homeschool

Review: Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership

January 9, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Are you looking for a complete curriculum, all in one place, where one price meets the needs of your entire family? Let me introduce you to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It is my pleasure to once again review their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. In this membership you will find a variety of video-based, printable text-based, and/or interactive courses.

Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership, image for review

What I am Reviewing

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a premier homeschooling site, particularly if you use their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. It is host to a complete PreK-12 education. Loaded with resources for child, youth, teen and their parents you will find it a treasure trove of information. Many of these courses are video-based, others are PDF’s, and yet others are interactive lessons. You get parent resources and access to World Book Online (a fascinating resource).

You can find SchoolhouseTeachers.com on facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Normal price is $179 for the Ultimate Membership, or $19.95 monthly. Stayed tuned for the current sale later in this post!

Learn more about SchoolhouseTeachers.com

SchoolhouseTeachers.com has so much potential to explore. There is quite literally something for everyone.

I would like to show you two of the programs we are actively using. My son is a high school student, and this past semester he is using French.

My son loves that he gets to hear the French spoken, and has easy to print off PDF’s. He saves them to his laptop and then prints off what is needful. This class is just PDF’s to download and listen to, standard worksheets to fill out and learn from. I would love to show you some of his work, but my 14 year is becoming quite private in his studies (at least in an online format).

I’ve been investing some time in learning the Inkscape program. This is a video series that walks you through the different aspects of using a graphic design course. I started it back in October but then hit a spell of bad health and am just picking it up again. Learning how to make rectangles and ovals all over again. 🙂

Future Plans

Next semester I will pick up a bible class called foundations for teens. Videos from RightNow Media along with worksheets makes a class that sounds appealing to my lad.

schoolhouseteachers - foundation for teens banner

We will also be doing a daily grammar, working through the world war materials in the World Book Encyclopedia Online and Dr.D’s geometry course over the next semester. Plans are in the works to take Latin down the road as well.

Doing the courses is easy, you can do a couple of things depending on the class. Go straight to the class lessons, or open the lesson plan.

Most of the courses have a lesson plan which is a suggested plan of action for completing the course. Just like with anything homeschooling though, tweak as needed. Most of the time you’ll find an overview, and then a daily activity list. Some courses will have both, others will just have the overview, it all depends on the needs of the course.

My son gains access to these courses easily by using the bookmarks feature. This feature is found through the member dashboard. You can make a new section for every member of your household. My son has a desire to take Latin down the road, will be taking geometry with Dr. D in semester two and is currently studying WW2. We’ll be adding the foundations for teens to his collection.

Focused Learning Centres

One of the interesting parts of SchoolhouseTeachers.com that many people are not aware of is the focused learning centres. These focused centres narrow in on one topic such as math, reading, science, highschool, careers and seasonal just to name a few.

Opening up the highschool centre led me to discover the mirade of help for highschool like making transcripts, exploring careers, and figuring out the scope and sequence of each grade level.

Flexible and Customizable

One of my favourite things about SchoolhouseTeachers.com is how you can make it your own. You can make a curriculum for your children just by letting them pick what they want to learn (with your guidance). Alternatively you can use the scope and sequence to choose.

They present their material in a variety of formats. You can look under subject matter, grade level, or see all the courses in the grade level chart.

Below you can see a comparison of the various math courses (just part of the list).

schoolhouseteachers.com - grade level chart

Whatever method works best for you, use it. The process of choosing curriculum is made as user friendly as possible.

Video Library

If you can think of a topic, the chances are high that it will be covered somewhere in SchoolhouseTeachers.com video library. Art, bible, history, math and so much more. Watch for fun, watch to learn.

Do I Recommend?

