Homeschooling Article in SLJ

Check out the article on homeschooling in the August 1 issue of SLJ. My friend Cathy Henderson from the Greece Public Library is mentioned. Woo to Cathy! Her homeschooling programs have been innovative and popular.

Presentation for Mid-Hudson Library System

Here are the slides I’ll be using for my presentation at the Mid-Hudson Library System, “Serving Homeschooling Families,” tomorrow, Thursday, May 1 from 10am-Noon:
Helping Homeschooling Families Presentation

A Good Start: The Less-than-$150 Homeschooling Collection

Many librarians I speak to tell me that they don’t have much money to devote to serving homeschoolers and feel overwhelmed trying to figure out where to start. With that in mind, I offer you my Less-than-$150 Homeschooling Collection. These are books that span a wide variety of homeschooling needs and should circulate and prove [...]

Circulation of Curriculum Kits at the Webster Public Library

Recently, one of our WPL staff members did an analysis of the circulation of our curriculum kits (we call them “subject kits” here). I thought some of you who are considering creating kits of your own might be interested in the results. Click here for the analysis in PDF format. We put our first thirty [...]

Updated Curriculum Kit Listing

We recently updated our list of curriculum kits available in the Monroe County Library System. I thought I’d post it here as a PDF in case it’s a help to any of you trying to design kits of your own.

PLA 2008

For those of you attending the PLA Conference in Minneapolis this year, I will be leading a Talk Table discussion about homeschooling on Thursday, March 27th from 10:30-11:45 AM. I’ll be bringing some resources from my library for people to take a look at, and I’m really looking forward to seeing who comes and what [...]

Public Libraries Looking for “Perspectives” on Homeschooling

Public Libraries, the journal of the Public Library Association, is looking for essays about homeschooling for an upcoming “Perspectives” feature. Find more information here.
Thanks to Susan from Wizards Wireless for giving me the heads-up on this.

Anatomy of a Curriculum Kit, Part 4: Processing and Circulating Kits

When I talk about curriculum kits, I get a lot of questions from librarians about how to process and circulate them. The best way to handle these issues is going to vary widely from situation to situation, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. That said, I’ll tell you some things I [...]

Anatomy of a Curriculum Kit, Part 3: Resources to Help You Pull It Together

Selecting materials to create kits in subject areas you may or may not know much about can be a challenge. You can feel free to copy our kits, but I’d bet a fair number of the items we chose are already out of print. Here are some resources I’ve found helpful when designing curriculum kits.
Children’s [...]

Anatomy of a Curriculum Kit, Part 2: Deciding Which Topics to Cover

Once you’ve decided to create curriculum kits, your first priority will be figuring out what topics to cover. Here are some things to consider:

What is the homeschooling community looking for? You may want to gather information through surveys or focus groups. Curriculum kits are a significant investment of time and money, so you want to [...]