Welcome to The Learning Link! Your weekly dose of homeschooling tips, tools, and inspiration to make teaching easier and more joyful. If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up for your own copy here.

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Enjoy 752 words of homeschool inspiration below. ⬇

This is the time of year when all the homeschool moms are reading, watching, and browsing sites for homeschool curriculum for next year. It is absolutely necessary. It is fun. AND it provides a much more interesting way to spend time being productive than finishing the dog-eared worn-out curriculum from this year that is almost (but not quite) over. Anyone else being productive like this aside from me? ;-)

Here’s what's new this week...

📝 Fresh Picks

​Homeschool History- Online History Resource from Notgrass for only $24/year. You can use it along with Notgrass's curriculum or with any other history curriculum. I linked to a video that shows what is in the program. The overview video is 9 minutes long, but I adjusted the playback speed (bottom right corner of video) to 1.5 to speed it up. Just to clarify, I have not used this at this point, but it looks like a great (cheap) option for online history resources!

​Our Island Story: A history of Britain for boys and girls* - I purchased this book from 1905 because of the raving reviews and the storybook format that we love. I had only browsed it briefly before my fourth grader "stole" it from me. He's been working his way through it on his own at night and has made comments about how it connects to our current history studies! (Just FYI the specific edition I purchased was ISBN #9781902984742 - a blue hardback book).

🧰 Teaching Tools

​Claritas Publishing - I have not yet written a review of this curriculum but plan to. It covers a similar curriculum to other Classical memory work programs. This year my kids and I used it for the first time. We did Cycle 2, and it has been a hit. We start our mornings with a brief intro or review of the memory work. I bought the CrossSeven.org yearly membership to go along with our Claritas cycle, and it's been worth every penny. They have videos of all the songs for each week. My kids like to sing along while they color or doodle, play with playdough etc. This week we did some review and just watched/listened through all the science or history videos up to this point.

​Story of the World - We tried to read SOTW for several years before it finally worked. We finally read volume 1 when my kids were in 3rd, 1st and PreK. This year we have been reading volume 2 (grades: 4, 2, K) and my older two have really enjoyed it. I personally think it works best for kids ages 7+, but of course when you have one younger than that (which I do), they can glean whatever they will as you work with the older ones.

​Tuttle Twins* - I have not yet worked out how I'm going to coordinate the Tuttle Twins American history books with our upcoming Story of the World Volume 3 and Claritas Cycle 3, but I will keep you posted. At minimum, I will have my older kid(s) read it independently. I absolutely love the way that TT has captured the IDEAS behind the founding of our country. Here's an article I wrote reviewing this curriculum.

📚 On My Bookshelf

​Spies, Code Breakers, and Secret Agents: A WWII Book for Kids* - This one got a HUGE thumbs-up from my 10 year old! He's all into WW2 right now and apparently this one was spot-on. BTW it's available on Kindle Unlimited.

​Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims* - I purchased this series last year thinking my oldest would need it for a class. He didn't, but recently he requested some books about the Pilgrims and I remembered this one was hiding on a shelf! After about 30 minutes of reading it he came over, "I just want you to know I love it!"

​Interactive History Adventures* - I mentioned this one last week, but since this is specifically history related, I figured I'd repeat it here. My 4th grader has devoured all the ones I've found for him. It's a series of choose your own adventures through history. Just be aware they can be pretty gory.

💰 Deals and Steals

Homeschool Buyers Club - homeschool curriculum 20-80% off retail prices here.

Curriculum Clearance Sale at Rainbow Resource - here​

All About Learning Press GIVEAWAY for April - here*

Homeschool Buy,Sell,Trade Facebook Group - here

Happy Homeschooling!

Emily

​TeacherTutorMom.com​

P.S. Don’t miss my latest posts on TeacherTutorMom.com for encouragement, strategies, reviews, and more.

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