I’ve been using The Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership by SchoolhouseTeachers.com for much of my son’s educational needs. We don’t use it for everything as we are Canadian, therefore we need more Canadian content in our learning. 🙂

I could easily have my son do most of his schooling through SchoolhouseTeachers.com even without the wanted Canadian content. Perhaps, I should help create more Canadian focused content on SchoolhouseTeachers.com just to make it even better. What do you think? 🙂

Promotion

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is currently running a promotion. The Fresh Start sale where you can get the year for $99 (only99 is the code you’d use). Or monthly for $12 (need code only12). My affiliate link for this deal.

Many Religions One Truth

January 3, 2020 By Annette1 8 Comments

World Religions class anyone? Why would anyone want to teach their highschool student about the religions of the world? There are many religions, but really only one truth. Therefore, learning about the religions of the world serves as an aid to teaching my lad discernment. In the process he will learn more about how people think.

Why Study World Religions

It’s a fair question. In a day and age when people seem to believe anything they want and call it religion or faith, why study it? Wouldn’t it be a futile gesure? You’d never truly finish.

But you know what? You don’t need to study them all to gain a

the faith of others better understood
understanding of your own faith (if any)
understanding of the global village
a multi-disciplinary approach to study
a better understanding of history.

Understanding the many religions of Others

If the only people who can understand Christianity are Christians, or the only ones who can understand Islam are Muslims, of what benefit is it? Seriously? If you can’t stretch yourself to understand how others think, then you miss out on opportunities to further understand each other. You will lose chances to reach for compromise, friendship and more. Our religious identities often influence our actions upon the world and it’s people around us.

Understand your own truth better

As you learn about the belief systems of others, you are often drawn to compare their understanding with your own. If you compare say the Islamic belief system and honestly compare it to the Word of God (the bible) you can see where it differs, and perhaps where it is the same. You will better understand when the bible says that the truth of God resides in us all. It will lend further credence to the bible.

We do take the risk that some individuals might be drawn to a different belief system, a different world-view than what they currently possess. That can be both a positive and a negative, all we can do is have open and honest discussions, pointing people to the truth found in God’s word.

Studying world religions shows us often what people do when they use general revelation to understand more about who God is. Viewing the natural world brings us to understanding God. The twists in logic sin causes as people seek to understand God without the understanding that his specific revelation gives us. Ligoniers has a good article on this point.

Scripture itself not only tells us how the heavens declare his praises, but also that “Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy (Acts 14:17)”.

The Global Village

Truth be told, different world-views surround us, and this world is becoming smaller and smaller all the time. We get to hear about Tsunami’s in Japan, government collapses in other countries, economic collapses, missing children, politics, terrorism etc. It surrounds us everytime we turn around. To help us make sense of it all, knowing what makes people tick would be a good help don’t you think?

For instance, knowing some of what I do about Hinduism and Buddhism makes me wary of the increasing populary of the mindfulness movement and the growth mindset. I have yet failed to see any biblical application of this movement. It’s good to understand it though, as understanding where it differs from the world of God gives me talking points with those espousing it.

Understanding the faith of others helps us to live out the scriptural mandate to show kindness to others and to show integrity as we live out of faith. The other week I wished someone Merry Christmas and she mentioned she didn’t celebrate it but enjoyed the festiveness of the season. I followed that up asking about what she celebrated and learned alot about Ramadan. Stuff I didn’t know before. We had a great discussion and hopefully left each other inspired by the stories of each other.

Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Study

Since belief systems influence cultures, politics and lives, understanding them is important. Understanding the Islam belief in Jihad helps us better understand the 9-11 attacks. It helps us to understand the threat felt by those who would ignore the word of God and impose their own belief set. Explaining the threat felt by leaders in other faith systems when their people turn to the Lord and so persecution of believers happens. Learn to understand how religion influences culture, and ergo the actions that people take. We can see it in political actions, in stories written, the examples used in math, how people interact with each other, and the art they draw.

The more you see the connections between all fields, the more you will see the connections to be found. a more holistic understanding of whatever subject you are learning will make your studies more enriching. In our studies of science and history over the years, we have seen many times how faith influences actions and the directions people take in their research.

