WV Home Educators Association
Newsletter July 2023
In this newsletter:
Hugh O Brian Youth leadership reports
Homeschool Q and A
Sights and Sounds in the Mountain State
Friendly reminder that all registered homeschoolers should have had an assessment completed for the school year 2022-23. The assessment should have been turned in to your local Board of Education IF your child was in grades 3,5,8, or 11. All assessment should be kept on file for 3 years.
WVHEA sponsored 3 students for the HOBY leadership conference the first week of June. Sophomore students from the around the state are selected for their leadership potential to participate in this weeklong seminar in Fairmont WV . It is open to public, private, and homeschooled students.
Some of the comments the students had incuded:
Jack-I am thankful for the opportunity to attend HOBY Youth Leadership conference, appreciative of all the people who work so hard to help young leaders and made it a fun week for us! I would recommend it to other young leaders who want to make a difference in the future.
Sydney-We didn’t just try to get through the weekend, we participated, learned and grew together. We were taught many things at HOBY. Like how to be a good leader and how to make change in our communities. I learned a lot and had a wonderful time. I would highly recommend going to HOBY Youth Leadership Camp…..
If you have a rising sophomore who would be interested in attending HOBY next year, reach out to a Board Member and let us know.
Homeschool Q and A
Question : We do portfolios but my child hates written work especially worksheets. How can I show that he is learning and making progress without making him do a bunch of worksheets?
Answer: There are a lot of ways to show progress besides just worksheets and tests.
One of the simplest ways is oral narration. Simply put ask dad/grandma/ neighbors if they want to know what child has been studying. Ask child what they learned that day and quickly pull out your phone and videotape while child rattles off everything they learned about a certain subject. Simply upload the video to a private FB group, private IG account or just to the cloud so it is easily accessible when it is time for portfolio reviews.
Taking pictures /videos of kids cooking, building, going on field trips etc. is also great to use for portfolios.
Other ways include making collages (most libraries have free magazines that you can use), so if you are studying reptiles let your child cut out all the pictures of reptiles and glue them to a piece of poster board. Or they can do a Lego model of animals or a scene from a period in history. If your child loves Minecraft they can do all this in Minecraft and then take screenshots to use for portfolio reviews. Drawing a picture can also work great.
For older kids writing a skit/play / song/ poem or short story about things they are learning can be fun , just take pictures of it.
Sights and Sounds in the Mountain State
July 6-8 Holly River State Park –archery, fishing , and how to measure trees
July 7-9 Chief Logan State Park –all about bugs
July 9 Blennerhassett Island –birds of prey educational program
July 12 Pricketts Fort State Park-Colonial Kids Day
July 14-16th Twin Falls State Park –Civil War re enactment
July 20th Cacapon State Park –Geology program
July 22-Beech Fork State Park –Bill Lep homeschool dad and storyteller
July 23-Pipestem State Park –Shakespeare in the Park
July 29th Chief Logan State Park –meteor shower watch
For more fun family events check out wvstateparks.com/events