King and I, About Youth Leadership

By Daviyd Peterson

Actually this is not a movie review, although a child is being prepared to take over his father's kingdom and there are many lessons to be learned about preparing a child to make wise choices. This is an exercise for homeschooled children involving Dr. Martin Luther King - whose birthday will arrive again on Monday and how your child will get to use their imagination to have a conversation with Dr. King. Thus the title - King and I.

Of course the subject could have been the profound affect Dr. King had on my life both while he was alive and through the years after his assassination. But, in order to keep his dream alive I felt it would be more fitting to ensure that Dr. King was given a chance to share his dream with our future generations by letting them pretend to have a conversation with him about his dream, about peace, about people living together.

While this may seem like more of a challenge than most homeschooling parents might be willing to take - I will give you a head start as the rewards will blow you away. For those of you alive when Dr. King began affecting the lives of the nation, take time and share what was happening in that time and how times are changing. Everyone with little memory or nothing to shape your insight can easily find resources online using your favorite search engine. Some examples are a website about children's responses on the subject "What if Dr. King were alive today" and can be found using your favorite search engine with subject in the quotes mention above.

The best site for information on Dr. King of course is the King Center's website. I continue to be amazed at the sample of Dr. King's speech "The Drum Major Instinct".

Another resource is "A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King" and can be found by searching for tributes with a "timeline", this site has a very good timeline guide for helping in creating the conversation. Depending on your child's age you can adapt the exercise to fit using - What would you say to Dr. King about what is happening today. Reading to younger children or allowing them to watch various programs about Dr. King and then have the exercise will make it fresher in their minds.

For those too young to understand I have 2 exercises, the first is where I play Dr. King's speech and give them a play microphone and soap box as a podium to give the speech from and just let them go for it. Don't worry, later on the words will begin to sink in and have more meaning along with giving them a reference for their 'conversations' with Dr. King later when they get older. The second exercise involves letting them draw Dr. King and what he is saying in his speeches. I got the surprise of my life when my nephew showed me a picture of his drawing of Dr. King surrounded by people holding hands - and this at 4 years old.

The ultimate purpose of these exercises could give our children a greater chance at not repeating the mistakes made that created the turbulent times that inspired Dr. King to step up to the forefront of the civil rights movement. It also is a rehearsal for possible roles of leadership, and to cultivate our children's future so that they may have a chance to be a King.

Always remember that a child shall lead them...

Daviyd Peterson: 12-year consultant, instructor, trainer of digital divide solutions for home and business. Helps African American and minority homeschools bridge the digital divide by becoming computer homeschools. Supporting homeschool moms and dads with resources to provide income for their homeschool...

http://www.daviydthepencilpusher.wordpress.com

daviyd@bluebottle.com

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Home Schooling in Your Motorhome

By Rooster Boisseau

At first glance the terms "hitting the road" and "hitting the books" might appear mutually exclusive. But if you home school your children and have access to a motor home, read on.

Your one room school house on wheels.

One of major concerns of parents who decide to home school their children is that their child is not exposed to the wide array of mental stimuli encountered by children who participate in a more conventional education. Children who go to public and even private schools are exposed to many different cultures, personalities and diverse beliefs. However, children schooled in the home sometimes are not exposed to a wide variety of other children. Co-operative home schooling, which brings a number of families together to share the work in educating their children, helps somewhat but home schooled children still, may not experience the plethora of mental stimuli experienced by their more traditionally schooled counterparts. One way to ensure that your child has access to these stimuli is to pack up your motor home and hit the road.

Math Class

As you head down the highway in your one room school house on wheels, opportunities for teaching abound. In addition to the regular daily lesson plan, you can incorporate trip specific lessons into the daily work. For example, the math lesson begins when you stop at the neighborhood filling station to top off your tank. Consult the owners' manual of your motor home and find out the capacity in gallons of your fuel tank. If age and grade appropriate have your young student convert this measurement from gallons to liters. For younger children, a fun activity is to let them watch the pump through the RV window and count the gallons or even tenths of gallons that pour into your motor homes fuel tank. Of course with the current price of gasoline, this activity will be much more fun for them than for you.

Once you've filled your tank, get out the map and sit with your student to study your route. Consult your motor home's manual again and find how many miles per gallon you can expect to get. Help your young student compose a formula to find how far down the planned route you'll be able to travel before your motor home requires fuel again. You can help your child use the map to help navigate as you travel along. Plan a side trip at the spur of the moment. Ask your child to tell you how this side trip will affect your timetable and fuel bill?

