Tuesday Tour

We’ve been having a bit of a crisis in our homeschool lately. I just have so much work to get caught up in with my speaking ministry–work that I’ve been putting off for years. But I can’t seem to do it at the same time as I’m homeschooling. Even if my husband takes the kids one day a week, I just can’t get everything done.

So then when I am homeschooling, I’m not really paying attention to the kids. My mind is elsewhere, focusing on what I should be doing on the computer.

We’ve decided, then, after an especially rough week last week, to take three weeks off to get me caught up, and then to work six weeks of homeschooling, one week off, so that I can get my work done periodically and won’t get behind. And we’re going to be schooling half days through part of the summer, too! I find they get bored and bicker in the summer anyway, so it’s just as well.

This plan means, though, that three kids, ages 11, 13 and 13, need to work on their own without me for three weeks. And that is not an easy thing, because two of them gang up against the oldest girl and tell her she’s being bossy, and they try to just play chess all day. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I do want them to get other things done, too.

So today, on our tour, I am going to leave you with some sites kids can go on to actually DO SOME STUFF while you need them to get out of your hair. Because, if we homeschoolers are honest, we do have those moments, don’t we?

Here’s a neat one: Freely Educate. It has a mish mash of curriculum that’s available free on the internet. Some of it your kids can do themselves, like this amazing computer curriculum site. Kids can learn how to program in a graphics environment. Today, my 13-year-old nephew is starting on that one!

Another one with links to “Gutenberg texts”, or books which have been published on the internet, in the project that hopes to have all books eventually online, is Old Fashioned Education. It organizes all the resources by subject matter, but if you’re going to use them to homeschool you’ll have to do a lot of work yourself organizing it!

A site where they can work on their own again, which I really favour, is Interactives. All sorts of neat math and science quizzes are up online, but they’re all multimedia, and really fun.

For younger kids, the Kids’ part of the National Geographic site is animated, and has a number of activities you can do. You can assign them to explore the site for twenty minutes, or something, and you’re guaranteed they’ll learn something! They also have premade activities, like this one for The Underground Railroad, which your children can take.

As a Canadian teaching Canadian geography this year, I love this online activity at the Canada Atlas site that the government has.

But if you want your child to just fill in an outline map in an interactive activity of several different countries, you can find those here at Your Child Learns. And the United States is included in that one! I also like their World Monuments Map Puzzle. The same site also has free online software where you can build your own medieval village, your own castle, and more! That can keep your child busy for at least twenty minutes. And that can be a godsend!

Education World has an online tour of the human body, with links to great websites. I especially like The Virtual Body, and you could easily assign a child, say aged 9 and up, to look at it for 15 minutes at a time. Lots of activities there, too.

The American History site also has a “Price of Freedom” learning activity, where you learn more about different historical figures. Again, the child can do this on his or her own.

If you’re into Canadian history, here are some online interactive quizzes kids can take. My kids are each doing three of these today!

And then, last suggestion of the tour today, the National Gallery of Art has different tours you can take, with audio, of different art time periods and mediums (media?). They look really interesting, and my kids are doing the French Impressionists from the 19th century today!

I hope that gives you some ideas to keep your kids occupied if you just need some time to yourself periodically or time to get something done. I know I’m making use of these today!

Have a good day!

I’m the author of four books, including To Love, Honor and Vacuum: When you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother, with an appendix especially for homeschoolers! Read my daily thoughts at my To Love, Honor and Vacuum blog!