Teaching Tip Tuesdays

In my quest to read other blogs, I came across Donna's site--The Helpful Homemaker! She is hosting meme called Teaching Tips Tuesday. I thought I would join in this week with a tip. My tip is "Don't be afraid to use something other than textbooks!" I know that for some, using textbooks are helpful tools! It helps with confidence in knowing that you are teaching your child everything they need to know and you are not missing any concepts.

There is so much FREE wealth of educational resources on the internet that you don't need to use textbooks! I will show you how over the course of several weeks, I will take you to websites that I use to build my home schooling curriculum.

Where do I find what topics need to be covered at what level?

Getting a hold of a scope and sequence chart or charts is important to the planning process. If you were to get a "pre-packaged" curriculum you would find the chart in the teacher's edition of the book. However, when you don't use a "pre-packaged" curriculum, you don't have the chart available to you in order to plan out your schedule for the year. So you need to head over to...

World Book's site and check out their "Typical Course of Study" page. They have conveniently broken down each grade level into links. You can click on the grade level that you are teaching your child and find a wealth of topics that need to be covered for the year. For me, I usually try to cover all the topics listed under the Math and Language Arts sections. For the History, Science, and Health and Safety sections, I try to cover only two to three topics out of each section. The reason why I only choose a few is because I find that the topics for those subjects repeat themselves over the years.

There are other places to find scope and sequence charts. Head over here to my list of sites that I have used to help me put together curriculum for my kids.

Come back next Tuesday for more websites! In the meantime, head over to Donna's for other teaching tips!