Happy Birthday Message to Grandpa

Unschooling Moments
I have grappled with unschooling. In some ways I see it really working well for us, but in other ways I don't think it is enough. I approached preschool through unschooling and my children were very well prepared for Kindergarten. I like the idea of unschooling after preschool, but the times I have tried it have left my son unfulfilled. I unschooled my oldest son for the second half of Kindergarten and discovered that my son needs new ideas presented to keep the learning process going. He can expand on new ideas and explore on his own at that point. My other son typically needs direct instruction to facilitate learning. While unschooling isn't the perfect solution for us, it is not w

Creating a Unit Study
When we were approaching our second year of homeschooling I decided to try and put together my own unit studies. There are a lot of great unit studies out there, but I didn't find something that was exactly what I wanted. Many unit studies encompass a wide range of school subjects. I chose to focus on ones that covered geography, history, literature, art, music, and some language arts. Making up your own study is time consuming, but your can tailor the study to your child's interests, level, and needs.First you need to choose a topic. For example you can choose things like a specific country, a period of time, or a science subject. I've done some on Nativ

Learning Arabic with YouTube
YouTube is a great supplement to any language study. Every Monday we watch selected videos on the Arabic language during lunch. I chose videos related to the alphabet and vocabulary. The Arabic alphabet songs are catchy and the vocabulary is simple. The Arabic alphabet songs and the videos from the Muslim Kids School are some of my kid's favorites. The Muslim Kids School videos are songs about different letters in the Arabic alphabet.You can view the playlist here.

Fun with Ancient History
We are studying ancient history through living books, activities, and videos. We are exploring what life must have been like when people hunted mammoths, lived in caves, and traveling around looking for food. We are using these books: Maroo of th