5 Ways to Help Your Kids Connect to Their New Neighborhood

Today's guest post is very timely for our family. We are moving from Texas to California. So we will definitely put a couple of these tips into practice. I am especially looking forward to checking out the libraries in our (soon to be) new town.

Moving to a new neighborhood can be difficult, especially for young children. They are forced to leave their childhood home, their friends and the only neighborhood they have ever known. This transition can be even more difficult for a child that is homeschooled. While most children gain friendships through interactions at school, a homeschooled student has to work twice as hard to find friends in their new neighborhood. If you are the parent of a homeschooled child, here are 5 ways you can help her to connect to her new neighborhood after a move. 

Help Her Join a Team

While your son or daughter may not be able to join their school’s basketball or softball team, there are plenty of club teams and just-for-fun leagues that are always accepting new members. Being a part of a sports team is not only a great way to make friends; it will also help your child to stay in shape and learn to work as part of a unit with group of kids. If your child isn’t interested in sports, give the scouts a try. Your child can learn valuable life skills and make new friends at the same time. 

Take Walks around the Neighborhood

In some neighborhoods this is easier said than done, but if you are lucky enough to live in a place where you can go for a walk with you child take the opportunity to familiarize yourself with your new surroundings and introduce yourself to as many people as possible. You may find that there are other kids your child’s age living just around the corner. Set up a play date for them to get to know each other better.

Get a Library Card

We often think of the library as a quiet place to read and study. The library is also a great place for your kids to make new friends. Libraries often organize readings, movie nights and other types of get-togethers designed for kids of all-ages. Does your child love Choose Your Own Adventure or G.A. Henty books? The library is a great place for your child to meet kids that are into the same types of books that they are. A shared love of Harry Potter could blossom into a lifelong friendship. 

Sign Your Child up for a Class

Just because your child doesn’t attend a traditional school that doesn’t mean that they can’t attend afterschool classes offered in the community. Does your child like to dance, cook or paint? Afterschool classes are a great way for your child to improve a skill while meeting dozens of kids with the same interest. Having trouble picking out a class? Try signing your child up for Spanish, French or Chinese classes. Not only will they be introduced to an extremely helpful new skill, they will also be introduced to a new culture, new foods and new friends. 

Make Friends with Your Neighbors

There is no better resource in your new neighborhood than the people who live down the street. Take the time to invite your new neighbors over to a housewarming party or just knock on their doors and say hello. Even if they don’t have children that are your child’s age, they will be able to give you a better idea of where the neighborhood kids like to hang out, what activities they are into and where you can connect with other parents. By building your social network you will not only help your child to make friends, you will make a few new friends yourself. 

Author Bio: Kenny Soto is a blogger for MyMove.com. Visit MyMove.com for tips, customizable checklists and hand-picked deals to make moving more rewarding and less stressful.

Considering Home Schooling? Consider These Legal Issues

It is important to know the laws regarding homeschooling in your state. This guest article gives an overview of some of the issues that may be relevant where you live. Also, one of the best sites to find out the legal ins and outs of educating your children at home is the HSLDA. That's the first place I looked when I found out we were moving to a different state.

An increasing number of parents are, for a wide variety of reasons, thinking about home-schooling their children. The reasons for this include concerns about the quality of education in public schools, inability to afford private school, a desire to teach a curriculum grounded in the family’s religious or philosophical beliefs, and many others.

In all 50 states in the U.S., home schooling is legal. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children. This decision gives the governments of individual states a good deal of authority to regulate the practice of home schooling, including the subjects that are taught in such schools, as they see fit.

And as you might imagine, the nature and scope of these regulations vary widely from state to state.

Wherever you live in the United States, it’s important that you do your research on the laws that apply to home schooling, since the intent of this article is not to provide a comprehensive survey of the laws related to home schooling in all 50 states. However, it will provide some information about the legal issues that come up most frequently when a parent decides to home school their child.

State Regulation of Home School Curriculums

Although all states in the U.S. allow parents to home school their children, they also have a strong interest in ensuring that all children receive a minimum standard of education, whether it’s in public school, a private school, or home school.

For that reason, most states require that certain subjects be taught in all schools, including home schools. They typically include mathematics, reading, writing, science, and history. The requirements differ somewhat from state to state, however. Many education companies, as well as non-profit organizations, produce curriculums in these subjects, designed for parents who are home schooling their children. This allows parents to teach these courses even if they are not experts in all of those subjects, especially when teaching them at lower levels.

Some states require parents who are home schooling their children above a certain class level to have a state teacher’s certificate, or to be licensed tutors.

However, many states do not have this requirement.

This means that either educational or social services authorities may have access to your home, in order to ensure that the home and educational environment are conducive to the child/student receiving a quality education.

