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Homeschooling:  'Subjects'

Introduction
Free Materials
Subjects on this page

 

Introduction

Because most of us were educated in schools, we tend to think of our learning as consisting of 'subjects.'  In reality Life is a continuous flow, and not a series of compartmented 'subjects' that we 'take.'  Despite that it is easy to see why 'subjects' arose.  The idea of trying to educate large groups of children simultaneously, without segregated categories of information would be chaos. 


"The House That Jack Built" perception of 'Subjects'

As beings who live within Time, we also have the minor problem of usually being able to do only one thing before we do another, and then only linearly:  starting, proceeding, and finishing.  Because of this 'minor' glitch we find ourselves 'gardening,' and then 'cooking,' and not considering that 'gardening' may be 'pre-cooking' in that it provides the raw materials for the meal.  Stretching the analogy, I could say that raking the lawn in order to put leaves in the compost bin, the result of which winds up in the garden bed to feed the plants that produce the food, could also be seen as a step in the cooking process.   This analogy reminds me of old cookery recipes that began,  "First, find a chicken . . ."  Eventually it all fits together, but in the meantime (and in some states) we need to stuff our little subject-pigeons in their appropriate holes.

The following are resources that parents can use to educate and entertain their children as they grow.  We all have to do 'something' while we're 'here,' so we may as well enjoy ourselves as best we can, because there's enough grief and anxiety to go around, and have leftovers.  This resource list is made up only of the online pages I've found that looked interesting (my kids are grown, so I haven't had the chance to try out most of what follows).  The list is not complete and will always be a work-in-progress (I like finding stuff).
 

Free Materials

Other links in the Subjects area also provide some free materials, but not all.  These links are free general information links.

Free online curriculae are linked from this site's Curriculum page.

Free online encyclopedia:  Wikipedia

Free online libraries: 
Awesome Library
Bibliomania online books and study guides
Digital Book Index (log-in required)
Free Classics Online
Internet Mathematics Library
Internet Public Library
PDF Planet E-books Archive
Project Gutenberg
University of Florida Literature for Children (PDF facsimiles of antique books)
University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
World Wide School (click on "Library" for the books page which has titles in the public domain)
 

Online Libraries with mix of free and for-purchase texts
The Baldwin Project
Bringing Yesterday's Classics to Today's Children
Children's Books Online:  The Rosetta Project (downloadable antique texts)

Lesson Plans (parent site:  Awesome Library)


Subjects On This Page

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Archaeology
Art

 

B

Business

Back to Subjects On This Page

C

Civics
Cooking
Curriculum in general

 

D

Driving Education

 

E.

English:  see Language 

 

F

Field Trips/vacations
Foreign Languages

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

G

Grammar -- see Language
Geography

 

H

Handwriting
Health (on Science page)
History
Home Ec/Independent Living

I

International Relations

J

K

L

Language (includes Grammar, Phonics, Reading, Literature, Spelling and Writing)

 

M

Math
Music

Back to Subjects On This Page

N

O

P

Phonics -- see Language
PE
Public Affairs

Q

R

Reading -- see Language
Religion

S

Safety
Science (a separate page within this website)
Social Studies
Spelling -- see Language
Sports

T

U

Back to Subjects On This Page

Unit Studies

V

Variety

W

Writing -- see Language

 

Archaeology

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Art

    Visual Art

  • Atelier products
  • books for young children by MaryAnn F. Kohl
  • books for young children by Lucy Mickelthwait
  • Dave's Snowflake Page
  • The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
  • hint: listening to an audio book or to someone reading aloud while drawing, sculpting, painting, etc. will keep your logical Left Brain busy and stop it from horning to to boss the artistically creative Right Side around.

  • KidsArt  "KidsArt On-Line art teaching supplies features how-to books, art history, gallery and enrichment created especially for kids, from preschool through teens."

