At RCOA we know that supporting and educating the teaching parents is the best way to enhance the learning at home; shoring up the front line as it were. Therefore we strive to offer workshops for you as teaching parents on a variety of topics each year with a goal to educate, inspire, and encourage you on this learning at home adventure.
Some of the topics we have presented to date are:
- Math Manipulatives - Make math meaningful, memorable, mind-stretching and FUN! learn how to make home-made manipulatives and learn which are the real child pleasers.
- Many Roads to Math Mastery - Is one math program the best? NO! you must analyze each program in light of your student and you as the teacher. Not one-size-fits all.
- Mapping Out a well rounded Socials Program - choosing curriculum suitable for your family, making Socials fun and interactive, incorporating literature.
- How Do you Manage? - time management for the homeschool family (School, Chores, Meals, and time for Dad).
- Delight Directed/Opportunity Based Unit Studies - take that aha! moment and turn it into a "seemingly" impulsive unit study (the kids may not even realize it is school).
- Teaching Science without getting swamped - Science is more than Nature Study you and the children need to get your hands dirty, blow up a few things, construct and destruct and poke, prod, and investigate every corner of God's Creation.
- Utilizing Online Tools & Resources - RCOA offeres a wide variety of online programs and resources at group rates and that list is growing every year! Which are right for you and how can you best incorporate them into your studies or make them the cornerstone of your program. This session is for both techno-noids and techno-geeks.
- Portfolios & Assessment Policies - How can you best represent your child's learning to their RCOA teacher? Maybe we should just mail the child? No, but homevisits are sure a "picture worth a thousand words" and putting together the teacher's "goodie bag" is best approached positively as an opportunity to show off not a checklist to complete.
- A Charlotte Mason Education - in the summer of 2006 RCOA invited Catherine Levinson to come share her heart on the benefits of adopting some or all of Charlotte Mason's Ideas.
We will repeat some of the above workshops this coming year and are looking for ideas of what new topics you feel would encourage and inspire you this coming year. Contact Brenda Fawkes with your ideas.
