Must-Have HS'ing Resources

I know it's been forever since I've posted something on this blog, but our new school year has brought new resources that I have to share. The coolest that I just found is the free loan program from The National Gallery of Art in New York. You can request a catalog or browse their online catalog full of wonderful art resources. For Vince's 9th grade work, I was looking for free art history resources. That's how I stumbled on this valuable resource. There are too many items to list; you'll just have to check it for yourself!

http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/loanfinder/index.mhtm#resourcefinder


On the same subject, I found Canadian professor Dr. Robert J. Belton's free online handbook: "Art History: A Preliminary Handbook." I printed off the 2nd and 3rd sections to use as an introduction for Art History before we get into the actual history, artists, periods, etc. It's at:

http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/creative/links/arthistory.html


I will eventually post these links on the side of this blog along with the other links to free curriculum. My goal was and continues to be to bring you free curriculum to make homeschooling possible on any budget!

JEOPARDY-Homeschool Style

The kids have really gotten into trivia games and especially enjoy watching Jeopardy. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to use it for a fun learning experience. So for the elementary-age kids (Faith & Dylan), the teenager helped me design a Jeopardy game. Every Friday, we play a new Jeopardy board with questions from categories like Bible, Science, Geography, History, Healthy, etc.

I started with a large piece of white tagboard and framed it out with cardboard to make it a little more sturdy. I then broke up the board into 30 squares the size of 3x5 index cards. In the middle of each square, I put a small magnet. Then on 30 trivia cards, I put the magnet on the inside with the question. On the back, I wrote the category name and monetary amount. There are oodles of websites with trivia questions, so it wasn't hard to find those. Another good source is the popularly-used-by-homeschoolers books, "What Your ___ Grader Needs to Know." We plan on using new questions each week for three weeks and then the fourth week, we will use a combination of the previous three week's cards for a review. It's a little bit of extra work, but the kids had a blast. Also, it's a great way to cover all those extra subjects and topics that you haven't got to yet or need a review on from the previous year.

50 Nifty United States

I love this song! I learned it in 3rd grade and it still helps me remember the states in alphabetical order, so we're going over it again with our homeschool this semester.