Modern Homeschool Today

    Lego is a huge part of my boy's lives and their love for it continues to change and grow in complexity as they get older. My kids loves the free play of the normal Lego blocks but are also developing an interest in the assemble kits. "Mum, Can I please get the Lego star wars deathstar? It's only $400...."   I've always known that Lego is 'good' for kids, for their developing creativity, problem solving and more. These reasons are more than enough motivation to encourage the use of Lego in our homeschool.   Why Use Lego In Home Education?     1. Kids love Lego, it's fun and motivating!   As delight-directed homeschoolers, I love using my children's interests and passions to impart different skills and knowledge. Lego is something I have used many a time to teach mathematical concepts, physics, engineering and even literacy. When a child is interested in a topic they have a motivation, a desire to learn a...

We are struggling with writing at the moment. 7yo loves to write but is very resistant to the 'rules' of writing such as punctuation, capital letters etc. He enjoys most aspects of homeschooling but when I say we are going to do some writing I can see his body tense, his eyes roll and then the complaining starts.... We are currently trying out a few different curriculum to discover what is going to work for 7yo and Brave Writer is one of them. A fellow homeschooler suggested the brave writer 'jot it down' resource  as I love curriculum I can use for both 7yo and 6yo and this resource is designed for kids aged 5-8. The book introduces the idea of a 'brave writer lifestyle' and suggests this is the daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal rhythm in your homeschool that explores music, the arts, film, nature, literature, poetry and various writing practices in a natural, predictable flow. It provides a guide, not a "to do" list of activities designed to...

My 7yo has always been fascinated with rocks. So when he spied the national geographic rocks and minerals collection at our local newsagent his eyes lit up! I saw it as a great opportunity to foster his keen interest in geology and for me to learn something new along the way too. There is something exciting about waiting for the next rock in the collection to arrive, going to pick it up and learning about something new.  And move over Justin Bieber (or whatever the female equivalent is these days) there's a rocks and minerals poster next to my son's bed!   I must admit that rocks and minerals don't intrigue me the way they do my son so I've had to be proactive in finding motivating and exciting ideas for exploring this topic. To get some ideas on how I could expand on this interest I visited some of my favourite homeschooling blogs and sites. I discovered this idea on teaching the layers of the earth. I followed the links and printed and laminated our o...