Home schooling High school

Assalm alykom:

With all my years in homeschooling, I have noticed that most families home school in the younger grades or at least until 8th grade. I have had a very difficult time finding any families who home school in high school. Well, I will be reaching this point next year. I am looking for any families who home school in high school. I would like to know if you use an online school and any pros and cons that you can tell me about your experience. You can contact me at umnour1@yahoo.com.

Some of my Favorite websites for Homeschooling

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I want to share a few websites that I find to be an integral part of my homeschooling. I use these sites everyday with my children.

http://www.spellcity.com/ This site is has made my children great spellers. You can create your own spelling lists for each of your children, regardless of the level of the child. There is a section that teaches the child the words, tests the child, and a games section that uses the words. They have a new feature now that you can create your own sentences to go with your words. I used the kids names. They were excited to hear their names in Arabic being pronounced.

Another site that I found, helps with memorizing Math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is full of interactive games that they can play. My kids just love it and cannot wait to do it each day. This is the web site: http://www.fun4thebrain.com/ They have a sister website for multiplication that has worksheet drills that you can print out. I like to use them to time my children. http://www.multiplication.com/

Here are a few other websites that I use for the younger grades to help with their phonics.

http://www.iknowthat.com/com

There is also http://www.starfall.com/ . I am sure every homeschooler knows this site. It has been around for a long time. I have used it for all my children and really taught them to read from it. I hope you find these useful.

Play Dough Arabic Letters

I am now on my fourth child learning Arabic. My husband and I make a combined effort to teach our children Arabic. I start them out with their letters and then we work up to connecting words. Once we reach the grammar rules, I have to turn them over to my husband. I like doing play dough with my children. The Arabic letters are so curvy and artistic that the younger children have a little trouble writing them at first. Doing play dough helps them to create the letter that they would not likely be able to write very well. I used a common recipe for play dough.

You'll need:
Flour 3cups
Salt 1 1/2 cups
Water 3 cups
Vegetable Oil 2TB.
Cream of tartar 1TB.
Food coloring few drops or unsweetened "Kool-Aid" 1pkg.

Mix ALL of the ingredients in a large saucepan.Cook over medium low heat, until the dough comes away from the edges of the pan and it becomes difficult to move the spoon. Remove from heat. Cool until it can be handled.Place on counter or wax paper knead 3-4 times.Store in an air tight container. I put glitter in mine to make it more fun. I also found neon colors of food coloring, and they are nice and rich with color. I have also used tempera paints in the past.

I have a second grader also and she is now forming sentences. I found this book and I really like it. She is able to do the book and it is nice and colorful to keep her interested.

The pumpkin patch

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Here is another field trip we took. It was a local pumpkin patch. Here is the link for it.

It is quite a place! It has animals , rides, and of course pumpkins! My children had a great time!

A Fly Craft

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I was teaching my little girl who is in kindergarten about bugs. We were learning about the house fly as one of the bugs. It is quite a gross creature! We stumbled upon this little craft and my 7 year old daughter made one also. They had fun running around the house smacking their older brother and sister with the flyswatter. Click here for the template.

Field Trips

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I am planning this year to do many field trips with my kids. This has been something a little lacking in our past homeschooling days. We were always moving around. So, planning field trips did not make the school year each time. We took our first trip to a local family apple orchard. It is very close to our home. The orchard was family owned and operated. The family was so kind to us. The owner gave each child a bag and allowed us to pick all different kinds of apples. She explained how the orchard worked. She had a small area where they made apple cider and showed the kids how it was made. She had a apple sorter and polishing machine and she ran a few apples to show us how they sort them all. In the end, we bought a bag of apples and some cider. From the bags she gave the kids to pick their own, we had so many apples. My daughter tried her hand at an apple pie and it was very delicious. We are planning to go to a local pumpkin patch this week. My son is studying American History and of course the American Indian. I am calling around to local reservations with the hopes to visit and learn more about their culture.

