As a homeschooling mom, I can honestly say that I understand the frustrations of homeschooling and finding materials that are easy to access for Mary. Mary and I work on a lot of different materials and lessons throughout the year and a lot of times I like to have worksheets or extra lessons to reinforce what she's learning. But over the years I have found that it's very hard to find decent worksheets to download and print out online. And it's even harder to search for them online too. Usually I'm pretty good at finding stuff from search engines, but finding worksheets can prove to be trying to say the least. And another problem with finding them online is most of them will be all over different websites so you'll need to keep searching in multiple places. Honestly, I don't have time for that.
For the past few months, I've been able to check out the CHSH Download Club from CHSH-Teach.com and so far I've been very impressed. CHSH-Teach.com is a collection of resources and materials for K-12 in a variety of subjects including holidays. Some materials can be accessed for free and others need a paid membership. Currently they have two membership options - a 1 year membership for $25 and a Lifetime membership for $99.99.
When you do subscribe, you have instant access to over 50,000 downloadable materials. Also since CHSH-Teach.com is a community as well, you can upload and share your own materials with the other members too. There's also a forum as well that you can chat with other members in.
Surprisingly enough, Mary is still on summer break until the end of September because of her age. Where we live, she has to be 9 to go into 3rd grade and she doesn't turn 9 until the end of September. But throughout the summer, we make sure to work on little things to keep her mind fresh. Mostly during the summer, I tend to take it easy with her and do fun activities like nature walks, activity books and outdoor worksheets since the weather is nice. One of our many projects this summer has been to do National Park Service Junior Ranger booklets with her for her badges. So far she has gotten over 20 of them and she's very proud. But most recently, my husband found a brand new curriculum that is over the computer to help teach her French which she was going to start in 3rd grade anyways. So we decided to start French early in the summer and she is loving it. And in my CHSH-Teach.com account, I can login and get fun french reinforcements for her including flashcards and posters. Just check out some of my favorites:
With the posters, I can hang them in her room and go over them daily and I love the idea of flashcards because they help her remember so much better.
Not only did they have French but they also have ASL too which is almost impossible to find online. Mary started learning ASL about 2 years ago with me at classes outside the house. We both loved it and took to it pretty fast. Since it's so fun to learn and I would like her to continue, I have new worksheets and flashcards for ASL now! I really enjoyed the signing sheets the best because they teach new words in them.
CONVERSATION