Introduction

The Homeschooling Toolbox includes a "New Homeschoolers Start-up Kit" that walks you through a simple way to begin homeschooling. For Pre-schoolers and Kindergarteners there are dozens of tools for teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. The Homeschooling Toolbox contains handwriting paper, number booklets and "six square sheets" (pictured here). There are also notebooking pages for children to create their own books, such as "My Book of Godly Character," "A Book About Me" and "My First Words" Book. For early readers, The Homeschooling Toolbox includes phonics teaching tips, phonics flash cards, and Dolch list flash cards. You will find ideas for good read-alouds in our extensive reading list and you can record the books your family reads on our record form. There are also poems and fables that can be printed and read to children. The printed page can then be illustrated by them. You will also find some extras that are peculiar to our family. Our children needed help learning to pronounce R's, L's and S's so we have included speech drills as well. We also have a useful poem for courtesy in church and a special chore chart for 2-4 year olds.

For older children there are advanced math drills and formulas, a study skills kit, evaluation forms for writing, a Bill of Rights study guide, Latin, French, Spanish and German language tools, Greek and Latin roots, and memory tools for planets, geography, and the US presidents,

Another use for the Homeschooling Toolbox is creating notebooking pages for memory work. We have studied and memorized poems, hymns, famous speeches and Bible verses using copies that we printed from the Homeschooling Toolbox. The children illustrate them as a way to help their memorization. We store the pages in the proper section of their notebooks, and the children like to see their artwork when we review the things they have memorized.

In our family, we also make books that grow each year. The Homeschooling Toolbox contains a simple questionnaire that I print out at the beginning of each school year. It includes such things as height, age, favorite foods, favorite books, etc. I put a current photograph on each child's form and have him answer all the questions. I save the completed questionnaires in a booklet for each child. It is fun to capture their answers. Last year my four-year old wanted to be his big brother when he grew up. This year he wants to be a clown!

The Homeschooling Toolbox has many other life skill tools, including a unit on courtesy, a safety checklist, chore lists and household skills by age, a babysitting information sheet, crafts and recipes.

One delightful aspect of homeschooling is creating recitals for families and friends. The Homeschooling Toolbox includes many good poems and famous speeches for recitations as well as a Christmas Nativity Play and a Patriotic School Recital. We have performed both for our own family (and grandparents) and as part of larger groups.

With the Homeschooling Toolbox a great amount of material is literally at your fingertips. If you are new to computers you will be surprised at how easy it is to "browse" through it. You can print out as many copies as you need from the convenience of your home. You may find the material prints better if copied into a word processing program first. We hope that your family will benefit from all the resources of the Homeschooling Toolbox. And don't forget to check out our Shakespeare Tools. The link is at the end of the resource list.

Warmest Regards,

Joyce and family