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Issue #76 August 2006Former Unschooled Student's Testimony Click Here! In this Issue
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By Deanna Mascle
Learning to read is not like climbing a mountain. You do not
simply lead your child over a peak and they then become a
skilled reader.
Instead there are a series of skills and building blocks that
children gradually acquire and then continue to build on for years
before they become truly proficient readers.
Vocabulary
One of those essential
skills is vocabulary. Vocabulary refers to the words we must know
to communicate effectively by listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read.
Children use words in their oral vocabulary to make sense of the
words they see in print. Vocabulary is also important in reading
comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading
unless they know what most of the words mean.
While vocabulary is essential to reading, children begin building
their vocabulary long before they begin learning to read and continue
building their vocabulary long after they have mastered the basics
of reading. In fact, for most people, vocabulary building continues
as a lifelong endeavor.
Children can be taught vocabulary both indirectly and directly.
Children learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through
everyday experiences with oral and written language. We teach
children the meaning of words as we talk to them and explain the
world around them. We expand vocabulary through reading to our
children and eventually our children will add to their vocabulary
by reading extensively on their own.
Children learn vocabulary directly when they are explicitly taught
both individual words and word-learning strategies.
It is useful to teach children specific words before reading because
it helps both vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. Repeatedly
exposing children to vocabulary words in a variety of contexts
brings greater depth to their understanding of the word as well
as recognition. It is also important that children learn how to
use dictionaries and other reference aids to learn word meanings
and to deepen knowledge of word meanings.
Children who are learning to expand their reading vocabulary also
must learn how to use information about word parts (such as affixes,
base words, word roots) to figure out the meanings of words in
text through structural analysis or how to use context clues to
determine word meanings.
If you want to expand your child's vocabulary there are two additional
strategies you can employ.
The more books and conversation are a part of your child's life
then the more their vocabulary will continue to grow.
About the Author: Deanna Mascle is the publisher of http://PreschoolersLearnMore.info and http://teachyourpreschooler.info
Source: www.isnare.com
See Easy Homeschooling Companion
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on building literacy through the classics.
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By Kathy Wilson
Summer decorating should add freshness to your home, not bog you
down with more projects during an already busy season. Here are
11 of The Budget Decorator's top easy, fast and cheap summer decorating
ideas.
1. If you want to add color to a room fast, paint is a great option.
To save time and money however, try just painting the focal wall
in a room. In most average rooms, you can paint just one wall
in less than an hour!
2. Instead of sewing up new pillow covers and tablecloths, try
using no sew techniques instead. Pillows can be wrapped in a piece
of unfinished fabric on the diagonal like a present, and wrapped
with decorative ribbon to secure it. Use duct tape to put a temporary
hem in flat sheets or older tablecloths to make them fit your
end tables and breakfast nooks. Once you have those tables covered,
use cardboard boxes pushed under the tables to hide the kids toys
and books and flip flops, but keep them handy. The floor length
tablecloths will hide the storage area.
3. Take a box around the room and pick up all your knick knacks
and collectibles. Now replace just three of your favorite items
or collections. You will appreciate the less cluttered look, and
the decrease in dusting chores as well!
4. If you love fresh flowers in your home, but hate the time and
expense of changing the arrangements, find a sunny spot in your
yard and toss out some sunflower seeds! Many varieties leave no
pollen on your tables, are foolproof to grow, make your yard look
great, and can last up to 10 days in a vaseall for the cost of
a packet of seed!
5. Take down your layered window treatments and pick up your area
rugs for a cool, clean look for summer. Be sure to leave mini
blinds or sheers on your windows for privacy and light control.
6. Clean the glass in all areas for your home! The shiny surfaces
in your home reflect light and sparkle, both contribute to a fresh
summer look. Don't forget your tv screens, kitchen appliances,
and even picture frame glass. Try this one technique, and see
if your rooms don't look brighter and cheerier, for no more cost
that an little effort a few pennies of glass cleaner or vinegar!
7. Finally, mix up your décor a bit for a fresh take on
the rooms you've spent so much time in the winter months! Move
around some furniture, borrow and lend pieces from other rooms.
Use clear strings of holiday light over the top of cabinets for
sparkle. Bring out your good china and hang it on the wall as
art. Put your toaster or bread machine under the cabinets for
a cleaner look. Feel free to take down some wall art and store
it for next fall. Paint your aging dining set a bright white.
Whatever you do to bring the summer season into your homes, make
sure that you pick a couple of ideas from this list, and give
them a try. They are fast, easy and cheap, what could you lose?
About the Author: Kathy Wilson is an author, columnist, and editor
of The Budget Decorator and other popular websites. For hundreds
of free budget decorating ideas, visit her at http://www.TheBudgetDecorator.com.
