2020 has everyone confused, scared, changing how they live and do things daily. With all the changes many people (myself including) have chosen to start homeschooling.
If you are considering homeschooling but are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start I hope this post will help you. This is a compilation of resources and information explained to make it simple (hopefully) for newbies like myself as I start on the home school journey.
Since I will be doing home school for my girls anyway I will share what we do on this blog to help anyone else with ideas etc. Be sure to like our facebook page, and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss out on any ideas.
For starters, here’s some explanations and resources below:
Growing up with friends that were home schooled my experience was that they were the “weird” kids usually with extremest parents who feared the government. They basically enjoyed a life of summer time with rarely having to do any real school work.
At first I envied that! While I was sitting in a classroom all day they were sleeping in, watching tv, playing, etc.
But then as I got older I could see the value in education as I was actually learning things in school and they weren’t in a learning environment at home. I had the ability to make new friends all the time, to be a part of clubs, to hear opinions and ideas outside what I would normally be exposed to. Whereas they were only surrounded by their family and limited friend & neighbors and their influence or opinions & ideas.
Now let me start by saying not all home schoolers are like that, that was just my experience with the ones I knew.
So although once I had kids I liked the idea of teaching my kids at home, but didn’t want it to be like the friends I knew, and valuing education we’ve had our kids in public school.
Until this year I didn’t realize there were good resources out there that supported and helped parents home school and teach their kids. With 2020 we started looking into some home school options. I am so grateful for the friends we have now that home school and have been a great support and resource as we navigate this new adventure. Here are the resources and programs I’ve found that are so far amazing.
For our girls we have chosen to do My Tech High. We have a combination of MTH course (Computer Science- Minecraft class), 3rd party (P.E.- Gymnastics), & custom (Math, Language Arts & Science)
My Tech High (no cost)
With MTH your kids have a lot of flexibility for homeschooling. Some schools are even offering their own programs with MTH. Basically it’s a way for your kids to be home schooled with varying degrees of parental involvement depending on your availability or education.
Once enrolled with MTH your student will be assigned a certain number of periods and has 3 options for EACH period (meaning you can choose different options for each period):
Education.com ($60/year)
Covers: Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Coding, Common Core & more.
Ages: Pre K- 5th Grade
This app & website has a variety of resources and is a good place to get a well balanced educational curriculum.
Adventure Academy ($45-60/year)
https://www.adventureacademy.com/subscription/offer/c09c263/ This link is $45/year price.
Covers: Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, & more.
Ages: 8-13
A fun game that teaches a variety of subjects in a game setting. Your kids will have so much fun it wont even feel like school. They can also connect and play with other friends.
Reading Eggs & Math Seeds ($59-89/year)
I wanted some flash cards for some fun games and on the go learning options.
The ten blocks are a great visual aid for Math. The sight word magnets I got to put on our fridge for a fun visual reminder. The teal gadget is a book binding machine- I got this so I could create some workbooks of my own. (there’s tons of resources in my pinterest boards)
The magnetic white board and make your own magnets are for the girls to track their daily assignments.
All these workbooks are from the same publisher- I really like them! They are both cute and good quality. I ordered one and loved it so much I checked out what other books they made. They will even email you extra freebies if you email them.
After spending TWO DAYS printing out free worksheets to assemble math & language arts workbooks for the girls I realized there were probably better options……. so I turned to amazon. Luckily I found these 3 books and am so impressed with them! They are all worth every penny. They are good sized books and have full color pages.
I found these DK Eyewitness books and really like the quality and content. We’ll be using these for our monthly science topics. These are the first 2 I ordered. The DK Eyewitness publisher literally has HUNDREDS of books, so I didn’t realize at first that some are geared more towards kids whereas some are more for adults. They also have some that are “workbooks”. So keep that in mind when ordering…. I got the Chemistry book above but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the more adult ones so I will see when it gets here. But the Weather workbook is really cool.
Be sure to check out my YouTube Channel for some video reviews and updates.