• Scratch would let you make it as easy as possible. Colorful drag and drop tiles to build functions, would introduce the really basic concepts of control flow and all
• You could play with Visual Studio a bit. Dragging and dropping buttons and showing how to do something simple like make a popup window with text or add two numbers
• Python is pretty easy to start with too for obvious reasons, maybe that would make sense to start with for some basics.

AP Computer Science A
In AP Computer Science A, you’ll learn how to use Java to build games or creatively address real-world issues. Through hands-on experiences in analyzing, writing, and testing code, you’ll learn how to transform an idea into a functioning program.

AgentCubes Tutorial Book
You are a traveler on a journey to find a treasure. You must avoid walls, and chasers who try to catch you. If you find all the treasure, you win.

Alice
Learn to program interactive 3D graphics. The focus of the Alice project is now to provide the best possible first exposure to programming for students ranging from middle schoolers to college students. Appeals to girls.

CyberToy
Windows download for teens who want to try their hand at creating fly-though scenery such as found in games. Experimental.

Fundamentals of Visual Basic
Students who have little programming experience can expect to spend between 1 and 2 hours on each lesson, including the time for doing the hands-on examples and exercises. Typical completion time for the course is about 1 quarter, or 12 weeks.

Game Maker
Have you ever wanted to be able to design computer games, but didn’t want to spend countless hours learning how to become a programmer? Then you’ve come to the right place. Game Maker is a program that allows you to make exciting computer games, without the need to write a single line of code.

GameProgrammer.Com
BBS, Mailing List, Articles, Source Code, Demos, Tutorials. Most of this community are in their teens and twenties. Everything you need to help you start programming games.

GitHub Copilot woven into Visual Studio
Your AI coding partner for faster and smarter development. Elevate your efficiency. Let Copilot and Visual Studio 2022 help you generate and refactor code, identify bugs and resolutions, optimize performance, and get context specific help throughout your coding workflow.

Introduction to Programming Using Java Version 4.1, June 2004
This on-line book contains Java applets, many of which require Java 1.3 or higher. To see these applets, you will need a Web browser that uses a recent version of Java.

Java Tutorial from SUN
A practical guide for programmers with hundreds of complete, working examples and dozens of trails–groups of lessons on a particular subject.

Learn HTML – CodeAcademy
Start at the beginning by learning HTML basics — an important foundation for building and editing web pages.

Linux Survival – Where learning Linux is easy
If you would like to learn the basics of Linux quickly, try this entertaining online Linux tutorial. You don’t need to install it on your computer, and best of all, it’s free!

Khan Academy Computing Courses
Intro to computer science – Python. Computer programming – JavaScript and the web. AP®︎/College Computer Science Principles. Computers and the Internet. Computer science theory. Pixar in a Box. Code.org. Hour of Code.

Phrogram
You can make your own games, explore how math and science concepts work and have fun. Get Learn to Program with Phrogram!: A Guide to Learning Through Game Programming Using the Latest Version of Kids Programming Language now with the O’Reilly learning platform. Free trial.

Python for Beginners
Before getting started, you may want to find out which IDEs and text editors are tailored to make Python editing easy, browse the list of introductory books, or look at code samples that you might find helpful.

Scratch
Mac OS and Windows. A free programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Snake Wrangling for Kids
A printable electronic book, for children 8 years and older, who would like to learn computer programming. It covers the very basics of programming, and uses the Python programming language to teach the concepts. Editions for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Visual BASIC for Kids
This tutorial is written for and directed to kids. Kids learn about project design, the Visual Basic toolbox, and many elements of the BASIC language. Numerous examples are used to demonstrate every step in the building process.

The post Computer Programming for Kids appeared first on A2Z Homeschool – THE A-to-Z of Homeschooling.

I have heard John Taylor Gatto speak three times now, and each time I get something a little different out of what he has to say. He came out with a book about the history of American education that is shaking up a lot of people who think that Carnegie, Ford and other industialists who have donated so generously to education were doing so out of the kindness of their hearts.

In the essays below, Gatto speaks about what he knows best and what he’s found out about education. He was New York City and State Teacher of the Year at various times in his career. He taught at a school were teens everyone else had given up on were sent, and he did a good job with them ­ but in a creative and unorthodox way. He let them out of school, to be around town, working on various projects, learning first hand how to work the system.