  • Mommy! It's a Renoir.  The guide book, also known as "Mommy It's a Renoir," presents a series of graded activities using small prints of famous artworks. Preschoolers begin with enjoyable matching games. The exercises increase in complexity as older students pair different paintings by the same artist, then learn to group paintings by features such as artist, style, school and subject.
    by the same author: Child Size Masterpieces by Aline D. Wolf

  • National Gallery of Art websites for kids

  • Tesselations, and images by their most famous practitioner, M.C. Escher

 

    Physical Art

        Dance

Back to Subjects On This Page


Business

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Civics

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Curriculum in general

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Driving Education

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Foreign Languages

  • Fokus Deutsch (German), Destinos (Spanish), French in Action (obviously French): websites for the video programs from the Annenberg Foundation.  Some of the lessons (half-hour long) are viewable online (Video on Demand -- VoD icon) and have supporting downloadable files (registration required).  This is an immersion course, not a translating course.  A good introduction to the languages, making listening to the episodes easier, would be though The Learnables.
     

  • Power-Glide program
    You should learn a foreign language the same way you learned your own natural language. We use diglot weave stories, puzzles, games, songs, and other fun activities to draw out the natural acquisition the way children do.
     

  • German
    Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm
    American proverbs from German immigrants
     

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Geography

  • Geography Coloring Book

  • Geography Studies
    "This group is for homeschoolers, teachers, and other educators of children of all ages. Make learning fun. Take a train ride, horse ride, airplane ride, boat or ship ride across the ocean, etc. to each state or country."

  • Green Geography
    Greenmaps.org "Green Maps (both printed and online) utilize Green Map Icons to highlight sites of natural and cultural significance. Around the world, each map is created locally in a unique way. Click the continent to find out about each Green Map project and our collaborative effort to cultivate community health and citizen action."

  • Map Machine from National Geographic

  • Postcard kids: "Geography postcard project for children. Started in October 2002 to help children enhance their Geographic studies and even some history through sending postcards from their local area to other postcard kids around the world learning about their home of residence around the globe. Track the ones you get by tacking a pin on to a State map or create a scrapbook album. Kids, teens, school classroom, home schoolers, even a grandparent can join to help out."

  • NASA Visible Earth photographs from satellites and the space stations

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Handwriting

  • Italic Handwriting

  • Hints for handwriting from A to Z Home's Cool with a section for left-handers

  • Donna Young's pages

  • Handwriting Overview from the Zaner-Bloser website, with a handy 'plug' for the Z-B style.  Links are included at the site for Palmer, A Reason For, McDougal-Littel,  Harcourt Brace, D'Nealian, Getty-Dubay, Abeka and Paterson Directed methods of handwriting.  The site also has a compact style comparison sheet.

  • Samples of alphabets are shown at the Educational Fontware website.  This site apparently sells computer software that mimics the styles of handwriting listed so that worksheets for children can be printed in the style of handwriting the children are learning.

  • The Write Fonts from About.com.  The page has links to sites with free font downloads.
     

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

History

World History
Local History (history from the perspective of people who live in an area)
American History

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World History

Back to History
Back to Subjects On This Page

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    Local History

  • Chernobyl today My name is Elena. I run this website and I don't have anything to sell. What I do have is my motorbike and the absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and the speed demon take me.  I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl "dead zone", which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.

  • Local History and Awareness of our surroundings and how pre-readers 'see'
    4 Jan 04, Cambridge, Mass. CBS 60 Minutes, The Eyes Have It
    Book by the subject of The Eyes Have It, Prof. John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic

 

Back to History
Back to Subjects On This Page

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    American History

 

Back to History
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Home Ec/Independent Living

  • Books for younger children:
        Christopher, Please Clean Up Your Room by Itah Sadu, illustrated by Roy Condy
        Clean Your Room, Harvey Moon! by Pat Cummings
        Dirt Boy, by Erik Jon Slangerup, illustrated by John Manders
      Home Sweet Tree, by Stan and Jan Berenstain
        Three Nasty Gnarlies, by Keith Graves
        When the Fly Flew In by Lisa Westberg Peters, Illustrated by Brad Sneed

  • Book for older readers: 
        Home Comforts:  The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson
    (and an antique version of the same type of book: Mrs. Beeton -- a name I remember from older English mystery stories)
     

Back to Subjects On This Page

Language

    Grammar
    Literature
    Phonics
    Reading
    Spelling
    Writing
 

 

Back to Language
Back to Subjects On This Page

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    Grammar

 

Back to Language
Back to Subjects On This Page

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    Literature

 

Back to Language
Back to Subjects On This Page

---------------

    Phonics   

  • Basic Phonics
    "According to Basic Phonics, we learn to read by actually reading, by understanding what is on the page. Most of our knowledge of phonics is the result of reading; the more complex rules of phonics are subconsciously acquired through reading (Smith, 1994). "
     

 

Back to Language
Back to Subjects On This Page

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    Reading

  • Beginning Reading:  "Directionality" is a primary skill children need in learning how to read English because it isn't obvious from text alone that English print is to be read from left to right.  Chinese writing runs from top to bottom and Hebrew runs from right to left.  In looking for useful websites I found a wonderful example of what I'm hoping is an unintentional demonstration of 'directionality.'  The text is difficult to read because we're not accustomed to looking at it in this manner. 