Another year down in homeschooling

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I have been so busy to put time in my blogs. I have really wanted to update my readers on my homeschooling journey. This is our 9th year of homeschooling with the exception of one year that we all went to an Islamic school. This year and last we used the Oak Meadow books. I had one child at 7th grade, then, 5th grade, and 1st grade. I have to say, this is the most economical full packaged curriculum. I also have to say it is not the most high quality either. The saying goes that you get what you pay for. For first grade, I still am not happy at all with the level of teaching. It is so light that it almost seems uneducational. I realize that it is a different form of education that is similar to the Waldorf style. However, I wonder where the child eventually catches up with reading and math. At first grade, there is still very little reading, if any and math has almost no computation at all. I supplemented my own, and felt I wasted my money on the curriculum. For second grade, I just went to Ebay and bought some things. I got the Scott Foresman Language Arts and Singapore Math. The local Catholic school was retiring their Science, Health and Social studies. I bought them for a small donation along with the teachers manuals. Last year, I had a 5th grader and a 7th grader. I like some parts of the Oakmeadow in the upper grades. For next year in 6th grade, I already have that whole curriculum from my other child. To save money, we are just going to go ahead and teach it to my daughter. For 8th grade, I decided to pick and choose. I like the English and the History in Oak Meadow. It has them reading classics instead of the new books. These classics tend to be more wholesome and have more meaningful stories. I also like the writing that is in the Oak Meadow. It has a great deal of writing and my children are really good writers from it. They can writer a 2 to 4 page report on something in a blink of an eye. Their reports are organized and their content is very good. I decided to switch to Singapore Math and Science. The science in Oak Meadow is really uneducational. There is not much explanation and the experiments almost never work. The math is very light and easy for my son. I think that he could be more challenged. So, I decided to try the Singapore math. Also, I got it much cheaper on Ebay than the Oak Meadow Math. This year I am going to also add another student. My 4 year old daughter will now be part of our school. She will be 5 soon and needing to be taught kindergarten. I have not worked with her at all. I am in no hurry since I have my hands full with the other three. My husband is taking over my oldest exclusively. This way I have more time to spend with the other three. Also, the higher grades are more complicated, and I spend alot of time studying and understanding the material so I make sure they are getting the best knowledge. Overall, we had a great year! Our new little farm was a great educational lab for the kids. We saw baby goats born before our eyes, we watched barn swallow build nests and raise their young, we have so much area to run and play, it is so dark we can see every star like a planetarium, the list of wildlife is on going, we have seen pheasant, deer, porcupine, raccoons, woodpeckers, opossum, chipmunks, honeybees, lighting bugs, coyotes, hawks, geese, humming birds, rabbits and the list goes on. I pray that all of you homeschooling families have had as much success this year as my family has had!

Learning Geography

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I have been really busy with life to commit time to my blog. This is my latest craft that we did with my first grader. As you know, I use the Oak Meadow curriculum. They teach the beginnings of geography in a different way that I am not used to when comparing the ways to my older kids. My older kids you would start with a flat map or a globe and teach them North, South, East and West. They would always look a little lost because that cannot conceptualize it to their scale. With Oak Meadow, they teach the child from his/her small surroundings. They have them make a map or a model of their room. With this, they can relate to where something is because they are familiar with it. Then, you teach them the directions from their room. The next step, the place gets a little bigger. The child needs to make a map of their house. Also, they need to know the directions here. Again, the child learns a little bigger area. They need to make a map or model of their neighborhood. I like this method very much. At this age, they really can conceptualize each step of making the area bigger. We made this little model of her room that she shares with her two other sisters. We made the all of the furniture from boxes and then painted them. The bed is a bunk bed that we made from Popsicle sticks and small boxes. We made the floor, which in their room is wooden, from Popsicle sticks that we varnished. We made the windows from magazine picture of the outside and the put fabric curtains. She loves it and does not want anyone to touch for fear it will break. I encourage you to try this concept in teaching. I really loved it!

The Tortoise and the Hare

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We were doing the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. My girls had happen to check a book out at the library with crafts related to old stories. This one was in there and we thought it would be fun to act the story out with them. They are made with little toy cars. We just used double sided tape and tabed the puff on the rabbit and the paper for the turtle. Since they have wheels, we could just race them accross the floor. I love the story too! It is such a classic!

Weather/Wind Vane

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With my first grader, I have been teaching about the weather. They have the typical weather vane that you make from a straw, pencil and paper. I wanted it to be more exciting. We made this one from junk we found in our barns. It took a little bit of engineering and rigging, but it actually turns. We used PVC piping, metal scraps that we found, a long nail, washers and a metal hose fitting. The girls painted it funky colors, and now it sits on a post near my pasture.

