May 17, 2012

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Since I couldn’t do that, I ordered myself a shirt instead. Their shirts for parents aren’t nearly as cute or pithy as the ones for kids, but I like it. This t-shirt is made of 100% preshrunk cotton jersey fabric and sells for $19.29. It is a very comfortable shirt and I will wear it with pride…even though in 3 days I will no longer be a homeschool mom, I will be the mom of 2 college students. Yikes!

Disclosure: I received this t-shirt for the purpose of this review. All opinions are 100% mine.

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• Over 200 Full Color Pages
• Available in an 8.5 X 11 Spiral Bound Printed Book ($24.95) or PDF Download ($19.95)
• A Class Planner: Schedule each student’s class assignments.
• Weekly Schedule: Organize your week with class assignments, weekly priorities, prayer requests, dinner menu, and notes.
• Month at a Glance: Plan field trips, enrichment activities and books to read
• Semester Attendance & Progress Reports
• Transcript Evaluation Forms and Perforated Report Cards
• Menu Planning: Plan weekly meals and conveniently shop with perforated shopping lists.
• Family Worship & Prayer: Read through the Bible in a year and record prayer request weekly

and much more….

I am a planning addict and I have never been so excited about a planner in my life! This wins hands down because it isn’t just a homeschool planner it is a home-school planner. Along with lesson plans it also includes meal plans, Bible reading charts, shopping lists and more. Organize your home and school with one affordable planner.

As much as I LOVE The Well-Planned Day, I have decided to give my copy away to one lucky homeschooler. I really only have 1 son at home now and he is doing almost half of his class work in a co-op setting so I know there are other moms who need this more than I do. If you would like to order your own copy of The Well-Planned Day you can so so here.

Mandatory 1st Entry: Leave me a comment telling me a) how long you have been homeschooling and b) how many children you homeschool (Please make sure your e-mail, blog URL or Twitter handle is attached to your entry.

Bonus Entries:

• Visit The Well-Planned Day website and sign up to receive a FREE trial issue of Home Educating Family Magazine. Leave me a comment letting me know you did this.
• Tweet This ” Homeschoolers-@MomMaven is giving away The Well-Planned Day planner. Enter today http://bit.ly/Well-Planned ” you may do this 2x a day leave the tweet URL in the comment.
• Share this giveaway on other homeschool related websites/message boards. Leave me the link to your post.
• Blog about this giveaway for 3 entries! Leave the link to your blog post in the comments.

This giveaway ends at 9:30pm on 9/18/09. The winner will be chosen by Random.org. The winner has 48 hours to claim their prize. I reserve the right to delete any entries that do not follow the rules stated above.

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Mom’s Homeroom on MSN, sponsored by Mini-Wheats is an online resource packed with tips and tools to help your child succeed in school. You can enjoy videos from their panel of moms, explore the library of articles and printables as well as connect with other moms on the message board.
My favorite part of the website is the widget on the left side of the page. You can choose a topic like reading, writing, attentiveness and more and see videos, tips and articles pertaining to that subject. This makes it easy to navigate to the information you need. Visit Mom’s Homeroom for all of your school related questions.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats and received a sample to facilitate my candid review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

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Organizing at home for school success: Clutter makes it difficult to study.

• Whether your child’s homework area is a desk or a study table like the Malaysia’s best ergonomic tables, it needs to be cleaned off regularly and have the supplies organized and accessible.
• Keep pencils in a pencil cup for easy access.
• Use an expanding file for organizing projects.
• Use the tools you have to their full potential. If your desk has a file drawer organize color coded files by subject to keep papers organized etc.
• Teach middle and high school students how to use a planner to organize their time and activities.

Organizing your child:Organization relieves stress and increases confidence.

• Teach your child HOW to organize and pack their backpack. The big section for books and binder, middle section for lunch and smaller section for accessories.
• Teach your child HOW to organize their binder. Shoving papers into a binder does not equal being organized
• Have a place for the child to empty their backpack daily
• Purge the binder at least once a week
• Set out their clothes the night before
• Elementary and middle school students need their parents to oversee and guide their organizational habits. Parents must take an active role in making sure papers and books are traveling to and from school as needed.

Establishing clear organizational routines and following through the routine will help your child feel more confident about school. Also, get your child involved from the beginning-make a list and go shopping together, work out the routines together to help him take ownership of the tools and the process.

Organizing your homeschool: This will vary by family and homeschooling style.

The teacher on the panel said to clearly differentiate between living space and school space in your home. We tried that…we have a small house, it didn’t work for us-it may work for you. Here are some of my homeschool organizational tips.

• Color code by child-Each child gets their color for the year. This helps them know what is theirs as well as helping mom know who left their supplies laying around.
• If the child works in multiple places around the house use a plastic bin to store all of their school supplies. They can take their bin to wherever they are working today be it the kitchen table, living room couch, back porch or grandma’s house.
• Daily file papers into the proper binders. Paperwork can easily overtake the homeschooling household, file daily to avoid the clutter.
• Before buying everything new for the new year, see what you can re-use or re-purpose from the previous year.

While you are doing your back-to-school shopping, make sure you check out OfficeMax’s kid-centric school supplies line, Schoolio-Von-Hoolio.

I don’t know about you but I dream of owning Peter Walsh’s In Place System for organizing all of my homeschool and home office filing.

Disclosure-Office Max sent me a sampler of their Schoolio-von-Hoolio products as a thank-you for being part of this webcast.

