Homeschooling has become popular for families who find their children’s needs are better met at home than in a regular school setting. Starting to homeschool can seem a daunting task. What curriculum should I use? Can I really teach my child? What other tools will help me create the best educational experience for my child? Finding the right educational resources for your child is easier than ever before!
Asking other parents can be helpful when choosing your teaching tools, however every child is unique and responds differently to each curriculum and tool. Figuring out your child’s style, strengths and weaknesses will help when choosing what to use. Some parents start off by using an all-in-one boxed curriculum and others tailor their child’s program using books and tools from several companies. There are many books along the way to help you make sure you are covering all the bases as you teach your child. E.D. Hirsh has written a great book series on what your child needs to know at each grade level. The first in the series is called, “What your Kindergartener Needs to Know: Preparing Your Child for a Lifetime of Learning.” This series not only serves as a guide but helps you create lesson plans to cultivate grade-appropriate skills.
One of the benefits of homeschooling is the ability to go above and beyond what is provided in a regular school setting. Why stop with the basics? There are countless tools available to help you teach your child outside the classroom. A music CD called “Geography Songs” makes learning the location of oceans, planets, famous landmarks and over 225 countries fun and easy. Music appreciation can be equally as fun with “Classical Kids” music CDs. These clever music CDs take your child on a journey back in time with a clever story that goes along with each composer’s music: Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bach and many more! This is a great introduction to a sampling of the greatest composers of all time.
There are numerous books and curriculums for homeschoolers. Listed below are just a few. To suggest your favorite homeschooling resources, email us at feedback@speech-express.com
Getting Started
The Well Trained Mind
Jessie Wise, a former teacher and current home education consultant, wrote this amazing book along with her homeschooled daughter Susan Wise-Bauer, an instructor at the College of William & Mary. They provide VERY detailed information on a home-school curriculum for a type of classical education called the "trivium." Within each of the three stages of learning (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) are suggestions for lessons, how-to tips, and lists of resources. This book is truly a classic homeschooling book! -- Tricia Morin, Speechville Board Member
Developed by renowned and respected education experts including scholars, writers, teachers, designers, and even a Nobel laureate, the K12 curriculum is based on time-tested and research-based methods of instruction. The K12 development team searched the world to identify and build upon the best teaching methods and materials.
Courses for students in kindergarten through ninth grade
Over 700 lessons per grade
Six subjects: Language Arts/English, Math, Science, History, Art, and Music
Innovative, proprietary Online School
Planning and progress tools for parents
Lessons based on Core Knowledge sequence
Online worksheets, lesson plans, and teaching guide
Traditional materials such as books, CDs, science equipment, manipulatives, art supplies, etc.
Courses that meet or exceed every state's academic standards
Book Description
Parents can assure their child's success in language arts with this simple-to-use, scripted guide. First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind uses picture study and other classical techniques to develop the child's language study in those first two all-important years of school. Each lesson leads the parent, step-by-step, through the simple oral and written projects that build reading, writing, spelling, storytelling, and comprehension skills. Use this book to supplement school learning, or as the center of a home-school language arts course.
This was a FUN simple workbook series that starts with the basics of learning letter sounds and goes all the way! There is lots of repetition for children that need that. I found myself skipping pages on some sounds and on other sounds, using every lesson page. Plus, the lessons were easily modified for those days that my child just didn't want to write but still was ready to learn reading. This book series is incredibly cheap! -- Tricia Morin, Speechville Board Member
I have read and reviewed many phonics programs and this was by far the easiest program to follow for both me and my child. Each sound is learned in a simple lesson. There is a little worm that shows up in all the lessons that makes it a little more kid-friendly. --Tricia Morin, Speechville Board Member
Description from Amazon The Combo Kit is packed with enough language arts instructional material for two full years. Featuring age-appropriate lessons for the younger child, the kindergarten portion of this kit covers the first 15 steps of the 36-step Level 1 program. Two kindergarten student workbooks are included featuring larger print and fewer words per page. Topics covered include letter recognition, letter sounds, manuscript writing, and beginning reading. Boxed: 18" x 12" x 6".