Fancy Bird Feeders

Both my 5th grader and my 1st grader have studies of birds and making feeders. Well, here is our idea. I visit local auctions where I live. At these auctions, they sell everything by the box load. Therefore, I usually have a few treasures that I do not want or need. So, we made bird feeders from them. The first two feeders, we painted a hard plastic bowl, glued some buttons, and stenciled some teapots. We glued the bowl on to a glass vase using Hard As Nails Glue. Lastly, we used the same glue to put it on a fence post near my pasture. So far, I am glad the glue is holding up to the fence post, but we still have not seen a bird. The bottom feeder was a little more complicated. We uses to glass candle stick holders, a vase and a piece of pvc piping. We glued the first candle holder on to the vase. We then glued the pipe and then another candle holder on top. The way we mounted the candle holders, allows them to be like cups to hold the seeds. The pvc pipe, we coated with peanut butter and than seeds. Again, there are no birds, but they look nice on the post.

James Herriot

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Last year my daughter did the Oak Meadow 4th grade. This book was part of the reading for that grade. I had never really heard of James Herriot and thought the book looked childish for 4th grade. However, after reading the book, my daughter loved it. I read the book and loved it too. I looked in the library for more of his books and found he writes adult books and have been enjoying them ever since. James Herriot is a Veterinarian and all of his book recount his adventures as an animal doctor. I love all the animal stories. They are heart warming as well as educational. He is from England and all of his stories revolve around small town farmers and their animals. His books are pretty wholesome and can be enjoyed by the whole family.

Duck Light Bulb

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We just got a couple ducks on our farm. My friend has so many. When we visited my husband cornered a male and female and brought them home. Since we have our little farm, I decided to work in to our studies with my first grader lessons about a farm. We studied a few animals and of course we had to study the duck. I am amazed at how freezing it is outside and the ducks are swimming in the little tub we have for them. While studying ducks we read that they have no nerves in their feet so they do not feel the cold. Also, their feathers are designed in such a way that their skin does not ever feel the water. Glory be to Allah how he creates things so perfect. You can see my ducks in my other blog. Here is our little craft we did about ducks. We made it from a old burnt out light bulb. We painted the light bulb with Kilz primer. This stuff will stick to anything. We cut the feet and beak out from foam and colored them orange with a permanent marker. We used feathers from our chickens and we glued the eyes, buttons, hat and lace with a glue gun. We drew the eye lashes with a sharpie pen. I think she looks really cute!

A Year in Homeschooling

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This year for me was like no other for homeschooling. It took us a whole year to finish. We lived in three states, and stayed in five different homes. We have finally settled in Nebraska. It looks like we are here for a while. While living in all of these temporary places, my schooling was very different. We had three plastic tubs that we kept all of our school supplies in. We had everything from books, to markers, paint, glue, notebooks, maps........Just everything we needed. Every time we moved, I would just pull those tubs along and set up our little mobile school. We started in Florida living in a vacation condo along the beach. We did many science experiences from the beach. I capitalized on the museums in the area, and we did field trips. We later moved to Tulsa Oklahoma. But, before we did, we stayed a few weeks in Orlando with my husband's family. I could not just sit around and not school the children for two weeks. I brought my plastic tubs/mobile school into my in laws home and started our school again. We spent 6 months in Tulsa and lived in an apartment until we were able to find a house. My mobile school started for a little longer period of time. During our time in Tulsa, we had taken a few road trips to Nebraska to visit friends there. We loved the area and found a house we wanted. We were at the end of July and we moved all of our things with the idea we would close on our home in a few days. We went to our friends house. The closing of the house was not going as planned and we ended up staying three weeks with our friends. We had to put all of our things into their garage. Well, I only had a week left to finish our curriculum. I could not let the kids not finish soon. I searched through the garage for my tubs, and I found them after much difficulty. Alhamdolilah after a week we did it! My advice to parents who always need perfect conditions for homeschooling is that you really do not. You just have to have a great deal of patience and for me I needed determination to keep going and finish. Parents need to ask Allah for patience and determination because I believe under any conditions and circumstances you can make it with these two attributes. May Allah give us the patience, strength and determination to educate our children to please Him. AMEEN