All sites are free unless noted otherwise.

For Teachers:

www.bakersbookstore.com This is my Usborne book store where you can get all those wonderful Usborne books everyone keeps recommending to you. Books on just about every topic for every age. Usborne internet linked books with safe sites for your kids. These are the best resource books you can have.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com The cost is $20 per year subscription. Enchanted learning has TONS of fun stuff for kids in the lower grades. You will want to have a great printer for all the things they have!

http://www.rainbowresource.com/index.php pretty much anything you need for homeschooling

http://www.col-ed.org/cur/math.html basic lesson plans done for you

http://www.abcteach.com/ over 5,000 free printables

Especially for Pre Schoolers:

http://www.youcanteach.com/

For Math:

http://themathworksheetsite.com make your own worksheets or use theirs

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/math-drills-minute.html minute math drills

For Science:

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/index.htm weather related

http://www.answersincreation.org/geologylessons.htm geology related

http://www.tvakids.com/index.htm conservation

http://kids.discovery.com/ great site with tons of topics

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

For Reading:

http://www.starfall.com/ This is a fantastic site for beginning readers and up. Interesting and easy for even the youngest of children.

http://www.readinga-z.com a guided reading program with downloadable books.

For Geography/ History:

http://www.netstate.com/ U.S

Broad Topics:

http://www.si.edu/ The Smithsonian Institute

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/ Time Magazine for Kids. Also has lesson plans for grades K-6.

If you own a website dedicated to the education of children and would like to have it on this list let me know.

Much like the unschoolers, I have always encouraged my children to learn about the things that have piqued their interest. I have been trying to find a little more hands- on project type lessons. If they show interest in a specific topic, I do all I can to help them find out as much as we can about it.

For science, we are studying the planet Earth and built models with play-doh just for the fun of it.

My wiggly 5 year old boy who can spell his name but doesn’t want to learn to read was thrilled to make play-doh words.  He even spelled the word “bat” all by himself!

He got bored with building words very quickly and moved on to his own creations. He was especially proud of this:

Here we are sitting at the table working on History. We love History. The girls especially love their history time line notebooks, which is a new thing for us this year. They adore finding, coloring, cutting and pasting those little timeline figures into their own “scrapbook”.  They even drag it out to work on when they have a few spare minutes.

( and yes, this is what our dining room table looks like most of the day! We eat in the kitchen. )

Look at these precious hands working so hard.

My baby even wants in on the fun. Serious fun.

See? Loving it!

I love to learn. I want to make sure my children never lose their love of learning. All children are naturally inquisitive, they are born with the desire to learn. From the moment they are born, children have the natural instinct to learn and parents have the natural instinct to teach. As toddlers we sing them little songs, to walk, to tie their shoes. We introduce them to plah-doh, sand, books, games and all sorts of other types of fun stuff. As they get older we replace their fun stuff with books and worksheets and tests and reports and somehow if we are not careful, we start to squash their love of learning. It happens in schools every day. Children are fighting the system, they want to learn but they hate the way they are made to learn. They are failing miserably because their natural love of learning has been killed.

I refuse to do that to my children. Making sure they never lose their love of learning is more important to me than what or how much or what pace they learn.

When you love to learn you have fun and it is easy!

Because it is natural.

So take that. “school”

When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could

A boring ready region upon anything we did exposing every weakness how the kid did bye the kid

Out in the middle of nowhere they were home at night with friends, psychopathic wads would flash down with a inches of their lives

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave those kids alone
Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!

- Pink Floyd

p.s- I would love to hear from some of you unschoolers, and learn more about how and what you do with your kids!