Homeschooling Methods #3

I was talking with someone about homeschooling a couple days ago and I thought that it would be good for me to post about some more methods that I've used in my home-schooled education.

WHEN: (Wasatch Home Educators Network) www.whenonline.org
This is a home-school network based in Utah county, it's got a site with a forum where a lot of home-school parents get together to discuss different things about homeschooling; such as how to teach different subjects, how to get started, things that are happening that will affect homeschooling and posting field trips that they're organizing and inviting others to join them. You can join the forums for free and get access to all the different forums.
And here's the description from their site about Paid Members, "The annual membership fee is currently $5.00. As a Paid Member, your annual membership fee covers the cost of your children's participation in official WHEN Academic Events (Spelling Bee, Science Fair, Geography Bee). Your membership will also allow you to register for WHEN sponsored field trips and skating parties online using PayPal."
This organization has been a great asset to my education, helping me to experience a lot more plays, field trips and have great social interactions with my peers around the county.

My Tech High: mytechhigh.com
This is a charter school based in Utah that has this unique vision:
1) America was founded on the principles of innovation and entrepreneurship.
2) Every child is different – parents need resources to personalize learning.
3) Technology is essential to future success – in college, career, and life.
Because of this vision they let you, the parents and students decide how to best educate the student. They let you choose from many different options for classes, and have different options for many different areas of the world. So I would encourage you to head over to their site and check it out. I've been able to take 8 different classes on  different technologies, and I completed all of them except one on coding. I've also been able to go through 3 years of math in a semester with one of their math options. This is a great option if you are able to use it.

Life: This one might seem obvious, and it might not. I think that one of the best resources of education is just living life and observing what is going on around you. There are so many opportunities to learn every day, from seeing how a bird flies to seeing how planes fly. From learning a technique you see someone using in art or work, to observing the way a mother takes care of her child. There are endless possibilities for learning and experience, sometimes you have to search them out, and sometimes they'll smack you in the face with a problem in your life that you can learn from.

I'd invite you to use the first two resources if you can, but to definitely use and learn from the third one. You can learn anything that you put your mind to learning! Have a great day and learn!

More Eagle Project Pictures

Here are some more pictures from my Eagle project.

 



Sanding the boards.

Putting them together.

Painting them.

This was a really good project!

Thanks if you helped or go to The Colonial School.

My Eagle Project and the Colonial Fest

I'm a soon to be Eagle Scout!

I did my Eagle service project this last Saturday. Now you may be thinking, "What did you do for your project?"

I made benches for The Colonial Heritage Foundation, they will be used in their Colonial School reenactment.


These are the benches they've been renting.

The Colonial School welcomes all who want to attend, whatever time period they may be from.


These are the benches I made for my project.



The Colonial School is part of The Colonial Fest, the largest Colonial reenactment this side of the Mississippi. (West)

 

Some other things that are done during The Colonial Fest are reenactments of Jamestown,

You can try on some Spaniard armor!

drafting troops and firing muskets,

Real gunpowder!

and the stocks and pillory.

The pillory is for the head and arms.

And the stocks are for the feet.

 

Because just having your feet locked up for a day wasn't enough back then, you would also sit on a pointed stool!

 

The Colonial Fest goes on at the SCERA Park in Orem Utah, during the 4th of July. The best part? It's free to come! Their website is: http://www.freedomfestival.org/events/colonial-days/

 

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at The Colonial Fest this next year!

Home-Schooling Methods (Part two)

This is part two of my two part post.

This is for those of you out there that want to home-school and just don't know what there is out there that you can teach your children with, and also for those of you that just want more resources for your children to chew on, home-schooled or not.

Here are some things that I being home-schooled my whole life except for a local Seminary class and an online charter school that I have been taking classes through this past school year, have found were helpful in my studies and academic progress. And I believe that they can also be helpful to you and your children.

This post is mostly for teaching younger children but you can still teach your older children with these things.

Logo I made
 for PERC

The first thing that I would like to talk about in this post is your local PERC. (Parent Education Resource Center) This may not be available in all areas but something similar should be available in most places. Somethings I like about it is that you can go and checkout games like you would books from a library (except there is a limit). The games are educational and there are different types of games, ones for older children and ones for younger children. There is also sometimes a shelf full of CDs that are also educational, you can checkout two of these. The reason that I like the PERC and things like it is that when you play the games with your children they don't even realize that they are learning stuff from playing the games (as long as you get ones that they'll enjoy). There is no specific website as far as I know for PERC except for area specific ones.

PBS Kids
Logo

The next thing that I wanted to mention is PBS Kids. It is an online resource that has a lot of educational games that kids love to play. It is the website for the popular television program with the same name that airs on various television stations around the world. The games are very age oriented but there is something there for all ages at least up to around age 12 when children start losing interest in them. But there are some games that go beyond that age interest level that older children might want to play. The thing that I like about this is that the games are educational and cover a wide spectrum of curriculum from geography to math to science. The link to their website is http://pbskids.org/

Books!

