How to Find the Right Curriculum Without Breaking the Bank

The best way to find a curriculum that will work with you and your children is to sample as many different types as possible.  But of course there’s that little problem of cash to fund this little experiment. But there is hope …

Homeschoolers love to share resources. Because of this (and it’s just good business) many curriculum stores give away freebies and sample so that you can try before you buy. Another great source of freebies are homeschool expos.  You can check around to see when one is coming near you. Or you can enjoy a virtual expo from the comfort of your home. Virtual expos provide you with samples of all of the vendors that have participated that year.  You’ll get MP3s, ebooks and sometimes special websites for you to learn more and/or try out products.  I went to my first one this year and I’ve been enjoying it at my own pace.

There are also people who collect free resources from across the internet, such as Homeschool Freebie of the Day. The Erksine Family has great websites that give away free curriculum, ebooks and audio shows to enhance the homeschooling experience. The Erksines encourage people to sign up for their weekly notifications so that you know exactly what day each resource is offered. This is very important since they take down each resource at the end of the day and you don’t want to miss any of their finds!

Another way to experience all that is homeschooling is by getting a subscription to a monthly magazine and seeing how other homeschoolers are getting things done.  Right now there is a great Summer Bouquet subscription drive that not only gives you an in-depth look into homeschooling, but they’re also giving away 19 bonus curriculum packages. These packages contain ebooks, real books, software, DVDs, movies, etc. What better way to get an overview of the many, many different types of ways there are to educate your children today? Just a word to the wise, these particular bonuses are only available for the first 5,000 subscribers, so if you are thinking about doing this, you need to get it right away. (If you’re one of the first 1,000 subscribers you’ll get additional gifts!)

Oh, another cool aspect of this particular subscription drive is that they’ve also created a really cool interactive catalog so that you get an in-depth understanding of what you are really getting.  You know, I always hate those ads that tell you you’re getting free bonuses and then just list a bunch of stuff under it. I mean, what if you are unfamiliar with a certain product and want to know more? But these gals are taking full disclosure to new lengths, so you won’t be surprised when your packages arrive.

This short list should be a good place to start on your curriculum hunt.  And always remember that Google + FREE + curriculum is always a winning combination to find more great curriculum ideas and samples.

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FYI: Cool Career Book Series (for children) Released This Month

Hi,

I just got an email about a brand new book series called “When I Grow Up I Want To Be …” that I thought might be of interest. I have to wait until my husband gets paid (”Thanks Dad!”), but I’m definitely going to get this one. The thing I like about it is that it discusses a variety of jobs (i.e., Firefighter, Veterinarian, Chef, Military, Doctor, Police Officer, Missionary, Artist, Pilot, and Farmer to name a few) from a practical standpoint. They discuss how much money you can make at these professions, the skills you need, the actual day-to-day tasks, etc.

My daughter, Jade, wants to be a Firefighter (well when she doesn’t want to be a ninja) and I think this will be an excellent introduction for her. After we read it I’m going to take her to a firehouse so that she can do a little fact finding of her own! And as we read the other books, she may find discover a new outlet in another profession.

Anyway, the special pricing only lasts until the end of June, so you should check it out soon.
http://bit.ly/16IWXw

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Mammoth: Making Math Easy

It’s all my fault. I admit it.  My eldest daughter is having problems with math right now because I changed direction and confused the heck out of her. I was snared in the siren’s song of cyber-schooling and now I’m doing damage control.  See, when I started teaching my daughter math I made if fun, practical and entertaining. When I hooked up the cyberschools they made it worksheets, boring, and repetitious. And that just doesn’t work for a blue child — I should know since I’m blue too! And the cyber-curriculum has created a division of education amongst the girls. Under my own regime (another aspect of my emancipation!) everyone pretty much learned at the same time with mild adjustment for age and attention span, of course.

But now I’m back into traditional homeschooling and I’m feeling great about it.  Except for getting my little girl back into loving math. Well, that was until I stumbled upon Mammoth Math Clock while hanging out at Currclick the other day. I was looking for a resource to build up my eldest child’s ability to tell time. If you ask her what time it is she can tell you, but since she can’t explain how she figured it out I translatethis as a need for more practice.  since if you should be able to teach something to others once you really know it.  Her little sister is just learning to tell time. so I was looking for something that will kill two birds with one stone.  And Mammoth Math Clock is the answer for us.

