unSocialized Educated at Home; Engaging the World

​Presidential Timeline of the 20th Century: ​Interactive timeline, including photos, documents and videos.

​Egypt's Golden Empire Charts the major events of the New Kingdom; includes virtual tour of key sites, info on hieroglyphs, and other features.

​Roman Empire ​With additional resources.

​African American Lives  ​Includes videos, primary source documents, and section on DNA and geneology.

​Ancestors in the Americas ​ Asian-American timeline.

​Women's Movement  ​Women's suffrage movement

​Timeline of Judaism  With video, web resources, and lesson plans.

LA Timeline​ ​Historical moments that shaped Los Angeles.

Middle East History ​Four timelines on: the wars on terrorism; Iraq; Afghanistan; and Middle-East modern history.l

Timeline of the 20th Century 

​Homeschooling is all about convincing a child of how smart he is. Convince him of that, and he can take the other skills you give him and accomplish his desires for life.

I truly believe that teaching a child to read phonetically and giving a child a good grasp of the meaning of words is a fundamental basic start. However, teaching a child to CONNECT WITH THE TEXT will convince him of his true potential. 

What do we mean when we talk about “connecting” with the text? Connecting with the text means that a child can personalize the meaning found in the words on the page, that he can decide how the material on the page personally affects him. It is this personalization, together with a student’s ability to grasp the meaning inbetween the words on the page as well as his ability to draw researched-based conclusions based upon those words that gives a child inferential thinking abilities.

Read all textbooks together with your child out loud as much as possible. Stop OFTEN and discuss what you read, and ask as many questions as is necessary to enable your child to personalize every section that is difficult to understand.

Encourage your child to express his ideas about what you've read.

Do it everyday!

Carol Kay, homeschooling mom of six now-grown children.

Webpage: www.candy4wayphonics.com

(We'll need to continue working on spelling this year!)

My son recently bought himself an inexpensive camera and has “suddenly” developed an interest in stop-motion animation. He’s been filming a series of short animations featuring his main character, Joe, in a number of situations, some of them unfortunate (an elephant walks over him; he gets attacked by giant spiders). Joe always turns out okay, though, demonstrated by his signature bow at the end of all the sequences.

Rudimentary in structure and decidedly non-educational in content as these first forays are, I wouldn’t want to kill my son’s enthusiasm by attempting to get him to make his creations more instructive (eg. Joe as Crispus Attucks getting mowed down by a bunch of Lego guys as British officers at the Boston Massacre). I think I’ll just see where his imagination leads and find some material that may help him to develop his interest further if he likes.

Coincidentally, I recently came across a site that provides free lessons and suggested projects for kids using different forms of digital media. At Adobe Youth Voices, there are lessons for audio and video production, digital photography, graphic and web design, print production (which includes things like book publishing and creating posters), and a section on how best to showcase your work. There’s also a section on animation, and one of the subcategories is stop-motion animation. There’s a stop-motion handout with some tips about the process, a video tutorial and some project ideas that look like they could be helpful.

Any of you using digital media for projects?