Love is in the air...Homeschool love that is...

Today is a HOT summer day, but in our home it was like Christmas. Our homeschool packages arrived!

I have not received any compensation or benefits for writing this blog post.

Apologia Physics Instructional DVD

 The Homeschooled Young Man could not wait to tear open this package and see what was inside!

When the Homeschooled Young Man see's bubble wrap, he knows it's gonna be a good day! 'Cause any boy knows that bubble wrap serves 3 purposes.

1. Bubble Wrap protects our purchases

2. Bubble Wrap makes for great workout routine jumping up and down on all the bubbles

3. Bubble Wrap drives a Homeschool Mom crazy with the popping sounds and the jumping up and down in the house!

Apologia Physics

The box is not yet unloaded and the Homeschooled Young Man has the book open and is reading through the lessons...lol...ah, the glory of homeschooling. 

Have you ever seen a child who is hold up in classroom all day, for 180 school days per year and are this is excited when their Apologia Physics Instructional DVD arrives in the mail? Yes, I know, we are weird, we homeschool, need I say more?

Praise the Lord for the learning everywhere about everything mindset. Our world is our classroom and we are loving it. Learning is not a chore it is a lifestyle in the homeschool.

I have not received any compensation or benefits for writing this blog post.

Hear ye, Hear ye: 20 Questions & The Homeschool Planning Meeting.

Summer has flown by and we are almost ready for a brand new school year. Tomorrow will be our annual Homeschool Planning Meeting. We have some pretty neat stuff to plan for. The Homeschooled Young Man has some thinking to do, we ask that he bring his ideas to the table in writing (by doing this he gets to practice real life skills in handwriting, spelling, critical thinking, organization, time management, goal setting skills). Things that I have on the agenda...of course they won't be hammered out in stone because it's just July and we don't follow the public school schedule, so we are good. But I like to get something penciled in, so I can be on the prowl for good deals on our homeschooling materials.

1. What will be our core courses?

2. What will we use for those core courses?

3. What extras will we add in to round it all out?

4. What will be done as full year courses and what will be done as semester courses?

5. Field trip ideas?

6. Will we attend homeschool convention next year?

7. What life/social skills will we work on this year?

8. What volunteering will we be involved in?

9. What career training/skills/shadowing will he be involved in?

10. Will he be a part of TeenPact.org again this year?

11. What classes outside the home will he take?

12. What are some things that he would like to learn?

13. What sort of employment will he take part in?

14. What 4-H projects will work together with our schooling this year? (the 4-H Health Sciences can be used for Health class, the Cooking 101 project can be used for Home Ec credit etc. Homeschoolers are always thinking outside the box with real life skills.

15. What scholarships will he be applying for?

16. Will there be standardized testing this year? Stanford 10? SAT? ACT? ASVAB?

17. What colleges will we visit?

18. What materials do we have on hand that we can use instead of buying more stuff.

19. What church related activities will we take part in?

20. What worked and did not work last school year?

I am sure that more will come up as we chat around the kitchen table. However, this is what homeschooling is all about. Yes, some homeschoolers have a set of state standards that they must abide by, but there is so much more to homeschooling that those standards. We as homeschoolers can focus on so much more right alongside schoolwork. So many more rich life changing experiences that we can afford our children.

What are we teaching our pre-teens & teens about SEX??

This picture says it all, I had never really thought of it this way. What have you used to teach your children about abstinence? In our home we have talked about it since the very beginning. With our son being adopted, his birthparents were college students and that helped with explaining a lot of things. Our son had a pretty good understanding of single parenting and just how difficult life is for single parents and their children. We have used God's word in the book of Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. We have also talked about King David and his sin. 

Another of my favorites is called A Chickens Guide To Talking Turkey With Your Kids About Sex. I heard an interview on Focus On The Family with the authors and liked. Got it free from the library...check it out!

What have use used in your home regarding this topic?

SpellingCity.com Review

As homeschool product reviewers for The Old Schoolhouse Magazines TOS Review Crew we were given a Homeschool Membership to SpellingCity.com, it's a family membership for up to 5 students in our family. I had to giggle and reminisce back to the first years of our homeschool. We loved using SpellingCity.com, back in the day the homeschooled young man loved to play the free games and practice his spelling using the program. We had found our homeschool curriculum's spelling lists on the site and used those daily. Other times I would import my own lists for history, science and reading words. But there was something lacking in that whole process, now after using the Homeschool Membership of SpellingCity.com, I know exactly what it is. We were lacking accountability in knowing what was actually getting done, I just knew my homeschooler would tell me "I got X number wrong." or "I played this or that game."

Letter Fall game

With the Homeschool Membership you get so much more for your homeschool shopping dollar. SpellingCity.com has an age range of K-12th grade, but I played around with some of the games and had a lot of fun, though I struggled with the Letter Fall game, the homeschool young man LOVED that game and played it a lot.

When you sign up and start the Homeschool Membership, you as the homeschool Momma type in the students' names, it's that easy! Then when your students sign on to SpellingCity.com, they just log in and they will automatically go to your parent homepage.
All activities done on SpellingCity.com will be recorded for you to later view in your parent account. Spelling test results will be right there for you to see and are recorded including the score
              as well as the words that were spelled right or wrong.

I allowed the homeschooling young man to goof around on the site and find what he wanted to work on and he found some pretty cool areas that I did not even know existed on the site. He came across some very COOL science vocab lists that are by grade and by subject, as well as GERMAN word lists. Now how cool is that? He was messing around with those German word lists day and night, big thrill for him since he is taking German this year. The other games that he really liked were Hang Mouse and Word Scramble.

Word-O-Rama game

I do have one hint for you, coming from a homeschooling family that has used SpellingCity.com in the past, MAKE SURE THAT YOUR CHILD USES THE CORRECT ACCOUNT THAT IS HOOKED UP TO YOUR PARENT ACCOUNT! At first I could not figure our why things were not being recorded in my parent account, I figured that I (not being tech savvy in the least!) had goofed something up. Well come to find out the homeschooling young man was going in and doing activities on his personal account, he was so use to entering in his (free account) info, that it never dawned on him that he was using the wrong account. And ya know how us homeschool mothers get busy...lol. We finally got it straightened out.

Flash Card

"Differentiated Learning": you can assign different tasks to each of your children

"Efficient record keeping": Great for states where homeschoolers must track their students because the tests results and student activities are recorded right away.

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• *Set up year-round homeschool spelling word and vocabulary practice with our Word Study Playlists
• *Students can create and customize their own word lists
• *Receive immediate feedback on all games and tests
• *Review and assign learning activities to match your homeschool vocabulary curriculum
• *Easily review your child's work from the parent portal
• *Accessible anywhere

SpellingCity.com also offers Mobile Apps, and now they even offer an Android App and a Kindle app. We used the Kindle app and it worked really well.

All in all we had fun playing with the SpellingCity.com Homeschool Membership and I think we learned from using it too. Make sure you check out the FAQ section, lots of helpful info there and also a great video guide is on the site too.
P.S. SpellingCity.com comes in handy when homeschool Momma is busy and can't stop just right then and there, she can send her students to play on SpellingCity.com...lol. The kids won't even know they are learning, they will be having so much fun!! Also, SpellingCity.com is a great learning tool for homeschoolers. See SpellingCity.com for more information.

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