Homeschool Resources - Coding, Art, Languages

This is Part 3 of my collection of homeschooling resources and focuses on supplementary skills and subject resources viz coding, art and second languages.

Coding

The world of teaching kids to code has come a long way from the BASIC computer language classes I attended in grade 6. Here are some of the online resources helping to grow the coders of the future.

Scratch
This Massachusetts Institute of Technology project has been an explosive success among parents and kids alike. It's especially designed for kids from ages 8-16 to get a foundational knowledge of coding. One bonus is that this website is so popular, it's easy to find complementary project idea books for the kids to use. I only wish it came in an app like the junior version. I just transitioned the girls to this website last week and they love it. Sugar has already built and published 3 games. Spice has struggled with understanding the site and would prefer to continue using the Jnr version but her sister is helping her out. I may buy them this book if they run out of  project ideas.

Homeschool Resources - English, Science, Math

While the first part of this series focused on general resources, in this post I'll be listing subject-specific resources for elementary school primary subjects (English Language Arts, Science and Mathematics)

English Language Arts

Storyline Online
Features videos of celebrities reading children's books. Each book reading includes a recommended grade level and run time.

ReadTheory
A free K-12 reading comprehension resource. My kids were introduced to this in grade 4 and became instantly addicted.

Sources of free books

• The free section of Amazon Kindle library
• Your public library (usually has an Overdrive or Libby app for ebooks). The twins have enjoyed accessing their favorites like Babysitter's Club series. 
• Any Little Free Library near you (PSA: Wipe books, wash hands!)
• Bonus: The Harry Potter At Home portal is for fans. Apart from fun activities, it also highlights the Harry Potter book that is available for free on (audio and ebook) on various platforms. 

Science

National Geographic Kids

Here you'll find free videos, games and nature-themed information. If your kids is really entranced by this site, take things a step further and gift him/her an annual subscription to the National Geographic Kids Magazine (currently selling for $7 for 6 bimonthly copies) Spice is going through a giraffe-loving stage and spend HOURS on this website. 

US Forest Service Kids Section

Canadian Online Atlas from Canadian Geographic
Explore Canada by themes like rivers, ecosystems, natural resources etc.

NASA for Students

Mathematics

Topmarks: Website for math games across the ages

Mathframe: Another website that teaches math through games

Splash Learn: Math apps for grades K-5. The school actually recommended this and the girls like it so far. If you don't want to download the apps, the website can be accessed directly.

Prodigy Math Game
I signed the girls up for this in January and I'm quite glad I did. There's a premium-paid access but for now we're using the free app. I like that the game's difficulty level adapts to the kids abilities and a breakdown of the different areas is displayed in the parent dashboard. With the report from the dashboard, I'm able to identify where the girls are struggling in their math studies.

Kumon Workbooks
I'm a big fan of workbooks and my favorites are the Kumon workbooks. For the grade 4 math curriculum, I have ordered the books on fractions, division and geometry to help the girls with the areas that haven't been covered in school and they're obviously struggling with.

Free Worksheets
Printable math worksheets for grades k to 12. Here's an example of the 27 page grade 4 worksheet.

Homeschool General Resources List

As I alluded to in my previous post, this era of social distancing has led to me (and most parents in the world) to try our hand on serious homeschooling. In the past, I have accessed several resources to teach the girls but this was a supplement to the primary learning they were receiving from their schools and teachers.

With all the unknowns of the initial lockdown, I had to revise my role to that of primary educator. In that role, I struggled with finding decent, reputable resources for teaching older elementary kids (grade 4). Sure a quick Google search will yield some results but I found some of the resources to be too commercial, flaky or poorly designed for my use. Some were also good. In keeping with the objective of this blog to "Learn and Share", I'm going to highlight all the homeschooling resources that I think are worth accessing.

This post quickly grew to be a loooooooooooooooooog list so I'm going to break it down into sections which I'll keep updated as I find new goodies.

Learning Styles.

Before attempting to educate your kids formally, it's worth it to have a decent idea of how they learn best.

• Article on Understanding the 7 types of learning
• Another article on the 7 learning styles
• Learning styles quiz

Life as it was - March

I confess, when I chose the word "HOME" as the theme for the year, I really did not envisage that the world would be in full pandemic mode and our family of 5 would be spending the whole day at home... together... like 24 hours.

To be honest, it's gone way better than I could ever have imagined. I thought our house was too small for 5 people but we've managed not to go stir-crazy or get on each other's nerves. All in all, things have been going splendidly and I feel lucky and blessed. On to the updates

• Staycations: We haven't ventured too far out of the house but we did manage to sneak a few walks through the neighbourhood and to the park while maintaining appropriate social distancing. Calgary is on a social distancing advisory and not lockdown. 

• Family Time: My baby turned 3 this month and also potty trained himself for the nighttime. He now stays dry through the night and in the morning, we make a mad dash to the toilet. He does have a potty chair but I ditched that in favor of the potty seat which takes up less space and is easier to keep clean. I think he may be ready for daytime potty training but I'm not ready :) 

Life as it was - February

Well Happy Leap Day to you. Keeping with the theme for the year, here are the highlights of our 29 day February.

• House: Decluttered the one small but very messy corner of the garage. More baby steps! Bought a dining table from Pier 1's closing down sale. The dining table we had at home was actually inherited from the previous owners of our home. I never liked it but it was useful enough that I always procrastinated about replacing it. My ideal dining table was one I had found on the Pier 1 website. Once I heard that Pier 1 was going out of business, I dashed to the store and was able to snag the dining table with matching bench (at a good discount) from the second store I visited. Finally adulting in the home decor department of life. 

• Staycations: On valentines' day, we headed downtown for the Calgary Winter Glow Festival. This was the inaugural session of the festival and it was so perfect for a mid-winter break. It makes me feel so proud of my city that little initiatives like this are still coming out in spite of our economic woes. 

• Family Time: I've finally succeeded in one aspect of sleep training BabyBoy. It's the part where I put him in bed and walk out of the room without him crying for me to come back and watch him sleep. Now I have a critical hour of my evenings back and can revive my bedtime routine with my girls. With that being said, we're now reading through the story of Moses in Exodus and the girls are finding it so engaging. My premise for choosing that was we have a DVD copy of The Prince of Egypt movie in the car which the girls love. It's easy to start discussions around what happened in the Bible version versus the movie adaptation. I wasn't sure if the girls were mature enough for us to read an actual bible instead of a book that was a collection of bible stories but so far so good.  

TIP: If you want to get your kids reading the bible, choose a version that's written in contemporary language. I am currently a fan of the New Living Translation version of the bible.