A New Day With New Commitments

Today is a new day. The day will bring what I make of it. As another year passes by, I am realizing that I am not getting any younger. Two of my kids are nearly grown to young adulthood. Amazing!

Today, we as a family made a commitment to work on healthier eating habits. It is important in our lives to choose better options in the area of eating. There are so many choices available to us, that are really not the healthiest. Foods can be cooked so quickly, but usually for a price in our health.

My kids were given a notebook today that will record the foods they have eaten, as well as fitness activities done. They were really receptive to the idea. As a mother, I am also recording the same items on a daily basis.

We will take some time to review the entries and then discuss ways that we can improve our eating habits as well as become more active. We are what we make of our day. This includes the choices we make in our eating.

My kids are not really overweight, but they are not really at the most optimal weight for their body frames. They do have room for improvement. We are making this a life lesson as well as a continuous school lesson.

We, as adults, do not realize sometimes how much food is going into our mouths. I believe that at times, this is true with our children. How much do we teach our children about portion control? How many times do they actually look at the amount of fat grams, calories, and fiber intake they consume? Are they thinking about how many servings of fruit each day they are eating?

Our lives are so busy, that simple important lessons lay by the way side. How important is teaching your children about eating properly to you? What can you do to help them be active in their eating choices?

Dreams and Passions of Homeschool

Homeschooling has been around for ages. Since our country started institutionalizing the education system, for many this option started taking a back seat. The present education system has some disadvantages which are addressed only by homeschooling. One such disadvantage is rigidity of the system. This is well addressed by homeschooling our children. Homeschools provide more flexibility in nature. Homeschool provides a child an independent learning experience, while allowing him to follow his passion.

If a child has a special interest in a particular activity, present day educational systems do not allow him to devote sufficient time to his interests. Take, for example, a child interested in playing tennis. He may be really good at it. But, there will be some restrictions on how much time he can play tennis.

Home school children are given more opportunity to follow their passions. So, it is the responsibility of the parents to give children an environment where they can find their passion and follow it. Providing homeschool options allow students to follow personal interests. This is one of the biggest advantages of homeschooling. If a child knows his passion, homeschooling will provide a system to follow dream. It provides freedom of independent learning.

Homeschooling is particularly suited to those who want to become sports people, artists, or a wide variety of other fields. Who knows what would have happened if Charlie Chaplin was not provided with the independence of homeschooling.

Homeschooling is a great option for families who can commit time to their children. As parents, you have the ability to make a difference in your child’s life.  Are you helping your child to live their passions and dreams?

Using a Homeschool Support Group

Within the earlier times of homeschooling, homeschooling support groups didn’t even exist. Now it’s possible to locate one within nearly all communities within the country. Here include 5 tips to making your groups run more smoothly:

1) Be helpful: Face it, all homeschool mothers are busy. It is unrealistic to believe that one mother could run a household and a whole support group.

2) Encourage everybody to share work load: Occasionally, you’ll have a few people who only wish to come for field trips, as well as group meetings and don’t want to be of assistance in any way. Whereas, a few individuals are more gifted in preparing for field trips, others could still be in charge of transportation, offer food for open houses, monitor younger kids, or do an abundance of additional tasks so all responsibilities could be shared by everyone.

3) Monitor kids: If somebody isn’t available to monitor the kids as parents meet, make certain you check in often with the kids, or have parents take turns checking in on kids.

4) Be prompt: A few days you could make it to the group on time, yet it is really in the ideal interest of a group if everybody arrives on time in order to make the most of the time arranged for the field trip or meeting.

5) Don’t get pulled into an additional resource or curriculum choices because other families are using them successfully: Stick with what you’ve determined for your family and place all curriculum implications upon a list for the following year.

Cost Effective Homeschooling

With available resources directly within your own community, you can homeschool using any budget. Newer homeschoolers oftentimes are concerned with the expense of homeschooling. The fact is homeschooling is as inexpensive or expensive as you make it. Here are three excellent available resources right inside your backyard, or at the most, a brief ride from it:

Book Sales and Libraries

The local library ought to be your initial stop upon the path to low-cost and free opportunities for learning which involve, in addition to books, excellent film and music resources. Go on the Internet and examine your county’s library system site to study about the placement of local libraries, any upcoming events, as well as all of their fantastic Internet services. If you do not own internet accessibility, the library usually offers this at no charge. Many libraries currently possess their own used book shops, in which you can locate outstanding book resources.

Resource Centers

Reuse Centers could be a bit tricky to locate, yet they are becoming more popular and are a bargain hunter’s haven. They are fabulous treat
for those “green” shoppers who like to reuse goods instead of buying new. Search within your phone book or ask your area school board. Examine the Reuse Development Organization directory for nationwide partners. Freecycle includes additional excellent material sources, all free.

Parks and Museums

Discounted admission to area museums is oftentimes obtainable within off hours, or if you go one hour or two prior to closing. There are numerous historical sites and museums; free at all times (or run by donations). Ask your area library for listings of historical sites and museums. Make some phone calls to figure out what excellent learning deals await you. You can oftentimes obtain educator discounts to science and art museums, in which an abundance of learning awaits.

