World Education Games are back on for 2013!  We at Essential love this opportunity for our children to be challenged in their academic skills while interacting in a safe environment with students from all around the world.  And, the best part…it is FREE! This year the program is

http://www.wordcentral.com/home.html Merriam-Webster’s Word Central is an online dictionary resource for kids.  It offers a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary, as well as daily word challenges.  I know that we had some issues finding a dictionary that would serve the purposes of o

http://www.nieonline.com/bhamnews/students.cfm NIE with The Birmingham News provides a resource for students to apply current events and news items to their studies.  Here is a quote from their website: Every day, The News is filled with articles and news items that reflect the curren

http://www.kidscoop.com/framed-teachers/download_edition/ Kid Scoop provides a weekly learning packet with printable, educational activity pages. Each packet focuses on a curriculum-based theme and includes high-interest reading content, vocabulary development activities, math problem

Flashcards are an excellent way to review over material learned or to aid in memory of new concepts/words/ideas.  I have used flashcards from the very beginning of homeschooling.  When I started teaching my children how to read, I would make flashcards for phonetic sounds, putting a l