This year we’ve shifted a lot of our schoolwork for our middle and high school sons to online classes. They each got a laptop at the start of the school year, and they are able to work through their classes each day mostly independently.
Today I just wanted to share a few of our favorites with you, in case you’re also looking to take a few things off your list and get your kids working more independently!
Schoolhouse Teachers offers a HUGE selection of online classes for homeschool families at an INCREDIBLE value! Â You’ll get full family access to over a hundred classes for less than it could cost to take one in a lot of places. Â They’ve got math, science, history, sign language, music, art, drama, speech, special needs, and MUCH more! Â Definitely worth looking into. Â Just recently one of my kids needed a different approach to math, and it just wasn’t in the budget for me to buy something totally new. Â I looked into our Schoolhouse Teachers membership and found a math class that I decided to try since it wouldn’t cost me anything extra. Â Bingo! Â It’s working great and he’s happier than he’s been in a long time with his math program! Â Awesome!
CTC Math has worked well for several of my kids and is a terrific value for the whole family, especially if you have multiple kids and tend to cruise through levels quickly. Â You can read my review of it here.
Music in Our Homeschool offers several different online classes related to music. Â We’ve been enjoying 20th century music appreciation and Intro to Musicals this year. Â Fun and easy!
We decided to learn American Sign Language for our second language, since we have a large deaf community in our area.  Life Print is FREE and a great starting point!  We love it!
Enrichment Studies (right here!) is an awesome resource for learning about composers, artists, presidents, and key people from history, all in an easy-to-use format that will save you time! Â All resources are pretty much open-and-go. Â We are working to add the helpful 5 Day Tours to every resource to make it even easier to learn about these famous and talented people in an organized way. Â (Our goal is to have all 5 Day Tours done in 2017)
Ancient Art History from Art Curator for Kids has been a very wonderful online class for us this year! Â The instructor Cindy does a great job and will be offering more classes in the future. Â Highly recommended for middle and high school students that want a more complete art history/art appreciation course.
I’ll continue to add to this list as we find more things that we enjoy and that work well for us. Â If you have recommendations for great online classes, or if you’ve enjoyed some I’ve listed here, please let us know in the comments!
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the upcoming presidential election here in the US, and I’ve seen a lot of comment from parents bemoaning our options for who to vote for. It’s a disappointing election cycle for many reasons, I think almost everyone will agree. What surprised me, though, was how many people I saw on facebook talking about how terrible it will be if this candidate or that becomes president, because they will be a terrible role model for their children. Wha??? Â Since when is a president automatically a role model?
I recall back to times when celebrities or sports stars were found to have done something criminal or morally reprehensible, and I’d see angry mothers on the news saying something like, “Hey! My kid looks up to you! You can’t act that way!” And I’d think, “Why does your kid look up to a total stranger?”
I mean, sure, you can appreciate that someone is talented or accomplished, but that doesn’t mean that their entire personhood should be admired as a role model for children.
But we’re a society of people that do this, even adults. How many times have you or someone you know looked for parenting advice from a stranger that got a book published, instead of asking someone that you know in real life?
I think one part of this is that we tend to idealize that which we cannot see. It’s the imaginary ideal! Â We don’t know how author XYZ actually interacts with their kids, or if their family seems happy and functional. We’ve not been in community with them to see how they’ve weathered the storms of life. A book, blog post, tweet, or facebook comment is only giving you a piece of a much bigger picture, and when we try to build this into something that we can endorse and admire, we are getting onto shaky ground.
I recall years ago chatting with a friend and she was getting all swept up in her admiration for the president at that time, saying, “And I just KNOW he is a Godly man who only wants to do the right things for our country!” and I remember thinking, “Friend, you don’t know that guy at all. Get ahold of yourself!”
As parents, I believe we need to shift our perspective on this and get our thinking right.
I have never held up famous people or strangers as role models for my children, and I won’t be starting now. Just because someone holds an elected office or is good at sports or is in the movies doesn’t mean they are automatically admirable.
Your children’s role models should be YOU,
and hopefully some other
trusted and well-known
family members or community members.
Family is where everything starts. Parents have an incredible opportunity to guide and influence their children, regardless of what is going on outside your home. Be wise. Do your best to create the culture you believe in. Invest your time and energy in building strong relationships with your children.
Affiliate links are used in this post. If you’ve ever caught yourself singing “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” or, “It’s a hard knock life for us!” when your kids complain, you MIGHT be a mom that likes musicals. 🙂
At my house, with several teenagers that love community theater, we are regularly geeking out to show tunes, funny voices, and favorite lines from plays and movies. So I was pretty excited to hear that my friend Gena from Music in Our Homeschool has created an Intro to Musicals course.
My boys are already working through her 20th Century Music Appreciation Course (and loving it), but now they want to take a detour and soak up all the info about the 10 musicals included in this course, since there are quite a few that they aren’t familiar with. You can bet that they’ll all be into it within a couple days. And why shouldn’t they? Not only are musicals fun and entertaining, but they are often a memorable depiction of different points in history, and are full of clever tidbits that have been sewn into the verbal fabric of our culture! Â Knowing where those sayings come from and the context for them makes language and relating to others more fun! Â (and that translates into how they speak, the jokes they can tell, the writing that they do, and on…..it’s all connected!)
The course says it’s for elementary students, but older kids (and YOU) will enjoy it too.
Musicals that are introduced in this course include:
Camille Pissarro was a Dutch-French artist whose work was especially important in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras. I’m so pleased to be offering this collection of ten printable pieces of his work for you to enjoy in your home and share with your family. Pissarro’s landscapes are truly inspired and I think more appealing than some landscapes may be for many children.
For the month of November you can sign up to receive this collection for FREE! Â Click here to get yours.
American Artist John Singer Sargent was considered to be the foremost portraitist of his time. His childhood was spend traveling Europe with his family. He was known as a rambunctious boy that didn’t have much interest in schoolwork. His mother was apparently an Edwardian-era unschooler! She believed that their lifestyle of travel and visiting museums and churches would naturally provide an adequate education for her son. Pretty cool, huh?
This month you can get this beautiful collection of John Singer Sargent’s art for FREE. Â Just sign up on the sidebar or click here.
Welcome to the Enrichment Lifestyle Blog! I'm so glad you're here. :) I'm Erica Johns, and I love to encourage homeschool moms and help them enjoy more of the beauty of the arts in everyday life.
About me: I started my homeschooling journey in 1997 and graduated the last of my six children in 2021. Amidst all the hard work, crazy days, uncertainty, and lost pencils, what I think we really gained was the gift of a lifetime: TIME TOGETHER. So awesome! Click my pic to learn more.
This year we’ve shifted a lot of our schoolwork for our middle and high school sons to online classes. They each got a laptop at the start of the school year, and they are able to work through their classes each day mostly independently.