History Lessons.

Plan your trip so that you follow an historical route. Follow the Trail of Tears, maybe the Oregon Trail. Travel the dusty path the cowboys rode in cattle drives from Texas to Dodge City, Kansas. If you've got the time, follow the route of Lewis and Clark or, explore the vast expanse of the Louisiana Purchase. What ever path you choose to follow, make sure you have plenty of supplemental materials for your young student to study. Many motor home parks have high speed internet available to their campers. At the end of each day, have your child connect to the Internet and gather information about the history of the places you've visited.

Social Studies

Take a trip through Appalachia. Venture some distance from the Interstate into the heart of some small town. Stop at a small store or local diner. Observe the people who live and work there. Listen to their accents or, eavesdrop on a conversation. There is no better way to discover how other people live than to explore these microcosms of America. You might even want to contact local parents who also home school their children and arrange a visit to learn more about each other and compare home school curriculums.

Other Destinations

Many home schooling co-operatives hold events at various motor home parks to compare and refine home school curriculums and provide new experiences for their home schooled students. An Internet search for these home school meet ups will yield many entertaining and informative events. If you choose to make one of these trips, be prepared to have a good time and be sure to bring your favorite covered dish.

Exercises such as these are entertaining and exciting to your child and if properly presented, your young student may not even realize he is in school. But remember, as entertaining, exciting and educational as these road exercises are, they are not a replacement for the well planned curriculum and lesson plans available to parents home schooling their children.

Article Submitted by Rooster B.

Rooster privately runs several News and Blog sites related to Homeschool Education [http://www.homeschoolzine.com]. Interested in the latest Home School curriculum visit his site at [http://www.homeschoolzine.com]

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Putting Delight Directed Learning on Your Child's Homeschool Transcript

By Lee Binz

If you have a child who is learning about things on their own, just because they are interested and not because you made them, then your child is engaged in delight directed learning. This kind of learning should go on your child's transcript too, right along with the things they are studying formally with a text or something similar, even though they might not be using any books!

To keep track of what your child has done and translate it into a course, keep a list of all their learning activities, group them together, label each group as a class, and then put that class on their transcript. That sounds big, so let's break it down into smaller pieces, using my sticky note strategy.

Divide a yellow sticky note into nine little boxes. On each one, name an experience/educational activity that your child has done, which you're trying to figure out how to record.

Note the year your child did the activity. That gives you an idea what the completion date was.

Estimate their grade. Think about whether they completed that experience to your satisfaction.

Estimate the credit value. Put down the approximate number of hours they were doing it or the credit value if you know the credit value. If you know that they've spent two-hundred hours on swim team, that's what you would put in that credit section.

Brainstorm subject areas for the activity. If ballet is the activity, maybe the course could be P.E. or maybe fine arts. Maybe your child does three different kinds of dance, like ballet, hula, and swing dance; you might be able to combine all of those into one class called P.E. or Fine Arts.

Group activities together. Search for similarities and join things that are similar into groups. Put those groups together into one course, to form a whole credit. Think about what kinds of things you might group into generic titles. Maybe your student is interested in Home Economics, so you put everything they do related to cooking, cleaning, or child care into one course. If your child seems to do a lot of art, put their needlework or craft activities together for a credit in art. Perhaps they get paid for whatever it is they do or work. In that instance, that credit could be called 'Occupation Education.' Sometimes you're not really sure what your child is learning, because they're speaking in foreign languages like C++ or Java, and you don't know what it means. In that instance, you could call their coursework 'Technology' or 'Computer Class.'

Make sure to give your child credit for the learning they do on their own, not just the activities which you assign to them and test them on. Delight directed learning is real learning that has a place on your child's transcript.

If you ever do need help getting your creative homeschool courses down on paper, I have a great resource, "The Total Transcript Solution". In it, you will get detailed guidance on how to create a homeschool transcript that will impress the colleges.

In fact, failing to carefully plan your children's high school courses is one of "The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make When Homeschooling High School." Learn how to avoid all 5 mistakes in my free e-mail mini-course.