History More Clearly Understood

One of my favourite things to do is visit museums and other places of history. The faith that people holds in evident in much of what we save. It can be found in the art, the artifacts, sculptures, paintings, figurines, pottery, and statues. Religion can be found in almost everything from stories written, the sacret texts pulled together. Their convictions are based on what their belief systems are. Religion pervades society and it’s actions in so many ways, we can’t always get a clear grip on it.

Suggested Resources

Some resources we are contemplating as we draw nearer to our world religions studies.

The More We Understand

How others think and why they think as they do, the better we are able to show others the truth of God. It gives us a broader view of the world we live in, in a way that devotionals can’t always. Help your students engage in the broader world, strengthen their faith, and teach them to discern truth. Learn how one truth is found as the basis for many religions.

Going Through Browser Tabs

November 2, 2019 By Annette1 12 Comments

It’s the letter G this week for the blogging through the alphabet challenge and I was wracking my brain for what I could do. As I was driving home from church this morning I thought hey! I know I do Going for the letter G. So here’s my third for the year I think.. Going through Browser Tabs.

Wanting to check links

I have a number of sites that I want to go through the links on them. All are homeschooling related.

15 places to learn coding for free.
Some online homeschool courses that were new to me.
Practical by Default had a listing of online courses that had a couple there were new to me and I wanted to remember them.
Integrate math and art. Some of these just sound really good.
Highschool Electives. By techiehomeschool mom.

Homeschooling Related

Other sites that I want to do something with

Canadian Schoolhouse. The Canadian site of The Old Schoolhouse.
Make Belief Comix just looks like an interesting site that I wanted to show the lad sometime.
World War 2 search on Christian Book Distributors.
Terrific Turtles. This inspires me to try my hand at something like this. I just like the set up and wanted to remember it. Sarah did a number of posts like this for the summer.
Compound Interest… A bunch of graphics on elements from the periodic table I think. It intrigued me. Maybe it will you too.
World War 2 colouring pages interested me at EduPics. They have lots of variety there so you should check it out!
I was looking into some highschool alternatives for the lad, checking out the virtual learning centre and independent learning centre. I might sign the lad up for a course or two next year.
WW2 materials on TeachersPayTeachers.
Wondering if this might be a better grammar program for the lad.
I still need to share this engineering journey with the lad.
As I increasingly think on making printables to sell, these lapbook templates from Homeschool Share seem like a good idea. Maybe not to use to sell but to at least generate ideas.

Faith Related

RightNow Media. This was a gift from our church, a free subscription.

24 inspiring bloggers. I’m linked on this page! 🙂

Various Others

Sometimes I just have random links open

Hover a place that just does domain names.
The Blog Plan – I started this course, just haven’t finished it. This site is related I think…. Start a Mom Blog.
Make and Sell Printables. I’ve done most of this. Yes, I still need to finish it, I’ve just been otherwise motivated lately. And there is this related page.
AudioGrabber. Hubby sent me this for some reason that I can’t remember, but it seemed important to keep. 🙂
Some day I will make this stuffed mushrooms.
Someone brought up on facebook asking about alternatives to netflix so I went looking and found these.

Others in this series

Enjoy Learning Music?

October 31, 2019 By Annette1 6 Comments

Did you know that my lad and I used to practice songs together? We’d memorize hymns such as Rock of Ages or Silent Night. We picked up playing the keyboard and have learned some flute. I love music though I admittedly have lost my good singing voice. Introducing this love of music has been a goal of mine for the past 14 years. 🙂 I don’t know how successful I have been, but my lad has signed up to learn guitar this coming year. Could it be true that my lad might enjoy learning music?

Resources

So let’s imagine that you, like me, have this desire to help your children enjoy learning music. How might you do so? I’ve collected some resources that may prove useful for you.

