trip to a local retirement or nursing home.  If it is a small home, the children might be able to visit with individual residents and read to them, play a board game, or play music (if they play an instrument).   Many of the residents of these homes have little or no contact with the “outside world” and are longing for a visit and some personalized attention.  Sometimes, they do not even have knowledge of the current events in the town or world around them.  They love hearing the news from children, just be mindful to share only positive happenings from the community to brighten their day.

Another way a homeschool group can make a retirement home visit into a great summer field trip is to arrange to do a group project with the residents.  Some activities that are always a hit with the residents include sing-a-longs, exercise sessions, and watching the children perform a play.

With both elderly residents and homeschoolers sharing and caring for one another, I think there is no doubt that this summer field trip for your homeschoolers might just be the most rewarding trip of the year!

May Teaching Themes for Homeschool

May teaching themes for homeschool are so abundant that it is hard to choose just a few.  In fact, it might be fun to choose some of the more unusual events in the month for your May teaching theme.  A great example is Eliza Doolittle Day.  Literary buffs will remember Eliza as the Cockney protagonist in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.  This is a fabulous way to introduce older children to this literary gem, while younger children can watch My Fair Lady to get the idea of the story.

A interesting May teaching theme for your homeschool is the story of the Wright brothers.  Their airplane was patented on May 22 and changed the world of transportation forever.  Trips to aviation parks, movies, or air shows would be a wonderful adjunct to this theme.

Lewis and Clark began their fateful expedition on May 14th, which presents the opportunity for an active, outdoorsy May teaching theme. Engage children in their adventure by having them create their own specimen box and take a hiking trip to find new flora and fauna to identify.

Round out your May teaching themes with a service project.  May 30th is National Senior Health and Fitness Day.  Volunteer at a nursing or retirement home and lead the seniors in gentle exercises or outdoor games.  A slow, gentle walk for those who are ambulatory will leave both your students and the seniors rejuvenated and happy.