Links to used homeschool books

    Amazon is a great place to look for used textbooks, but there are some other good sites too.  Educational Accents is another good site.  Also, Homeschool Classifieds is great.  Just a tip:  make sure to look at the definitions for the condition of the book closely.  You probably don't want to accidentally get a book that has the answers filled in the student worktext pages.  Also, if you have any questions, be sure to contact the seller.

   What about you?  Do you have a website you would recommend for buying or selling used books?  I'd love to your ideas.

Free Worksheets for Math, Reading, Grammar, Science, etc.

     I found a website with lots of free worksheets.  Just thought I'd pass it on.  Hope it's helpful!  www.superteacherworksheets.com

     Do you have an educational website that you've found helpful?

Webrangers: Cool learning tool for kids!

   When I was a kid, I remember going to a park and doing some activities to earn a special patch.  You can still do that today and maybe I'll talk about that sometime in another post.  For today, I wanted to share with you about how the National Park Service has a website where kids can sign in for free and do lots of neat activities online.  It's a great supplemental science and history learning tool.  A couple days ago, we learned about the railroad.  Click here to check it out.  Have fun!

Ideas and Tips for Homeschooling a Preschool Child

It's hard to find good help concerning how to go about teaching a preschooler. Of course at that age you can't expect to have much structure especially if you have a toddler or baby too. What has helped me is to take some time to think through what is important for my child to learn at this age. Try to do a couple things each day. Remember too that learning to do chores or watching you do things around the house like baking is learning too. My little girl loves to watch me cook and sometimes she will make her own pretend cookies or mashed potatoes. With the imagination the sky is the limit. We are also enjoying getting together with other moms and their kids around her age.
Here is a list of things that over time I am trying to teach her. Perhaps it will be helpful to you:
-memorize Bible verses (Daddy helps her with this at bedtime and she loves it!)
-catechisms
-teach him/her about God and what He is like, the Bible, Creation, etc.
-teach him/her to pray
-Sunday school songs and hymns
-to recognize the lower and uppercase alphabet and sounds
-to trace the letters
-recognize and trace numbers 1-10 (I have printed worksheets to help her learn to trace her numbers and letters. I covered them with contact paper so she can trace with washable marker and use these worksheets over and over again.)
-count to 100
-read good books to them
-help them learn to do simple chores
-do rhyming word games (For example, you can say to your child, "I am thinking of something that ryhmes with chair." Then point to your hair to lead your child to the rhyming word you are thinking about.) Do this a few times til your child gets the hang of it. It may take quite a while for them to be able to get a sense of rhyming words. That's ok and an exercise like this will help with that prereading ability.
-do simple math story problems using blocks or marbles
-work on memorizing full name, home address, phone number, birthday, parents' names
-to print his/her name
-know the colors
-ask him/her to define simple words (for example, ask "what is a piano?")
-help him/her to recognize coins and count them
-teach basics about health, safety, weather
-some basic history and current events
-complete the sentence (for example, "I would like to take a trip to _______.")
-recognize and draw basic shapes