Classics for Kids. I LOVE this website. My lad and I used it throughout his elementary years. Listening to classical music, learning about the composers behind it. Wonderful site!
Harmony Fine Arts has a music appreciation course that you might like.
If you are learning music and want to learn some theory to go with it, Teoria and Music Theory might be sites you want to check out.
Music in our Homeschool is a facebook group for folks wanting to bring music… into their homeschool! 🙂 I’ve been a member since it started I think. It’s a pretty good group of people.
Grab a song, whether it’s a hymn, folk, country, jazz or whatever. Learn songs of your choice. Learn about the person who wrote it. Music draws people together. Memorizing songs serves you well in your older age if you have it memorized and you can’t read the words! 🙂 (No no, not speaking from experience!) Give that gift to your children and sing together.
you could even head to youtube to listen to various genres of music. See what you like and what you don’t.

Games and More

SFSkids has a flash player game to learn about the orchestra. Then go to Carnegie Hall and play an orchestra related game. Both require flash player to work.
Another way to add enjoyment to your music lessons is to make your own instruments. This can be as simple as beating a plastic bowl, taping elastics to a box, or blowing on a piece of grass held between your palms. There are kits to build your own ukulele.
Two years ago we got a subscription to the K-W Symphony. Just a two ticket package for six different shows. The lad and Dad went a couple times on their own, and I and Dad and then twice we bought an extra ticket so we could all go. It was a TOTAL hoot! The lad loved it and got to listen to many different styles of music. He developed a love of classical and plays it while he does his school work. We would LOVE to do this again sometime. 🙂 If you can… do it!

Reviews I’ve Done

Maestro Classics is a fun way to learn music. CD’s telling a story about music and composers. It’s a great listen.
Learning piano or organ? You might want to check out this free music site called Simply Music. This is my review.

In Conclusion

I hope you have found something to help your students enjoy learning music. Adding music into your life will add depth and enjoyment to your life. Music is a good thing! 🙂

This post is my last in the write 31 days challenge. I know some I was very strict and stuck to the five minute rule and others I just included it as part of another post. It’s okay to do that you know, sometimes you have to bend the rules to make a challenge work. 🙂

Calvert Homeschool Review

October 30, 2019 By Annette1 4 Comments

Calvert Homeschool is a place where your students in grades 3-12 can meet all their schooling needs. Can you imagine the ease of life that creates? I do need to tell you though, their high school courses are just as intriguing for their parents (at least this parent!) I have got to tell you all about it. I’ve have, for the past few weeks been able to make good use of their mobile on-line program

What I am Reviewing.

Calvert Homeschool.
Calvert Homeschool Online.
Grades 3-12
Online homeschool, homeschool online
Individual and Family Subscriptions.

Providing quality education using multi-media lessons, hands-on experiences, customizable lesson plans, and easy to access dashboards for parent/teacher and student.

Giving you full online access to 45 courses, this online homeschooling option also provides numerous features such as interactive lessons, automatic grading, and monthly payments.

Details of Calvert Homeschool

It does take some getting used to, the system that Calvert uses as their base. You don’t go to the main site to do your learning, but to the online Calvert Homeschool site. This caused me no end of frustration until I figured that part out. 🙂 Learn from me… connect with their help department!

How we Used It

My original goal, was to have my son use the world history course. He’s currently working through material for world war 2 and I noted it had a few days on this topic. I struggled initially figuring out how to get him to this section and the amazingly helpful staff at Calvert helped me learn how to assign them and close off the rest of the course. WOOT WOOT!

He started, and he admittedly tried. But Calvert wasn’t a good fit for him. He is predominately an audio learner, and Calvert suits other learning styles better. Since Calvert DOES work for me, I stepped into the gap. I’ve been brushing up on my physics and engaging in a biology course.

Details of Calvert Homeschool On Line

Two sections to Calvert

There are two distinct sections to Calvert, the first is the parental section where you can choose lessons, customize how they will work, and grade assignments. The second section is where the student will find their assignments and complete their course work. Each requires their own login information.