Here is a John Taylor Gatto website primarily focused on his book: Underground History of American Education. The site has some videos and sound clips of John speaking.

You will not enjoy the essays in the links below. They will make you feel sad and angry. They will make you think.

Bootie Zimmer’s Choice
Our children have been held captive by a method of literacy transmission that ignores reality — and makes a very large fortune each year doing so. By John Taylor Gatto.

The Curriculum of Necessity
Or “What must and educated person know?” By John Taylor Gatto. Includes Harvard’s list of what a well-educated person should be able to do.

I may be a teacher, but I’m not an educator
John Taylor Gatto’s resignation letter in the Wall Street Journal. “I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in. I just can’t do it anymore.”

I Quit, I Think
I was New York State Teacher of the Year when it happened. An accumulation of disgust and frustration which grew too heavy to be borne finally did me in.

John Taylor Gatto
The site to find out more about John and to purchase a pre-publication of his book, Underground History of American Education. You can also view a pictorial essay about the history of education.

Nine Assumptions of Modern Schooling
John Taylor Gatto warned that although there were many caring teachers who worked hard in the system, the institution itself was “psychopathic and without conscience,” and would always overwhelm their individual contributions.

Personal Solutions, Family Solutions
“If you have no time for your family you want to ask yourself, ‘Why must I always be do-ing something?’ God made us human be-ings, not do-ings!” By John Taylor Gatto.

Public School Nightmare
Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought? By John Taylor Gatto

Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
By John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991. If you pay for these lessons, you should at least know what they are.

Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher
A longer version: “The first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of context… I teach the unrelating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much.” By John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 1992

The Underground History of American Education
A Schoolteachers Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling by John Taylor Gatto. A review on Family Unschoolers Network.

Why Schools Don’t Educate
We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom.

My husband, Fred Zeise, and son, Scott, help Gatto and Diane Keith, editor of Homefires, the Journal of Homeschooling, get the video system set up.

Gatto revealing what Carnegie’s motivation was to “help” educate America’s school children, to make them complacent workers.

Photos taken and copyrighted by Ann Zeise and used with permission of John Taylor Gatto.

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Parts is Parts – Intelligence Revisited
AN A TO Z ARTICLE
By David Albert. Most homeschoolers I know are partial to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.

Teaching and Relating to Your Child’s Learning Style
AN A TO Z ARTICLE
How to teach anyone to read once you have identified their learning style. By Lorraine Peoples, author of You Can Teach Someone to Read.

Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
AN A TO Z ARTICLE
An interesting article appeared in this morning’s New York Times. It debunks much of what educators have been saying about how children learn, and seems to verify what unschooling families have known for years

Early Year’s Child’s Learning Assets
Homeschooling uses childhood energy instead of constantly trying to dam it. Now, curiosity creates interest, interest increases attention to the task at hand, and attention gives rise to learning. By Linda Dobson

Emotional Intelligence, etc.
This site contains lots of practical information on Emotional Intelligence (EQ) as Steve Hein interprets and applies it. Many homeschool families value a high EQ more than a high IQ.

Keirsey Temperament Sorter
The questionaire for children identifies four temperament types: Guardian, Artisan, Idealist, and Rational. Parents will need to help younger children.

Learning Styles and Hemispheric Dominance:
Is Your Learning Style at Odds with That of Your Child’s?
These differences in our preferred approaches to learning and utilization of resources were causing some conflict among my children and myself and a great deal of inner turmoil on my part. By Karen M. Gibson, HELM.

Multiple Intelligences and the Concept of Flow
Here are the eight intelligences with some activities where you might find yourself going into a flow state. By Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D.

Multiple Intelligence Test for Children to Identify Their Strengths
Printout. By knowing your child’s strengths, you can help them to succeed in school and life! The multiple intelligences test can determine their specific learning style.

What is Your Learning Style?
Free. No email required. Find out how you learn best to improve your grades or learn new skills.

Young child learning style assessment
You don’t need to take your child to a psychologist to have a young child learning style assessment done; it can be easy to determine your child’s learning style by simple observation and answering a few questions.

The post Determine Your Children’s Learning Styles appeared first on A2Z Homeschool – THE A-to-Z of Homeschooling.

By Ann Zeise
Playing car games with kids can make a long road trip both pleasant and educational. Print this out to take along! Looking out the window, searching for objects can also help prevent car sickness. Keep the games light. It isn’t winning that matters here, it is laughing in order to make a long drive pass by quickly.

