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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