Teaching Religious Subjects at Home Schools

One of the most often-cited reasons for choosing to home school is a desire of parents to teach students in accordance with their religious or philosophical views.

In general, the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion gives parents wide-ranging discretion to teach religious subjects in a home school environment. It would be very difficult for a state government to justify allowing home schooling while prohibiting religious instruction in home schools. Any attempt to do so would likely be held unconstitutional by either a state or federal court.

However, as mentioned earlier, state governments can, and do, mandate that certain subjects be taught in the home school setting. Setting up a home school for religious purposes does not create an exception to this rule. While parents may teach whatever religious subjects they like in addition to the required subjects, they cannot replace the required subjects with religious teachings.

Miscellaneous

There are many other rules that may apply to home schooling in your state. It’s important for you to research the relevant laws governing home schooling in your state.

However, there are a few more rules present in most states that can be discussed here. For example, in most states, all courses in home school must be taught in English – with the obvious exception of a foreign language class.

Also, most states require home schools to be in session more or less at the same time as other schools. So, classes have to be taught during the day, 5 days a week. Furthermore, classes must run for a standard school year – usually a minimum of 170-180 days. Again, the specifics vary from state to state.

Finally, it’s important to understand the need to cooperate with state and local authorities that are responsible for regulating home schooling in their jurisdictions. While some of the things home schooling parents may have to submit to, such as making regular reports to the school district, and teaching subjects required by the state, may seem intrusive, these rules exist for a reason.

Like it or not, we live in an interconnected society, where nothing occurs in a vacuum. So whether they’re educated at home or in public schools, your children will eventually grow up to be adults, and, by extension, members of society. The state therefore has an interest in ensuring that as many people as possible enter society (and, almost as importantly, the workforce) with a decent education.

Conclusion

As you can see, the rules affecting home schooling are numerous, and can sometimes get pretty complicated. This article is not a comprehensive guide to the legal issues that you can face as a result of home schooling your children, and if you require detailed information on the subject, you should contact your state’s education authorities, and/or an attorney, either of whom will be able to advise you further.

John Richards writes for the LegalMatch.com Law Blog and LegalMatch.com. This blog post is not intended to serve as legal advice. It is offered for informational purposes only. Only an attorney licensed to practice law in your state is qualified to give you legal advice.

Teaching Your Children Skills for Life

Homeschooling your child brings with it the opportunity to teach your child the necessary life’s skill in addition to the entire academic lessons that you will be teaching.  In fact many of the life skills that you will teach will be far more important and will have a much more long lasting effect that many of the planned out academic lessons deemed necessary. While some of these life skills will be learned through osmosis, many of them need to be stressed in ordered for them to be fully learned and practiced. Many of these skills can be learned while being integrated into your daily lesson plans.

Communication skills 

By far one of the key skills you can teach your child is good communication skills. Good communication skills will assist your child in developing self confidence, a good sense of self-worth, and better relationships with you and others. Children are not born as good communicators they need to be taught this skill.  In order to teach your child to communicate well with you and others, you need to teach your child to express themselves by actually listening to them and hearing what they have to say. Try to remove all distractions, turn off the TV, shut off the phone and give them your undivided attention.  Train your child to look you in the eye and focus on you while they are speaking.  Discuss with your child what you just heard, engage them into conversation a show him/her how to explain their thoughts clearly.

Social skills 

Proper communication, problem-solving, decision making, self-management, and peer relations abilities are the social skills which allow one to initiate and maintain positive social relationships with others. Children that do not display proper social behavior are very often incapable of maintaining lasting relationships and can also interfere with learning.  Many children posses inborn social skills and don’t need help in this area at all.  However, especially in a home school setting, where children have very little opportunity to interact with pears, teaching and practicing social skills is of utmost importance in order for them to succeed. There are many tools that can assist you. In fact there are many special needs toys and games available that focus on social interaction and can do so much in the way of promoting social skills in a relaxed and fun atmosphere. 

Self Management Skills 

Teaching children to manage and be responsible for their actions is a key skill as well. The first step towards teaching children self management skills would be for you as a parent to conduct an assessment of your child.  You need to evaluate what your child is capable of doing on their own.  Toilet training your child is something that needs to be done, yet before taking the task on, you need to evaluate whether your child is ready and prepared to complete this skill.  At every stage there is different self management skills that you can expect your child to master.  Once you have prepared your child to be responsible for this task make sure to keep track of whether they complete what they are now supposed to be doing. If they are responsible for making their bed, make sure it done properly and in a timely fashion in order for it to be regularly maintained.  A responsible and independent individual will be a successful individual.

There are so many diverse life skills that are of a parent’s responsibility to teach their child.  Mastering these skills will go a long way in ensuring your child’s ultimate success which is every parent’s life goal.

