Gardening for Summer School - The Small Space Solution

Since gardening is a great way to continue your child's education through the summer months, I've included gardening in my homeschool schedule. When you homeschool you don't get a summer break. The children are always doing something and if it's not something useful and good, well, it won't be good. In my previous blog, I outlined some of the ways gardening can be a great hands-one learning experience for homeschoolers, or children home for summer break. The problem is not every one lives in the country with wide open gardening spaces. In fact, many people live in apartments with no gardening plot at all. So I've searched around and found a solution.

With window boxes, everyone can enjoy a summer garden. Help your child plant some seeds and see his delight at caring for them and watching them grow. What better education can a child get?

Gardening Can Change the Way Your Child Looks at Education

By Lily Ann

Spring is here. As summer approaches and school time is getting close to the end, many children are getting restless and tired of school. They are looking forward to a great summer vacation. How can parents encourage their children to continue their studies?

Gardening is a very effective way to continue your child's education. Children can use skills learned in school to research plants, how they grow, what care they need, which plants will do good in your zone, how people use plants (food, landscaping, etc.), and why plants are important to life. They will get real life experience of how food is produced. You may not realize it, but if you live in a city your child may think that food just comes from the grocery store. You can help your child get a real education outside of the text book.

Involve your child in every step from planning to harvesting. It will give him a practical application of every subject that he is taught in school. Gardening is a science. Together research different plants and gardening techniques. Read seed packets, gardening books, planting guides, and seed catalogs. Write about what you have learned. Use spelling skills to spell words correctly. Use mapping skills and math to plan out the garden plot. Provide hands-on experience of preparing the soil and planting and caring for the plants. Finally, reap the rewards with the harvest.

First, make a list of plants that would interest both of you and choose ones you will plant. Look at other gardens, in gardening books and catalogs. Read about each plant to see which ones will do good in your area. This is important because you want you child to have a successful experience. Be careful when ordering from catalogs. For example, if you live in in Washington State and you order an Orange Tree that grows wonderfully well in California you won't get good results. If you live in the desert, you're not going to grow a tropical plant. For the best results, go to a local nursery.

Using your child's math skills measure your garden space. Research each plant to see how tall and wide each one grows. Use your child's writing skills to record this information. Be sure he uses his spelling skills. Rule out any plants that are not going to fit. The child will then use mapping skills to draw a map of the garden and where each plant will grow. Let him use his artistic abilities to create a garden landscape.

If you live in an apartment with no available garden spot, use pots on the deck. You may even consider indoor gardening. Read about shade loving plants and different ways of indoor and container gardening. The child can still use mapping and math skills to plan out where each pot will sit. When choosing potting soil, let the child read labels and instructions. He can use reasoning skills to decide which soil is best. Comparing prices and calculating the total cost will use his math skills.

Next, prepare the soil and plant. Let the child learn the value of work. He works his mind to study soil preparation, ph balance, and mulching. He works his body to physically turn the soil, spread fertilizer, and put the seeds in the ground. Again, he uses math skills to plant each seed and plant at the correct depth and spacing. Can you begin to see how all the skills he is learning at school come together with real meaning?

The child learns responsibility when he cares for his garden every day. He will see the results of neglect if he neglects his duty of watering, weeding, and feeding his garden. He will continue to use reading, writing, and arithmetic to figure out how much water the garden needs, when to feed the plants, and how to give each plant the correct amount of nutrients.

Finally, the child will reap the reward of the harvest. He will enjoy delicious home-grown vegetables or a spectacular display of blooms (or both). Best of all, he will have used reading, writing, math, science, spelling, phonics, dictionary skills, and many other skills. He will be more prepared for the next year of school because he hasn't forgotten his lessons over the long summer.

Plant a garden this year and watch your child grow.

Visit The Garden Guide for more information and gardening books.

