Homeschool e-Books

Parents or and educators who home school children have the option to buy online textbooks to facilitate your students' learning. E text books can provide an appropriate curriculum for each grade level and subject, and enable students to learn electronically.

School eBooks

A variety of online textbooks have been developed that are appropriate for each grade level from kindergarten to twelfth grade, with each textbook indicating the grade level it is designed for. When you use e textbooks at or above the grade level of your students, you can be confident that they are working on appropriately challenging material. This material helps home-schooled students function at levels that are competitive with their peers.

You can download online textbooks and use them to challenge your students at appropriate levels without having to come up with your own extensive curriculum. You can take advantage of the flexibility of curriculum that home-schooling offers by focusing studies on the portions of textbooks you find most useful and relevant to your students' needs, or making use of multiple textbooks. You can also incorporate your own supplemental material into lessons as desired.
Cheap online textbooks provide a lot of value for a small initial expense. When you buy online textbooks you purchase an appropriate and effective foundation for an entire course. These e textbooks not only cover a particular subject, but provide opportunities for students to learn computer skills while they study subject matter and practice skills.

Students learning with e textbooks are guided through a digital learning experience that engages them and improves their computer literacy, as it develops their subject knowledge and provides practice for skills. Students learn to use the keyboard and mouse and strengthen typing skills as they navigate the electronic environments that e textbooks provide. Completing quizzes that test their knowledge along the way and performing electronic activities that practice their skills hold student interest while measuring their success, and further strengthening their subject knowledge and related skills.
Online textbooks are valuable tools for you to use for instruction because they can function as complete as well as flexible programs for subjects. Downloadable online textbooks on subjects including language arts, math, science, and social studies can be found. Online textbooks provide a foundation for you to personalize a curriculum to students without having to develop a new curriculum in its entirety, and students reap additional benefits from navigating digital learning environments.

Less Stress With Home School Programs

If you live far off the mainland in a remote country then there are few options for your child to study. Either you send him/her to a boarding school where he/she would be on his/her own for the better part of the year, or you teach him in a place which is difficult to journey to and fro, making your child feel tired and stressed out thanks to all that extra work. Truly, it is a big trouble for parents when it comes to teaching their own child. Also a lot of students suffer from different physical and/or mental disorders which make them a target for bullies in the school. That is not a problem when it comes to learning from home.

 Home School Programs

  However, if you think of the problem the solution is pretty simple too. Have you thought of bringing the school to your home? Yes, we are talking about one of the many Home School Programs which cater especially to the needs of those children who cannot attend regular school. Most of these home school programs have a very compatible and practical set of syllabus that can be understood by the students, and you can help your child learn about all the things a child should from a very young age. The child would be able to understand the things about reading and writing first, and then different kinds of knowledge would be added to enrich his/her learning process like math, science, arts and other extra-curricular activities.

The best thing about most programs like this is that they make learning a fun task rather than a pressured thing one must do. There is no compulsion so you would have to make sure that the student is learning everything provided in the Homeschool Curriculum . Check out the detailed syllabus online because most major programs put their syllabus there, and before buying into one such program you can always ensure you get value for money by comparing more than one online school on the basis of their resources, tools of teaching and the homeschool curriculum they follow. That would help them understand the basics of the process better, and ensure that they get the best learning possible through online programs.

You would see that as the student is not under any kind of pressure while learning, it actually helps him/her better grasp the different ideas and concepts and he/she is more open to new ideas and concepts.

Some Data About Home Schooling

Nowadays, home schooling is no longer a big issue and in fact, it is already generally accepted even by traditional schools or colleges. Before you plunge into home schooling, you have to consider the various factors involved.

Some Data About Home Schooling

 Most of the home schooling students don't do well in traditional classrooms and that's the main reason why their parents choose the home-based schooling programs. But this reason is sometimes not enough and you will need to consider other factors before you finally decide if home schooling is the best decision for your child.

You can't find a lot of guides that can assist you with home schooling but if you take just a few moments to read this article, you will get some of the most important data about home schooling.
Firstly, are you prepared to supervise your child's education? Since your child will be studying at home, you will need to keep a close watch especially if the child is still young; high school and college students require minimal supervision because they are already old enough to handle their responsibilities as students but still, you need to check on them regularly. The set up of home schooling is very much different from traditional schools so you and your child would have to adjust on some changes.

The decision for signing up for home schooling should be the joint decision of the parents and the child. As parents, you can't just impose home schooling to your child. If your child is not comfortable with home schooling, it might affect his/her mindset and hamper learning progress. Another thing to consider is the type of education that you're giving to your child. It must be suitable to your child's interests and needs. There are various programs to choose from, including basic subjects to complex topics.

State laws on home schooling also differ and so you should already expect some variations. If you want, you can inquire at the local government office concerned. In the US and Canada, home schooling has tremendously increased recently. Parents can even participate in home schooling forums so that they can receive assistance from more experienced parents. They can get helpful pieces of advice from other parents.
Some kids do well in home schooling because they have more freedom. They can learn at their chosen pace which makes it easier for them to understand various lessons. You see, kids differ when it comes to learning. Through home schooling, you can give much attention to your child's learning progress and you can effectively monitor it. Home schooling often provides scheduled projects and other requirements. You have to ensure that your child meets all the requirements and pass all their projects. That is one way to supervise the education of your child.

