#1: Welcome to Our Book Club!
Due to recent events, students are required to engage in learning in a variety of different ways. With schools closed, finding effective homeschooling methods can be challenging and a little stressful at times. Fortunately, Tutoring…With a Twist* is here to offer homeschool help.
As a way of giving back to the community, we’re starting our very own online book club! Our ‘twisted’ tutors will be sharing their favourite books via free live streaming services, and we invite you and your student(s) to join us.
With all the reading you’ll be doing, you’ll want to keep track of what you’ve read. Courtesy of Everyday-Reading.com, here’s a handy reading log to help you! You can print out the picture and write the title of each book on the spines of the books in the picture. Feel free to add colour as you wish!
Homeschool Help with The Hobbit
The first part of our book club will take place every Thursday at 12:00 noon. One of our ‘twisted’ tutors, Chris, will be reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. These live readings will be accompanied by questions and other opportunities for engagement, so you can tick off some homeschooling boxes while your kids listen.
If your student has been tasked with completing a novel study, our book club books certainly count! It’s also a perfect chance to experience The Hobbit in book form if you’ve only seen the movies. Make sure to tune in to our Facebook stream every Thursday at noon to hear all about the wonderful adventures of Bilbo Baggins.
Family Fun Fridays
Every Friday, also at 12:00 noon, Alvina will be hosting Family Fun Fridays. She kicked this off last week by reading You Must Bring a Hat by Simon Philip and Kate Hindley. As a fun little follow up, she showed us all how to make fashionable hats using only a piece of standard printer paper. If you’d like to make one of these hats for yourself, you can watch Alvina’s video here.
Family Fun Fridays will consist of Alvina reading a children’s book for everyone to enjoy. In addition, kids will have an opportunity to take part in a fun and exciting hands-on activity to go alongside the reading. This form of homeschool help is great for younger kids and brings the whole family together. Check out what Alvina has in store for our book club every Friday; it’s bound to be a ton of fun!
The Book Thief Tuesdays
And there’s more! Every Tuesday at 3:00pm, Julie will be reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This critically-acclaimed novel is suited for students in grade 8 and older. If this has been on your to-be-read pile for a while or you think your student would enjoy it, we encourage you to tune in!
For Homeschool Help, Julie will be providing questions and would love this to be interactive! Each stream will function as a sort of novel study that gives students an opportunity to interact with and respond to the text.
Being a native French speaker, Julie can happily offer her services in both English and French. So, if you’ve been struggling to find homeschool help for French immersion, look no further! Remember to tune in to her live stream every Tuesday at 3:00pm to take part in The Book Thief.
What will the homeschool help assignments be like? 
Our tutors will provide verbal prompts for students to consider as they listen. There will also be opportunities for students to compose written responses to help develop their critical-thinking and writing skills.
You can also get creative with it! We encourage students to take on exciting projects in addition to what is already provided by the book club. Perhaps your child could draw a map of Middle Earth to go with The Hobbit, or maybe they could make a poster highlighting their favourite parts of The Book Thief. The possibilities are endless!
#2: Tips for Homeschooling During a Pandemic
We understand it’s a struggle to know how to properly go about homeschooling your child during this era of e-learning. Our founder, Amber Scotchburn, will be live on our Facebook page every school day to share a piece of homeschool help to ease you through this unprecedented time of online learning. Amber is an internationally recognized parenting expert and author of the book Parenting…With A Twist: 12 Positive Parenting Tips For Raising Confident & Success Ready Children.
These tips will be for the everyday parent, like you, to have your own Skills Assessment of how you are doing as you homeschool your child. Like hundreds of families, place your trust in Amber’s Success…With A Twist system to help you transform the knowledge gleaned from this skills assessment to empower you to discover the positive parent within! You’ve got this!
Amber’s encouraging storytelling, passion for people, love of humour, uncanny insights, and her interactive process of teaching will come through in every video. Sound too good to be true?! Come on over to Facebook and watch one of her videos to see how she reaches the everyday parent, just like you!
Do I have to watch the live streams to participate in the book club or parenting tips?
All of our live streams will be made available as videos on our Facebook page, so you can access them at any time. However, if you would like to ask questions and interact with the tutors in real time, we encourage you to attend each session at the scheduled time if possible.
The book club is meant to be a fun little bit of homeschool help, so we would love to have you take part in any way you can!
Amber’s videos aren’t at scheduled times, so you will just have to catch her if you can ;)! However, she would love to hear from you as to what your biggest struggle is and what your biggest wins are. Feel free to comment on her videos!
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay in touch.
What books would you like us to read next? Head over to our Facebook page and let us know! In addition to homeschool help, we’re also continuing to offer online tutoring during this time, so be sure to contact us if you would like to learn more.
*Services provided by With a Twist Education Ltd.