Friday Favorites

Wow! It has been such a great week of encouragement from all of our wonderful Homeschool Review Crew writers! There are some talented writers and I am so proud to be a part of this fantastic team.

Today closes up our week of encouragement and I’m here to talk about some of our favorites here at Homeschool 4 Life. This is a hard one to keep short, but I will certainly try. We have a lot of favorites. We have favorite Back to Homeschool traditions, supplies, books, as well as our favorite curriculum. I thought it would be great just to have a list of what we love, so…here it goes!

Our Favorite Back to Homeschool Traditions

* Take the Day off – We always take the day off when the public schools go back to school. This is just a fun perk of homeschool and our boys always love being able to relax knowing that all of their public school counterparts are busy at school that day.
* Starbucks – When we lived in Oregon, the public schools started after Labor Day so it was cooler out. We would head to Starbucks to get the boys a hot chocolate and a donut while I got a caramel apple cider. The Starbucks workers always asked if we were going to school. We just would smile and say, “Nope!” (You can imagine the looks we got. It was always a lot of fun.)
* School Meeting – Before school begins again each year, I try to have a meeting with each of the boys to talk about school. We discuss what happened last year, what they liked, and what they didn’t like. Then we talk about what they would like to do this year and I would let them know about some of the things that I have planned for that year. These meetings have varied from year to year. One year I actually had a print out of questions for each of them, but most years these are just informal get-together meetings to prepare them and me for the upcoming school year.

Our Favorite Supplies

We use simple supplies in our homeschool. I try not to spend too much money on our supplies. Here is a basic list of what we like to use around our home:
* Ticonderoga pencils – These are the best pencils that we have found. They sharpen nicely and write well.
* Crayola crayons, colored pencils, and markers – I spend just a little more for the best for coloring. I just haven’t seen any that can beat Crayola.
* Scissors – Both of our boys (4th & 9th grade) like to use adult sized scissors for a smoother cut, but they both used children’s scissors when they were younger.
*Paper – wide-ruled lined paper, spiral notebooks, construction paper, and computer paper
* Tape & Glue
* Stapler & Staples
* Map/Globe – I love having a map and globe around for those times when we can add in some geography to look up a place that comes up in another lesson.
* Computer with Internet & a Printer – I use my computer and printer each and every week. There are so many resources online that I use and print.

Our Favorite Books

We have always encouraged our boys to find books that they enjoy reading. We try to get to the library at least every other week, if not every week for the boys to get new books to read. There are so many books that we love. I have just listed a few of our favorite books and/or categories of books to read:
* Comic books – I know this is controversial to put this on the list, but I got both of my boys interested in reading because of comic books. I used to love reading comic books and that rubbed off onto our boys. Sonic comic books are the favorite of both of our boys.
* Narnia books – When our oldest was in 6th grade, he read the entire series.
* Magic Tree House – Both of our boys have loved these books. I have to admit that I really like them, too!
* Seasonal & Holiday – I try to have some seasonal and holiday books around throughout the year

Our Favorite Curriculum

* Reading Eggs – This is our youngest son’s favorite thing to do. It is an online reading program that includes a game aspect to it.
* Sequential Spelling – This really helped our oldest (a logical speller) how to make sense of spelling.
* Apologia – We love their Exploring Creation Science series. Both of our boys have used them.
* Notgrass history – We love the Christian aspect of this curriculum.

To be honest, we don’t use a ton of curriculum. I make up a lot of the resources that we use or I find them online from different sources. The internet is a good friend to the homeschool mom.

Well, I hope that some of our favorites have given you something new to think about and maybe to try!

—oOo—

Thank you to Felicia from Homeschool 4 Life for this article.