Parental Dashboard

In the teacher or parental dashboard you can set up your courses, school, and students quite easily. As a parent you control how your child is able to complete their course. What constitutes an A, how they answer questions, and other important details. With the 3-12 package you can assign ANY course to your student. You will find them under each grade level. These are the options I had for grade nine.

I ended up choosing two courses from grade 10 and just one from grade nine. Grade 10 was Biology and World History, and grade nine was physics/chemistry. Adding another class later isn’t an issue, just go into the curriculum set up area and you are on the way.

If you ever get lost or don’t know what you are doing they have put together helpful manuals to assist you.

My desire is to walk you through EVERYTHING but that would make this review FAR too long, so let me just walk you through the sections I used the most.

Everything is easily right at hand. Everything that is clickable is in blue. I used the assigned work and grading tasks the most.

I absolutely loved how easy they made it for me to grade the assignments. Just click on the link and grade.

One thing that I couldn’t figure was how to know what mark to assign a given assignment. Should I give it a five out six, or a 2 out of 3? It wasn’t, at least for me, always an intuitive decision. How to fix that, I haven’t a clue. But we muddled through and grades were assigned.

Student Dashboard

Like the parent/teacher board, the student dashboard is easy to navigate.

You can see at a glance what you have to work on (a report, experiment or project) and what lesson is up next. A list of items needed for assignments can be found so it’s easy enough to have supplies at hand. One of the assignment (about needing to closely observe for experiments) called for a bowl of peanuts, my son and I (cause I told him about this one and he thought it sounded fun) used a bowl of dried fruit instead. We choose to not get lost on the details and peanuts we would have had to purchase. 🙂

Lesson Set up

One of the beauties of Calvert is that you aren’t tied down to working at home on a specified device. As long as you have the internet, you can work off your laptop, tablet or phone.

Each lesson follows a predictable format. Overview, lesson pages, questions based on the lesson. Each lesson can easily be completed in a day. Stopping and starting again is not a problem either, because we all know that things happen and sometimes lessons started have to wait.

Vocabulary Arcade

On the overview page the student is introduced to the vocabulary words used throughout. With these words comes the vocab arcade.

While I think it’s great to have a way to help students practice their vocabulary, I had to wonder why they chose to have animated characters that would clap for a correct answer. It makes sense for elementary school students, but not for high school. Neither I or my 14 year old were impressed with the arcade.

I found the flash cards to be helpful. It’s a simple platform that simply helps you learn new words.

What a lesson looks like

The overview pages introduces the lesson, showing the highlights, and giving needed vocabulary words to understand the lesson.

One of the things I really enjoyed was that videos come with transcripts! So for someone like me who would rather watch a video than listen to it. I can avoid the video and read my way through. Using this option of course is not mandatory, but it’s a lovely aid for those who have English as a second language, or other comprehension issues.

I do have a bone to pick though. Growing up in Canada, I am well used to the metric system. Using a centimeter/millimeter rule in a lesson for accuracy and then not actually being accurate. It’s just wrong. Accuracy is not guessing. If you are measuring something you DO need to be accurate but you can’t on a centimeter ruler be accurate to a 100th place value if they don’t have a 100th place value on the ruler. Anything else is just guessing.

Other than that particular math question, overall I found this secular, online homeschool option to be a good program.

Should You Use Calvert Homeschool?

There are mixed feelings in this household toward Calvert Homeschool. Read all the way through to understand why. 🙂

Normally I would have my son speak his mind, but his mind is not disposed kindly toward Calvert. He doesn’t like it. Would he adapt if I told him to, yes, but relationship is always before schooling. There are a myriad of things that he doesn’t like, but most of it comes down to personal preference and he has other avenues he’d rather pursue.

