Customer Reviews

Trust the Children: An Activity Manual for Homeschooling and Alternative Learning

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You will not find repeats from homeschool help books here! It is a fun and extremely creative book full of educational games, most used spelling words, fantastic quotes, play-dough recipes, teaching ideas, writing ideas, memory tips, art ideas, much much more! A really fun fun and stimulating book for all ages and all experience levels. It is not strictly from a Christian perspective and I find myself mentally replacing her few references to a high power with the words "God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob" but not a problem. Very non-denominational. My favorite part is where she has you visualize your perfect learning space....as a project for planning but with involvment from kids. Describe the lighting, the art, the books, the colors, the nature stuff, the seating, the work space, etc. and with her own helpful ideas. This is a "learning space" and not a "classroom". A real inspiration for that hs burn out that sets in once in a while. Not a book that you read from cover to cover, but one you keep going back to often and skipping all around. Especially for those with a desire to incorporate some unschooling ideas. Worth buying!

Anna Kealoha provides as a successful mother of four and homeschool teacher provides an insightful ideology of teaching. Her experience also crafts this book as a resource that is abundant with a myriad of wonderful ways to learn.

As a pioneer of the home and school method, what Kealoha calls blend schooling, she offers a revolutionary way to look at education. She accomplishes this noteworthy task in a very practical and straightforward manner, drawing on academic theories, but only engaging that which is crucial to a parent's or educator's knowledge.

The result of this conglomerate of philosophy and practical wisdom is a wealth of information sure to assist any person concerned about their child's education.

As a homeschooling mother of four, the best testament for this book came the day the children began to use it for ideas and inspiration. Anna Kealoha has a beautiful and thoughtful attitude about how, why and when to teach our own whether homeschooling or not.

Anna Kealoha is clearly a connoisseur of teaching and learning, and she is happy to share her "secret recipes" for joyful and successful home education.

This encyclopedic cookbook of recipes for learning is jam-packed with creative ideas that will appeal to parents and children of all ages. It is incredibly comprehensive, with a wide variety of games, curriculum outlines, inspirational essays, lists of resources, and more.

My husband likes the logic puzzles and book lists. My older daughter likes the math section, where she finds endless inspiration for charting, graphing, and calendarizing her life. My youngest finds the word games exciting. And I find a welcome surprise on every page!

So, like Grandma's recipe book, this wise and wonderful guidebook has never yet made it onto the bookshelf at our house -- because someone is always using it!

This book had the potential to be really good, but it does not live up to this potential. Kealoha indulges herself in a brief 2 paragraphs about homebirth because "homeschooling is a natural continuation of homebirth..." While I support homebirth, this book is not about homebirth and 2 paragraphs cannot begin to treat the complex issues surrounding birth. To me, and possibly to other readers who, like me, are/were unable to birth at home, the statement that "parents should always be in complete control of the birthing situation and ... and should not readily give away their birthing power to the medical establishment" is ignorant and offensive, and smacks of snobbery.

Ignoring the extraneous and poorly-worded birthing topic, there is much that is useful in the book. However, there is also a great deal of 'filler' material that bore an unhealthy resemblance to the dittos and busy work that I remember from my own public school days. This book should have been written and edited with greater care. I imagine the author decided to write a book about alternative homelearning, wrote a few worthwhile paragraphs, then collected material willy-nilly to make a full-length book.

A better approach might be to write about homelearning as a personal endeavor and, when the material has piled up quite naturally, to edit ruthlessly, before even considering publication.