    Another important aspect of learning to read is the realization that each word is indeed a word.  The mind must have the technicalities of the exercise demonstrated in order to comprehend the mechanics.  Reading aloud to a child sitting next to you or on your lap, pointing to words and moving the finger under the word as it is pronounced indicates where to look on the page to find the portion of the text that is being spoken.
     

  • See also Books:
    for very young children
    for little children
    for older children
    for pre-teens
    for teens
     

  • Babybug

  • Cricket

  • Ladybug
    (unless the policy has changed, Cobblestone Publishing accepts donated subscription payments for young readers who can't afford a subscription)
     

  • Reading Lessons article in Home Education Magazine
  • Reading level assessment articles from HomesCool
     

  • Batchelder Award (children's book translated into English)

  • Belpré Award (Latino/Latina)

  • Caldecott Medalists (picture books)

  • Coretta Scott-King Award (ethnic multi-cultural)

  • Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (authors who made a significant contribution to children's literature; look for their books)

  • Newbery Medalists (American literature for children)

  • Sibert Award (informational books)
     

Back to Language
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    Spelling

  • Spelling differences between American and British English
    No, this isn't to push for Briticisms in American studies, only as a reminder that spelling is an arbitrary system of making sounds visible.  Being a good speller doesn't make one morally superior to one's less-letter-sensitive peers, although it does make you look good on paper . . . or computer screens.

 

Back to Language
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    Writing

Teaching children to write

One of the best ways to learn writing is to write.  This doesn't mean graded papers.  It also doesn't mean assignments.  Graded assignments can have a place, but for daily practice a less stressful practice method is having something to write about, and doing it.

Figuring out how to fit daily writing practice into homeschooling can intimidate parents, but it doesn't have to be a chore.  No grading is necessary, so the children can just write.  But, what to write?  Some parents create blogs for their children.  By using the privacy option at online providers such as Blogspot, the child's blog can stay out of the public eye, and only people who have the blog's web address can see it.

I found that using the Waldorf main lesson book concept worked well.  The children would pick one aspect out of whatever we had learned each day, then draw a picture and caption it.  Each drawing was about something that interested the kids, and they usually invested themselves in the job.  As time went by, their skills improved.

Page about trees in one daughter's science book from when she was about ten years old.

 

Page about optical illusions in the same daughter's science book from when she was about fifteen years old.

 

----------------------

 

Another way to learn to write is by hearing well-written language, and by reading it. 

Wikipedia article:  Fiction writing

Voracious reading

"You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader." [4].
 

Parents can help their children learn to 'write by ear' by reading aloud to them.   Listening can bypass the brain's internal language critic so that rhythm, cadence and syntax are effortlessly absorbed. 

We visited friend in England when the twins were ten.  Our son and our friends' son were watching a televised tennis tournament and their son was explaining the rules to our son.  (I'm not up on tennis terms, so bear with me later on)  We parents were chatting on the other side of the room, and we could hear the boys talking tennis.

Their son -- speaking in a not-too-broad Bedfordshire accent:  "[blah blah jargon tennis score] 'advahntage.'"

Our son -- who can't purposely do accents and speaks television-commentator American:  "[blah blah question about scoring] 'advahntage?'"

-- the parents suppress laughter --

Our son's established American pronunciation of words-in-common-with-his-English-friend never wavered.  The one word in the conversation that was new to him, in the context of tennis scores, "advantage" he pronounced in the way he heard it from his friend, "advahntage."  He didn't prefer or reject the way the word was pronounced by most Americans, he just absorbed it as it was presented.

Read-alouds and audio books are both good ways to learn 'writing by ear.'  After the child has some experience 'writing by ear,' then the mechanics of formal writing can be learned.