Susan Goodman is pediatric therapist and a social media director for funandfunction.com.  With her many years of experience with working with children hands-on, she guides customers in purchasing innovative products to further enhance their child’s development.

Teaching Cursive Handwriting: Worksheets I Plan on Using

Well, before we knew that we were moving my 7 year old had expressed an interest in learning to write in cursive . So, I had starting searching for some effective (and hopefully painless) ways of teaching him. 

Teaching Cursive: Worksheets Work

Worksheets are tried and true. So I plan on going that route. I learned Zaner Bloser and that is the style that I taught my oldest. So, why change now? Below are some useful resources that I found.

Cursive Alphabet Chart

Here is a Zaner Bloser alphabet chart. I am strongly considering printing this out and laminating it. That way I can pass it down to my 2 youngest children.

Cursive Practice Sheets

I will definitely print out these cursive handwriting worksheets that have all 26 letters, upper and lowercase, written on various sized lines. And I will turn it into a handwriting notebook.

Cursive Animation

Donna Young cursive animations are a good way to make sure that your children are taught the proper way to form their letters. I must admit that over the years I have adopted a style of handwriting that is partially cursive and partially manuscript. So, the animations serve as a good reminder on the right way to write cursive. Donna Young also offers a plethora of handwriting worksheets as well.

Cursive Writing Generator

If you want to make your own worksheets then make sure to check out my post on making your own handwriting worksheets for free. Two of the sites listed there has cursive handwriting generators.

So far, manuscript writing has not come easy for my son. I am hopeful that cursive will be less stressful now that he's used to the proper way of holding a pencil; and, he has become used to the idea of writing.

I will definitely use Charlotte Mason's advice of assigning a little bit of handwriting at a time. I don't want worksheet after worksheet after worksheet to cause frustration and burnout in my son. I've learned the hard way that isn't the best approach for us. So, we'll take it slow, just concentrating on a a letter a day, or whatever my son is comfortable with.

My daughter is a year younger but she and her brother seem to be in the same "grade". They are on slightly different levels in reading and math. But it is so slight that currently they do all of the same work. So, I'm sure that she will want to take up cursive as well when the new school year begins.

Children and Computers: When is the Right Time?

Today's guest blogger addresses a question that my husband and I have had to answer for our children. And we've also had reevaluate our decision every few years, as the children get older.

A perplexing problem that previous generations of parents have not really had to deal with is what age to introduce their children to computers. And not just computers; mobile phones and tablet devices also come into the digital picture. As with so many aspects to parenting, there is no ‘right’ age. It’s up to parents to decide for themselves when they are comfortable with their kids navigating their PCs.

There are two distinct schools of thought that parents may want to consider: early introduction sets children up for success in modern life; early introduction interferes with normal childhood development.

For example, toddlers are far better off running around, developing their motor skills and social and verbal abilities than spending time with a mouse and keyboard. As these are critical learning years they need to develop a good base that will shape the rest of their lives.

As a rule of thumb, three years old is about the youngest your child should be before you sit her down for any serious computer time. Although, by this stage, many children have mastered their parents mobile phones and have some indirect experience surfing the net by sitting on their parents’ laps.

3-4 Years Old
Kidsource.com strongly recommends that if you’re going to introduce your child to computers at this stage that you do so at levels that are developmentally appropriate. Children this young use computers differently than older children and so your approach has to be tailored to their needs. Don’t expect them to carry out proper tasks as they will probably be fascinated by the clicking ability of the mouse and the results that this brings.

Once they’ve got over the novelty, you can start introducing activities that require them to click to bring about a solution. Remember those memory card games you used to play as a kid? Similar computer programmes are available that help children recognise shapes and colours and which improve memory and response times.

Many preschools already have computer learning centres where children can start using computers in a controlled environment. This obviously relieves parents of the burden of finding appropriate activities. It also provides some bonding time as children can show off the skills they learnt during the day.

5-6 Years Old
By the ages of five and six years old, children should be able to start using specially designed children’s software, which contains learning programmes and games that will help develop their language and number skills and also help them with problem solving. As children get older, their use of computers gets more sophisticated.

Remember that you will have to monitor your child’s computer time for a quite a while, especially when they start to go online.

Sandy Cosser writes on behalf of Now Learning, which promotes online learning in Australia, including IT courses and accounting diplomas.

Serfronya here.
Ultimately, my husband and I decided that during the elementary years we would pretty much restrict the computer to free online educational games a few times a week after the children completed all of their school work. Once they hit middle school we utilize some online courses, such as typing. And now that my oldest is in high school, half of his classes are free online video courses.

