Terri Johnson of Knowledge Quest Maps has generously let us share the below, very helpful, article.

5 Must-Have, No-Cost Resources for Homeschooling

This past year has not been an easy one for many Americans, that’s for sure.  With businesses downsizing and laying off staff, many loyal employees find themselves out of work.  With the bursting of the real estate bubble, many hard-working homeowners find themselves in a house they can no longer afford to keep and yet can neither afford to sell.  We live in hard times, but often it is these very hard times that generate the most creative thinking.  As they say… Necessity is the mother of invention.  I believe that was first spoken by Plato.  Or you could say... “Invention is the mother of necessity.”  Thorstein Veblen, the author of that quote, was a U.S. economist and social philosopher who lived during the latter portion of the 19^th century until the Great Depression.  He lived in times not unlike our own.  Swift change can cause turmoil.

So, if invention and creativity is spurred on by necessity or difficulty (and vice versa), then now is a great time to look for and use no-cost resources that will serve us well during this economic downturn.

There are many of you who cannot afford homeschooling curriculum this year.  Does that mean that you should put your children into public school?  No, what it means is that it is time to get creative, even inventive, when it comes to our children’s education.

And this is your place to start.  I am going to share with you my top 5 “must-have” homeschooling resources that won’t cost you a dime.  Bookmark each of these sites and refer to them often as you prepare and teach your children during this upcoming school year.

Top 5 Must-Have No-Cost Homeschooling Resources

(These are not listed in any particular order because they are all good!  Bookmark or sign up for them all!)

1. Jim Erskine’s Freebie of the Day - http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/.  If you are not aware of this site, then I am excited to share it with you.  Jim works with homeschool publishers to provide you with 1 freebie each day.  The link to the freebie is only active for 24 hours, so you have to act fast, but these are quality offerings and not just filler junk.  Trust me, I have participated in this program and we have given away a full U.S. geography curriculum on one occasion and another full ebook on another occasion.  Other publishers are doing the same thing.  So sign up using the “Join List” tab at the top of the page.
2. The Old Schoolhouse’s Teacher Toolbox - http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com/E_News/index.php#teacherstoolbox.  Most of you are probably aware of their Freebie Friday newsletter (if you are not, then sign up for that one as well).  But the Teacher Toolbox newsletter is a lesser known treasure. The Teacher's Toolbox is a great way to inject something extra into your teaching plans especially when you are homeschooling on a shoestring.
3. The Homeschool Mom Unit Studies - http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/schoolroom/unitstudies.php.  Actually, the entire Homeschool Mom site is a gem and you should spend some time there getting familiarized with it and find out what it has to offer.  But I specifically highlighted the unit study page because unit studies are a great way to homeschool your children especially if you are working with limited funds.  You can teach them all the same topic but at varying levels.  You can often utilize library books and online information resources – all for free.
4. Donna Young Printables and Resources - http://donnayoung.org/index.htm.  Yes, this site is a treasure trove of lessons, planners and forms.  There is a form for everything you could ever need.  I especially like her diplomas!  If you are looking for a specific form, a planner or a lesson for a certain subject, make sure that you check here!  Donna Young has so many useful forms and resources that you will think you have hit the jackpot.
5. Homeschooling ABCs Free 5 Day MiniClass – http://www.homeschoolingabcs.com.  Sometimes when you are throwing it all together yourself and not using pre-made curriculum, you can start to wonder if you are on the right track.  Worry no longer… sign up for the free 5 day mini-class at the site above and receive information on:

Ø What to Teach and When

Ø 4 Steps to Homeschooling Success

Ø Homeschooling on a Dime

Ø Getting the Help You Need

Ø Planning and Scheduling

There you go – 5 “Must-Have” No-Cost Resources for Homeschooling.  Take advantage of them.  Let them be the fuel that starts your creative engine and keeps it going strong.  My hope and prayer for you is that you have NOT been hit hard by this financial mess our country has found itself in.  But if you have been, then look for the silver lining amongst the gray clouds.  As Patti Handy says, “Don’t let a good financial crisis go to waste.” (www.teenscashcoach.com)

Warmly,

Terri Johnson

Bramley Books^TM, a division of

Knowledge Quest, Inc.

www.KnowledgeQuestMaps.com

1.877.697.8611

A good month! :-)

Here is an example of a few assignments for the day on the velcro strip you can purchase through www.workboxsystem.com. It is awesome! First is a reading assignment, set up on the couch and he would know this. Second is computer work with a program on disk, third is drawer #2 in 'our system' of drawers, and fourth is a Write on/Wipe Off activity that I have set up for him and he knows where to go for that. The second strip continues his work with a game of chess using an educational chess curriculum, drawer #3 in 'our system', running time on the Wii fit (and yes that is a screen shot from Google Images) and last is drawer #6 of 'our system' with a lapbooking project.

