There’s a new website dedicated to helping parents and students homeschooling highschool. It’s called LetsHomeschoolHighschool.com. There are a few things that I think are really exciting about their approach.

1. They have sections for both parents and students. I think it’s wise to recognize that they are both decision-making at this point and while they read things differently, they will want common resources.
2. Community. There’s great sections for discussions by parents about homeschooling highschool and sections for discussions by students about homeschooling highschool.
3. Highschool and post highschool. Highschool, more so than the K-8 years of education, is partially about preparing for post highschool careers and education.  This is a fact of life and they’ve done well to integrate this content within the site.  They have four areas: Applying to College Info for homeschoolers,  College Alternatives, Financial Aid for College, and Gap Years.  For instance, here’s the intro to the Gap Year section:

How can you take advantage of the gap? … you know, those years that some people “take off” between high school and the time they apply for college. Those years don’t have to be a detriment to getting into college and doing well. Many students do better by taking a few years “off” to pursue hobbies, mission trips, join the military, or find a job. Whatever the reason, this gap between high school and college acceptance can be turned into a plus instead of negative…..

There are so many versions of anagrams, boggle, unscramble, descramble. Scrabble, text twist and other make-word games that it boggles the brain. It scrambles the….cerebellum.   Whats the real educational value of them? Sure, I know that its fun while waiting in line to play Words with Friends. Or with strangers. I’m no stranger to words with friends myself.  But how about these games’ value?  Intellectual? Yes. Educational?  Harder to say.

The object of the unscramble game is to unscramble letters to form each of your spelling or vocabulary words. To create the words, you may click on each letter in order or click and drag the letters into the box below. To move a letter, click on it and drag it into its new position before releasing the mouse button. Unscramble is a particularly popular word game that is a variation on other word games such as text twists, Boggle™, Scrabble™, Word Play with Friends™, jumbles, and anagrams. Anagrams often extend word unscramble to include phrases or sentences. VocabularySpellingCity also has a game where players unscramble sentences!

Word UnScramble is a fun and popular game. UnScramble is similar to other word games that ask the player to find words in several letters that have been scrambled up on a game board. Not only is this a great game to play for a fun time with your family, but it can also add educational value by helping to add new words to your vocabulary. If you enjoy playing this word scramble game you will probably enjoy other scramble games that also ask the player to

Some things keep changing in education, this site is mostly about the new things. But, some things do not change.  For instance, reading comprehension skills are as important today as ever.  I was thinking aobut this when I read about the process of learning to read and in particular, about mastering reading comprehension skills. And I quote:

“My child reads but she doesn’t seem to understand what she reads.  What can I do?”

Time4Learning teaches reading comprehension as part of an overall language arts program for enrichment, remediation, summer use, or homeschooling.  The key reading comprehension skills, interacting with the text versus just decoding it, is taught by Time4Learning as part of an integrated language arts program delivered on line including phonics, vocabulary, fluency, writing, grammar, and critical thinking.

For more info: The Reading Skills Pyramid illustrates that there are many steps to becoming a proficient reader. There are five key areas in learning to read: phonemic awareness, phonics, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and reading fluency.