There are many reasons that families choose to homeschool. I’m not even sure what to say that my main reasons are, but I know that is the path that I want to pursue with our kids. One reason is that I love being able to just build off of something that the kids are interested in. Example: Charlie has a love for rocks. Rocks of all shapes, colors and sizes and he has to collect them. We never come home without a new rock for the collection. We decided to embrace it by making alphabet matching rocks where he can match upper and lower case letters. As he gets the concept, I will add stickers to one side of each rock and he can work on letter sounds by guessing the letter on the back of the rock. Whatever he really cares about we can use to encourage learning. Rocks are a big part of our learning day.
One way we like to explore a concept more is through reading. We have so many books that we can probably find something in our collection to teach us more about something. When I had the chance to review some books from National Geographic I knew that we would love them for homeschool. When they arrived we were outside playing. I opened the package and the kids completely dropped what they were doing to sit down and read. It was adorable. With a wide range of books from board books through chapter books, there was something for everybody and the kids quickly picked a favorite. They both really loved to read Ugly Animals. We have read it a lot and Charlie seems to have memorized the entire book. He loves to read the book and knows the names of almost all of the animals. He loves to tell you some of the fun facts about a certain one, especially the short horned lizard {go ahead and Google the interesting fact, I will wait}.
I especially love that sometimes the kids have a question about one of the animals, where it lives, what it eats, does it go out at night, bite people, etc.. Tons of questions and lucky us, we have an iPad. We can Google the answers to their questions. I also love that National Geographic has a website designed to go along with the early readers series. With tons of fun activities, charts and so much more to encourage more in depth learning. I don’t know about your kids, but mine really love any chance to use the iPad and usually don’t argue with me when I tell them it’s time for learning games on it.
Just the other day I was scrolling through my newsfeed and saw this video.
It immediately reminded me of Flutter, Butterfly that was one of the 11 books we received from National Geographic. Maggie loves this book because, well, she loves pretty things like butterflies. We watched the video together and talked about what was happening and then we read the book again, stopping to talk and ask a lot of questions on the page that described what was going on. This was a great learning experience for the kids and we had lots of laughs and giggles as we watched the video, read the story and talked about it.
I’m a big fan of owning things that will actually get used for the long tern in our house. These books are more than just books to read. They are learning tools that we can pull out over and over. The books are written with different teaching points; how to pronounce a word, a definition, a did you know question. All things that help teach as you read the story. They are fun and engaging books with vivid, lifelike pictures that draw your kids in and keep their attention.
The National Geographic books have been a great addition to our home and our homeschool library. Now I want to own every National Geographic book out there.
What are some of your favorite books to read with your kids? Do your kids love to ask questions as you read?
One lucky reader will win a set of 11 books as part of the Reading Rocks with National Geographic Kids Giveaway. Giveaway open to US only. Ends at 11:59 pm EST on September 16, 2015. Good luck.