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Dr. Selznick calls these kids “Lego kids” because of their amazing spacial abilities. That describes Jordan, even at age 14 he loves to spend hours creating interesting things with his Legos and other building toys. Dr. Selznick suggests that there are 2 styles of Shut-Down Learners, I realized I have worked with both types. One of my homeschool co-op students is definitely a Style 1-disconnected, unmotivated and difficult, while Jordan is a Style 2-Pleasant and Terribly Insecure.

“The Shut-Down Learner” gives suggestions to parents and educators on how to help these students see their strengths and work on improving their weaknesses. I am incorporating some of the suggestions into this fall’s homeschool day.

Here are a few samples of De. Selznick’s advice:

1. Identify the “cracks in the foundation” as early as possible. Find a professional who knows the “red flags” to identify for early learning problems. So much heart-ache can be avoided if you address the skills weaknesses early.

2. If the cracks are widening, seek outside help if possible. Don’t be passive and wait for the schools to intervene. They may, but it’s often a long process. Many of the children I see are not bad enough to warrant the school’s intervention. It’s a negative snowballing effect. Use word of mouth in your community to find people who can intervene

3. Know the kind of reading problem you’re targeting.  There are essentially two types. In the first type the child has trouble decoding the words and reading fluently. This type is the largest majority of the struggling kids. In the second type, the child can read fluently, but has great trouble understanding what he/she has read. Get clear on what you are targeting!!!! Don’t scattershot your remediation.

4. Take the heat out of the interaction. For most of the struggling kids, the daily ritual of yelling about school is a constant. Households are tense. Lots of blame goes around. Pecking at your child, nagging and yelling are not working. Why continue?

5. Find the child’s true strength and help kid embrace it. The shut down learners that I know do not feel very good about themselves and they do not see their strengths. Most of these kids are very solid in the visual spatial dimension of ability. This is often not valued in school. The kids need to learn to value this trait and see it as a potential.

6. Find someone to connect and mentor your child in school. If your child is older, push the kid to have one adult in the building as child’s mentor. It should be someone that your kid can form a relationship with. Too often shut-down learners go through school not bonded to anyone. This is tragic.

7. Keep your humor. Try not to let school problems become all consuming. Go out for an ice cream sundae with your kid even if he hasn’t done his homework! School problems can be so all consuming – don’t lose touch with your kid’s good qualities.

Fortunately, the value of The Shut-Down Learner doesn’t end with advice. Dr. Selznick shows you how to apply this advice. With great sensitivity, he writes about several of the shut-down learners he has known. He shares their conversations and insights and shows how they didn’t let their learning problems and the rigidity of schools destroy their lives.

If you think your child may be a Shut-Down Learner I suggest you get the book and visit the website www.shutdownlearner.com, and get involved in helping your child succeed.

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Each week you input that week’s spelling list and then your child can study his spelling words even when you aren’t available to dictate the words to them. We used it this week for our Bible class. My boys had to know the books of the Bible in order and be able to spell them correctly. I input they words, it just took a few minutes to set up, and then they used SpellQuizzer to practice the words. It worked great!

The SpellQuizzer website has some downloadable spelling lists that you can use over the summer for enrichment or homeschoolers could use them too. Since you create the spelling list in SpellQuizzer, it works with any spelling curriculum.

SpellQuizzer is very affordable at $29.95 and, since it is customizable it will last for years. If you’re still not sure if SpellQuizzer is for you check out their free 30 day trial. This is a great offer-you get to try it before your buy it.  Go to the website, download your free trial and check it out. If you think this is something you’d like to share with a friend please use the ShareThis button below to share it, stumble it, tweet it or Facebook it. Thanks!

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As this school year winds to a close I have heard from several parents who are thinking of homeschooling their children. We are completing our 13th year of homeschooling and over that time I have helped several families weigh their options and get started.  I want to start out by saying homeschooling is not for everyone. Homeschooling is one of the biggest committments you will make as a parent.

The reasons families chose to homeschool are as varied as the families themselves. Many families homeschool because of religious reasons, special education issues or poor local school systems. We homeschool mainly for religious reasons but also because I was a public and private school teacher and I was appalled at the low educational expectations, lack of respect and discipline issues in our local schools.

Before diving in to homeschooling you need to make sure you are ready for the committment. Ask yourself these questions:

• Why do I want to homeschool my children?
• Do I have 4-6 hours a day to focus on my children and their education?
• Can I handle the added responsibility of being mom/wife/housekeeper/teacher ?
• Do I have a support system that believes in the benefits of homeschooling?
• Can we afford to homeschool? Each year we spend more and more money on homeschooling books, resources and activities.

Make sure you can answer these questions and then discuss them with your spouse. Your life will change when you begin to homeschool and you need to both be on the same page each step of the way. Once you are both united in this adventure it is time for you to do your research.

Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, though the rules differ from state to state.  A great starting point for learning about your state’s regulations is HSLDA.org, the Home School Legal Defense Association is a wonderful organization of lawyers dedicated to the cause of homeschooling and the rights of parents who chose to legally homeschool their children. When you visit their site click on the tab “About Homeschooling” and start reading.

Next time we’ll look at the most asked question “Where do I get books?”

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I’m not saying he is a perfect kid. He has been stubborn since the day he was born, attested to by my 34 hour labor! With him, there is no gray area just black and white (I wonder where he gets that from)? He can be lazy-what teen can’t. He has an explosive temper-though the closer He gets to God-the less we see of his temper.

I am proud to be his mom, teacher, coach, mentor and friend. Happy 16th birthday Aaron!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

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