It’s that time of year again, the start of a new school year. Newly sharpened pencils, books yet to be cracked open, and binders waiting to be filled, are all ready and waiting for students to return to learning. The beginning of a new school marks a new chapter in a child’s life, along with new experiences and new things to learn.

As homeschoolers, we too have that same anticipation and excitement about the new school year. Yet even with that desire to learn, I’ve found that it is often hard for my children to get their brain going in the mornings. Their mind is still foggy from sleep and they just can’t seem to jump right into spelling, math or language arts. Just as an athlete needs to stretch before a workout, children need to stretch the muscles in their brain at the beginning of a school day.

We call it our morning work. At the start of each school day we do a fun activity designed to get my children’s mind stretched and moving for the day…to read more about these fun activities, visit The Better Mom, where I am guest posting today.

It’s that time of year again. As much as I’d like summer to last forever, I can’t remain in denial. The new school year is right around the corner and for many, it has already started.

I’ve received all our books and curriculum and am excited about this year’s lessons. We use My Father’s World and this year we are doing ancient history. We actually started some of it in June and have enjoyed learning about Egypt, pyramids, and mummies.

Like all homeschoolers, I enjoy sharing the curriculum that we use:

1. For language arts we will continue using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 3 Instructor Guide (First Language Lessons). It’s worked well for us the past couple of years so we will stick with it.

2. For spelling we will continue with A Reason for Spelling - Level D: Student Workbook. As I’ve posted before, I love this curriculum!

3. We are starting Latin and Greek roots this year using English from the Roots Up, Vol. 1: Help for Reading, Writing, Spelling, and S.A.T. Scores. For writing, we are going to try Writing Strands Level 3 (Writing Strands Ser).

4. Another new curriculum for us is a computer programming curriculum we found to get my oldest started on learning the basics. I found it here.

5. We will also continue with Rosetta Stone Spanish, Singapore Math, A Reason for Handwriting, and Typer Island.

6. I always like to supplement our MFW curriculum to dive deeper into what we are learning. I love these history pockets, History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, Grades 1-3. They are kind of like lapbooks and a fun addition to our lessons.

7. I found this fun book on the orchestra, Story of the Orchestra : Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music! We will be listening to the works of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart as well as learning about their lives.

8. Our homeschool co-op will be doing Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day — Young Explorers Series (Young Explorer (Apologia Educational Ministries)) this year. We did ocean creatures last year and loved it. I’ve ordered the lap book that goes with it for my kids to do as well.

Are you trying any new curriculum this year? What is your favorites that you’ll never stop using?

It’s almost the end of the school year and I realized I’ve hardly posted about our year in homeschool. It has been a busy year for us. We have traveled the world learning about each continent, studying a number of countries in detail, and learning about each ecosystem around the world, all with the travel guidance of our My Father’s World curriculum. Along the way, we read stories and biographies about missionaries who loved and served the lost around the world. We also studied different people groups and prayed for a people group each week. And we enjoyed food such as bratworst and sauerkraut, nutella crepes, fatoush and kabobs, chicken satay, an Indian mango drink, and Australian meat pie.

And that was just in geography and science!

We also joined our local co-op and did a science class using Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day (Young Explorer Series) (Young Explorer (Apologia Educational Ministries)). This was our first year doing Apologia and we loved it! I learned as much as my son. Doing the accompanying lapbook made the learning even more fun and helped my son retain what he had learned.

Another new curriculum for us this year was A Reason for Spelling: Student Workbook Level C (Reason for Spelling: Level C). The spelling curriculum we used last year was unremarkable and disappointing. I have been so pleased with A Reason for Spelling! There is a story at the beginning of each lesson about a class of students. The stories incorporate a Biblical lesson, often a godly character trait or lesson in faith. The spelling words learned that week come from the story. The curriculum provides opportunity for kinesthetic learners as well (my son spelled his words with pipe cleaners, play dough, and even Scrabble Cheez-Itz).

