I'm having a hard time finding secular lesson plans and homeschooling support that take a more integrated curriculum approach rather than a isolated learning approach. I guess I need to research some more. I'm finding that homeschooling seems to A. be full of people wanting to focus on religion (mainly christian it seems) and B. Lots of people trying to "sell" workbooks/worksheets/notebooks/curriculum for the kids to use and books that provide guidance to the parents on what to teach and when. I just think worksheets are stifling and not a good way to teach kids (seems so dry). I think a better way to teach is a more integrated approach where you pick a "theme" for a day or week...such as weather...and then explore that theme in various ways and integrate various skills together in one thing. For example, reading a book about rain, snow, sun, etc. This will help teach things like opposites. In this theme, the child could learn vocabularly, science, math/numbers, etc. I would want them to "experience" what the weather feels like, maybe by walking out in the rain, etc.
Anyway, for those planning on homeschooling preschool, list your favorite FREE resources here. I'm thinking that those sites w/ sample lesson plans, activities, helpful tips, or articles will be the most useful here.
Here's a few I just found today:
http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/poptopics.html -- Clearinghouse on Early Education & Parenting
http://www.homeedmag.com/index.html -- Home Education magazine
http://www.kidspsych.org/oochy.html -- free, simple computer games that teach various concepts to preschoolers
As you can tell, I haven't really found what I'm looking for yet.
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