Teaching Life Skills to Homeschool Students

Experienced homeschoolers will let you know that the best benefit of the home-based education includes the countless chances at experienced-based learning. Children who are homeschooled possess the chance to study several life skills just by daily immersion within family tasks, and they do not really have to be taught life skills if parents include them within the daily activities of living. Here include four parenting tips which will assist you in facilitating your child’s life skills development.

Participate in Household Tasks

As there isn’t any proof that making kids perform chores forces them to be responsible and great house cleaners, welcoming kids who wish to assist in cleaning up or inviting them to get involved helps them . They learn, in tiny doses, how they can care for their belongings, as well as the household.

Include in Household Finances

Discuss how much items cost and about how the family makes money to pay for these items. Provide them an allowance, as well as control over their personal finances. Open up a savings account for each kid and take him or her with you to the bank to make withdrawals and deposits. You also can teach older kids to pay bills, assist with your family budget, as well as encourage him or her to save for bigger things.

 Be Involved in Shopping

Pass out a part of the grocery budget for each youngster, and allow each to shop for his or her favorite foods. Inside the grocery store, a youngster learns to budget purchases, read labels, weigh items, decide price per unit or per ounce and decide if a fruit is ripe.

Assist you in Cooking

Similar to the grocery store, kitchens offer a plethora of opportunities for learning. Besides learning to cook, kids also can learn to read a recipe, experiment with all ingredient substitutions, measure, wash
dishes and store food.

Homeschooling for Fun

Homeschooling can be a wonderful and fun adventure. It not all about learning lessons, although that is an important part of it. It is about exploring new things with your children. It is about having fun, too!

How do you have fun in homeschooling when there is so much to do? Take some time to have fun with your kids. Lesson time does not have to be boring, or overwhelming, for the family. When kids are having fun, they love to learn. If they are overwhelmed with all the “book work” they will easily come to not enjoying the homeschool experience.

Add some fun into your day by doing some hands on projects. Take a nature walk outside, or a short field trip. Ask you kids what they would like to do. They are sure to give you some ideas! If you are burn out because there is so much to do, take a break and look at how you can make changes in your day to make it more fun for you and your family!

Eco-friendly Teaching Ideas

Most households these days are fairly wasteful.  People drive everywhere without consideration for gas, leave lights on, take half-hour showers and waste tons of food.  When considering eco-friendly teaching ideas for your students, consider a unit on conservation.  

Limit your scope to just a few resources (three or less) and make it fun with games and prizes.  Three of the easiest resources to focus on are water, lights (electricity) and food.Water, water everywhere. With an increasing human population and limited amount of clean drinking water, conserving water is vital.  

The bathroom presents a great opportunity for this eco-friendly teaching idea. Place a bucket in the sink and measure how much water is used when it is left running while the kids brush their teeth.  Multiply this by a year and show them the number.  Now, put a price to it.  The physical demonstration will be a good reminder to turn faucets off when water isn’t being used.

Lights Out.  Leaving lights on results in a higher utility bill and wastes energy.  One eco-friendly idea to teach children  to turn the lights off is a fun money game. Give your kids $10 in ones in an envelope, and tell them you will take away $1 for each time you catch them leaving a light on that is not being used.  At the of a week (or month) let them keep the money left in the envelope.

Eat Green. Even when you buy local, there is a certain amount of energy and waste associated with growing, making, and transporting food.  An eco-friendly teaching idea for food conservation is to make a daily menu with your children and shop for groceries together using a budget.   Make smaller, more frequent shopping trips and make sure you use up all the food in your fridge before buying more.  Have a contest where the children devise new recipes to use up leftovers.

Baskets, Binders and Bookshelves — Organizing Homeschool Materials for Large Families

What large family doesn’t need tips for organizing their homeschool materials?  And organizing homeschool materials for large families takes extra care, so your house keeps looking at least something like a home and not like the local teacher store!   There are three great tools for putting this organizational plan into action — baskets, binders and bookshelves.

Baskets

Finding baskets is easy. They are very reasonably priced at garage sales and dollar stores; at Walmart and other big box retailers;  and at local craft stores.  They come in a variety of materials, colors and styles to match any decor — perfect for when your homeschool is located in the center of the home.  The best thing about them, though, is they allow you to organize tools and equipment while still looking decorative and chic.

Binders

Binders are essential to keep homeschool materials for a large family organized.  You can have a different color binder for each child, or a color for each subject.  You can use them to keep track of monthly lesson plans, field trip notes and extracurricular activities as well as for curricula, worksheets, and even extra paper.  The choice is really up to you!

Bookshelves

What homeschooling mom doesn’t sigh at the sight of rows of books lined up with neat precision on a bookshelf?  Bookshelves are an invaluable tool for organizing homeschool materials for a large family because, quite frankly, large families have more than the average number of books!  Not to mention, they are a great place to store your binders and baskets of supplies as well, making it easy to keep everything within reach during your homeschool day.

All in all, just these three simple items can make organizing homeschool materials for large families a pleasure instead of a pain!