Friday, April 23, 2010

Information overload? or frustration that could be eased with the right information?

We've all done it, well, okay, so I tell myself that to help me feel better.

You see something that you feel could help you during your school day, and suddenly, you're lost for hours surfing blogs, or you're sitting in a workshop at a conference feeling so ignorant that you didn't think this miraculous thing up yourself!


I try to look at it this way. Surely someone tried to play football with a basketball for a number of years before they said, "Geesh, there must be a better way"! So, without jumping on every bandwagon possible, I do like to implement different things without constantly re-inventing the wheel. It works for me. What also works for me, is to share these ideas. Something about sharing what I've gathered helps me to think through what I'm doing and evaluate it as I talk about it.


With that being said, I have a lot of notes from the conference we went to 2 weeks ago that I am still trying to make sense of so I can share them, and can't wait to get all of the MP3 recordings of the workshops so that I can share them with other moms and dads on this home educating journey.


You can check out a list of the speakers here and it may help you stumble on something you can use. A list of their topics is here and as I said, I will have the recordings soon to help spread their messages.

I hosted a Mom's Night Out for our local homeschooling group this past Tuesday, and it seems as though all of us could use some tips from time to time to spice up our routine, or to help us get out of a rut that is causing us frustration on a daily basis.


I've implemented this workbox system this year, and then in just the last 2 weeks we've been doing these unit studies, and this new Science.

I'm getting ready to start this for grammar, and I'm looking forward to the fall when we'll start on Math U See. Interested in it, but don't know where to start. You can take a placement test here.

Lapbooking is a great way to help your children to retain the information they are learning.

Want to learn how to lapbook? Well, let me overwhelm you with some more resources then! This, this, this, and this are all click-worthy!
All I can say is I enjoy schooling these children with the world as our textbook, and a trip to the Principal's Office, in the evening, freshly-showered and in their jammies, well, that sure is cool!

3 comments:

  1. great, jamie! i'm looking forward to checking it all out. i've calmed down and decided to finish our saxon math year out. surely the second half of the book won't scar my precious child too much further. we're getting together to do math w/ mistey one day soon, and so on and so forth. i DO think workboxes, in some form or another, would help me be more efficient. so i'm steeping all of this in my head like a nice hot cup of tea...thanks for being willing to share all that you are learning!

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  2. Sounds like a good plan miss gina...I stuck with Rod and Staff for another year just because I knew I could make it work, and it would make more sense money wise to wait until 4th and 1st to buy new vs just getting it to finish out K and 3rd. I do want to clarify I don't think you should just chuck it like an old pair of shoes, but once there are blisters, don't feel guilty for going shopping! Making good use of resources, like getting with Mistey, is your best bet. You'll find the balance that works for your Smith clan and I look forward to hearing your tips on how you made it work for you!

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  3. I have been coming back to this blog post time and again...and have yet to click any of the links. LOL Something (hmmm....three somethings keep pulling me away) before I can get any info.

    One day...I'll check out the links.

    Thanks for gathering some info for the rest of us.

    Maybe tonight I'll be back. :-)

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