Kids Eat FREE @ IKEA ~ September 3- 5, 2011

Ikea.com

Ikea is offering a FREE meal for kids valued at $2.49. They can choose from Mac & Cheese, Chicken tenders or meatball dishes.

No purchase is necessary. Find out more at Ikea's website.

FREE Shipping on Sears.com Online Orders ~ Coupon CODE

For the Labor Day weekend, Sears.com is offering free shipping on all orders from its website.

The coupon code is LABORDAYSHIP. Find out how to use it at Sears' website or by clicking here.

Top 5 Ideas for Homeschooling Field Trips

Flickr Image by liberalmind1012

 

As a homeschool instructor,you may want to incorporate a special homeschooling field trip into your curriculum. This is not only beneficial to the student, but you can also document this in your homeschool portfolio.

When deciding what venues you would like to use as field trips, you need to figure out what you want your students to get out of the field trip. While some homeschool parents enjoy taking their children to the more traditional science museum or zoo, many others choose to participate in apprenticeship types of venues.

These type of trips involve students getting an early, hands-on experience of trades and/or careers that they can learn from that will most benefit and prepare them for providing an income for themselves and their future families.

Many traditional schools incorporate this type of vocational learning into their curricula, in the form of shop class or other electives, so it is not uncommon. Here a few ideas for this very useful portion of your child's education.

Bakery. Your best option when finding a vocational based field trip is a venue that involves a great deal of entrepreneurship. Many young individuals are often only faced with the employment side of the economy and never usually see what the business owners do on a daily basis. Bakeries offer a great way to expose your children to that side of it. Students will not only be given an opportunity to understand business but they can also learn a very useful trade in the process. Contact your local bakery and ask if your students can stop by for an hour or so and talk to you about what they do for a "school" project. For older students, there may also be volunteer opportunities that your students can participate in, with the bakery.


Factory or distribution center. These venues offer another great way for students can get a background insight to how things in their world operate. Students will be able to see how products on shelves at their local grocery store are produced and distributed, what it takes to operate these centers and a bit about the benefits of productivity.Call your local center's human resources and see if you could set up a small field trip to visit.

Farm or nursery. Again, another great entrepreneurship/trade skill enhancing field trip.Students can learn how to operate a farm both as a business and as a trade. Students can also volunteer for these business to help them learn more. Call your local farm or nursery and ask the business owner to help arrange a field trip or volunteer opportunity.

Workshop or training course. While it is true that your students are being homeschooled, they may want to learn or find out more about a particular interest outside of academia. Woodworking courses, cooking classes, business seminars and career fairs are all good places to get experience and find out information that will help them after they finishing their homeschooling education.

Take your child to work day. What better way to get real life experience, then seeing what your parent does for a living. Whether the parent is a business owner, manager or an employee they could gain a great deal of experience from different areas. Depending on what the parent does or where he works, you may need special permission for your student to attend the workplace.

FREE Backpack with Office Depot Purchase ~ Online Coupon Only

Officedepot.com

With the new school year starting, your homeschoolers may need lots of supplies to get the year started. Office Depot is giving out FREE backpacks with attached lunch tote with every $15 online purchase.

Click here for more details and how to redeem your gift.

40 % OFF Michael's Crafts Printable Coupon

Visit Michael's website to print out your store's coupons.

When I make my crafts, I usually head to Michaels for supplies. They have pretty much anything you need to make projects for kids, homeschooling activities and craft supplies for scrapbooking and more.

Now, Michael's is offering a 40% off coupon in their weekly advertisements. You can find these on their website in the Weekly Ad section or you can sign up for their email newsletter to receive them.

Either way, it's a pretty good deal..

How to Make Money From Home ~ Starting a Home Based Tutoring Business

homework ritual by woodleywonderworks

As the school year resumes, many parents are looking for affordable and effective ways to get extra help for their children. Many stay-at-home parents can take advantage of home based tutoring. Home based tutoring involves students visiting their instructors at the instructor's home on a daily,weekly,biweekly or monthly basis. Starting up this type of business requires obtaining legal information, knowledge of the subjects intended to teach and how to effectively teach them, business operational skills, organization and a decent amount of marketing skills. Here are a few tips to get started in the home based tutoring business.