Therefore I ended up signing up the lad for two additional courses. These courses are Science300 and Integrated Physics and Chemistry. I did this so that I could review the program well. Calvert was kind enough to let us have six months, so they deserve someone reviewing their program well. The end result being: that although, like the lad, I dislike certain aspects, I do overall like the rest of the program.

What I think:

I love that if I know the material already I can skip ahead to the questions.

I love the the first page of each new section is an overview of what I will be learning about. It sets my brain in the right direction.

I dislike that for essay questions that it comes up in a F for the final grade (when you click on complete lesson). Like my lad I find that rather demotivating. I would rather it would say something like “awaiting marking by teacher”, or something, anything else than F.

I like that each page is focused. You can jump back and forth from one page to the next. You can rush through, or take your time. This aspect gives it a feel of a self-paced course. I love that the main page spells out what the next assignments are and that they are clickable.

Would it be useful for high school students?

In a nutshell yes, even though it is not a good fit for my lad, but I think I would have liked it at his age. The difference being in our learning styles. I like being able to jump back and forth, reading and re-reading and he likes to simply move straight-forward. He is an auditory learner and I’m a reader.

Calvert, I think, works best for students who like to read and who pick up on details quickly while reading. My son, reads, but when he doesn’t get something, falls back to searching for videos that will explain it better. He does not feel confident doing that with the world history course from Calvert as the questions are based directly on the lesson rather than on an overall concept.

The fact that there are a good variety of projects, it is highly customizable, and the excellent customer service makes Calvert an option you should explore further. Use the free trial period. See if it’s a good fit for your student, and give it a go. 🙂

45 members of the crew took part in reviewing Calvert. You should check out what they have to say! 🙂

Social Media Links

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CalvertHomeschool
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalvertEdu
Instagram: www.instagram.com/calverthomeschool
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/CalvertHomeschool/

10 Fantastic Ways to Learn History

October 24, 2019 By Annette1 6 Comments

History is a fascinating topic, one that is more than just dates, names and places. My son studied WW1 last year and this year he’s doing WW2. He has been totally fascinated as he’s learning about spies, North African battles and the people involved. Ergo I thought it would be fun to share 10 fantastic ways to learn history. For it’s definitely more than reading and memorizing dates.

Unit Studies

Unit Studies are a fantastic way to learn history. They help to connect all the dots between dates, science, geography, fashion, wild life and more. What you put into a history based unit study is what makes it complete.

You might not be able to include everything, and definitely you can’t in all the detail you might like, but the details you add will bring depth to your study.

For instance: As my lad studied World War 1 last year we learned about the animals that helped the war effort. We learned about the cats, dogs, pigeons and more. We touched on them lightly but we didn’t read the stories of men and their mascots. Nor did we delve in-depth into the care of the horses. But we learned that animals were important to the war effort, which was our hope.

Some resources you might like

Home School in the Woods.
Exploring Africa.
Amanda Bennet Unit Studies.
Homeschool on the Range, blogs small unit studies that sometimes ask interesting questions. Yvie also sells unit studies.

YouTube

My son, being the visual learner that he is, loves to go to YouTube. In fact, if he struggles with learning any concept he turns to youtube for answers.

When we studied WW1 a lot of our videos came from The Great War Channel.

Next year we intend to study Canadian history and I expect we’ll use Canadiana a lot as a base of study. And Historica Canada as well, who makes videos like the one below.

Adventures

The Great Canadian Adventure is a monthly subscription plan with guides walking the reader through each provinces history. Walk through the formation of our country.

The Canadian homeschooler has a monthly online subscription that bounces you all over Canadian history. The Canadian Time Capsule has good options for various ages making it an excellent resource to study Canadian history as a family.

Or you can take Audio history tour with Headphone History. Learn the stories and legends of Canada, stories written for children.

Magazines

Canada’s History has a fantastic adult magazine and a really really good kids magazine. Canada’s history and Kayak are premier magazine that will give an good overview of Canadian history over the course of a year.

If you are looking for something beyond Canadian History these top 10 might intrigue.