Source: www.isnare.com
See Easy Homeschooling Techniques Chapter 4, "Making Order," for tips for organizing and cleaning your home.
By Barbara Frank
The baby I carried on my hip while I homeschooled my first two
children is now 14. It's time for me to think about how I homeschooled
her older siblings when they were teens, and how I want to homeschool
her now that she's reached high school age.
In reviewing what I did with my older two, my goal is to avoid
what didn't work and to repeat what did. In that vein, here are
a few things I've decided.
This time around in our homeschool high school, I will not:
1) Use a correspondence curriculum with prescribed
course requirements and graded-by-computer tests. I did that with
my older children, and consequently they learned to memorize facts
long enough to ace the test, and then forget them. That's what
I did in high school, and I certainly wanted better than that
for my own children. But I was afraid to tackle my older children's
home education without the guidance of a formal curriculum, nor
did I have the time to design each one's ideal program because
I had two younger children (including one with disabilities) who
needed me. But this time around, my youngest is 12, and while
he will always have developmental delays, he's much easier to
care for. So I am now free to design and implement a high school
curriculum tailored to my daughter's interests and future plans.
2) Use the local
school district's driver education course. Both of my older children
took driver's ed at the local high school, and we all agree it
was a total waste of time. Since then, the school board has voted
to raise the fee from $50 to $300, which makes this decision even
easier, since private driving school costs about $350.3) Cut
our teenager slack on household chores because she may have a
part-time job, rigorous school work, or both. We did that with
the older two, and found it difficult to ever get them back in
the groove of helping out at home. That's why our home-for-the-summer
college student son is very little help around here.
There are also some things I did with the older two that I definitely
want to do with our third-born. This time around, I will:
1) Regularly update her high school
transcript on my computer, adding every bit of volunteer work,
every job, every online course, her driver's ed class, and every
bit of "school work" she does that can be listed on
a transcript. I will do this promptly, so I don't have to rely
on my not-very-good-these-days memory. This way, each time I need
a copy of her transcript for future college applications, I can
just print out an up-to-date copy from my computer.
2) Sign
her up to take the ACT each year of high school, so that by junior
year, she's very comfortable with it. Doing this with my older
children was part of the reason they both scored very well. I
already knew that high scores make teens very attractive to colleges;
what I learned was that they directly lead to scholarship money.
3) Continue
to encourage her to learn to use the computer (she bought a laptop
with babysitting money) because she will need that skill in the
future, whether she goes to college, works, starts her own business,
and/or runs a household.
4) Use community
and local colleges to augment her studies, as they'll provide
her with classroom experience in areas I don't want to teach (#1:
Chemistry!) as well as college credit.
5) Give her
increasing responsibility for deciding when to do her assignments,
to the point that by senior year, my involvement in her schoolwork
will center on a once-a-week meeting with her to review her assignments.
6) Do Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers with
her during her junior and senior years of high school, because
it worked so well with the older two, and because I'd like to
add some resources and books to it that will be chosen just for
her.
Also, as I did with her older sister, I will:
7) Give her increasing experience
in cooking, cleaning and other household chores. That, combined
with the babysitting she already does in our neighborhood, will
help train her for that most important of all jobs, being a homemaker
for the family she hopes to have someday.
8) Continue to garden and sew with
her, because it gives me great joy to share such pleasurable activities
with her, and because I want the time with her. I learned from
the last two to treasure such times because the days pass so quickly.
Finally, in addition to the all of the above, there's one more
thing I will do with her that I was not able to do with her older
sister:
9) I will continue to do the Mother/Daughter
study of "Women of the Bible" that we began a year ago,
because it's so nice to study the Bible together, and we have
had such great discussions!
These are the basics of my plan. Making these plans is kind of
bittersweet, because this is my last opportunity to do our "traditional"
version of high school. (My son's high school will be much different
because of his delays, but will surely bring its own joys, as
teaching him thus far has done.) This time around, I have a much
better idea of how well homeschool high school can be done; I
saw it with my older children. Thus I have a lot more confidence
this time around.
If you're going to homeschool your children during their high
school years, I hope these tips help you. Just remember the most
important thing: enjoy these years, because they will be over
before you know it.
© 2006 Barbara Frank/Cardamom Publishers
Barbara Frank is the mother of four homeschooled-from-birth
children ages 13-22, a freelance writer/editor, and the author
of "Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers" and the new
eBook, "The Imperfect Homeschooler's Guide to Homeschooling."
To visit her Web site, "The Imperfect Homeschooler,"
go to www.cardamompublishers.com.
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