Because we traveled with my husband a number of places this year, we were able to go on many field trips. We visited Washington, D.C. and toured monuments and the Smithsonian. We also went to children’s museums, science museums, aquariums, zoos, and more. If you want to know how we travel and do homeschool at the same time, read my post here.

We had a full year and I look forward to teaching two next year as my youngest will be starting kindergarten. What about you? How was your school year?

There are numerous benefits to homeschooling. One of our favorites is the freedom it gives to travel. My husband is often out of town for work and since we homeschool, we like to join him on his travels. For the most part, we are able to keep up with our homeschooling while we are away. Today, I wanted to share a few ideas on how we homeschool while out of town.

To read the rest of this post, visit Hip Homeschool Moms, where I am contributing today.

Disclaimer: I received access to the resources on this site in exchange for this review. The thoughts and opinions are my own.

We have been a homeschooling family for one year now. I can audibly breathe a sigh of relief that we made it to a year. Better yet, we are going to keep going. Hurray!

As any homeschooling family knows, teaching your children at home is not an easy job. I’ve made many mistakes and continue to learn as I go. I am always on the lookout for additional resources I can use to supplement our core curriculum. My kids need fun ways to learn that they can do on their own. The HEV Project is a great resource for parents looking for an additional resource for learning. They have made short videos on a variety of topics that instruct children on that topic. After watching the video, there are activities they can do to further enhance what they have learned. The topics range from science to art to chess to geography and more. They continue to add videos to the site.

My oldest son spent a lot of time exploring the videos available. He enjoyed them all but the one he loved the most was chess. There are a number of brief videos on chess, taking the viewer step by step through the entire game. From learning the basic pieces to learning challenging strategies, it’s all there. I’d never seen my son so inspired to try out everything he had learned!

In addition, the site also offers book reviews, contests, and (soon) forums for speech and writing.

The HEV Project offers many payment options, allowing you to pay what you can afford to pay. They understand the financial burden homeschooling can be for families. If one of the financial plans does not fit your budget, they encourage you to contact them directly to arrange a plan.

If you’d like to learn more about the HEV Project, click here.

The owners of The HEV project would like to offer one of my readers a free year’s membership to their site. Just leave a comment below to be entered in the drawing. Random.org will select the winner on August 14 at 8:00pm EST. Update, 8/14, Marilyn, you are the winner of this drawing. I will contact you via email. Congratulations!

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“A mother’s heart is the child’s classroom.” Henry Ward Beecher

Families choose to homeschool for a variety of reasons, and our family is no different. One of our reasons to homeschool was our desire to teach our children from a biblical worldview. Let’s face it, there are many things out there vying for our children’s hearts and minds. For our family, we wanted to give our children a solid biblical foundation from which to learn and grow.

I can lay blame on the world for its negative influences on my children-I have and I do. But what about my own influence? What if the greatest influences on my children’s minds and hearts comes not from outside our home, but from within me?

If my heart is the classroom for my children, what are they learning there?

To read the rest of this post, visit Hip Homeschool Moms, my writing home today.

We’ve been working on a big science project all semester. For my son’s weekly enrichment class that he attends, each student had to work on a science project. My son chose mealworms.

What are mealworms? I had never seen one until he chose this experiment. Honestly, I am not a bug or creature lover. I guess I’m a city girl at heart. But like any good momma would do, I allowed mealworms in our house.

Mealworms are the larvae of the Darkling Beetle. They go through a complete four stage cycle which is fascinating to watch: egg, larvae, pupae, beetle. For anyone who has done a butterfly kit with their child, this is similar, except you can watch the cycle go on forever if you’d like.

Mealworms can be purchased at a pet store. They need to be in an open container with oatmeal or wheat flour to eat and they drink the juice from carrots.

For this experiment, we tested how temperature effected the growth of the mealworms. We had one box in our garage and another outside. As it turns out, mealworms grow quickly through the four stage cycle when they are in warm, humid air.

A great site that has everything you’d ever want to know about mealworms is through the University of Arizona.

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