On-Line Resources

Of course you can always find history resources on line. I’ve a bunch in my pinterest board that might intrigue. Beyond that I have some links to resources.

History for Kids. Seven sections filled with cool games, videos, worksheets on many historical events and quizzes to test what you’ve learned.
Mission USA. Five interactive missions from American History.
National Geographic Kids has a history section.
American history for kids focuses on USA history.
CBC kids helps younger ones explore Canadian culture.
Time for Kids helps elementary students see history in the making.
DocsTeach uses primary source documents as a way to teach history. I had fun browsing and almost forgot I was writing this post. 🙂
Social Studies for kids not only gives you history of the past, but current events as well.
Canadian History for Kids was another fun website to browse.

Field Trips

Real life or virtual field trips help history come alive. Some trips to museums just let you browse through the past. Others, especially if you go as part of a group create experiences, helping you role play history.

Chapter Books, Living Books

Oh boy there are TONS of books that spell out history.

Biographies. Abraham Lincoln.
Diaries. Dear Canada diaries.
Period books. It rained warm bread.
Chapter books that touch on history. Magic Tree House.

Encyclopedias to Learn History

Encyclopedias that focus on history are a fantastic find and if you can find some that approach history from different perspectives… even better. My son and I learned so much history reading two page spreads each night before bed.

Some focus on art, others on weapons, others on the development of people groups. Each encyclopedia has it own focus. Read them, think it through, compare them to each other. It’s amazing the links you’ll find.

Hands-on Elements

Make dioramas, lap books, build with lego or play dough. So many ways you can make history interactive. Cook from from whatever time period you are studying.

Personal Accounts

Listening to Gramma talk about her experiences during the war my son’s ears perk up. It’s relevant to him. Also serving in army cadets, especially over Remembrance Day dinners, gives him the opportunity to listen to the war stories of our local veterans. Whose history are you willing to learn? What opportunities can you find to listen?

History Surrounds Us

History surrounds us, in monuments and museums, in the people from other lands and times, in the books we read and the things we do. How can you make history relevant to your students? What other fantastic ways to study history can you come up?

This post is part of the ABC blogging tour. Come on join us!

Others in this series:

A – Add in your life.
B – Edmund Burke.
C – Clarity in Writing.
D – Deep Runs the Well.
E – Ease of Consistent Schedules.
F – 10 fantastic ways to learn history.

How to Teach Elementary Science

September 20, 2019 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Wanting to do science with your students? I love science, I find it very easy to teach, particularly in the younger years, but not everyone has a natural love of science. The question arises: How to teach elementary science. Let’s walk through some of the options you have for teaching science to elementary aged students.

Nature Study

Honestly, I find nature study to be easiest way of teaching science to elementary students. There is so much to explore and learn just be observing the world around you.

Observe Animals

Observed the animals around you. These can be the squirrels in your local park or the spiders and bugs inside your house. You can visit the animals at the local zoo or at a wildlife rescue centre. You might want to visit a friend with a rabbit/guinea pig/dog or maybe go to a dog/cat/rabbit show.

Perhaps your co-op will offer an animal class or your local library offer a photo series of animals around the world.

You might want to sit down in your own backyard, block off a section of 1 or two feet and have your children count all the animals they find. Then you could walk down to the local stream or park and look for ducks, water striders, bugs, spiders etc.

You could easily do a bird study by setting up a bird feeder in your backyard. Find animals and take time to watch them, you’ll be amazed at what you learn.

If you can, bring along your phone, or a nature study guide, or a note pad (to write down questions for later) so you can answer questions that your children have.

