Why do parents often find themselves helping their middle schoolers succeed in school? Middle school is a big change from elementary schools academic wise. While some students seem to breeze through the first 6 years of school, middle school can be a rude awakening for both tweens and parents. No more coddling from teachers and…
Keeping collections is good for children. The benefits of collecting do not come from the type of collecting done on the Internet with a credit card. That thinly veiled consumerism is not what I mean by collecting. Beneficial collecting is also not the hoarding of valuable things in hopes of reselling them later for a…
“A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” ~ Abraham Lincoln Don’t we all want to raise children who LOVE to read? Reading is a gift we can give our children that will NEVER leave them. It is the gift of travel, fantasy, knowledge, and so…
Kid: Mom, I need…a new ruler…new pair of scissors…a box of tissues for the classroom…cupcakes for my birthday…a science fair display board… Mom: When do you need this by? Kid: Tomorrow! If you were a fly on the wall in my house, you would hear this conversation quite frequently. Different kid. Different item needed. Sometimes…
No matter where you have decided to educate your children (at home or by sending them to public or private school), as their parent, you have many opportunities to help them learn at home without using formal schooling methods. These six activities are easy to include in your family life and can be a wonderful…
Every human being loves attention and praise. Many of us even crave it and feel less than confident when we are not reassured by affirming words. As parents, we have incredible influence over our children through the words we use with them. Unknown to many parents, some types of praise are actually counterproductive to hard…
Educating your children at home doesn’t have to be expensive if you are willing to be creative. For example, an ordinary magazine can be used to create weeks of language arts and math activities. Most children will love being able to cut up or write in a periodical to do these unique activities. Language Arts…
When a unit of study is over, it is important to wrap it up with some sort of culminating review. Otherwise, big picture connections may never be made. Maximize the time you’ve already invested into a topic of study by lingering just a while longer for review. It doesn’t have to take a long– just a single…
I’ll admit something to you that I don’t admit to my children: Homework stinks. While I would definitely prefer to let the kids play every day from the end of school to bedtime . . . the reality is that most kids, even in the youngest grades, have homework. Every year we have to tweak…
Normally we think of math lessons as a pattern of instruction and then solving problems. The teacher goes over some new skill or concept, and then the student does math exercises from a workbook. But what about having your child create the math problems for his lesson? This turning of the tables is a great…
