Tips & Tricks: Taking Test

I know a lot of people wonder how do you deal with testing when you homeschool? First off you need to look into your state laws on homeschooling. In our state you do not need to do any testing. This includes all standardized test like the STARR test. So how do I make sure that our children are retaining the information taught.

Some homeschoolers do not test. Test only show what the student knows about that subject not their overall intelligence. However, I do give test. I bought the history, math and science test booklet that goes with our textbooks. I make sure to write down each main point of the lessons we do and we do a 6 week as well as a 12 week review.

Every 12th week of school I use that as the review. The math work we do goes over everything from the previous 12 weeks so our daughter completes both the math work for that week as well as showing me that we knows how to do the problems from the previous lessons. Two birds one stone kind of thing.

When I do give test from the test booklets I don’t tell our daughter that she is taking a test. I don’t want her to be self conscious or worry that she’ll get a bad grade. Instead, I tell her after we complete school for the day that she actually took test and she’s always so surprised because she said she had fun. That is what I strive for when we do school and when making sure she has retained the information given. I don’t think children are learning at their best if they are frustrated, scared or worried. School and learning should be fun!

All pictures shown are from our Timberdoodle curriculum. Even the “tent” she made while being a nomad was from The Story of The World. I highly recommend Timberdoodle. We’ve used them for 3 now and will continue to use them because they make awesome choices for homeschool curriculum.

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Review: Sensory Tissue Box

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T

Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade. My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

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