The Sensible Homeschool – Practical Help & Encouragement for Your Homeschool

A Day in the Life of a Homeschool Family

November 15, 2019November 11, 2019

One of the things that helped me the most in my transition from “What is homeschooling?” to “Let’s homeschool!” was reading about what homeschoolers actually do all day. Reading “a day in the life” blog posts about actual, real-life, home educating families doing actual, real-life homeschool-y things opened my eyes to the limitless variety of ways learning can (and does) happen.

I’ve been wanting to write my own “Day in the Life…” post for a long time and here it finally is!

Kids Are Always Learning (Even on a Sick Day)

November 1, 2019October 30, 2019

I love autumn. The older I get, the more I prefer autumn to my previous favorite season, summer. Apple picking, cider donuts, colorful scenery, veggie garden harvests and cozy sweaters on crisp fall days…. yes, there’s a lot to love about this season!

Except, of course, the inevitable cold or flu that someone catches and brings home to share with the family.

Homeschool Teaching Tip #5: Be Interesting

October 18, 2019October 21, 2019

This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. If you haven’t yet, check out Tip #1, Tip #2, Tip #3 and Tip #4.

I was going to title this post “Don’t Be Boring” but that sounded kind of harsh. Plus, psychologists tell us it’s good to frame things positively if possible. (You know… like when you calmly encourage your toddler to “use the markers on the paper” instead of yelling “DON’T DRAW ON GRANDMA’S FACE WHILE SHE’S SLEEPING!”)

So, whether you think of it as trying NOT to be boring or trying to BE interesting, the point of Tip #5 is to make life and learning fun!

Homeschool Teaching Tip #4: Don’t Spill the Beans

October 4, 2019October 22, 2019

This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. If you haven’t yet, check out Tip #1, Tip #2 and Tip #3.

Of all the teaching tips in this series, this one has probably been the hardest one for me to put into practice.

Over the years I’ve gotten better, but I still tend to spill too many school beans. What are school beans, you might ask? Allow me to explain.

Homeschool Teaching Tip #3: Find a Hook

September 20, 2019September 30, 2019

This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. If you haven’t yet, check out Tip #1 and Tip #2.

Imagine you walk into a classroom and take a seat at your desk. There you find a worksheet with a tree diagram. The teacher announces that you’ll be studying trees today. She lists the vocabulary words you should add to your diagram.

Now imagine instead that you walk into a classroom with a three foot wide slice of tree trunk on a table with a few magnifying glasses scattered next to it. The teacher invites you to study the tree for a few minutes and see what you see.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who would find the second scenario more interesting.

Homeschool Teaching Tip #2: Know Your Objective

September 6, 2019September 14, 2019

This post is part of a series of helpful teaching tips for homeschoolers. Check out the first post here.

If you look up “how to create a lesson plan,” the first thing that most resources will tell you is to “Know Your Objective.” That is, know what the main point of the lesson is. For example, “after this lesson, the student will be able to name the four largest moons of Jupiter.”

Homeschool Teaching Tip #1: Know Your Child

August 30, 2019September 3, 2019

When I started homeschooling, one of the first things I did was to check out a stack of “how-to-teach” books from the library. I was hoping to find the secrets to successful homeschool teaching.

I found about 30% of the information to be really helpful. The other 70% was geared toward navigating the public school system. They covered things like managing classes of 20+ students, working with parents and school administration, and decorating classroom bulletin boards.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of it was good information. But it just wasn’t relevant for me as a new homeschool mom.

Our Homeschool Summer Break Strewing Experience

August 23, 2019August 24, 2019

This past summer, I was looking for ways to keep the kids involved in something productive but not too formal (that is, no 24/7 Minecraft allowed… but nothing that would require too much work on my part, either).

Among other things, my plan included intentionally setting out interesting activities for my kids to find and explore if they wanted to (aka “strewing”). If you haven’t yet, check out the original post – Our Homeschool Summer Break – Year 5 – for a little more context and my original summer plan. In that post, I promised you an update on how it went and here it is!

Our Curriculum Choices Year 6

August 16, 2019August 12, 2019

I can’t believe it’s August again!

That means it’s time to share our homeschool plans for the year ahead. (If you’re curious about what we’ve used in the past, check out this post which has links to all the previous years.)

Year 6 Snapshot

We’re really in the thick of it now. I’ll be homeschooling my fifth and second grade boys and their three year old sister (whose unreliable, dwindling naps should make for ~~a crazy-making~~ an interesting year).