We use technology! I know that is taboo at times but we do. And frankly, I feel that it enhances our homeschool – not hinders. There are 3 technical gadgets that help our homeschool that we use regularly and you may find these 3 gadgets you need for your homeschool too. I use them as well as the kids and they have been helpful. I didn’t even realize how much I was going to love a couple of them but I do – I LOVE THEM! If you are looking for some new ways to make your homeschool efficient and utilize technology to get things done, you will want to check out these 3 technical gadgets that help our homeschool almost every day.
#3 – Kindle Fire – Yes, I allow the kids to play educational games online and what I LOVE about the Kindle Fire is the Free Play App that allows me to set requirements. I only allow them to play other games like Baby Dressup, and Test Pilot, and Minecraft AFTER they play educational games and the Free Play app allows me to require that. That is one of the best features of the Kindle Fire. AND you can set time limits and periods that they cannot use the Kindle at all, like from 7p to 10a or something like that. The kids do some of their electronic school on it if they have that assigned that day, we use it as a family to view Classical Conversations app related pictures like the Timeline Cards and History Snippets, and we can use it with our Rosetta Stone and ABCMouse.
We have a subscription to Right-Now Video (through SchoolhouseTeachers.com) that we use to video What’s in the Bible videos as part of our Bible study once a week. We typically use it for that unless we all head to the living room to watch on the Smart TV.
, Netflix and YouTube. We use You Tube in school A LOT! Right now we are using Amazon Prime to watch some of the Torchlighters series on missionaries we have been talking about other heroes from the church like Martin Luther. We also watch a great little guy on You Tube called A Kid Explains History which my son loves! We get little snippets about what we are studying like the Napolean, Black Death, and Ancient Eygpt. Next semester we will be using for snippets on World War I and World War II as well as William Shakespeare and the Space Race. Roku allows us to watch You Tube as well, which is great. And something great about Roku is that you can take it with you so, when we go on the road with dad and are homeschooling from a hotel room, our Roku goes with us and therefore so do our subscription channels. We have the Roku player but they also have a Roku Stick if that is more your speed.
(drumroll please)
The Amazon Echo
Weird, right? But I have to tell you, I HAD NO IDEA IT WOULD BE SO GREAT!!!
Truth be told, I purchased the Amazon Echo for my husband for his birthday last year. My thought was that, in the morning, when he is up before everyone, having the Echo in our kitchen would allow him to check his sports scores and the weather and traffic while he was making his lunch and getting his coffee. It didn’t really happen that way. For a while, it was in the wrong room and then he forgets about it.
But the kids and I — well, we use it almost every day.
First, if the kids finish something they are working on, they get to ask Alexa to tell them a joke.
“Alexa, tell me a joke.” They say and Alexa tells them a joke.
It has always been clean. Though sometimes a little over their heads, but most of the time not, the jokes have been pretty good and they really like having the opportunity to ask her to tell them a joke.
However, that’s not the part where this technical gadget helps our homeschool. That’s just a perk!
How do I use it? Well, I have our Classical Conversations memory work in iTunes on my phone. I use it as a Bluetooth speaker and send that to Alexa to play while we are working on our memory work. Additionally, I have the files for our pronunciation guides for our Latin and French on the computer and I can have Alexa retrieve that from my user and play those files on my computer. Or, if they are on my tablet or phone, I can again use it as a Bluetooth speaker and use it.
When we are doing morning time we ask Alexa what the weather is outside and then the kids like to find out the temperature in Alaska and Hawaii and Australia and other places we are talking about in geography or history. That is fun and Alexa gives us an answer.
If we are studying a time in history, we can ask Alexa to look up something about that time period. We can also ask her to play samples of songs from the Amazon Prime Music library (or our personal iTunes library). So when we are studying a composer, we have Alexa play something when we are talking about the composer. We have also asked Alexa to tell us other works by a composer or artist.
Alexa does math too. So, kids can’t remember how many teaspoons in a tablespoon or the formula for an area of a circle, Alexa can give them a little help with just a quick question. This has been helpful many times during cooking or math lessons. The kids have had fun asking Alexa complicated math problems too, which is pretty funny!
So, I THINK my husband occasionally checks the weather but I would say, overall, we highjacked his birthday present! It’s been great during school time for sure!
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