As you can see, below is a 100s chart we utilize for storage of our PECS. It is actually placed on our upright freezer using heavy duty magnets, you can see the little circle magnets in some of the pockets.

As he  completes his assignments, we splurged and purchased a multi level business card holder that he places his PECS in for everything he has completed. Notice, on the front of this holder I placed velcro to hold his "I need help" cards. If he needs extra help he has to give one of these to me, which he hates to do. As the program explains, this helps the student become more responsible. The first day he still had all four of his helps left he was so excited!!! He had completed all assignments without extra help. This does not mean I do not help him or teach throughout the day. Some activities come with "work with mom" for the assignment and we go through all of the assignments at the start of the day, because he needs that anyway. But he has stayed on track and worked beautifully using this system.

As you can see, if you read up on Sue Patrick's Workbox System, she tells you that you can adjust it as necessary AFTER YOU TRY IT AS PRESCRIBED!! I think most children will work very well as the system is designed, we simply had a personal issue over the design and had to adjust it accordingly. This was our adjustment and it has worked well for our family. Your family may come up with another way that will work perfectly for your family.

CHECK IT ALL OUT at www.workboxsystem.com for Sue Patrick's Workbox System and all support materials. I strongly encourage you to purchase the additional physical support materials as they will make set up so much quicker and easier!!

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

As you can see, we place the numbers for each drawer down the left side, I placed velcro in the center of the drawer for the "Work with Mom" card when necessary, and just for clarification the right side has a PEC of the activity or work inside. Drawer number one contains our Awana workbook, pencils, and scripture memory. Drawer number three is hard to see, but it has his handwriting work for cursive inside of it, along with sharpened pencils and paper. And drawer number six, actually has supplies for lapbooking. I know it is hard to see, but I used a picture of kids holding a completed lapbook in demonstration for the PEC.

Recently we reviewed a fantastic product called "Sue Patrick's Workbox System" for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, LLC. You can find it at her website, www.workboxsystem.com. This is an awesome product that helps you organize your school day while placing more responsibility on your children to complete their assignments and activities. Please go to the site and check it out, buy the book, and consider using this, it is really awesome!! Since I am actually writing this blog about changes we made to the idea, you need to have a good rundown of the system as it is designed to better understand the changes we made, so please check out her site FIRST.

Part of the concept is about having boxes for the various assignments on a shoe rack, each filled with a particular activity. All activities are "listed" on a handy little strip with velcro to hold handy little numbers to direct your child to the numbered boxes and complete their assignments. This motivates children beautifully because of their desire to clean up the shelf, it is highly rewarding to watch the boxes be cleared out, and the more full boxes be set aside as completed when containing larger items.

The problem we ran into is that one of the things that bothers my son, who functions on the autism spectrum, is disorganization or any mess in his workspace. So we had to make some creative adjustments to the system in order to make it work for him. Add to that, the system uses numbered cards to mark the various boxes for work, along with a strip to place corresponding cards on to guide the student through their day. This is reminiscient of PECS (picture exchange communication system) for us and so we decided to run with that idea because it works very well for our son. SOO, rather than shoe boxes, we converted to a plastic seven drawer system from Walmart for $20. We chose the one with the four small drawers and three larger ones so that we could fit more games and things in the bottom ones and workbooks, reading books, etc. in the top ones. I still use the system base idea, having ALL of the items necessary for each assignment in each drawer, which at times means having pencils in every drawer, scissors or glue in several, etc.

Because we already had PECS for many games and things, we have placed a Picture of a particular game on the strip as an assignment, numbers are used for the drawers, and since the instruction strip provides up to sixteen assignments/activities for a day, we can still be completing that many activities while only using the neat seven drawers for some of them. And some things on the strip may be "lunch" or play in the yard, etc. His assignment strip includes game pictures (he knows to find them at the kitchen table where we complete activity center work), pictures of various work locations for our homeschool (I took pics or pulled them off of Google images of our write on wipe off board, pocket chart, computer programs, even the wii fit jogging program to fulfill Sue Patrick's running on days when the weather is bad.). These pictures are what we place on his instruction strip and he knows where to go, along with the numbered strips for a particular drawer in his stand. This kept things neat, gave me space to place bulkier items because most things do fit into the larger drawers when necessary, allowed us plenty of activities to still list on his assignment strip, and has fulfilled his need for neatness in the process. It also gave me the ability to roll his cart out of the way when not in use, even to another room when we have company, which is awesome!

