There’s no question -- not every family is able to homeschool. Every family’s situation is unique and sometimes that means it is impossible for some families to school at home. If you find yourself presently in a situation not conducive to homeschooling here are some easily adaptable suggestions and ideas for a modified homeschooling regimen.

It is first essential that as a parent you make a deliberate decision to put education first and foremost in your home. Ensuring that your child receives a stellar education must rank in equal importance to providing adequate shelter, food and safety for your children because it is also with an excellent education that your children can accomplish their own goals and dreams for the future. So, set your mind steadfastly on not only providing an education for your family; but providing an excellent education. There is a difference.

Utilize Evening Hours At Home

Many say that there aren’t nearly enough hours in the day to accomplish everything. Do not allow your busy schedule to deter the work that you want to do with your children at home every evening. Oftentimes during the school week evening hours pass so quickly that it seems far easier to cook a quick meal, watch a few hours of television and fall into bed instead of eating a meal together as a family, working on homework instead of watching television and reading a story to your children before they fall asleep. You must make a concerted effort to go over your child’s homework every evening to help them understand and reinforce the work that they do during the school hours. Your children will, in turn, imbue a confidence unrivaled to others in their class. By putting forth that extra educational effort every evening your child will gain a mastery of their school work. They will also be given the tools that will allow them to face the next school day. Helping your child the day before translates into proven results during their school year.

Weekend Hours At A Glance

The weekend invariably rolls around just as quickly as evening hours pass. That is why it is particularly important that you use the time that you have to your advantage. It is crucial that you do not over-extend your children into a litany of activities during their weekends. You don’t want your children as busy as they are during the week. The weekends should be reserved for relaxation and reflection for you and your family. That includes your children as well.

Put together educational activities that you and your family can enjoy. Visit a local cultural center, go to the library, take a walk on a nature trail, or visit an art museum. These are all activities that the family can do on a Saturday that entails not only quality family time, but also affords great learning opportunities.

If you don’t want to go out, find opportunities to learn at home during the weekends. Take some time to teach geography by finding lesser known countries on the world map( something that all families should have). Or, you can gather the children together and teach a math lesson by baking a cake or by baking bread. You can also step right outside your door and encourage your children to turn over rocks, look underneath leaves, and roll over logs to see what life dwells outside in the insect world.

School Vacations And Summer: Perfect Learning Times

Some decidedly rich opportunities to get in effective educational time at home are during the holidays and summer. Obviously, during some of the shorter holidays in the school year, your children will probably be occupied with completing projects, reading books and studying for exams waiting for them when they return to school. In these cases, make sure to assist your children with their projects and insist that they finish their readings early so they can review the story and get a firm grasp on the content and the details. Ensure that your children have thoroughly studied for their exam everyday during the holidays and not wait until the night before.

On longer holidays take the time to put together involved projects. A lot of these projects you can get from Internet sites. For example, during the summer, help your children plant a container garden or help them to learn about the moon cycles by tracking where the moon is each night. You can peruse teacher websites and glean ideas for lesson plans and even view sample lesson plans for free on most sites. Assign novels for your children to read and then have your children write a book report about what they read.

If your children, especially boys, are more adept at outdoor activities or building things, take them to your local home improvement store and buy them some wood, paint, nails and a hammer or drill and project plans (parental advisory necessary) and let them learn math through building a chair, table or bookshelf.

If you are a Black parent looking online for multicultural educational tools, where do you go? Google? Yahoo? MSN? Those were the correct answers and only resorts until today. Instead of searching through irrelevant site after irrelevant site, all you need to have is a copy of Black Families Online: Directory of Online Resources for Black Parents handy, peruse its contents, plug in the given URLs and you’re in business.

Stacey Montgomery, the publisher of the premiere Black parenting website, Celebrating Children http://www.celebratingchildren.com wrote the recently released Black Families Online: Directory of Online Resources for Black Parents after she had difficulty finding Black websites herself. Realizing how hard it is for parents to find quality Black consumer, informational and educational sites, Montgomery set out to amass as many sites as she could and compile them into one book. Montgomery says in the introduction that, “With the growing use of the Internet by Black people, there is a growing number of websites targeted to Black families.” This is certainly true. The evidence? Black Families Online is now a compilation of nearly 400 Black sites that offers products ranging from Black and multicultural educational tools to Black parenting sites and everything in between.

As a handy resource tool, Black Families Online is divided into twenty different chapters some of which include “Dolls, Toys and Games”, “Greeting Cards and Other Paper Products” and “Magazines”. All of the nearly 400 given sites are either wholly Black-oriented, multicultural or sites that are not specifically targeted to Black parents, but contain a considerable amount of information useful to Black families. One of the most helpful features of Black Families Online is the thoroughness of the summaries following each site title and URL. Montgomery lets you know if the site has online purchasing capabilities or if the site has a Yahoo! group that you may join in addition to perusing the site, for example. You’ll also find the site summaries particularly helpful as they contain book titles relevant to the site and other interesting informational tidbits that make the site worth visiting.

The most appealing aspect of the book, however, is the connection that Montgomery creates between the reader and some of the actual site owners. Quotes from site owners, lightly dispersed throughout the book, reveal the personal reasons behind the making of some of the sites as well as thoughts about the importance of the Internet and the online presence in the Black community. Pamela Anderson, author and publisher of Watch Me Grow Kids, http://www.watchmegrowkids.com says, “As a business owner, it is important to have a website to reach black families because products targeting their needs are more difficult to get distributed through the retail outlets most frequently patronized by the general public.”

Black Families Online also contains a workbook in its appendix designed to help you find websites fast for a variety of occasions and purposes in addition to blank forms where you can jot down the "must-see" sites. Black parenting book titles are also provided for additional reading and offline resource tools. A glossary of terms intended to help newbie Web surfers nears the end of the book along with an alphabetical listing of the sites.

Black Families Online: Directory of Online Resources for Black Parents is a book that all families should have at arms' length. It will save you valuable time and treat you to a plethora of quality Black sites.