Acronyms
Using license plate letters, come up with the name of a real or fictitious name for a governmental or other organization, the funnier the better. Played in rounds. Whoever makes the others laugh or groan wins. Everyone can win!

Air Horns
When you pass a big truck, with your fist clenched, make a pulling down motion while smiling at the truck driver. If you are lucky, he’ll pull his air horn and toot back at you! Warn your parent you are going to be playing this game. Air horns are rather loud. Not to be played in heavy traffic or in a city.

Alphabetical Trip
One person starts with the letter “A” and says, “I’m going on a trip, and I’m going to bring ____ ” and names something that begins with the letter “A.” The next person repeats what the first person said, and adds something that starts with a “B.” The next repeats what they said, but adds a “C” item, and so on until someone can’t remember the whole list. For small children, don’t repeat and just let them add a new item that is the next letter of the alphabet.

BINGO
Before you leave make several copies of these BINGO cards and call out pieces. Little yellow sticky notes make great covering pieces! Play with any BINGO rules you like: 5 in a row, Blackout, etc. This site also has picture themed BINGO that kids will enjoy.

Card Games
Some, like “Go Fish” are fairly easy to play when driving. Rummy is another. Here’s the rules to many card games.

Counting Cows
Teams on left and right side of the car count cows throughout the day on their side of the car, while trying to distract the other team from actually seeing any cows on their side. If you pass a cemetery (or boat) on your side of the car, you lose all your cow points…. provided the other team sees the cemetery (or boat) and catches you! Variation: seeing a white horse after a cemetery (or boat) and you get your lost points back. Winning side gets whatever they want to eat at the next stop.

Hay Truck Wishes
If a hay truck passes you, hurry and make a wish! But don’t look back or your wish won’t come true!

Hug Bug
If you see a Volkswagen “bug” you get to give one other person in the car a hug… or throw them a kiss.

Instant Messaging, Car Style
Pack along a large drawing tablet and thick, black markers. Have kids make signs to send messages to other cars, such as “If you like Texans, wave!” or “Your brake light is out!”

Invent a Better Car
My son invented this game when we were stuck in traffic. First we improved our car, adding an ice cream dispenser, a toilet (We were getting desperate!) and such. Then we added helicopter propellers so we could get above the traffic and speed away, but that wasn’t fast enough, so we added a jet engine! Some of the improvements were quite funny, and laughing helped the time pass. Everyone wins this game!

License Plate Spelling Game
Select a car from a distance that you are about to pass. Everyone attempts to make a word from the 3 letters on the plate. The word must begin with the first letter, have the second letter in the middle, and end in the last letter. Longest word wins the total of the number of numbers on the license plate… if they add it right.

Variation for older kids: words must have 2 or more syllables. They must multiply the numbers on the plate together to get the score.

Variation for little kids: have the alphabet in upper case printed out before you go. They just have to try to find each letter.

Early reader: Has to come up with a word that either starts with the first letter, or has the middle letter in it, or ends in the last letter.

Mental Math
Watch for numbers on signs along the road. With beginners in the car, only add the numbers. In an advanced crowd, add the first two numbers, multiply by the third and divide by the fourth, throwing out any remainder. Each round played separately, but others help look for numbers. Winner is the person with the largest number after all have had a chance.

My Aunt Tilly
Aunt Tilly has peculiar likes and dislikes. She likes butter and jelly, but not peanuts or jam. She likes books but doesn’t read. She wears boots but not shoes. She’s doesn’t care for cake or ice cream, but likes Jello. Tilly very much likes bookkeeping, as she adds well, but she can’t subtract. There’s a pattern here. Once you get it, start saying other sets of things Tilly likes and dislikes. The tip is in her name and how it is similar to the things she likes.

Name That Tune
One person hums a tune and the others try to guess what it is. Winner gets to hum the next tune.

Semi Search
Each player selects a color. The first to see 10 big rigs in their color wins. Tip: select from white, black, green, red, yellow, or blue. Play at same time as Air Horn. If you get a truck in your color to honk at you, you automatically win.

States
Print out a copy of a map of the USA (or other map) for each player. Leave your own state white. Color the states that border your state Yellow, the states the border those states Orange, the next out Red, the next Purple, and all the rest Blue.

