Some Favourite Homeschooling Links

Photo courtesy of fd

The internet can be a fantastic tool for the modern homeschooler. Of course, it can also be a huge distraction from actual homeschooling! Sometimes, moms can get stuck surfing for hours looking for just the right site. I hope you will enjoy these sites that we have used in our homeschool and that this list will save you some surfing time.

Art

• Watercolour Tutorials: A terrific site with a whole bunch of watercolour tutorials from beginner to advanced
• Drawing with Children Nature Journal Style: How to use the book, Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks to develop nature journalling skills
• Harmony Art Mom: A terrific blog which features Sketch Tuesday, an opportunity for you and your children to sketch the assignment of the week and e-mail your scanned sketches to Barb, the owner, for inclusion on her weekly flickr slideshow
• Totally Tessellated: This one is really math and art. Tessellations are...well, I'll let you discover them at this site which features tons of information and free printables, again from basic to complex designs

Bible

• Bible Reading List by Episode: I love this article by Penny Gardner, author of The Charlotte Mason Study Guide. If you click on the links in the body of the article, you will find lists of episodes (sections with natural breaks) from the Bible, making your Bible study well-focused and narrate-able
• Scripture Memory System: The best idea I've ever seen for memorizing scripture together. You can make this at home for a very minimal cost (or free, if you have the materials on hand, as I did). We've used this for a couple of years.
  

Nature

• Handbook of Nature Study: This blog, owned by Barb of Harmony Art Mom, features weekly Outdoor Hour Challenges which are lesson ideas to help you use the book, Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, in your homeschool

General

• Scrapbook to Learn: My children have loved learning to use digital scrapbooking, using the program Scrapbook Max, to narrate things they have learned
• Lapbooking: We haven't done a lot of this, but when we have it has been a lot of fun. It is a great way to include mini-narrations on a topical or unit study or even narrations from chapters of a particular book
• Ambleside Online: A free Charlotte Mason Style curriculum which we have used for just about our entire homeschooling 'career'. A wealth of information and ideas!
• Educational Fontware: This company sells a cd of fonts you can install on your computer that correspond to all the major handwriting books. We use Getty-Dubay Italics and this program has allowed us to make our own copywork for younger children who aren't able to copy directly from a book

History

• Book of Centuries: A Charlotte Mason concept and a lifetime project where children keep a timeline in a book. This can include simple entries with dates, or pictures/maps or even narrations. This site has a free, printable Book of Centuries.
• Homeschool in the Woods: We love the collection cd from this site which features the most gorgeous, printable timeline figures. They come in black and white so your child can colour them before use. The author/illustrator has a wealth of ideas for how to use the figures -- from simple timelines to making your own games!

There are lots more sites I'd love to recommend to you, but I think this is a good start. :) If you have other favourites, please feel free to mention them in the comments section.

Remember that tomorrow I will continue Charlotte Mason Basics for a real life home, covering common questions about narration. See you then!