School Begins At Home

So many children are going back to school this time of year. But for some children, like my son, Dakota, school is at home. We have been using Time4Learning.com for our online curriculum since he started Kindergarten. We love Time4Learning. Many of the lessons are like video games. Dakota loves to learn to recognize site words by playing a game similar to Frogger. He loves listening to Ms. Hoot and the Hooties read stories to him. Now that he is in Third grade, he loves getting enough points in Language Arts to see the dog light up all the way from his tail to the tip of his nose. When he has finished his work for the day, he can go on the Playground and play other video games. Or he will go on Learning Games For Kids and play some of the games on there. I even enjoy going on some of the games myself.

As mom/teacher I like the way I can print out reports as often as I want. Usually at the beginning of the year I print out the Lesson Plans for the whole year. Each day as Dakota does his work, I write down the scores on this printed lesson plan. When he completes the course, I print out the report for that course and keep it in a notebook. That way I can look back at what he has done since Kindergarten. Even though we have no reporting in this state, it is a good way for me to see how he is doing as we move along. Another thing that I like is that he can do a lesson over and over as many times as he wants to. Or needs to. If he doesn't understand something we can do it again and again. There are also printed lesson sheets to go with most of the lessons. This gives him even more practice with the lesson. And it gives me a hard copy of something that he has worked on to keep in his notebook.

For our family school begins at home. But it doesn't stay at home very much. We are often off to the library, the art museum, the nature center, the environmental center, the science museum, historical sites, soccer, and the park for play dates. We are very busy as homeschoolers. But we enjoy it so much. It is so great to be able to see your child bloom before your eyes. To watch that Ah ha moment when a concept finally becomes clear. I love homeschooling and I love Time4Learning.