As far as the internet and other devices that connect to it, we made the decision that it is not necessary for children to be online unsupervised. Our teenager does not own a cell phone, tablet computer or anything else that he can carry and use to access the internet when no one is around. When he needs to do research on a topic or watch one of his video courses, I sit in the same room with him while he is on the computer. And I plan on doing the same when my three younger children get older.

Like Sandy stated in the article, this is a judgement call that is for each individual family to make.

4 Creative Ways Your Kids Can Go Green

Today's guest post gives some great tips on how to recycle, reduce, and reuse. I teach these principles to my children because it is unwise to be wasteful. And also, because going green and frugality often times go hand in hand.

Some people think that going green is only for adults, but children can do plenty to go green too. In fact, teaching children how to go green at a young age will help instill this mentality in them, and they will be more likely to continue these tactics later in life.

Most kids will learn to recycle paper, glass and plastic, and most will learn to turn off lights when they leave rooms as well as waste less water when showering or brushing their teeth. While these are good tactics to teach your child, there are other creative ways that kids can go green.


 1. Turn off everything, not just the lights.
Turning off lights is easy to teach your children because it's obvious when they get left on, but you shouldn't limit the turning off concept to lights only. Teach your kids that there are plenty of things that use energy, including their games and electronics. Kids will leave games plugged in, or they'll let iPods charge or they'll leave TVs on. Teach them that turning these items off is just as important as turning off lights. If you notice your child is struggling to remember, try and make a game out of it. The more fun it is, the more likely they'll be to remember.

2. Don't give your child bottled water.
If your child is thirsty, don't let them reach for a bottled water. Instead, take them to the store and have them pick out their own water bottle. Eliminating plastic bottles from waste is very beneficial to the environment, and water bottles can be reused, so your child is creating less waste. If you're concerned that the water from your tap isn't as good as the purified water in a bottle, invest in a water purifier.

3. Give away old toys and clothes.
Rather than throw unused items into the trash, have your child take their old toys and clothes and donate them to a charity or goodwill store that will give them to people in need. Not only will this eliminate the amount of waste in our landfills, but it also shows your child how to do a good deed at an early age.

4. Start a garden.
Gardens are a great way to teach children about going green. First, you can teach them how to rely on nature to create food instead of always relying on the grocery store. You can show them that walking out to your backyard uses less energy than getting in the car and driving to the store.

You should also set up a rain barrel and teach your child how to reuse rain water. This will teach them to not let water go to waste.

If possible, you should also set up a compost and teach your children that some items don't need to go into the trash. Instead, they can be turned into compost, and the vitamins and minerals from the compost are really good for their garden.

At a young age, children are like sponges. If you teach them how to go green now, they'll remember these tactics and implement them when they're older. Going green is also a great thing that you can do as a family. Educate each other on new tactics you can employ, or make a game out of it. Donating clothes or old toys and starting a garden is also something that you and your child can do together.

Rather than wait until your child is older to teach them about going green, teach them to start now. Every little bit will help the planet.

Luis Figueroa is an Environmental Philosophy major at the University of North Texas who loves to share his passions and interests on blogs. He never writes without the help of a grammar checker as he needs the software to make his work professional, clear, and free of any grammatical mistakes. Grammar rules aren't always easy to remember so he is happy to let a machine do the work.

Educational Songs: Singing Our Way Through Homeschool

Lately my husband and I have been listening to 80's music on Pandora. I have been singing words to songs that I haven't heard in 30 years, like I just heard the song on the radio yesterday. This reminded me of how much staying power songs have in our memories.

Memories

A few days ago I heard Soon and Very Soon by Andrae Crouch on the radio. EVERY SINGLE TIME that I hear that song I am reminded of the few times that I went to church with my aunt when I was little. It seemed like the choir sang that song every time that I visited. Again, that was over 30 years ago.

Fun Times
Because of those experiences I have revisited using educational songs to teach the children. We used to listen to circle time songs several times a week when we first began homeschooling. They happily sang the songs while dancing around the school room. And it wasn't long at all before they had memorized their ABC's, numbers (up to 20), seasons, and days of the week. Easy peasy, no formal instruction was needed. Occasionally, I still overhear a little one singing one of these songs softly to himself, to trigger his memory.



Some years back my oldest learned all 50 states and their capitals courtesy of Wakko and YouTube.

How Quickly We I Forget
I don't know why I was so quick to forget what a great tool educational songs are in homeschool. Oh wait...yes I do. For awhile there I had gotten so bogged down with the mechanics of schooling that I had completely let go of the spontaneity and fun.

 But now that I have recovered from that trying time,  I will be using songs quite a bit in our upcoming school year. In particular, I am hoping that we will be able to sing our way through English class. Learning about parts of speech can be so boring. Unless, the information is put to a nice little melody or turned into a rap. And a little impromptu dancing thrown in just for fun never hurts either.