Look for cars with out-of-state license plates. The scoring goes as follows:

1 pt – Yellow

2 pt – Orange

4 pt – Red

6 pt – Purple

8 pt – Blue

Hawaii and Alaska are 10 points, unless you live there. Hawaiians and Alaskans get 10 points for Florida and Maine.

Only the first person to spot an out of state license plate gets the points for that sighting. They must find a license from another state before they can get any more points from the state they just found.

You can decide when the game ends ahead of time. Set a time limit and whoever has the most by then wins, or set a point limit, and the winner is first to get that many points, or as soon as one person has 10 sightings, scores are added, and highest score is the winner.

Help identifying states from recently, typical state license plates can be found illustrated on Jim Moini’s License Plates site. Here are some you might find on trucks and trailers. Likely to see Mexican license plates? Each state in Mexico has its own set of license plates, too.

Billy’s U.S. GRAPHIC Plates
For those playing in the USA.

License Plates of the World
For those playing all over the world, where ever there are licensed vehicles.

Trivia
“It” selects a letter, and someone notes the time. Everyone watches out for things that start with that letter. First to call out gets the item, and keeps track on their fingers. With a tie, no one gets it. In ten minutes the person watching the clock calls “Time!” and the person having seen the most items wins, and gets to pick the next letter.

Twenty Questions
“It” thinks of a person, place or thing and announces they are ready. Others ask questions that can be answered by “yes” or “no” by “It.” With strict rules, only 20 questions may be asked. “It” keeps track on his fingers and wins if the others can’t guess in time.

Water Tasting
Taste and evaluate drinking water as you take rest stops. Make a chart of where you were. Did the water look clear? Did the water have any flavor or smell to it? Did you like it or not? If possible, ask where the water comes from – a well or a river or where?

Links to More Car Games

Mom’s Minivan
101 Car Travel Games & Ideas for Kids.

The post Car Games On Long Trips with Kids appeared first on A2Z Homeschool – THE A-to-Z of Homeschooling.

About Teaching Handwriting
Fonts – Styles of writing
History of Handwriting
Left-handers
Problems & Solutions
Worksheets to Improve Handwriting

About Teaching Handwriting

How to Teach Handwriting
Oversee practice so children don’t fill a page with improper work simply to finish quickly. Praise letters and words written well and have the student erase and rewrite anything unacceptable. While this may seem time consuming, remember that it will actually take more time to undo bad habits. There are four components to handwriting, whether a child is learning to print the letters or write in cursive “joined up:”

1. correct letter formation
2. uniform letter size
3. uniform slant
4. spacing

Fonts – Styles of Writing

Dyslexie
A free font to help those who tend to reverse letters of just have a hard time telling letters apart for whatever reason. Though not designed for handwriting, you could print out worksheets in this font to help out a dyslexic child.

Educational Fontware, Inc.
EFI makes and sells D’Nealian ®-style, Zaner-Bloser ©-style, Handwriting Without Tears (TM)-style, Harcourt Brace ®-style, Peterson Directed Handwriting ©-style, McDougal, Littell ©-style, Getty-Dubay Italic (TM), SSD, and Palmer style handwriting fonts. Commercial site.

Jardotty
Windows true type font (.ttf) to download directly from this link. Jardotty is a dotted alphabet good for creating your own traceable handwriting worksheets. Created by Christopher Jarman.

Jarmon
Windows true type font (.ttf) to download directly from this website. Christopher Jarman cursive handwriting font. The solid line version of Jardotty.

Learning Cursive Handwriting
Commercial site: Fontmenu.com Cursive Handwriting typeface offers the possibility to create exercises that follow the guidelines of the D’Nealian ® approach to cursive handwriting.

Learning Curve BV / Learning Curve BV Dashed
Learning Curve BV contains two versions, one is plain and the other dashed. This font also contains a set of dingbats that helps with practicing elements of cursive writing.

Print Clearly
Solid and dashed. From Blue Vinyl Fonts, which has lots of nice, free fonts for writing and other uses as well.

School Fonts
Mac & Win. Commercial. Block Letters and Cursive Handwriting typefaces enable any computer user to create exercises that follow the guidelines of the D’Nealian ® or the Zaner-Bloser ® approach and letter forming teaching techniques.

History of Handwriting

Ancient Scripts
Designed to give an introduction to writing systems, which hopefully will tantalize the reader into searching for more information on the web or in books and publications.

Left-handers

Tip: When creating worksheets for lefties, put the samples across the top, not down the left side.