Review and comply with your local laws. Many states and local municipalities now have laws concerning home based business and often have specific ordinances about how you can conduct this type of business including maximum customer visits to the location, parking restrictions, even hours of operation.So it is important to find out from your local municipality what you will need to do in order to conduct a home based business.

Brush up on subjects and your pedagogical skills..No matter how high you scored on your school exams, you may still need to brush up on these subjects as they are being taught today. Schools may have new ways of teaching subjects or new material that they have included or taken out of certain grade curriculum's. Keep yourself updated on the latest curriculum changes.

As much as teaching is about knowing what your teaching, it is about knowing how to teach. Much about teaching involves knowing how to properly interpret what you know and making it understandable to your students. You may want to brush up on this aspect, as well, by reading books,guided lesson plans or even take a few classes in the art of pedagogy.

Develop a business plan that includes profit. As funny as it sounds, you will need a plan that includes making money, not breaking even or making a loss. You should start by evaluating all of your expenses, such as materials, advertising expenses, business licensing, even utilities. You will need to factor these expenses into your pricing.

You will also want to decide how you want to charge your students. Some people decide to charge by the hour, if they decide to conduct shorter lessons. While some people charge by the session, if they teach multiple subjects or conduct more extensive lessons. Each instructor has his own preference and you will need to decide which schedule best suits you.

Organize your business.  Like operating a school classroom, this business requires a great deal of organization. However, unlike a classroom where you are giving foundational instruction, you will only be limited to aiding the student in his current assignments or building unto what students already or are currently learning. As a tutor, your job is not essentially to teach anything new but to aid in the current learning process the student is already undergoing at his or her current school. This will require appropriate material, student-tutor communication and even tutor-teacher communication.

Apart from organizing your tutoring sessions pedagogically, you will need to schedule and prepare your session properly. This will including scheduling your students properly, providing payment schedules, organizing your material for both you and parent, and adequately using session time to cover material. You can start getting organized by developing a calendar and a time sheet to keep you on track for these events.


Market and advertise your business. Once you have your business set up and organized, you will want to begin spreading the word about your business. While widespread advertising venues, such as local ads or newspapers could be beneficial, you want to reach your niche market more effectively by advertising directly to small groups such as PTAs, homeschooling groups, local education supplies stores, etc. These could be great ways to directly reach those who would be most interested.

Another creative way of advertising your services, may be to offer a few of your lessons at a local venue such as your city recreation center, at schools or even retail stores. Schools and city centers often look for business to provide services, like these, to their community. This could be a great way to have the institution to drum up business for you.

Keep in mind, marketing isn't just about finding clients. You will need to provide information about yourself and your credentials. Many parents and institutions will want to know that you are qualified to instruct before they consider using your services. Make sure to provide that information whenever you advertise your services.

Home based tutoring is a great way to earn money from home. It takes a reasonable amount of preparation and planning so that you can run it successfully. It's best to do your research before diving into anything. Making it profitable can be done with proper business planning and organization skills to prepare you and your students for a positive learning experience.

How to work from home while homeschooling

Image by THOR from Home Suite Studio

As homeschooling parent, you may still want to have to choice of contributing to the household income. There are many opportunities to do so while managing your home schooled students. However, there are a few ideas to keep in mind when deciding how to work from home.

Choosing a field. While many online websites may claim that you can do almost anything to make money from home. It is not realistic. Many home based workers, find there is only one main avenue to go through; entrepreneurship. Starting your own business from home is often the only way to make a reasonable income. This is because there are very few employers willing to hire people remotely. So, as the job market becomes meeker, many home based workers will need to create the work for themselves rather than look for a company that will accommodate to the home based employee.

Start by researching small business ideas and find out what your skilled at or what you think you might be able to learn. Ahbbo.com has a master list of 400 business ideas that you can start from home.

Managing your time.This may be the hardest part of working at home, especially when homeschooling. You will need to find out how much time you will need for work and how much time you will need for schoolwork. Many work-at-home parents, schedule the early morning hours for their business operations and the daytime hours for homeschooling.

If you do work that requires you to do a bit of travel or leave the home for a few hours, you will need to schedule your homeschooling around that, as it may be less flexible. Oftentimes, you can break the homeschooling up throughout the day. A few hours in the morning before work and then a few hours in the afternoon, after work. You can even incorporate homeschooling into your trips outside the home. Making time for field study or even apprenticeship can be a good way to do so.