OneLuckeyWife

I know that a lot of homeschoolers choose not to give test or do any sort of testing. Some states will require that you get test done or go to a place to have a test administered. In Texas, this does not apply to us. However I do give tests, quizzes and we do reviews. I do not tell our daughter when we are doing any of these except the review. I will mutter to myself while looking at my planner and say that week is a review week so she sometimes overhears this. Does this make her nervous? No. Solely because I do not make a big deal about it. I know a lot of kids get test anxiety and I do not want our daughter to think that they are a daunting thing. Last year We used Test Prep  and I really liked it. It touches and 2 of the most important classes in school: English and math. The English portions cover reading, comprehension, vocabulary, writing and grammar.  A lot of the reading will be reading passages and then answering the questions that go with them. The will need the skills of suf

I set goals for the school year at the beginning of the year. I go through all the curriculum and see what it goes over then make goals from that. For example in our Math-U-See curriculum for 1st grade it mostly goes over addition/subtraction and solving for X. While the child can use the blocks to help them I set the goal that by the end of the year I would like our daughter to be doing the problems either entirely on her own or using her finger or blocks as little as possible. For subjects like history and science my goals are they she remembers the main ideas from the sections we read. Our youngest, is 2, is just about to start school so she will be doing preschool. In preschool I just teach the basic things. So my goals for her are that by the end of the she can do the following: letters; upper and lower numbers; 0-25 counting shapes colors weather and what you wear for them animals and their sounds drawing different kinds of lines kinds of vehicles same, different sizes places bod

New videos have been added to my Tips & Tricks page for  Reading Lessons . There will be lots more to come so be sure to check those out as well!

This year's history class is over the middle ages and the renaissance time periods. We got Famous Figures to go along with it since it was so nice to use for 1st grade. In the front of this book there are little paragraphs that go over who each person is and what they did that makes them so memorable. I did not really use these last year. In fact we only ended up using half of the pages. For each person you get a teacher cut out and a student cut out. Our daughter at first had fun coloring the people but by the middle of it she was bored and did not want to color them so instead I just had the teacher ones cut out and put together for her to play with.  Sometimes I do have her color them just so she learns some patience. She thinks it takes to long to color them. Or sometimes I will color them with her to show her she can take her time and enjoy coloring even if it take awhile. I wish that the book came with the little pins to to put them together with but I found them at Walmart

While our history textbook does have geography it is really only over the geography of the time and there is not a lot of it. So to compensate for this we use Skill Sharpeners Geography . I would not use this as your sole history curriculum but rather to supplement like we do. There are 16 different sections for your child to complete. Each one has passages to read, questions to answer and a hands-on activity to do at the end of the section. As to be expected there is a ton of map work for your kids to work on and there are a couple non map sections like suburbs vs city and ocean habitat. The kind of work that will be asked of your child are filling in the blanks (with and without a word bank), multiple choice and writing the answer. I will say that I wish some of the lines were longer because some answers will take a lot more space to write than what is provided for them. So for this we write the answers on a separate piece of paper and then I staple it to the workbook pages. This wor

I really like using books in our homeschool so I was very pleased to see Word Fun in our 2nd grade kit. This book goes over the different types of words. Nouns, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, interjection and preposition are all included. The drawing is really nice and colorful. Our daughter finds the art style to be very funny which keeps her interest in what I am reading and explaining to her. Each new type of word is explained and has the symbol for it. Then you get to read a few passages about if you were that type of word. I really like how they did this book not only does it give you the basic definition of the word but then the passages go more in-depth like saying that a proper noun has a capital letter. It introduces the different kinds of nouns not just giving a blanket idea of nouns. Hands down our favorite thing about this book is that at the end of each section about the kind of word there is a game to play! We often play the game multiple times while we a

Here are some do's and don'ts when homeschooling. Feel free to add some in the comments below. Do's: Not all child are the same so get the curriculum that works best for each child Praise your child when they do something good or something that they have been struggling with Read a lot to your child Let them be a kid not everything has to be educational Take breaks if necessary Do your own schedule; you do not need to copy others Join a homeschool group if possible Go out in the world; museums, zoo, water park, etc. Always encourage your child Explore things your child show interest in Don'ts: Compare your child to another Yell or show frustration Just write everything for your child Tell your child they are doing bad or that they are behind Show your child grade until they are older Push something your child is not ready for Let other people question your child to make sure they are doing good unless your doctor is concerned and then get a professional; your sister'