10 Simple Teaching Techniques Will Make Your Child an Excellant Reader.

When I began homeschooling my first child, I wondered "How does a teacher with thirty plus students teach them all to read?" I was struggling to teach one child. Now with a few years of experience and some successes behind me, I'll share some of my most effective teaching techniques.
1 - Steady progress not instant mastery. Each day build on what the child has learned the day before. Every improvement no matter how small is a step in the right direction. If the child is learning something every day, you are succeeding. You are getting closer to your goal with each baby step.
2 - Set your child up for success. On purpose put him in situations where he will win. Set short-term easy-to-reach goals for him.
3 - Let him know you are excited about his reading goal. Praise him for every step in the right direction.
4 - Have story time every day. Read to your child. A child that is read to has a greater ability to put the words together into a meaningful story. Choose books with no pictures and encourage the child to build his own pictures in his mind.
5 - Choose reading material that is at the child's interest level rather than just his reading level. He needs to be able to relate to the story from his own real life experiences.
6 - Write words the children say. Suppose your child had an exciting day and he wants to tell you all about it. Grab a pencil and write down word for word what he says. Ask him questions to get more information. Write down exactly what he says. Then read it back to him. Let him read it to a friend. This kind of activity will help him transfer the written word into something meaningful.
7 - Label things around the house. Put labels on the table, chair, desk, floor, and ceiling. Anything that has a name can be labeled. Get creative. Use descriptive labels like big blue chair, Kris's room, dull brown carpet, pretty rose tea kettle, etc. Let the child use his imagination to come up with exciting labels.
8 - Teach at odd times. While making dinner, read the recipe out loud. Point our letters and words on signs while driving. Show him articles in the news paper. Read him the mail. Just about anything you are doing, you can include the child.
9 - See, Hear, Say, Write. Choose a reading program that uses this method. See the word. Hear the word. Say the word. Write the word. If your program does not include this, it can easily be added in. Just write the word on a paper. Tell the child what it says. Have him repeat it to you and then copy it onto his own paper.
10 - Read it to him, read it with him, child reads alone. Read the story or book to the child before you ever try to get him to read it alone. For the child who is just beginning to read, or an older one who is struggling, this is a very affective method. True, he may read some from memory, but it helps him to remember the words when he sees them in other places. After you have read the story, read it with the child. Take turns. You read a sentence then the child reads the next sentence. Finally, the child reads the story alone.

Reading Begins With Real Life Experiences

If a child learns to read well, he will be able to succeed in any other subject. It works the other way too. If he learns from experiences, he can understand what he reads. Reading does not only consist of putting sounds together to make words; but also putting words together to make sentences, and and sentences together to make a story. If he doesn't have a clue what a word or group of words means, the story won't make sense to him. The beginnings of a good reader is in real life experiences

A word only means something if the child has something real in his mind to connect it to. For example "apple." Your eyes read the word and you mind tells you the rest. You know what an apple feels like, what it tastes like, what color it is. You know it grows on a tree. You know what the price for it is at the store. You know Great-grandmother cannot eat one because she doesn't have any teeth. Baby brother likes to throw it around. Mother doesn't like him to because it bruises it and makes it soggy and yucky. There are many things that the word "apple" triggers in your mind because you have had real experiences to tie it to. If you'd never seen an apple, the word would mean nothing.

Toddlers are busy for a reason. They are learning how everything feels, looks, tastes, smells, and sounds. All this information is stored in their little brains. The more real life experiences with real things they get, the better they will understand the concept of reading when they reach school age. Interact with your child. Show him things. Tell him about them. Encourage him to use words to tell you about things. A child needs to be able to use words verbally before he will be able to read and write.

The simplest thing to you, a mature adult with years of experience, could be a great exciting discovery to a young child. Even a six-year-old going into first grade will come up with great discoveries that are every day occurrence's to you. Share the excitement with him. This is where your child's reading skills begin.