Sing, Spell, Read & Write is a learning-to-read curriculum that uses a 36-step program of carefully sequenced systematic, explicit phonics instruction to build fluent independent readers. For more than two decades, veteran educator Sue Dickson developed and field-tested this program in her own classroom. Where other reading programs were failing the students who were struggling the most, Mrs. Dickson saw first-hand the amazing results her students achieved when she combined music with multimodal teaching strategies. Using look, listen, point, sing-along, and echo routines along with gross motor and fine motor activities, the program activitely engages the senses and effectively reaches all types of learners. Virtually every child is assured of success. Today, the program has a proven, nationwide track record and the soundness of such an approach is strongly supported by current research on brain function, language acquisition, and reading.
Features • Sing, Spell, Read & Write helps you: • Put the proven power of multisensory learning to work in your classroom. • Develop a complete Language Arts curriculum with correlated and sequenced phonics, reading, writing, spelling, comprehension, and grammar lessons. • Engage students and make learning fun with catchy sing-along songs, games, phonetic storybook readers, and hands-on activities. • Boost Language Arts skills for all students, including those who struggle with traditional approaches. • Promote independent reading by the end of Grade 1 for virtually every child. • Incorporate step-by-step guidelines and scripted lessons into your curriculum. • Track each child's progress using built-in assessments and achievement tests. • Improved reading scores nationwide -- 42 percentile-point increase in total reading scores, 34-point increase in comprehension, increase of 2.7 reading grade levels in one year.
We've had the CDs in this boxed set for over a year now. The Classical Kids series has been wonderful. We have two boys (now 6 and 8) and this has been a great introduction to classical music. At first, the kids loved the stories which provide a sense of history and place and, ultimately, keep the kids interested in the entire CD. As they listened (time and time again), they started to pay more attention to the musical portions. Recently, we've been able to tell that they've picked up a sense of the music as we've listed to classical music on the car radio. Time and again, they perk up when listening to a piece of music and surprise us by saying "That's Beethoven". Sure enough - they've picked up something about the style of music that's characteristic of Beethoven. Sometimes it's the snippet of music from the CD and other times it's just the rhythms that are characteristic of that piece. As a family, we all recommend this. --Review by M.Raegen
This is possibly the best course I have run across to teaching children effective communication through writing. Andrew Pudwea presents a ten-hour seminar for the student on the qualities of a good writer. This DVD series brings Andrew Pudwea's writing technique course right into your livingroom. The package includes the student materials also and assignments suggestions to reinforce concepts. Pudwea lays out his concepts in a simple and very entertaining way. There are several different levels. Our family started with Level A for my nine year old son. --Tricia Morin, Speechville Board Member
Overview: Unit I & II-Outline a paragraph, Write a paragraphUnit III-Story Sequence, Write a Story Unit IV-Summarize a Reference, (find keywords, choose what is interesting/important) Unit VII-Creative Writing Other topics covered: Banned Word List, Topic Sentence/Clincher, Sentence reflect or repeat 2-3 Author: Andrew Pudewa Grade: 3-5 Publisher: The Institute for Excellence in Writing
Learning to Read - phonemic resources, phonological awareness, rhyming, alliteration and lots more resources to help your child become a successful reader.
Learning to Write - handwriting and expressive writing. Worksheets, books, articles, software programs and other helpful links.
Learning to Spell - word recognition, visual learners, spelling helpers and more.
Speechville Express
is a resource for families, educators, and medical professionals, offering
information about language development in children, helping those who
care for toddlers and young children who are late talkers, and connecting
you with others who have been down this road. Language disorders and
communication impairments included are apraxia, stuttering, pervasive
developmental disorder, dysarthria, and aphasia, among others.
aphasia
