Beginner Home School Mom

I am going to keep on doing updates, Check for them under "Beginner Home school Mom" Tab.

I am a beginner home school mommy. I have a 12 year old son, named Joshua Garza. He's in 7th grade if your trying to figure out the math. Looking for other learning ideas and materials besides books from the Teacher School here in Havelock, NC. I was able to find sites that are Free or Really cheap, because it turns out to buy the curriculums online cost over an arm and leg. I would have to throw in some toes too. So we have waiting till next year to jump into that debt, since we have decided to homeschool for 8th grade as well. 

So let me jump in on what we are using now.

*Note this is not only for Middle School Students. Its an all around grade game. :D

SUMDOG

Okay this one Free but you can only do so much, but I love it. I went ahead and paid for the month price of $6.  Its fun the parents can get involved and its all learning. From subjects Math, Reading, And Writing. 

What I like as well, it makes the student want to play these learning games so they can upgrade to new levels and play with plays around the world. Now doesn't that sound cool!! 

I have also set up challenges for my son to do so many questions to earn more coins. Each game you play you have the chance to earn a lot of coins which all go towards you upgrading and upgrading your avatar. A great part also is that you can keep track of your students learning, like a progress report. 

This can also be used in Schools for Teachers and I think thats for FREE! 

Here's a snap shot of the front page.

Heres a snapshot of their prices. Very Cheap! (right now since writing game is new its free, but only for a short time) <-- So GO NOW!!!

Last chance for free Writing Game

Now this is how it looks when a parent logs in. 

And you can add more then one child

My avatar, and this is under parent log in where you can play the games as well and earn points to upgrade clothes and levels. I played a couple of times, and I felt bad at first playing with kids that were in middle school but I really wanted points for Pink hair. HAHA.

My sons Joshuas login and avatar, and isn't his avatar cute with his soccer outfit!!

So so worth it. But if you have any questions just let me know! 

BRAINPOP

This one has free learning videos that we have watched sometimes. I haven't made the option to buy into this program yet. Im still up in the air with it. But my son did like the video that were on there for learning about subjects he needed help on. At the end of the video they can take a quiz to see how well they did. The Link above takes you to their free are on their site. 

Looks like this. 

And This Link Brainpop, is the regular login page.

The one below in orange is for K-3 its their jr page. Kind of cute.

Brainpopjr.com

When you go into pricing, you have a couple of categories to choose from. Here is a snapshot of it.

I am going to use the example of Home Schooling. This is the price and after doing this I remember why I haven't bought it yet.

I don't know if you can see the price in the bottom for 1 year and its $205. I guess its not bad for a whole year. BUT I am still going to hold off on it!.

Home Schooling a 7th Grader

We are finally into our 3rd week into of homeschooling. It has been a challenge to homeschool a 7th grader, and trying to also teach a 3 year old. Lets just say a ton of multitasking is involved. 

Not only do I get the challenge of dealing with 2 kids nine years apart, but I get to deal with a hyper 3 year old and a 12 year old with ADHD. But thats a whole other subject. So to get started on why I am homeschooling, it came to this. The school my son is attending is somehow making him fall behind in the learning curve and my son has learned that he can get away with half ass work to get good grades. Which in books shouldn't be allowed! Not to mention the children at the school my son was attending were so bad that the teacher was unable to teach the children, so no one was learning anything. Last was the kids at the school have been picking on my son, and that as just the last straw. Me going so many times to his school and seeing no results I had to take him out and figure I will homeschool him till my husband gets station somewhere else. 

Now the crazy part that no one tells you is how in the heck to start things, and how expensive homeschooling can be. I had no idea that it would take so much out of my pocket! So before I jump into those expensive curriculums, I figure I would go to the teacher store and buy workbooks to start him off at home. 

I went off the subjects he was already learning at school and then looked at his progress reports to see where he was falling behind in or where I thought he should get more one on one time and then got very lucky the lady running the teacher store was a prior teacher and helped me pick out some books.

^^  ^^

These are the books we bought, I went back on some grades to see if he really understood the information. I already knew last year the school was not a good one. 

Whats also great about these books, is that each story is a nonfiction one. So its like two birds one stone kind of think. (I'll post pictures later on of the infor inside the books)

This here is a blank Lesson plan that I also got at the teach store. 

I filled in the info on what subjects we hit each day and what we did. Pretty simple after you get the hang of it. 

We are going to switch to an online curriculum after January so its more structure.