Home School
YOUR KID’S FINANCIAL LITERACY
I’m starting a thread here in the blog on other businesses that we at Notch Hill endorse because they have great philosophies, have amazing products or are just in general super cool people.
So it is appropriate that the first company seems to fit into all these categories.
Four Quarters Finance seem to come from similar roots to us here at Notch Hill. They believe in the concept of play being a powerful way to teach kids. Like us they are also passionate about literacy, but in their case they are passionate about financial literacy. They have 3 financial literacy packs designed for different age groups. I love the idea of teaching kids from an early age that it is important to save a portion of their money for themselves and a portion of their money to give away.
Check out their website at www.fourquartersfinance.com you will also find them at the BC Home School Conference in early June.
MULTI SENSORY WHAT???
Multi Sensory Learning has been a buzz word in education for decades now. It sounds very serious but few people know about the benefits it can offer.
What is Multi Sensory Learning?
Multi Sensory Learning is very simply learning through all the 5 senses. If you teach any one a concept through sound, sight, feel, smell and taste the chances of them ever forgetting it are very small. For example lets take something boring like fractions.
Sound: First explain what half and a quarter is to your child.
Sight: Take an apple and cut it into half and a quarter
Feel: Allow your child to cut up other pieces of fruit into fractions.
Smell: Take three glasses of water. Using vanilla essence measure out three servings into the three glasses using fractions. How different do they smell?
Taste: Taste the difference between the three glasses.
Do you have to use all the senses all the time?
No, some senses are harder to engage than others. Try to engage as many senses as is natural for the topic you are working on.
Isn’t Multi Sensory Learning used mainly for children with learning challenges?
Multi Sensory Learning has been very successful in teaching children with learning challenges. However it’s uses are much wider than that, it is a great tool for teaching any one any thing – I like to use it to teach adults concepts too. One thing it does is get you to think much more creatively about the topic you are explaining. Taking any thing out of a text book and into 5D is much more engaging and in the long run easier for you. A little more effort at the front end equals less time going over topics and re explaining old topics when you are trying to build on them.
Next time you are looking to explain a concept, try to think in 5D (using your 5 senses!) For information on a Multi Sensory literacy program see the rest of my website.
MORE HOME SCHOOLING- MORE REASONS TO HOME SCHOOL
The ranks of America’s home-schooled children has continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal. The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. “There’s no reason to believe it would not keep going up,” says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at NCES.
Traditionally, the biggest motivations for parents to school their kids at home have been moral or religious reasons, and that remains the top pick when parents are asked to name one factor affecting their choice. But the 2003 survey gave parents six reasons to pick for their interest (they could pick more than one). The 2007 survey added a seventh: an interest in a “non-traditional approach,” a reference to parents, dubbed “un-schoolers,” who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education. Read more in USA Today online.