Whether you supplement or provide remediation, distance learning, or after-schooling Well-Trained Mind Press offers curricula and other materials to support your endeavors.
You can learn from other parents! Check out the After-school discussion board on our community forums.
A very helpful and practical article written by Susanna Jarret offers recommendations that will enable you to take control of your child's education.
Here are her top five recommendations:
We highly recommend that parents who want to take charge of their child's education read Rethinking School, by Dr. Susan Wise Bauer. It provides up-to-date, inspiring, and compassionate guidance for advocating for your child within a school system. It also offers suggestions for supporting students who don't naturally fit in a traditional classroom.
2. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading
Even if you plan to send your children to a traditional school, it is a good idea to teach them to read first. Too many children fall through the cracks and never learn to read properly. The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading is an affordable scripted curriculum that requires absolutely no experience from the parent. You can open it up and get started. The lessons are short (you only need about 10 minutes a day).
Our resident math expert, Kate Snow, created a curriculum designed to support kids with their basic arithmetic facts. Each course focuses on one basic operation (multiplication, division, addition, or subtraction) and takes just 6-10 weeks, 15 minutes a day. Kate Snow designed Facts that Stick to supplement any math curriculum. It includes short lessons, fun student exercises, and games!
If your child is struggling with arithmetic, they may be missing foundational knowledge in basic operations. Thankfully, Facts That Stick offers a fun and easy way to build their math confidence.
In addition, Kate Snow has articles and videos to help you teach your children math with confidence. She even has a whole curriculum called Math with Confidence!
4. Audiobooks
One way to supplement your child's schooling without taking any extra time out of the day is to use audiobooks! Whenever you are driving or completing chores around the house, turn on some high-quality audiobooks and infuse your home with fascinating stories!
We offer our entire The Story of the World series on audio, performed by master storyteller Jim Weiss. Some of my favorite childhood memories come from long car drives listening to Jim Weiss' fun reading of these gripping true tales.
Jim Weiss also offers a wide array of audiobooks for young listeners, telling the stories of women and men whose courage, perseverance, and curiosity changed the course of history. These make wonderful supplements to a student's existing history or literature program.
5. Books! Lots of them!
Speaking of books, the best way to improve reading is to, you guessed it, read! Read with your child, play audiobooks in the car, and let them read books they like (even if they are below their reading level). It may be the easiest, most fun, and most effective way to supplement your child's schooling. In The Well-Trained Mind, Susan Wise Bauer recommends that students read a combination of at-level books and below-level books. At-level books force kids to read slowly and with concentration, increasing their reading fluency with each line. Just-for-fun books may be "too easy" in regard to reading skills, but they still help students learn to enjoy reading, which, at the end of the day, is extremely valuable.
There are lots of great reading lists on the internet. Here are two lists to get you started:
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- For Young Readers, Jessie Wise, a nationally recognized homeschool expert and author of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading, provides this list of good books for beginning readers to try.
- For Older Readers, here is a list of Great Books, arranged chronologically, with discussion questions and reading tips. Working through this list not only introduces your child to wonderful literature, it also walks her through world history.
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