The Cube Window: Homeschool

Why We Started Homeschooling

Our child started homeschool middle school (6th grade). We have contemplated the homeschooling issue since 3rd grade. Since middle school started, it felt like it was the right time to start this journey.

These are just a few of the Support Groups in Illinois:
Naperville HomeEducators
CHILD Illinois
IL HOUSE
Lombard Home Educators
CAHFT
You can join/follow many other homeschool groups thru Yahoo! groups nationwide.

Links on Homeschooling

A Great Resource http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/
Homeschool.com
For Illinois Homeschoolers http://www.illinoishouse.org/
Donna Young's website offers FREE planners and expert information plus a very good record keeping and report card printout using Excel http://www.donnayoung.org/index.htm
A guide to what your 1st through 8th Grader Should Know http://www.coreknowledge.org/

Books for the Homeschool Educator

Elementary Level:

The Well-Trained Mind- a guide to Classical Education, by Susan Wise Bauer
What Your Sixth Grader needs to Know, by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. http://www.coreknowledge.org/ (Core Series Books) -They also have different grade levels available from their site.
The Complete Home Learning Source Book by Rebecca Rupp
Homeschool Your Child For Free - Lauramaery Gold and Joan Zielinski

High School Homeschool and preparing for College:

Homeschooling The Teen Years by Cafi Cohen
Setting The Records Straight ( How to Craft Homeschool Transcrips and Course Descriptions for College Admission and Scholarschips) by Lee Binz
Homeschooling High School ( Planning Ahead for College Admission) by Jeanne Gowen Dennis

Links For 6th Grade and Up ~

Math

Coolmath.com This site gives step-by-step demo from basic arithmetic to Calculus.
Life of Fred: A complete Math Curriculum explained in plain english and created by a College Math Professor, Dr. Stanley Schmidt.
www.homeschoolmath.net

History

National Archives http://www.archives.gov/education
Biography of Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin. How the Cotton Gin affected labor laws, applying for patents on invention. The National Archives has a website for teachers and students. The teacher's version includes lesson plans http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/
Homeschool In the Woods by Amy Pak- Ms. Pak put together some awesome timeline figures and History lessons making the experience more "hands-on" rather than just reading the boring book! We made our first purchase, "Industrial Revolution" for this year's History focus. Currently, we are on Lesson #2. (Sept. 2010)
Youtube.com - Youtube has everything! To go along with our Industrial Revolution theme, we've found history videos so far on the Transcontinental Railroad, Battle at Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee, Geronimo, The Lakotas, and The Long Walk.

Science

Newton's Law What is Force? Gravity, Friction Measuring Motion, Newton's Law of Gravity,
Bernoulli's Principle, Buoyancy, Lift Simple Machines: you can watch online videos on http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://hubblesite.org/
How Stuff Works' site above. Click on video and type in your search item.
www.jason.org Environmental Science Lesson Plans and videos

Art

A good art site to visit, Eye on Art: http://www.robinurton.com/history/directory.htm

Music

Music Source: http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/
Eras of Music from Essentials of Music's site http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/

Foreign Language

coffeebreakspanish.com Free downloads of 15 minute lessons from iTunes as podcast. Put in your iPod! This site is mostly for me (teacher) so I can get a head start and also listen during my break! (We will start "Beginning Spanish" this summer! I wanted to share this download!)

Language Arts and Language Usage (LA LU)

Spelling Words - We use textbooks (Houghton and Mifflin Spelling & Vocabulary) for 8th grade level
Writing - We use Glencoe Writer's Choice textbook.
Elements of Literature textbooks we use but here is their site: http://eolit.hrw.com/hlla/newmainlinks/lit.jsp
Literature with printables, PDFs, iPhone apps: www.LitCharts.com