Keep in mind that home schooling is not for everyone. Children who do well in traditional schools should not be pulled out immediately because it might have a terrible effect on them. You must evaluate your child carefully and you can even ask them. They should also decide if they like home schooling. The final decision will still rest on you and if you have certain problems with your child regarding your decision, you have to explain everything to your kid. Tell him/her why you decided to go for home schooling because if there is understanding, everything will work well.

Do Black Children Do Better with Black Teachers

New research confirms that black students excel when they are taught by black teachers. Interestingly enough, three years ago, a different study contended that the race of children doesn't matter. The way I see it, each of these statements is true... and also false.

I have observed through personal relationships, and/or just plain observation that a child will be who you set in their mind they will be.  If you tell a child he is stupid, he will act stupid. If you say a child is bad at math, she will continue to be bad at math. Children are very open to suggestion. This is just part of the problem.

I also know, just from dealing with my own kids and observing others, that children will meet the bar you set, and no more. So if you place the bar low, the child will meet it and then coast from that point.  If you keep raising the bar, children will work to meet the bar. Eventually, if you keep raising the bar, they will learn to keep excelling on their own... if you keep lowering the bar to meet them, they will become lazy and won't produce.

So this becomes a racial issue when children are exposed to instructors who know nothing, and don't care to know anything about that child's background, from a cultural or personal perspective, and instead makes assumptions based on their own experiences with a person of that race, and places that assumption on the child and what they can accomplish. In other words, Miss Sally Jones, a white women who is well educated, and had limited exposure to black kids, goes to teach in a black school. Her only exposure to black kids is a couple of people she met in college and did not find them especially bright  for whatever reason.  Likewise, she dismisses these kids as not very bright, and 'bless their hearts', she just humors the children and accepts work that is barely acceptable and calls it an A.

Miss Dora White, on the other hand, is a black woman who has taught in inner city schools for years, and knows a spark of genius when she sees it.  She also, being a black woman, knows very many black kids who are very bright, and so expects the most from her students, regardless of what color.  When a child brings her sub-par work, she grimaces and tells them to try again.  You can do better she says.  The child goes back to the drawing board and does better.

This is not to say that the same child won't also encounter Mr. Levine, a white male, who has grown up with and worked with black people all his life, and he has learned to not judge any child on first glance. Mr. Levine will engage, try different tactics that might even stimulate a child from a cultural perspective, having lived in and around that child's racial culture and having some insight. He could even do a better job than Ms. White, and he may have developed a passion and special interest in learning about that culture from a fresh perspective.  He may connect with children in a way that not only inspires them to raise the bar, but also excite them and make learning fun.

So,  my point is, black kids with black teachers, will most certainly do better than black students with white teachers... if the teachers are equally inexperienced and approaching the teaching of these children from within their own cultural framework. But take a teacher of any race who takes time to understand where a child might be coming from, who can excite children, and not make judgements, and it won't matter if that teacher is orange, and those kids are magenta. They will learn from them.

The problem is we just don't have enough Mr. Levines.  We have far too many Miss Sally Jones' who are new to teaching and don't have enough social experience to deal with a kid who is not like them. And then, the Ms. White's are spread too thin, mostly because their value is clear, but be have to few of them. Hopefully, over time, Ms. Jones' will turn into Mr. Levine types, but chances are many will leave the school system before getting there.

Oh, and I should probably add that black mothers who homeschool their black kids will have the best results probably because they already know their kids and expect them to succeed.  They will continually challenge and encourage them to meet the bar, and sometimes even lower a bar or two temporarily to give the child a sense of satisfaction.  There is a certain insight a homeschooling parent has with their own child (regardless of color) that even Mr. Levine will have trouble competing with.

In the end, we need to stop worrying about the race of each child and each teacher, and staff schools with a good mix of races, so children will look around and see themselves represented among other students, teachers, and administrators, and even if they don't have a black teacher for each class, or even each year, they will feel represented in the school.  Also, with a good mix of teachers, there will always be someone to whisper to the young Miss Jones' and remind her that a child who she isn't giving the benefit of the doubt can accomplish more than she thinks.  This is who she will transform into a future Mr. Levine.

I'm not saying race of teacher is not important to students, because it is, because understanding of the child is important to students, but that can be fixed with some cultural and sensitivity training (done regularly and often).

Almost done costuming another show

The Complete Works of Shakespeare ...  Abridged!  I made 2 and altered the rest.  A guy is playing the women's parts!

Gertrude (made with no pattern)

Lavina (also made with no pattern)

Ophelia

Juliet

Cleopatra

 I am still working on the nurse costume... and kilts for Macbeth!  So if you are wondering why I haven't produced any art work in a while... here's why.

"I just thought maybe I could do a better job myself"

This was the exact thought I had when I decided to homeschool my kids...and the sentiment is growing, especially among African Americans.

Black families have become one of the fastest-growing demographics in homeschooling, with black students making up an estimated 10 percent of the homeschooling population. (For comparison’s sake, they make up 16 percent of all public-school students nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.) And while white homeschooling families traditionally cite religious or moral disagreements with public schools in their decision to pull them out of traditional classroom settings, studies indicate black families are more likely to cite the culture of low expectations for African American students or dissatisfaction with how their children—especially boys—are treated in schools.  read more