The last thing I want to talk about is just old fashioned BOOKS. (I know scary!) Books were the beginning of human evolution to great inventions. Without them we wouldn't have (m)any of the things we enjoy today! So the natural thing to think is that if you want your children to be able to have a vivid imagination and come up with fantastic inventions it would be a good idea to have them read some books. All of the things that I have talked about in these last two posts you need to be able to read in order to use. Some of the writers that I have liked a lot are the following: The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Brandon Mull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jeanne DuPrau, Tina Monson, Lois Lowry, Orson Scott Card, James Dashner, Cressida Cowell and Roald Dahl. These are just some of the many authors and writers out there. But I could put out a million names of authors and writers but the key here is that you need to go and find out who you like to read and have your children read classic books so that they can have their vocabulary and brains increase in size and strength. The last thing I will say about books is this: With cell phones and stuff like them you can now read books on them and that is an excellent resource, I highly encourage using them to read if you don't have a paper and ink version, but I at least prefer to sit down in a corner and read a paper and ink copy of whatever book I'm reading. Lastly (but not least) I would like to rewrite a common quote, "There's an app BOOK for that!"

Be sure to check out these resources to see if you would like to use them to teach your children or yourself!

Home-Schooling Methods (Part one)

This is the first part of a two part post.

This is for those of you out there that want to home-school and just don't know what there is out there that you can teach your children with, and also for those of you that just want more resources for your children to chew on, home-schooled or not.

Here are some things that I being home-schooled my whole life except for a local Seminary class and an online charter school that I have been taking classes through this past school year, have found were helpful in my studies and academic progress. And I believe that they can also be helpful to you and your children.

This post is mostly for teaching older children but you can start teaching your children with these things around  the time that they are able to read.

Khan Academy
Logo

First of all I have loved Khan Academy it is a free online math system that started when the founder Salman Khan started teaching his cousin who didn't understand some math concepts. He used Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad to help teach her. Some of his other relatives started wanting him to teach their children. After that, he decided it would be easier to post his videos on YouTube. From there it has evolved into an entire website that anyone can use to teach themselves or their children. You can now make your own Khan Academy login to keep track of your progress. If you are a parent, then you can set up yourself to be your children's "Coach" so that you can track your children's progress as well. One thing that makes your children want to do it is that when they do certain things that show that they are investing time into learning, it awards them different "Badges" some of them are harder to get than others, but it is FUN to earn them and show them off. That's all that I can think of while keeping my post short. The link to their website is http://www.khanacademy.org/

Seterra
Logo

The next thing that I would like to talk about is a program called Seterra. This is a free downloadable geography program (you can also do it online now) that is about four megabytes for the latest version (4.02) and about one megabyte for the version before (3.0). One thing that I like about this is that it records the best results in a high score list so that you can have friendly (sometimes crazy!) competitions between siblings and parents. The format is also very well laid out so that you can navigate the program easily. The way it works is, you open the program and then pick what part of the world you want to learn more about (divided into continents). Then you pick what you want to learn about in that section. It has stuff like countries, with their flags and the capitals, of the continent you have selected. If you think that you know most of the world you can take the (Ultimate) quiz of "Can you name all of the countries of the world?" The link to their website is http://www.seterra.net/

Sporcle
Logo

The last thing that I will talk about in this post is a cool quiz site called Sporcle. It is a place where people can make users and then they can make quizzes about all sorts of things. Some that would be better for teaching your children would be the quizzes located in the geography, language, science, history and literature sections.The way it works is you pick a quiz that you want to do then you press the start button and you have a limited time to complete the quiz. On some quizzes if you get a wrong answer then that ends the quiz. After you run out of time or get all the answers right then you can see your stats and see how you compare against others who have done the same quiz. The link to their website is http://www.sporcle.com/

I will post again soon with a couple other things I have found helpful to me.

Be sure to check out these wonderful resources and see if you would like to use them yourself!

Blogger into Google, What is new?

I found this information at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?hl=en&tab=my#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault%3Falt%3Drss.

You may ask yourself why did Blogger join Google anyway? Well according to what I read there were a couple reasons: a) Google had things that Blogger didn't such as servers and other things like that. b) They liked the people running Google and they wanted most of the same things.

You may also wonder if due to being bought by Google, if Blogger will eventually disappear or become incorporated to the extent of losing their logos and stuff like that? In the article I read it says that Blogger will still keep their own logos and stuff.

And last but definitely not least you are probably wondering about their plans for the future. Well when the article I read was posted (April 1st 2011) it  was very stingy on those details.

Computer Literacy: What have I learned?

In this day and age almost everyone is using computers, so to keep you updated here are some things I have learned in my Computer Literacy course:

I have learned to always read instructions even if you think that you know what you are doing, you might skip a very important step.

I also learned that it is very important to know how to touch type, especially if you are an accountant or something similar.

I have also learned to be considerate of other people when writing an e-mail or blog post so that you leave a good impression on people.