Anything Left-Handed – Are you left handed?
We are a group of left-handed people providing products and information to make life a bit easier for left-handers around the world and campaigning to promote awareness, acceptance and empathy for left-handers. The accident rate for left handed people is much higher than for right handed people. Also, did you know left slanted

DKL Cursive and DKR Cursive
These fonts are patterned after the handwriting methods in the workbooks “Cursive Writing Skills,” by Diana Hanbury King. Ms. King has produced both a Right-handed Edition and a Left-handed Edition.

Left-handed But Not Left Behind
Author Annie Thomassen was a homeschool Mom for 9 years. During her daughter’s education she was also completing her undergrad degree, and researching left-handedness. She realized that there was very little out there on teaching a lefty, so she developed a writing method to teach her daughter. This ebook is the result.

Problems & Solutions

Accommodations and Modifications for Students with Handwriting Problems and/or Dysgraphia
Many students struggle to produce neat, expressive written work, whether or not they have accompanying physical or cognitive difficulties. They may learn much less from an assignment because they must focus on writing mechanics instead of content.

Dysgraphia
Often, dysgraphia is misunderstood. Parents and teachers may think you are lazy or that you don’t care about neatness. This means you have to try even harder to show that you do care.

Handwriting Club
Using Sensory Integration Strategies to Improve Handwriting. Students with difficulties in sensory processing, sensory awareness, and/or perceptual skills usually have handwriting problems.

Pocket Full of Therapy
Sells writing paper and graph paper with raised lines so that sensory learners can “feel” their way along as the write.

Worksheets to Improve Handwriting

Addressing Envelopes Practice
Print out these envelopes and stamps to use to practice addressing and stamping envelopes correctly.

The Amazing – Incredible Handwriting Worksheet Maker
Allows you to formulate a worksheet with your child’s name or a short sentence in any of 5 fonts, manuscript or italic.

Build a Handwriting Activity
Create your own worksheet with this form from EdHelper. Supports printing, cursive and D’Nealian.

Callirobics
Commercial site. Handwriting exercises to music to improve small-muscle skills and eye-hand coordination. Good for aural learners young and old.

D’Nealian alphabet worksheets
Learn and practice manuscript handwriting featuring fun coloring page images. These are suitable for preschool, kindergarten and early elementary.

Donna Young’s Handwriting Paper
A series of graded lined paper .pdf files with a wide variety of uses for free writing practice. Some have space at the top for a picture.

Jan Brett’s Alphabet Line Bulletin Board Set
Jan has such a charming set of alphabet posters, you’ll want them to decorate your room. They are in traditional, cursive and modern manuscript.

Free Practice Paper
As adults, sometimes we forget that kids need lots of practice to learn how to write clearly! It’s helpful to have lined paper to learn proper letter height and more.

Handwriting For Kids
Each lesson is featured on its own page, and kids are shown in simple steps how to write the numbers, letters, and sentences. Kids can trace uppercase and lowercase letters, and even blank sheets are provided for kids to practice more before their next lessons.

Handwriting Practice Sheets
These sheets may be printed and reproduced by parents, guardians, and teachers for home or classroom use. Donna Young’s collection.

Handwriting Worksheets
Some pretty basic worksheets for beginning printers. One in Zaner Bloser font.

Manuscript Hand Writing
Letter introduction goes along with the book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. On Donna Young’s site.

Peterson Handwriting Lessons for Homeschools
Our workbooks and materials provide the tools needed to establish evidence based process for regular evaluation of specific qualities that relate to process skills.

The post Handwriting – Teaching Cursive and Manuscript Writing appeared first on A2Z Homeschool – THE A-to-Z of Homeschooling.

And the corollary: What you know nothing about, your children will demand to learn!

On our old Yahoo Group, Rebecca asked:

But if you don’t have any college behind you, wouldn’t you feel as though the teacher who has had 4 years of college to become a certified school teacher, could likely teach the children some things that you could not?

Well, I have a BA in Philosophy and something like 100 units past that, but from too many colleges, so I don’t have a masters.

Our support group had a mom in it who was literally a rocket scientist. Did her children care to learn physics? Nope. They wanted to learn biology! They were real keen on nature! They wanted to identify trees by their leaves!

My husband had taken German, and I had taken French. Our son decided with a friend to learn Latin! Even more so when I protested I didn’t KNOW Latin, and besides, Spanish was so much more practical in California.

