I thought it would be fun to post some of the really great paid, or free things each week. I hope peo­ple enjoy. Each link will have a cat­e­gory, and will say paid or free, all links that go to pdfs will first take you to the site to down­load them, Enjoy!

National Edu­ca­tion Stan­dards: I have seen other sites that do stan­dards as well, but this one is new and of course help­ful for a guide­line with home­school­ing. http://www.educationworld.com/standards/national/ addi­tion­ally, here is another link to stan­dards http://www.academicbenchmarks.com/search/

Ed Excel­lence fea­tures some great arti­cles and stud­ies about “No Child Left Behind” I highly rec­om­mend it for any­one think­ing of putting kids in pub­lic schools or any­one that has kids in pub­lic schools. This isn’t to put down pub­lic schools or “no child left behind” it’s just to edu­cate your­self so you know how the law applies to your area. http://edexcellence.net/publications/index.cfm?topic=5

Edu­Place has some great graphic orga­niz­ers for FREE, here is the link to the orga­niz­ers, http://eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ They also have some other free­bies that are in pdf for­mat (ie: easy to grab) One page of free­bies they offer is Monthly themes. I like it because it shows you some writ­ing prompts, some activ­i­ties, games, sci­ence, quizzes, word searches, social stud­ies, math & more all per­tain­ing to the theme. Each theme is cov­ered from Kinder­garten to 8th grade. Each month has sev­eral themes and you can access the whole list of themes on this page too. http://eduplace.com/monthlytheme/

More from Edu­Place:

http://eduplace.com/shapebook/ Shapes

http://eduplace.com/ss/maps/ Geog­ra­phy– Maps

http://eduplace.com/bil/ Bilin­gual Resources– awe­some for learn­ing another language!

http://eduplace.com/spellinglists/ Grades 1–5, weekly themes

http://eduplace.com/activity/ Find activ­i­ties to do with your kids.

I just found this great link, www.naturalparentingtips.com/parenting/10-knew-parent/ It is 10 things this per­son wishes they knew before they became a par­ent, and I thought it was just great.

I would add to it though. I dont think always get­ting the cheap­est things is the best way to go. For instance we buy clothes at Wal­mart and Chil­drens place and you can tell the dif­fer­ence between the clothes years in advance. At chil­drens place we pass them through 2 boys and on to my cousins 2 kids and they last, unfor­tu­nately for Wal­mart you cant say the same thing. Clothes there tend to fade quickly and dont last more than 1 kid. They either get stretchy and look wrong, or they are just so old look­ing from all the wash­ing. I dont think the price is that big of a dif­fer­ence either, con­sid­er­ing what you get.

There is one other thing I learned in MOPS called HALT, when a baby, tod­dler, young child is cry­ing, just think of HALT, it means Hun­gry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. The only other thing I have seen kids this young cry for is a drink, and I guess that some­what fits in with hun­gry. Give it a shot, and see if it works. When they are angry, you can just talk it out, why they are upset and what can be done dif­fer­ently next time.

The last point on the post Im send­ing you to is to never be afraid to improve your par­ent­ing and that reminds me of some­thing. I often see peo­ple who worry so much about being a good par­ent, they dont want to mess up, they want to do a good job so that their kids are happy well adjusted adults, etc. I used to really worry like this too, but Ive come to notice that if you worry this much about your par­ent­ing, you are doing a good job. Think about it, as long as you are really try­ing to do your best, you will have peo­ple notic­ing, so yes, keep improv­ing, keep learn­ing and keep try­ing. It is doing these things that proves you care and you are a good parent.

www.naturalparentingtips.com/parenting/10-knew-parent/

When my hus­band recently returned to being out of the house cer­tain days of the week, I had to find a new nor­mal. I had a whole list of things I wanted to accom­plish each day, but I didn’t know quite how I was going to get them all accom­plished with the kids run­ning around the house. I have tried before to have a note­book with all my tasks, a to-do list I sup­pose, I have tried sched­ul­ing to the hour and half hour. Nei­ther of those worked, and this time I didn’t have time to screw around.

My old­est is in Kinder­garten and while he has pro­gressed some this year, if I don’t “school” him every­day, he gets off track and is hor­ri­ble the next time we school. Yes, this means hav­ing to do things with him on the week­end too, but I try not to make it too much. Just some read­ing and writ­ing, short tasks, that make his brain work. Read more »

I found this great post on stum­ble upon and gave it a thumbs up. I thought it was great for all home­school­ing moms. The arti­cle dis­cusses why you should leave your kids to find their hob­bies, music incli­na­tion and sports inter­est. They also tell you all about the study that brought out this information.

I feel great that we have left our kids to find their way in life, as far as hob­bies go, have a look:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/children-passions-autonomy-100209.html