For one thing, Maria Miller’s approach to math is a simple one.  Work on one concept at time and build upon it. Her mathbooks don’t have a lot of colorful pictures, cute jokes or other distractions that has made Jade’s cyberschooling math experience so rocky. Just simple explanations, short practice examples to complete and move on to the next component.  This approach makes it easy to include children from different age groups. Ms. Miller also includes a load of online and offline resources you can tap into if you want to expand the lessons or your child needs more practice.

Let me give you one example. In the beginning she only uses the hour hand to teach the children how they can tell time.  She shows them how the position of the hour hand will tell them if the time is a whole hour or a half hour. She gives some illustrations and then it’s the child’s turn to tell time.  The beauty of this system, at least for my kids, is that they are onlyconcentrating on one thing.  There is no confusion about which hand they’re working with. Jade sometimes would confuse the minute and hour hand — now there’s no confusion. My six year old got it immediately and has never experienced the confusion of which is which.  When we moved on to the second lesson, the minute hand was intoduced, but the focus was only on the quarter and half hours. And so on and so forth.

My kids loved the fact that once they finished a section, they “knew” what time it was and how to manage the clock. Jade now confidently tells the time and explains how she knows — no more nervous glances at me to see if she’s on the right track or not. And her little sister, Alaya, enjoys telling me “Mommy it’s 2:35 p.m.” (or whatever the time may be when she gets into her silly mode).  And best of all, for me, is that I’m done teaching how to tell time for at least 2 more years!  We’re moving into the Mammoth Blue Series now.  I’ll be doing Addition and Subtraction with the ladies before moving on to Multiplication and Division.

And I’ll get to teach them both at one time freeing up time for me to work on other things during the day. And maybe even carve out some more time for fun and games. Yeah!

If you’d like to learn more about Mammoth Math, you can visit www.mammothmath.com and sign up for Maria Miller’s newsletter, free math worksheets and software.  She has a great deal where you buy even one of her workbooks and you get free math software for the kids!

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My Best Christmas Present

On December 25, 2008 I got the very best Christmas present ever! My gift took a long time to arrive, but I was prepared to handle it, or so I thought. I read the books on it, outlined what I needed to do, got the necessary training and then … I waited.

Waiting is very hard for me, so I tried to prepare myself even more so that when my gift arrived I could just jump right in and begin the new journey of my life. Hah! So much for my grand plans.

On December 25th my friend and fellow entrepreneur and I purchased our SBI sites together (it was a great two for one sale!). After pushing the “Submit” button I clicked over to Outlook just waiting for my email that would give me the keys to the kingdom. Tick, tick, tick when the second hand and then it came — BINGO!!

I opened my email and was shocked … the keys to the kingdom were hidden behind The Action Guide. I would actually have to watch some boring (or so I thought) videos before I could actually start working on my masterpiece. I felt my lower lip moving into the classic pout position. You know, I read the free reports, did my research, I didn’t need any stinking videos — the nerve of some folks!

So, I settled in to watch the videos so that I could hurry up and start building my site. And after about 15 minutes I realized that I had a lot to learn before I got started. Wow! And I had already done the legwork (or so I thought), but the videos really explained the little things that I didn’t really appreciate as I did my read through of the material previously.

So, with a humble spirit I emptied my head of quick starts and know-it-all attitudes and settled down to watch. And the more I watched, the more I learned. And the more I learned, the more refined my ideas became. And now I’m redoing my blueprints, tweaking those little things that would have killed my standing in the search engines and maybe, just maybe in a week or so I’ll be ready to actually begin my work.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because as you get ready to download the free material and watch the free videos I want you to know that these are just the tip of the iceberg. You’re just a freshman taking a few courses to get your feet wet. Once you sign up, the real education begins. And the more you know, the less time and money you’ll have to spend fixing yourself up later.

P.S. If you want to read the book that got me started on my path to independence click the picture below!

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	affID = “cajam.html”; Wait until The 3 Minute Shortcut has finished, or pause it, before touring these visual links… Tube It! Tour It! Join It! Tortoise It! Doubt It? Try It! Videos From The Heart How SBI! Makes You Succeed SBI! Family Bulletin Board SBI! Business Philosophy Ask Anything To An SBI! Owner Risk-Free Test Drive (The middle four links above open a new browser window.)

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