David Albert on this list has a story about learning how to play the violin just so he could talk to his daughters about music. David’s a smart fellow, but he’d never taken up a musical instrument in his life before homeschooling!

Teachers get a BA first in some subject matter, and then go a 5th year or longer to get a masters in education. Been there. Done that. I learned how to manage a class of about 30 kids, how to create tests, how to use various machines, how to help a non-English speaking kid learn English, the history of education. Stuff a classroom teacher needs to know to survive. There is NO correlation between what is learned at a school of education and what you need to know to teach your own children! (Well, it does help to know how to work a computer, but you have all picked THAT up!)

Want to do something interesting? Google “School of Education” and take a look at what is being offered at various education programs. Is there ONE class that would be of use to you trying to help your own children?

Here’s Harvard’s education program –

The Masters Degree will teach the following:
The Ed.M. is designed to be a yearlong intensive program for students who wish to study a particular field in education, acquire a general theoretical background for understanding past and future field experiences, or develop skills for use in professional work in education. Our program offerings include:

Arts in Education
Education Policy and Management
Higher Education
Human Development and Psychology
International Education Policy
Language and Literacy
Learning and Teaching
Mind, Brain, and Education
Prevention Science and Practice/CAS in Counseling
School Leadership
Special Studies
Teacher Education Program
Technology, Innovation, and Education

Here’s a state college’s program – San Jose State University near me in California. Your more “basic” education college’s Masters Degree:

Critical Issues in Education
Advanced K-8 Curriculum and Instruction
Sociology of Education
Learning in a Hi-Tech Environment
Seminar in Curriculum
Qualitative Research
Critical Perspective on Schooling in a Pluralistic Society
Critical Studies in Language, Culture, and Narrative
Classroom Issues in Language/Literacy Development of L2 Learners
Philosophy of Education
MA Project

Now I’m not knocking the titles, but the CONTENT of those courses will be on how to do these things with a whole SLEW of children in one small room. Yes, it is a “good idea” to incorporate “Arts in Education,” but do you really need to make your child learn every art available? If you have an “arty” child, then you just sign them up with the art museum course! Simple as that! If not available, you just supply the kid with different art materials and let them have at it! A book or two from the library may help with project ideas and technique as they get older. You don’t need to know the theories of art education in the schools to know to go buy your kid some crayons and paper!

The “Curriculum” classes are a semester long, maybe 3 hours a week. How much science or history do you think a new teacher learns in one of those? So how do “real” teachers manage to teach something they know nothing about? They read ahead, usually in the children’s text books, and those are often very wrong, just plain bad science and history! You, you get to read real books written by real scientists and historians, and then share your enthusiasm about the topic with your kids in any fashion that gives pleasure to both of you, taking hours or days to explore the subject together. I’ve heard of families who have participated for years with historic reenactment groups or making huge contributions to a specialized science or writing a novel, just because they’ve had the time and enthusiasm to do it.

Your first year will be your “Practicum,” so go easy on yourself. There is a learning curve, and it will take about a year for both you and your children to find a comfort level for living the learning lifestyle. It doesn’t happen over night.

You have so many advantages that teachers in public schools do not!

First off you really LOVE your children! Nothing forced or faked here!

They learn when they are ready, and you can go at a speed that makes sense, going over or dropping topics, repeating or moving on. They learn in a sunny room, or even outside! They are not hungry, but are well fed according to your family’s dietary beliefs. They can go to the bathroom when they need to. They get all the sleep they need, so are rested. If they need to move about, they can. They are healthier, as they aren’t exposed to so many viruses, and if they do get sick, they have time to recover. With all these proven and well researched learning pluses, you can’t miss! You just have to “be there” for your kids, and give of your time and finances to keep their learning projects happening!

I also liked Tammy’s reply to the post:

I’m going to surprise all of you and agree with Sarah, in several ways.

Tammy

She’s so right-on! Just about everyone in the whole world can teach my child something I cannot! Everyone has such unique experiences, that it is worth searching out others to find out just what they can teach your child about life.

Our Field Trips section is also a wealth of community resources for mentors for your children.

In our Table of Contents for this page, check out the pages under “I don’t know how to teach.” We’re here to help you understand how you can learn how to be the very best mentor for your child. The very best! And when you can’t be, how to find others to volunteer or to do it for a fee.

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