 

    Books about writing

 

 

Back to Language
Back to Subjects On This Page

Math

Algebra

Cheap math tools: 
Fifteen Bean Soup:  soup beans are good math manipulatives because they are easily found (at the commissary), inexpensive, disposable, and in a pinch can be supper.  The beans are easily handled and visibly different.  A child can see the differences between a pinto, a lima, a garbanzo and a kidney bean but yet appreciate the 'bean-ness' of the whole.  One kidney plus one pinto equals two beans.  Eight beans taking away the three  Great Northerns leaves the five Limas.  Sets within larger numbers are easily seen (four rows of four beans makes sixteen beans yet each set of four within the sixteen, such as  Black, Jacob's Cattle, Navy and Pink, are readily identified).  4 x 4 = 16.  Division is also easily seen.   The big bonus is that if you accidentally vacuum up the spilled 'manipulatives' it's no big deal.

Hint: Use M&M candies as manipulatives, especially when working on subtraction.
 

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Music

 

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PE

  • At breakfast, the newspaper had a 'human interest section front-page headline' "Cup Game Stacks Up:  Schools embrace pastime as a new building block for today's students."  [note: the website often lists articles for about a week, plus the site requires registration for some articles]

    The article is about the PE class at Pearson Elementary School in Kansas City, Kansas.  The latest thrill is Cup Stacking. After reading the article I don't think anyone can question the legitimacy of homeschooling activities.  Mind, I'm not questioning the legitimacy of Cup Stacking as a public schooling activity (unschoolers accept broad ranges of human activities as legitimate educational experiences), only Implications From Others*  that homeschooling activities aren't quite up to snuff.

    * I was going to link to an anti-homeschooling article titled "Homeschooling robs children," but the publishers pulled it from their website.  And quickly, too, since the article arrived on my homeschooling chat lists just two days ago.  Still, the article was online long enough to get a reaction.
     

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Public Affairs

 

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Religion

  • Creation Science [note:  I am completely unqualified to evaluate the content of creation science materials.  You'll have to do a web search and use your best judgment.]

 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Safety


 

Back to Subjects On This Page

Social Studies

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---------------

    Civics

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    Current Events


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Sports

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Variety

Previous Fancies is a page of items that previously appeared on the site's front page.  The Fancies are fun things that caught my attention and can be loosely included under Subjects.

  • AHA Homeschool Resources information

  • Common Sense Press
    "Common Sense Press uses an integrated approach to learning with emphasis upon context. For example, in language arts, spelling, reading, vocabulary, grammar, handwriting and phonics are taught in the same lesson. Research shows clearly that language arts taught in this way is much more effective than when taught in the traditional isolated and fragmented manner."

  • General 'skill levels' by grade, according to the authors of these websites (keep in mind that children develop at different ages, and at different rates within their ages, and probably even at different rates within their areas of interest as contrasted with things they find boring, and that there is no one Grade Level handed down from from Mount Schoolympus):
        K, 1st,     2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,

    A web search doesn't bring up anything that I'd have considered useful for the kids once they were past the age of most 8th graders except for World Book Parent Resource Center.  If this doesn't satisfy your need for specifics, you can do web searches for "9th grade skills," and so on, but be prepared to sift through a lot of edu-speak.
     

  • Free Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

  • Guidelines for 'what elementary teachers' ought to know.  These guidelines are useful for finding titles of works, names of authors, or just browsing to see if anything interesting pops up.  They are not meant to be used as curriculum for children.

  • IMAX DVDs

  • Lyndsey's Mania Geography, math practice, dot-to-dots and matching

  • Mazes, sharpen those thinking skills

  • Scholastic website
  • Standard Deviants
  • Waldorf books that may be useful for anyone.
    The Form Drawing book is useful for developing small-motor skills.  This may improve handwriting, and it also gives the user a repertoire of designs that may be useful in decorating papers, producing artwork, or doodling while on the phone.

    The art sketch pads are useful for: sketching, of course, or making homemade textbooks through the child's own efforts.

    The crafts books are useful for art instruction, as well as producing quality mementoes of the homeschooling adventure.

    The Children's Year has ideas for year-round crafts and activities.

    You Are Your Child's First Teacher:  this book may be useful for new parents, or as a baby shower gift.

 

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This site was last updated:  Friday, 15 February 2008

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