An example of Nature Study

We have three squirrels in our back yard… grey (new youngster) white and black. Just by watching them we know that grey is a bold as brass and will probably cause trouble in the rabbitry this winter. White is easy going and knows to stay out of our way. She’s been around for the past two years and doesn’t cause any fuss for us. Black will get into mischief in the summer and if I leave a bowl of grain out for him in the winter he’ll get into that but won’t bother with anything else. Bold as brass grey is starting to chase black around but so far hasn’t ousted him from the backyard maple tree. Grey is still confined to the front yard… he is pushing hard though. By watching them we are able to learn so much about them, what they eat (did you know they will eat green tomatoes?), how they defend their territory (or to challenge for more), and all the sounds they make.

Unit Studies/LapBooks

Other than getting out in nature, or alongside of getting out in nature are unit studies and lapbooks.

You take your child to the zoo and they get fascinated by tigers, or chimpanzees, or maybe the dwarf goats. You can find a unit study or lapbook on them. My son has long been fascinated by ants and spiders and his youth I commissioned an amazing ant unit study for him. He LOVED it. Learned so much. Now he raises ants and gains additional learning.

Some places you can go for materials.

Amanda Bennett Unit Studies. Horses, tigers, dolphins, geckos, insects, oceans, volcanoes, seashells, caves and so much more. Go explore, and then come home and learn some more! (pay)
Homeschool Share has all sorts of unit studies and lapbooks. (free)
Lapbook Lessons – Animals and science to learn and do. (free)
SchoolhouseTeachers.com – a variety of lessons, so many options, bug science, world of animals, curious science, disgusting creatures etc. with over 400 lessons there’s sure to be nature studies for you! (paid)

Pay Attention to Landforms, Soils and Plants

When you are out and about pay attention to landforms. Notice the pond, the creek, the hill, the way stones stick out of the ground. As you travel around pay attention to different trees and terrain.

When you are working out in your garden show your children what good soil looks and feels like. Have them experiments with sandy soil, clay and good loam. Does it make a difference if you add fertilizer?

Help them grow a row, or start a bean plant in a container, or maybe grow some cat grass for a loved family pet. Have your children test out if a plant will grow in the dark or what happens if light is far away from it. Learn about phototropism and more.

When you walk through a forest pay attention to the mosses, fungi, ferns and trees. Help your students see the different levels of a forest and then take an excursion on line and learn about the rainforest and its different levels. Expand their learning naturally.

Additional Online Sites

There are numerous places on-line if you need more of a curriculum, or places to learn or see experiments done.

Mystery Science – has open and go science lessons. Sign up for a free year of science lessons. They have a limited number of spaces open.
cK-12 – has an elementary division that you might find useful. These are flexbooks that you can use online or download as a PDF.
In the Lab of Mr. Q you will find downloadable classic science texts. Provide a well-rounded science education.
The Canadian Wildlife Federation has put together education units to help teachers.
Nature Canada doesn’t have lessons but they are a wealth of information.
PBS learning has a number of experiments to watch and maybe do.
Canadian Geographic has a great kids area, and as an educator you can sign up for the cangeo education newsletter. They put together some great resources!
Project Gutenberg has put together an elementary geography program.
Easy Peasy has an all in one science curriculum. An excellent resource for your science needs.
Guesthollow has a science and literature course.

Online sources for teaching elementary science

Don’t forget other sources

Don’t forget to

go to the library and raid their shelves for all things nature study-ish
Watch youtube videos
search websites with good information on whatever your children are interested in.
Easy science experiment books…. there are lots on the market.

There is so much information available, make use of it.

For instance, I am hopeful to get my lad into a Biodiversity weekend. That might not work for your younger children, but I know in London we have groups that do forest school, another that takes regular walks in the local swamp, my son spent time with friends and family looking for minnows, crayfish and clams in our local streams, and of another group that does scavenger hunts in various local playgrounds. Make use of the world around us, and do science the easy way! Enjoy your explorations.

A book that might help you is the family adventure journal, or these nature cards. You might want to make some crafts from the things you discover making the crafty nature journal just what you need. I’ve pinned loads of ideas over on my nature study pinterest board. Give it a boo, you might be delighted by what you find.