How To Raise a Healthy child in Spite of Your Doctor.

I am currently reading for the second time, How To Raise a Healthy child in Spite of Your Doctor. 

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, renowned pediatrician and author advises parents on home treatment and diagnosis of colds and flus, childhood illnesses, vision and hearing problems, allergies, and more. PLUS, a complete section on picking the right doctor for your child, step-by-step instructions for knowing when to call a doctor, and much more. I heard about this book a few years ago while doing research about vaccinations. This book is not all about vaccines but it has a chapter in it on the subject. This book helped me to understand more about how the medical establishments work especially pediatricians and how to protect my children from them.

Some of the best chapters in this book are as followed.

Most things get better by morning
Parents and Grandparents are wiser than Doctors
How Doctors make healthy kids sick
Immunizations against Disease: A medical time bomb?

And more...

I feel this in one of those books that everyone should have.

How To Raise a Healthy child in Spite of Your Doctor.

FREE Education Games And Other Activities

       Here are the fun and educational game sites we have found. More added monthly! Many of them we have played on but some of them we have not yet. These sites are FREE to use online and can add to a great day of learning for you and your children. They are placed in the category of relevancy but most of the sites listed do offer many games for other subjects. We hope you enjoy these sites with your family!

Reading:

http://childhoodreading.com/

Social Studies:


http://wordcentral.com
http://bls.gov/k12


Math:

http://kidsnumbers.com
http://primarygames.com


Science:

http://weatherwizkids.com
http://kidsfarm.com


Language Arts:

http://playkidsgames.com
http://grimmfairytales.com
http://funbrain.com/grammer


Health:

http://kidshealth.org/kid
http://bam.gov

Our Home School Begins Another Year

    We officially started on workbooks again, this year we are not focusing to much on workbooks but I feel they have there place. My son started 2nd grade home school and my youngest is starting to learn pre k reading. It was nice to have a break and we all needed it.

Last year we took on a lot of book work and didn't finish all of the workbooks we had but my son still did very well. So this year we are only using the workbooks needed for basic knowledge and this year we have picked curriculum that are more straight to the point and easy to follow along.

That way we can focus more on reading great books and doing fun activity instead of workbooks all day. My son loves video games so we incorporate educational computer games into our day, and my kids can play on their own while I get some stuff done.

Not to mention it is a great incentive to getting workbooks done!

This year we have chosen Pathways for our reading curriculum and I am very happy with it. Pathways consists of a chapter book and a workbook the child does a page before the section of the book is read and then does a page after. There are also phonics pages to do anytime, this is a straight forward curriculum in reading and hits all the important parts to reading. Pathways was created by the Amish to be used in their school houses. Pathways chapter books are filled with great stories that children love as well as character building scenarios.

We are using Math Steps for our math curriculum. This curriculum has a teachers guide as well as a great easy to follow workbook that gets right to the point of each math lesson.

We also are using a vocabulary workbook called Vocabulary Workshop by Sadlier Oxford. This one has a teachers guide and it is also very user friendly and hits all necessary vocabulary skills.

For spelling we use Spelling Connections by Zaner Bloser also a user friendly curriculum, this has a teachers guide and a workbook that gives a spelling list at the beginning of each section. The student practices the words by doing the corresponding work pages and then a challenge page that introduces more challenging above grade level words.

In English we are using Houton Mifflin.
Science is Mc Graw Hill.
Social Studies is California Vista this curriculum is standard for CA public schools.

There is not much to say about the last three, but we read them do the workbooks, activities and discuss the information. Later we may read other books and enjoy Field trips to places where we can further our education on the subjects.

Thanks for reading I just wanted to post something about our curriculum choices. We will not however be focusing our day on workbooks. I feel that curriculum has its place in home school especially when it comes to a basic knowledge which I feel essential in life but not solely obtained in a strict curriculum program.

We get all this curriculum for free provided to us by our Home Based Charter program provided to us by the state of CA. There are many Home Based Charter programs for your homeschooling needs, also see Online Home School Programs.  Home Based Charter Schools