(Thank you to Carolyn for this great guest post!)

As a homeschooler, you are no doubt very proud of your academic achievements and will in all likelihood be ahead of the academic curve when you are ready to matriculate into the college scene.  Due to the one-on-one and focused nature of homeschooling many students are able to advance more quickly through their studies and are therefore ready to test out of entry-level college courses.  Math and English test scores are not generally a problem, but the other side of this can be the lack of extra-curricular activities.  To become competitive with public or private school students, you’ll have to reach out into the community to round out your education.  Here are a few tips and resources for homeschool kids to help them prepare for college in their high-school years.

1. Athletics

If you are athletically inclined, but don’t have a school team to join, try checking out your options at community centers around town.  A lot of kids that go to public/private schools and compete on their schools sports teams also play the same sport for a club team.  Activate your social skills and join in!

2. Science Centers

Depending upon your location many cities have science centers that offer classes.  I grew up in Oklahoma City and went to the Omniplex to take lab and astronomy classes in a homeschool group.  Check with your nearest science museum to see if they offer any sort of field trips for homeschool groups or would be willing to set one up.  We got to dissect frogs in the lab, visit the planetarium and tour the gardens.

3. Language Classes

Check community centers and community colleges for foreign language classes.  Most colleges will want you to have a least 2 years of foreign language and studying it out of a book with no interaction might not be as impressive by itself unless you at least pair it with some sort of interactive speaking class.  Libraries, churches, community centers and other resources in your local newspaper and community websites should list any offerings.

4. Volunteering

Due to the open schedule homeschooling provides, you should take advantage of the volunteer opportunities in your community.  Colleges love to see volunteering on your transcript and the flexibility of your schedule may open up doors for you to get involved in ways that public/private school kids can’t.

5. Tests

Before you apply to colleges you will need to sign up for either the SAT or ACT standardized exams.  Get a book of example tests and study them beforehand, it will help to know what you’re about to walk into.  If you are seriously advanced in certain subjects, consider taking College Level Exam Program (CLEP) tests to earn college credit before you even walk onto campus.

6. Shopping Schools

Most universities will offer tabs to explain what is needed for homeschool applicants.  Check out the Online Education Database or other college ranking information to help you determine where you want to attend.

7. Student Aid

Go to the FAFSA website to apply for financial aid once you have selected your institution.

Once you have taken these steps it will be time to get your transcript and letters of recommendation together and actually apply to the school.  Good luck!

Author’s Bio: Carolyn is a guest post blogger who writes on the subjects of higher education, registered nurse schools and the job market.

Check out this rich online resource called A.S.L.U., a free sign language website that offers lessons, videos, tests, quizzes, and everything you need to educate yourself to communicate with deaf friends and family.

I recently started working closely with a deaf woman in our church and really wanted to be able to communicate better with her.  I was pretty excited to find this site because the lessons were well organized and started out with valuable conversation tools I could use right away instead of just vocabulary lists.  I was frustrated with other resources that would teach me a bunch of words, but not how to ‘chat’ with my new friend.

It’s basically a full high school or college ASL curriculum offered online for free.  Take a few moments a day to do a lesson or encourage your children to.  It’s lots of fun, keeps the mind agile, and can help bridge a communication barrier in all kinds of situations.

Enjoy!

What do you do to keep the kids active during the cold months?

If you have something that works for your kids, take a second and add it to the comment section and maybe we can come up with a nice list to help us all keep our sanity this winter.

Thanks!

Here’s my idea:

We got the two boys a mid-sized trampoline (8 feet, I think) for Christmas.  It just fits in the basement and we’re planning to move it out to the deck in the spring.  Before that, we’ve had good luck with a simple exercise trampoline and a blow-up jumping ball pit, though the blow-up was not very durable with five kids using it.  It only lasted a year or so.

What works for you?

Have you ever sat with your child helping them learn history facts, Spanish words, multiplication facts, or any of the myriad of facts they learn throughout their school years?

Next time, head over to this great website that has done most of the work for you already:

Quizlet.com

What we like:

• It’s free, funded by ad revenues.  (You can upgrade to ad-free and ability to load images onto flashcards for an optional $15/yr)
• It’s well-established, so almost any facts you’re looking to study will probably already have a set of flashcards entered for you by previous users – over 8 million sets!
• A well designed dashboard showing all your flashcards, recently studied, statistics, etc.
• Many learning methods including spoken flashcards for foreign languages.
• Games to increase speed and fun with learning.
• Groups – If you are learning in a group, you can get together, share flashcard decks, keep in touch and help each other.
• Printable – A new feature allows you to print your flashcards if you need to take them with you.
• Built from scratch by a high school sophomore into a thriving business.  Read his story here.

What a great resource!  Enjoy.

If your kids are gripping about writing lessons, why not start teaching them to type?

I remember watching my toddler use a mouse better than his grandma and realizing that we are in a completely different world now.

So, why wait to teach typing?  In fact, I have to admit, I type much more nowadays that I actually write.

One of my BFFs (hey, old people can have BFFs, too), recommended a great site that her kids have been using to learn to type, for free:

TypingWeb.com

What we like:

• It’s FREE (There is an optional one-time $10 fee to remove ads and unlock extra lessons and games)
• You can track your progress.
• Typing games make it more fun to learn.
• A free Teacher Portal:  If you sign up first, you can make a username and password for each of your kids.  Then, using the teacher portal, you can keep track of each child’s progress.  All the basics are free.  (They do offer ad-free and premium service options for $4.99 per student if you’d like.)

