Language page

Chinese

Our kids attend Chinese language classes on the weekend. You might check for something like this in your local area for languages that you're interested in.

Chinese Characters bopomofo pronunciations
On-line Chinese Tools. They have nice flashcards among a lot of other things not related to learning Chinese.
Pronunciation FAQ

Foreign Language

The Rosetta Stone Language Library. Multimedia language instruction covering a variety of languages. It's rather expensive software though the Family Unschoolers Network has it discounted for home schoolers. I'm going to try an order and will post my impressions later.

English

The English Server at CMU contains over 15,000 online humanities texts.
Guide to Grammar and Writing, definitions, suggestions, quizzes and great links.
The English Web at Marist College contains a nice pointer to other online university English Departments. There are also links to general literary sites.
Analogies: I think that doing analogy problems is good for problem solving and thinking. They may also be useful for taking tests for college and graduate school. Continental Press has materials for this in their reading section and you can also find problems in SAT and GMAT preparation books. These may be a little difficult for younger children though. We've used the Continental Press workbooks and have been happy with the results.
Educator's Publishing , recommended on a bulletin board. Recommend products are Classical Roots and Wordly Wise.

Writing

Elements of Style by William Strunk.
The Little, Brown Handbook, a very nice textbook that doubles as a handbook for grammar and writing. By Fowler and Aaron.
Ontario Ministry of Education site has examples of where kids should be for writing by grade from 1-8.
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. Contains articles on writing on grammar.
Writing Strands, A recommended series that we're using. A review is available at The Well Trained Mind site.

Literature

CyberGuides reading lists with lesson plans from the San Diego County Office of Education. I have only taken a cursory glance at their lesson plans. They look like they might be useful.
Literary Explorer. They have book report forms and literary works with lesson plans.
An Option for Great Books at Home: Critical Thinking Courses in English and American Literature from The Well-Trained Mind. Christian materials for this topic.

Latin

Bolchazy-Carducci Online provide Latin materials. Their Artes Latinae product has been recommended by homeschoolers. It is pricey. Something for us to look into.
Trivium Pursuit Homepage contains an interesting philosophical approach to Christian Homeschooling. Contains a nice comparison of different educational/homeschooling philosophy. They sell the Artes Latinae product along with many other products.

Reading

Our son started reading at three. He cracked the phonics code by himself and was able to read just about anything at that age and we spent quite a bit of time providing him with definitions of words that he asked about. We did use the McGuffey Readers with him but he had learned how to read before we started using them. We used these with our daughter and she started reading at two using a sight-approach. She has taken longer to figure out the phonics code (took two years), though she was able to read at around a third-grade level, according to the McGuffy Readers guide. At four, she can decode words fairly well phonetically and reads very quickly. She was slower to have an innate interest in reading (she wanted more to look at the pictures and to be read to while our son devoured books).

McGuffey Readers (K-12), 1800s, Mott Media. A great series for teaching reading. Probably good if supplemented with a phonics program. The book contains religious content and the language may be archaic at times.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I have seen this book in Barnes and Nobles and it has been recommended by many on the home-ed list.

Handwriting

We didn't really use any materials for handwriting for printing but are looking into materials for cursive. For teaching reading, you can set up your browser to use a handwriting font and then visit a page which doesn't specify its own font. You can then print this out for your child to read.

Educational Fontware sells a package of fonts that can be used to print worksheets that kids can trace or review to get the hang of cursive and manuscript writing.
Handwriting Without Tears , a program used by many school districts and apparently at a lower cost than products from large vendors.
Match Software fonts & Typefaces
farewell cursive font free for downloading from the I Shot the Serif website.
There is a font called mariah which is distributed with Microsoft PLUS which does a decent job with lower case letters.
Elfring script fonts
There is a font called kathleeniefont which you should be able to find with a search engine. The font is very good for lower case and passable for uppercase.

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This page is maintained by Michael Moy mmoy@yahoo.com

and was last updated on January 28, 2000