And his responsibility level? Wow, it has improved greatly!!! I wholeheartedly recommend this book and the system. And I would definitely purchase the support materials because it will make your job so much easier when you first get started. We mounted the matching velcro to the drawers for both the numbers and the "Work with Mom" PECS and have also expanded our PECS offering to everything I could possibly categorize in our home school. I actually found a pocket chart for 100s made up of 100 two inch squares that hold the PECS perfectly and is awesome for me when planning because I just look over the items we have for school and pick what he needs to work on, then I record it on Sue Patrick's scheduling sheets to track what we have been doing. Awesome system!! Seriously. And you don't have to do what we did and make a bunch of PECS for all of your items for school, but we had many PECS already and they just slid right into this system beautifully. And of course, he loves the little pictures of his many activities!

I will try to get pictures on here soon of exactly what we had done. But I encourage you to try this product, if the boxes hold you back, give it some thought. This is the best thing we have ever done for our home school and for the independence of our children to handle their own work load. And I haven't even touched on the tremendous help it provided for me as I schedule our days. I use Sue Patrick's Workbox System right along with my high school daughter's schedule to make sure that my one on one time is scheduled perfectly for each child. This system allows me to easily see when my son will need me and when to schedule independent work for him while I work with my older daughter. If you put your mind to it and really read her book and understand the concept, try it as suggested for a while, and then adjust it to work best for your family. We have found a very happy medium with this and thank Sue Patrick for a tremendous product for homeschoolers. She took many ideas and trial and error and rolled it into a truly usable and helpful way to organize our days successfully!!

Pictures to follow below, check it all out!

Copyright 2009 Donna Campos

End of school year, approaching vacation, and wedding plans, have ALL been keeping me very busy. I miss keeping up on blogging better.

Around here things are good. Everyone is growing so quickly. The big boys (Dad and 3B10) had birthdays at the start of the month and now we have the little boys (4B4 and 5B2) this weekend. Time does go by too quickly.

Our oldest will be married in August, so plans have begun in earnest for the big event. Very exciting. Her fiance is a really wonderful young man, we really like him. Planning for her has brought back wonderful memories of our first days as a married couple. We may have to plan a second honeymoon soon, just to relish the memories.

Our second child is busy completing her junior year of high school, although we school year round I am blocking out more of a summer this year. She will need it with the many church youth group events she has coming. School will continue for 3B10, more because of his needs than for any other reason. We continue using "My Reading Coach" and are thoroughly thrilled with it. I want him to continue through the summer and not miss a beat with it. Otherwise, I hope to enjoy some swimming and relaxing and a lot of read alouds.

Reviews are going along well enough, I am still completely in love with the job and The Old Schoolhouse magazine! I hope to get an ebook out soon, but we'll see whether or not I can actually hold up to the experts...I'm still thinking it may not turn out well enough. Anyway, I am enjoying the effort and hoping to help a few others with some good ideas. I have failed to keep up on blogging well enough to regularly encourage others, this could me the next best thing.

1G21 is still writing and we are still hopeful to complete editing on book two of her series very soon. Wedding plans may throw a bit of a wrench in our efforts, there is only so much time in a day. You can still find her at her website (www.jessicalynncampos.com) and the book received a wonderful review from a TOS Reviewer. You may look it up by book title "The Risen, the Chosen, and the Dark; Book One: The Dawn of It All" on the TOS site top left under Resources and then Product Reviews, in the books section. Take a moment to check out some of the other books that have been reviewed, you'll find some great information.

Home stuff is going well, I've been painting and finally got the kitchen done. Next is the boys bathroom, which is actually the master bathroom. Then I hope to take off some doors this summer and sand and repaint them smoothly. The previous owners textured everything in our house: doors, frames, outlets, didn't matter. Very annoying now. So I am slowly trying to rectify the problem, but it will take years!

So do you have big summer plans? How are things at your home? I'd love to hear from you!!