I hope you enjoy it, too.

Photo by Alexbruda

If you’re looking for something fun to do with the kids next week, head over to Michaels, where they will be having three FREE “Make-it Take-it” craft sessions next week.  Here’s the schedule for our area.  Make sure to verify with the store in your neighborhood before going:

1. Monday, Dec. 19th, 11am – 1 pm:  Camille’s Fun Dough Shapes
2. Wednesday, Dec. 21st, 11 am – 1 pm: Orion’s Foam Block Stamping
3. Friday, Dec. 23rd, 11 am – 1 pm: Olier’s Sand & Glitter Art

Enjoy!

Photo by Julosstock

We found a great little app today that got my 3-year-old writing with his fingers and loving it:  IWriteWords:

It’s a $2.99 app that has a little crab your youngster can touch with his finger and drag over numbered dots to write each step in uppercase/lowercase letters, short words, and numbers.  It quickly teaches them the correct strokes needed to make the letters and has a cute childish drawing that pops up depicting the short words like ‘cat’ and ‘cup’ after correctly writing them.

My little guy wasn’t too interested in the letters by themselves, probably because they have no real meaning.  However, he loved writing words!  He looked so empowered and excited that he was actually writing words.  Then he started on the numbers, which he has recently gotten excited about through his newest game: ThinkFun Zingo 1-2-3.  He sat there, entranced, and wrote all the numbers up to 20 without a break.

Our favorite features:

• Price:  IWriteWords Lite is free to try (only abc, 1-3, and 3 words are included).  Full version is $2.99
• Both lower- and uppercase are offered and correct writing stroke orders are taught intuitively.
• Replay feature, so when I finally get my IPod back, I can tap through all the words and numbers he’s been writing and see a replay of his actual strokes.  Cool to see him improve!
• Included playable version of the ABC song he can tap his way through.
• My child loves it and is excited about writing – that’s priceless . . . I wonder if it would get my 8-year-old excited about writing. 

I wish they would make more apps with this kind of educational quality!  Enjoy.

Melissa and Doug Sale

A couple of our favorites are $10 instead of $20:

Melissa and Doug Cutting Food Box

And for some fun early pattern and math skills, this keeps my 3-year-old intently busy for up to 30 minutes.  That’s a record! 

Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards

Enjoy!

Here are a few tips that have helped me out:

1. Get a free Amazon Prime Membership Trial, which gives you free 2-day shipping and also removes the $25 order requirement to get free shipping.  You can only do this if it’s been 13 months since a previous free trial. (Make sure to go into “My Account” and “Manage Prime Membership” and review whether you want the Prime to automatically renew after the trial.)
2. Check out the Movers and Shakers Amazon page.  In the left hand column, you can click on the category you’re looking at like ‘toys’ or ‘books’.  This will show you products that have started selling much faster than usual.  This is usually the really popular items along with the ones you’re looking for – the best priced deals.
   • Like these two expansions to our newest family favorite game, Dominion.  We love it because everyone from age 5 to adult enjoys it.  The expansions are usually around $45 and today they dropped to $22 and quickly made the Movers and Shakers page.  Yay!
   • 
3. The Lightning Deals- These go on all day and have specific starting and ending times.  Here are ideas to help you get the items you want:
   • If you’re at all interested in an item, and they are going fast, click and add it to your cart.  You will have 15 minutes to think about it before you need to check out.  If you don’t buy it, it will go to the next person in line.
   • Lightning deals later in the day often only have a clue about what they are.  However, I have found that if you cut and paste the text of the clue and then do a google search for it, with the word “Amazon” you can often figure out what many of the upcoming items are.
4. Finally, if you want to avoid the urgency of the Lightning Deals, you can check out the Deals of the Day or The Gold Box.  Here’s an idea to sift through the many pages of deals offered in the “Best Deal” slider box.  Here’s what to do.
   • Go to the “Best Deals” slider box in the middle of the page (which can be hundreds of pages).
   • Go to the “Sort by” drop down menu and choose “Percent off (high to low)”
   • Click on the category you’re interested in (toys and games, video games, etc.) just below the product images.
   • Buy the good ones: like this $20 Littlest Pet Shop set for $12
   • 

And I appreciate any shopping you do through my links – I get a small referral commission for Amazon purchases made through my links or by using the Amazon search box in the sidebar on my homepage.

Thank you and enjoy your holidays!

It’s a Japanese style of poetry that based on a theme or image. However, it doesn’t usually rhyme. Instead it has a syllable pattern: 5 syllables for the first line, 7 for the second, and 5 for the third. (Clapping out syllables for a few example words and sentences really helped the younger kids.)

After explaining the basics, we wrote one together:

Kids running around
Making a lot of messes
Fun for everyone

Then the rest of the gang came up with one each on their own:

Our 11-year-old, in reference to his latest favorite game: Minecraft:
Mine some wood from trees
Make some wooden swords and tools
Go kill a creeper

My 10-year-old daughter stormed off, insisting “I’m going to do my own writing, instead of this dumb poetry”, proving that no lesson works for everyone and that puberty emotions are in full force at age 10. 

Our 8-year-old boy:
I like Halloween
I can’t wait to trick or treat
Big bag of candy

And proving that imitation is the sincerely form of flattery, from our 6-year-old boy:

I like Halloween
People wear scary costumes
Big bags of candy

Overall a fun writing unit when you need a break from the daily grind.

Enjoy!