I found some great resources online if you are homeschooling a high schooler. Springtime is always a welcome time of year, and I think everyone is more than ready for it, NOW. However, it’s also that time of year you’re in the home stretch in the school year. In our home, spring was so enticing, we thought of every excuse we could to get outside, and it wasn’t too easy going back inside to finish “school”! Towards the end of the year everyone is ready for the school year to be over, including the teacher!
That’s why planning ahead and finding some online videos and some fresh material can help revive everyone to finish the year well. Here’s a few to get you started, let us know if you have some you’d like to share!
PBS has so many great documentaries, many with lesson plans to match, good chance you can find one to spice up a history or science lesson. If your computer and online connection allows, you can watch all of it online. Go to : http://www.pbs.org/teachers/
Then there’s Homeschool4free, and the price sounds nice, with some great links to some mammoth resources. There’s a link to a site that teaches all about codes and ciphering that might interest your young scientist. They also have an exhaustive list of Regent Exams and Answer Keys used in NY, but make a great final exam for any homeschooler. There’s many links to good places to print worksheets for a variety of subjects, and much, much, more! Go to http://www.homeschool4free.com/
Listen to great speeches at TED.com. A virtual library of speeches, most of a reasonable length, organized well. Every most high school students dread taking Speech, but maybe after watching several great speeches they will be more inspired! Go to: http://www.ted.com
Many homeschoolers don’t realize the government has a wealth of information online free for the taking, (actually, it’s our taxes at work….) and they’ve even named the site, FREE. FREE stands for Federal Resources for Educational Excellence. Some good stuff! Go to: http://free.ed.gov/
The US is making history with our crazy economy right now, help your teen develop a better understanding of all the talk about the stock market. Investopedia has a virtual simulator with real time stock figures, and isn’t too hard for an older student to figure out. You’re given $100,000 to invest as you will, and tools to find stock symbols, prices, charts that show their recent performance, ect. Be sure to uncheck all the boxes that will sign you up for a dozen online newsletters, but it’s fun to see what you could do if you had $100,000 to throw away. )(We recently tried it and have only lost 27,000 so far! Go to: http://simulator.investopedia.com
Now is the time to learn the basics of starting a business, because if they choose wisely, their business could become a good paying summer job. There’s so many lessons rolled into this activity, and it’s a project they’ll gladly spend time on! The SBA has a course you can work thru at http://www.myownbusiness.org/course_sba.html
If that is too difficult, the Homeschool-Entrepreneur 9 week course is a week by week lesson plan with worksheets taking them step by step to starting and running their own business. Go to; http://HomeschoolEcourse.com (not free-but they’ll earn it back!).
There you go! I hope that helps break up the end of the year doldrums, send us your strategies for keeping things interesting!
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