When a child learns to read, he learns to picture in his mind what the words mean. If he reads "The fox ran into the hollow log" he sees in his mind the picture the story tells. What if he's never seen a fox. Maybe he doesn't know what a hollow log is. Encourage you child to ask questions about the things he reads. Answer his questions. Show him as many real life experiences as you can. Go to the zoo. Take a nature walk. Find a fox, a hollow log. Let him see, hear, feel, smell, and listen to the fox and the log. Make the story have meaning then he will learn that those black letters on the white page are really more than just black and white letters. They mean something.

Read to your child. Every one says it. You can even read it on the cereal box. Read to your child. Children love books with pictures, because they can look at the picture to know what the story means. Read stories and books without pictures, and encourage your child to make up the pictures in his mind. When he has this background of being read to and making pictures out of the words, when he learns to read, he will already know how to convert the words into something meaningful.

Write down words that your child says. For instance, Johnny's tooth fell out. He wants to tell Grandmother all about it. Have him dictate a letter to her. Write down exactly what he says and then read it back to him. Watch how pleased he will be with the letter that he "wrote" to Grandmother. This kind of an activity will help the child see that written words mean the same as spoken words and get him used to seeing written words before he even enters school.

Give your child real life experiences and start him on the way to reading.

Question or Suggestion

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The Worste Day of School. Should I Quit?

Books, papers, crayons, glue, and just about everything else is strewn all over the floor. It's 11:30 a.m. and all we've covered so far is a half a lesson of math. The preschoolers are happy, for the most part, dumping every box and container they can find. Did I hear the toilet flush a few too many times? The students are getting grumpy. First grader seems to think that pounding the paper will solve the problem. Baby needs changed. Now they all think of a reason to leave the school room, drinks, potty, etc. Preschooler doesn't want any help with his work book. He's a big boy. "Now I 'm not going to do it because you told me how." Sisters start fighting over who's right it is to rest their elbow on the other's desk. Now every one is screaming, but not teacher yet. This looks like a good time to take a lunch break (it's lunch time anyway isn't it.)


Some of these problems can be avoided. How? Children get grumpy and uncooperative. Here are some simple steps that may help. You can take steps to dodge the problem, but you won't get away from it altogether.


Get the children to sleep early the night before. Many times a child is ornery just because he didn't get enough sleep.

Don't feed the children cereal for breakfast. Feed them something nutritious, with no sugar if you can help it. Even if your morning is rushed, a good breakfast is worth the time. Plan ahead the night before. Get up ten minutes earlier so you can fry some eggs or potatoes. Even good old-fashioned mush will do the job. Just don't call it mush. Think up a creative name. Hot Corn Cake With Milk.

Clean up the school room after school so you can enter on a clean room and get a fresh start. It only takes a couple of weeks to get everyone in the habit of putting things away before they leave the room. You may seem like the mean mama bear, but insist. No one goes out for anything, unless it's a real heart attack, until the room is clean.

Limit wacking-up-papers activities. Hide the scissors. It makes clean-up easier.

If every one gets really grumpy, change the scene. Play a game. Take a walk. You stay happy and you'll have 100% better chance of getting the children to be happy.

Put things you don't want dumped up out of the reach of little hands. Make a special place, preschool cupboard or shelf with toys that preschoolers can get any time. Have only a few toys at a time. If you periodically change the toys, it will keep them from losing interest and heading for more exciting things, like the toilet. Keep the bathroom door closed.

Let older children take turns doing a preschool "class." Have them take turns keeping the toddlers busy while you work with another child.

Don't sit there getting nowhere. If one subject, say math, takes all day, cut the lesson short after half an hour. Thank the child for what he's done that day and go on to the next subject. Stop while he's still in a good mood, before he gets frustrated.

If a child just woun't write his lessons, let him use a crayon, or colored pencil, or a pen. A little change may do the trick.

If this is your first year of school, or second, or third, and it's still hecktick, I'd suggest Homeschooling ABC's. Click Here! This e-class will help you get things organized and off to a good start.

For First-Year Homeschoolers

Don't you wish someone would take you by the hand and walk you through your beginning year of homeschool week by week? The homeschooling ABC's does just that. Click Here!