If you’ve decided that homeschooling is the right choice for you and your family – you’ve made a big decision that needs care and attention in order to be implemented properly. Homeschooling can be a great way to provide students with a bespoke education that fits their specific needs and ability. It can help them prevent being swallowed-up in an education system that puts results before actual learning.
That being said – you need to make sure you’ve got everything in place to make sure a homeschooled kid gets the absolute best education possible. While you’re probably already putting a lot of thought into specific lesson plans and have a broad view of the sort of curriculum that needs to be provided – in this article, we’re going to look at a number of different homeschooling tools that could take your homeschooling education efforts to the next level.
Spreeder
Teaching speed reading can be difficult – but it’s something that really helps boost your education potential once you’ve mastered it. That’s why Spreeder is so useful. It helps get rid of your bad reading habits so you can learn to speed read and digest the important information that you need to.
While some papers and texts need a slow and careful read – others simply need to be skimmed and the relevant information picked out and stored by your brain. Being a good speed reader can really help improve how much you can read and learn each day. Spreeder has a free online version, as well as a paid package.
DuoLingo
If you haven’t heard of DuoLingo by now – where have you been? It’s probably the most well-known and established language learning app in the world and has taken the internet by storm. Best of all, it’s free.
DuoLingo was created to help make language learning fun and includes achievements and other fun elements to help make you want to get to the next level. And it really works.
While certain language qualifications might need a bit more specific detail – DuoLingo is a great way to start for younger language learners – and a great supplement to language learners of any age.
G-Suite Education
One of the biggest drawbacks of homeschooling is that it makes it harder for students to collaborate and learn with other kids. Now Google has entered the education sector, and they’re providing students with G-Suite Education, which bundles together a lot of different collaborative tools and software to make homeschooling easier. Along with a range of normal office tools, G-Suite Education includes Google Classroom. These apps are designed to help students and teachers interact easily from remote locations – meaning your homeschooled kids can still start communicating with others even if they’re situated in a completely different location.
Homeschool Helper
One app keeps coming up when you look for the best tools to help your homeschooling education – and that’s Homeschool Helper.
These days, school administration can be a full-time role that requires a team of professionals, so planning everything that goes around your kid’s homeschool education isn’t easy. It’s not just about teaching anymore.
Thankfully, Homeschool Helper can help. It’ll let you plan lessons, track learning progress of students, calculate grades, keep track of tasks – and much, much more.
Think of it as a classroom assistant that comes right out of the box. It’s an affordable solution for evaluating your kid’s homeschool education and helping them move forward with their study.
FamilyTime
You might be getting concerned about how much time your kids are spending on their computer – especially if they’re homeschooled. The thing is, computers have been a force for good in homeschooling and have revolutionalized the learning possibilities for people across the globes.
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As you can see from this article, there are tons of different tools and apps that can help improve education possibilities – and kids have all the research potential they need at their fingertips. But computers do still come with distractions, and if you’re spending a lot of time on one – these could start to get in the way.
That’s where FamilyTime comes in. You can set it up to block certain applications and make it so computers can only be used for productive tasks during the school day. Not only that, you can monitor and adapt overall computer usage to make sure students aren’t spending too much total time plugged in.
While the computer has become the centre of a homeschool education – you should still try and mix things up a bit and plan for some off-line education time.
Ron Paul Curriculum
Ron Paul Curriculum is a great way to supplement the classes you’ve already planned out with an affordable and extensive range of online courses and classes. They include tons of resources for lots of different subjects, including maths and history. Courses are taught online by highly qualified professionals. While homeschooled kids should still have direct person-to-person learning time, Ron Paul Curriculum can be a great way to supplement that learning.
Codeacademy
One way many traditional in-school education options are lacking behind is on their uptake of modern skills like coding. Coding is a relevant skill that’s here to stay, and equipping students with it could give them an advantage over school kids who’ve been left behind by an education sector that’s slow to adapt.
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Codeacademy makes it easy and fun to learn how to code – much like DuoLingo does for language learning. It’s a free app that could help improve career prospects with a relevant and in-demand 21st-century skill.
ChorePad
While chores aren’t normally much fun – this modern day wallchart app will help you plan and motivate your students to keep up-to-date with their chores and other activities. This app isn’t just for homeschoolers, but it can really help take your homeschool possibilities to the next level.