Combining My Efforts

As my life gets more and more hectic, I'm finding that I need to combine some of my blogs. So I'm combining my Good Mornin' God and Homeschool ABC blogs into my latest life-styles blog http://pinkpotpourri.blogspot.com/ in an effort to relieve some of my blogging stress. I will create a label Homeschool ABC so that you can easily find the latest posts for that section.

Homeschool ABC will remain active until I can remove all the content I need from it. Visit http://pinkpotpourri.blogspot.com/ for all new posts from today onward.

Need Maps?

Below is a great site to download maps for your geography lessons.

http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/reference.html#list

Baptist Curriculum Site

Preserving God's Word through Christian education with total curriculum for grades Pre-K through 12th grade. Six subjects taught: Bible, English, History, Literature, Math, Science.

Check out Landmark's Freedom Baptist Curriculum at www.landmarkbaptistchurch.org/lfbc

College Scholarships

Our older son is heading to college this week. A while back I posted about how he is finishing his last semester of high school in dual enrollment - one class at the high school and 9 hours of college courses at the local college. He goes to public school but he would still encounter the same things we're going through if he were homeschooled. By the way, they are including ways in the instructions now for homeschooled individuals to be able to enter college. This used to be a nightmare for homeschooling families. Many simply require that you keep records of the child's grades (there are online sites that will do this for you) and make the required scores on the ACT, SAT or Compass tests to enter. Hopefully I'll remember all of this when it's time to send our younger one to college.

It's still a bit of a nightmare as I'm learning as I reach each new step. The college courses the older son is taking are payed for by the state. Many states have this type of enrollment. It takes a few phone calls both to college and high school, your child has to make a B average, fill out registration papers, etc. and your child has a free semester of college. I'm just finding out from my husband that there are 2 summer courses our son can take free of charge also. That will be the next thing to check into.

Anyway, I need to start applying for scholarships for him to continue his college education after this semester. You have to re-apply before each semester; there isn't a scholarship that will take them all the way through college. There's a very tight window in which you can apply and very many processes to go through. You can only apply for fall semester after you have your income tax return. You need to apply with FAFSA before you can apply for any other scholarships. Many scholarships aren't available for summer classes.

In a nutshell, to apply for a fall semester scholarship that has to be turned in by March 2nd:

• He signed up for Selective Service (all males have to do this to be eligible for financial aid, receive grades, transcripts, etc.). Rules are that they have to be 17 years and 3 months to sign up but won't be officially registered until 30 days before their 18th birtdays and will receive their number within two weeks of that. This number has to be turned into the college.
• We are waiting for W-2 forms to arrive so we can fill out the income tax returns.
• We will fill out a FAFSA application.
• We will fill out Hope, State Lottery and other financial aid applications offered from the FAFSA site.
• We will fill out the college's financial aid applications.
• Check and double check to make sure all i's are dotted and t's are crossed and that all documents that are required go with the application are with the application. You won't even be considered for the scholarship if anything has been overlooked or is missing.
• Some of these scholarships require a cover letter and resume of school performance, work history, extracurricular activities, etc. to be considered for a scholarship. That's what we're working on right now while we're waiting on those W-2 forms.

Wish us luck.

Moving Along

Our first week back from Christmas break has moved along very well. As a matter of fact, it's been MUCH better than I anticipated. We're back to routine - working on all subjects - now that those fractions are finally over with.

I hope to add more educational sites and teaching tips soon so stay with us. Have a super day!

When to Slow Down

Slow down and spend more time on a subject when it requires more concentration. For the past month, that's what I did to teach our son fractions. The only other two subjects we studied during that time were Spelling and Government. I didn't want to rush through fractions every day so I set aside Reading, Writing, & Language Arts so that he'd be able to study fractions for a couple of hours on a daily basis. We were even able to begin decimals before we began Christmas break.

We'll still be able to finish Language Arts and complete most of his reading and writing assignments this year.

Decimals & Fractions

Well, we started decimals this week. And we'll continue those through the end of the week. So far it's been simple with tenths, hundredths, thousandths and ten thousandths. All you have to do is count the zeros to insert your numbers into the proper place value. Tomorrow will be more challenging as we have to turn 5ths into tenths and hundredths. I'm going to switch gears next week and exchange Math for English. We should also be finished studying Government in Social Studies next week also so that we can move ahead in Science after Christmas. Have a nice week everyone!