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How Much Does Homeschooling Cost? FAQ May 07, Jenny asked: "I'm wanting to homeschool my boys aged 8, 7 and 6 but the cost of materials seems expensive." For the other subjects April did 'projects'. Lap books and scrap booking are the modern version of doing projects - a quick google search will bring up dozens of excellent informative sites telling you how to use either method with your children. I prepared activities, worksheets and lessons on themes or topics related to what I wanted April to know. We did art most days - that's very simple - just supply a few art materials and a space to be creative! For craft I organised enough materials (including a junk box of recycled materials) for April to build dolls' furniture, houses, cars, props for her pretend games, play with clay (including real clay, play doh, etc), wool, sewing materials - anything and everything that would encourage her to use her hands and her mind to create and produce. I encouraged her to help me with the chores - cooking, cleaning, gardening and looking after her baby brother. We spent time each day reading together, she read to her brothers, and spent time reading to herself. We had a small collection of largely secondhand books and also went to the library and toy library every week. Buy frugally at first - start with one or two books in one or two subject areas and see if you child is inclined to do 'bookwork' at home. Think carefully about different ways to approach topics rather than working from and in books. For example, it's easier to learn about pets by looking after them rather than doing a 'school project' on them... It's easier to learn about cleaning teeth by having someone show you night after night the best way to do it and help you master the technique of flossing and visiting the dentist for a chat and show around the dental surgery (before you actually need to visit the dentist for real!) than filling in blanks or colouring some page in a health work book! That's about right... only the children would sometimes work a lot slower, and how long also depends on how much there in on each page. For the first couple of grades that's not a lot, but handwriting skills are imperfect and it takes a fair bit of time for the child to get a whole word written! By grade six the pages were packed full, the writing a lot smaller and it took a bit longer. A lot more to read too! We used workbooks as a kind of 'skeleton' learning program and fleshed out learning in those areas with lots of activities that reinforced or added to the skills and content covered in the books. You'll find a description of the kinds of things we did for reading and writing in my two practical homeschooling series booklets, and I cover spelling, writing, reading and maths for that period of homeschooling in my Learning in the Absence of Education book (http://alwayslearningbooks.com.au) Most of the children's writing and handwriting arose from activities generated by other subjects, such as social studies and science. Whenever the children wrote anything I'd be looking to see how their skills were developing and improving. This would give me clues on what sort of reinforcement they needed. Sometimes it might mean I'd ask them to do a particular page in their workbooks, if I thought they needed to learn that skill or content now. For instance, Thomas was keen on apostrophes before he knew about fullstops and commas, so I taught him about apostrophes. |
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