The (Former) Home School Resource Page

A quiet revolution is taking place in education. More and more parents are finding that public schools are not teaching their children the subjects and especially the values that they want. In fact, it seems that schools are more interested in warehousing children than in teaching. How can we correct this state of affairs? Increasing numbers of families are finding that for their children the answer is Home Schooling.

This page was created last year as a list of resources to help Home Schoolers. This year I am changing the focus to an educational resources directory. My reasons are simple. We are not home schooling any of our children this year. And there are other network resources that are better suited for home schoolers. Please take a moment to read about Who I am and What this page is meant to be.

Here is a collection of resources on the Internet that we have found useful in teaching our children.

• Indexes
• Web Resources
• Our Recommendations

Indexes

Here are several indexes of Home School resources (besides mine), and other papers of general interest to home schoolers.

• Jon's Home-School Resource Page is a clearing house for Home School information. The most frequently asked question I get is "How do I get started where I live?". Jon's page has hundreds of pointers to local support groups.
• Educational Online Sources is just that.
  • The Eagle Academy is a sort of an on-line school. They have curricula available, and a nearly full service web-site for subscribers. This can be very helpful for those of you who live in states that hate home schooling. The Eagle Academy curriculum and lesson plans have been approved by New York, and will probably satisfy most state education departments.
• Engines for Education is a whole new idea for me. It is a 'hyper-book' which is, as you might expect, a book with hypertext links. But that description does not do it justice, nor does it prepare you for this new experience. I have found that it is an unusual and slightly discomforting feeling to read something that does not have a 'top' and a 'bottom'. You must decide what you are looking for and go to it. My paradigm is that it is more like a conversation with a scholar where I control what we are going to talk about, and I can just sit back and listen.
  You may want to jump straight into the discussion about Education for educators of all stripes. Specifically, I found this question about students teaching themselves to be an interesting start, as well as this list of the Top Ten Mistakes in Education.

Web Resources

Art

• The most comprehensive and complete art resource on the net (that I am aware of) is the WebMuseum. There are numerous 'mirrors' of this site. These are places that have exact copies of the WebMuseum. When you connect to the link above, select the mirror that is closest to your home, and (hopefully) your access will be faster.

Government

• Visit Thomas. The Library of Congress' legislation server. It has information on all of the legislation currently being considered, as well as older bills.
• I have on occasion found lists of U.S. Historical Documents Archive. This is the most comprehensive I have found. There are also a number of these in Project Gutenberg.
• It also has the postal and email addresses of members of the House and Senate.
• For more information on the Library of Congress itself, visit it's home page.

History

• The library of Congress also has this collection of Civil War Photographs.
• This handsome History of the United States was actually built by a group of Dutch students. Isn't the Web an interesting place?
• Those bright kids at CMU have done it again. This Historical Papers index is just chock full of COOL stuff.
• NASA has thoughtfully provided a History of Space Exploration. This includes summaries of all of the missions up thru Apollo. In particular, we enjoyed reading this concise summary of Apollo 13 before we saw the movie.

Literature

• Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. This is one of my favorite short stories. I found this copy at Columbia University, where they have a project by the same name to transcribe great works onto the internet. You should check out Project Bartelby frequently to see what has been added.
• Many literature resources are part of The Project Gutenberg Master Index. To quote their history document, The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.

Museums

• Certainly the most important museum in the U.S. is the Smithsonian Institution which has thoughtfully built a beautiful page to help you browse through the many exhibits. Of course, as any red blooded boy will tell you, the only one that you really need to see is the National Air and Space Museum.
• And in case you missed the reference above, do NOT miss the WebMuseum.

Reference

• CIA World Fact Book is a quick and easy reference to all the countries of the world. Unfortunately, it is hard to keep this link current, mostly because vandals have caused the closure of the official CIA site.
• World Flag Database is just what it says.
• No reference section would be complete without a Dictionary and a Thesaurus

Science

• This is a great jumping off place for studying the Solar System.
• If you are interested in Space Exploration, take a look at History of Space Exploration in the History section.

Web Sites

• Berit's Best Sites for Children. As others have noted, the name says it all.
• The Global Encyclopedia was an attempt to build a free encyclopedia on the net through contributions of users. I loved this idea, but it seems to have died of disinterest. Here are a couple of replacements which are not quite as fun. Free Internet Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia.com
  I am still looking for the original.
• The Project Gutenberg Master IndexHere is another great site that is suffering from its own success. It has a huge selection of literature and other online books. Unfortunately, it is much harder to use than it needs to be. Be patient.

Our Recommendations

Books

• We have bought and used a ton of the A Beka books and find them to be very useful, intelligent teaching aids. In particular, I love the language books. Very no nonsense.
• We used a lot of the Saxon Math Books. They are fantastic. Kids cannot help but become math wizzes with these. (Note: They move right along. We didn't use them for our first grader.)
• We also love the E.D. Hirsch books What your nth grader needs to know. Our kids read from them every day, and we frequently have them do 'research' reports on the subjects covered.
• Since a lot of us got into home schooling to escape public school values, it should not surprise anyone that we all read The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.

My Postal address is	Thayne Forbes
			8917 Summer Crest Dr.
			Sandy, UT 84093
			USA