From Lee Binz, The HomeScholar - Helping Parents Homeschool High School

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What You Should Know About Homeschooling Misconceptions

By Mandy McCormick

We hear a lot of things about how home schooling is a negative thing for children and how they can be scarred for life. We hear a lot of people repeating the same lines against it over and over. The problem is that these people have never experienced home schooling on a first hand basis and so would have no real knowledge about the experience.

They are the ones who spread and keep the misconceptions about home schooling current and active. If you are thinking about trying out this method of education for your child, then here are a couple of things that you should know about it. These are the more common misconceptions that are being spread about home schooling:

Homeschoolers Are Stuck at Home- The problem here is that some people are taking the "home" part of homeschooling quite literally. The fact is that these kids get to enjoy a lot more activities outside than kids do at regular schools. Their parents can take them out to museums, parks, movies and galleries as part of their regular learning process.

Homeschoolers Are Friendless- This is in connection again with the fact that some people think homeschooling kids are stuck inside the house all day long. The well balanced home schooling curriculum would have plenty of time for playing and engaging in other activities with other kids. The parents can also enroll the kids in fun activities and classes where they could meet children in their own age group.

The School is the Only Place Where Kids Can Socialize- Some people say that children who don't go to school would not be able to socialize properly. For them the school is the best place in learning how to deal with other people.

There's a problem with that view however, and that problem is the fact that children in schools are exposed to a lot of negative socialization in their turn. They experience bullying, peer pressure, and a lot of other unpleasant stuff. That doesn't happen with homeschoolers.

Ordinary Parents Are Not Qualified to Teach Their Own Children- This is simply not true and studies show that the educational attainment of parents has no significant bearing on the performance of kids who have undergone homeschooling. On the average, children who undergo home schooling perform better than those who go through the normal means of education. This means that any parent who is willing should be able to teach their kids.

Teens Miss Out a Lot by Being Homeschooled- Another very common misconception about home schooling is how children miss out a lot of their teenage years when they don't go to usual schools. The truth is that children who undergo homeschooling can do the things that they want when they want to. They do not have to engage in things that are required for the curriculum.

These are just some of the more common misconceptions that we get in regards with homeschooling. As you can see, there is so much more to this method of education and it really is worth exploring.

Lighthouse Home School Resources provides a complete line of curriculum, including homeschool books and homeschool supplies. For homeschool resources, visit Lighthouse today.

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How to Prepare for Home Schooling Your Kids

By Mandy McCormick

Statistics indicate that the number of parents opting to home school their kids is on the rise. That is not surprising, since there are many reports indicating that children who underwent home schooling performs a lot better than those who go to school in a traditional way.

In the past, a majority of parents who home schooled their children did so because of religious or personal beliefs. What they believed in goes directly against the idea of sending their kids with others of their own age to interact freely or it could be that they don't want their kids to be confused with the teaching in schools.

Things have changed now and some parents just go for home schooling because they feel that it is the best move to bring out the best in their kids. If you believe in the same way and you want to try home schooling then it is important that you should know how to properly prepare for it.

Home schooling your kids means that you will be taking on the responsibility of being their teacher. There is no need to emphasize the importance of such a responsibility. It will basically determine if your child will actually be learning or not.

In order to help you out on starting to become a home schooling parent, here are some of the things that you need to do in order to prepare properly for the task:

1. First of all, you need to assess your own ability to teach your kids. Do you feel confident that you can handle that responsibility? If you have your doubts then you should seek the opinion of someone who is an expert on the matter, and when I say an expert, that doesn't mean your friends at work or your neighbor.

2. You need not have a doctorate on some subject in order to teach your kids at home, but it would really be helpful if you have a strong background in education yourself. That would allow you to handle your kid's home education in the right way.

3. Pick the curriculum that you would be following for your kid's education. Read the materials that will be used and make sure that you understand them.

4. Don't stop using the resources that you will be getting. It would help if you study further and use other materials that you can find in order to conduct your research. It is important that you know the subject that you are going to teach by heart.

5. Look for some training where you can get some knowledge on the proper teaching methods especially for children. You can also do it online. There are many resources where you can learn teaching in the proper way.

6. Be confident about yourself. Your kids will feel it when you start to doubt yourself when you are teaching them and that simply would never do. You have to gain their trust and that starts by believing in yourself that you can actually teach your kids.

Lighthouse Home School Resources provides a complete line of curriculum, including home school books and home school supplies. For homeschool resources, visit Lighthouse today.http://lighthousehomeschoolresources.com/

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