"I don't want to write a report." One of the problems homeschoolers face is that it's hard to get motivated to do well-written, well-edited writing when no one but Mom will be reading it. Giving your child a personal web page is one solution to this problem. Creating the web page, and, if they're old enough, learning html) can be an elective, technology, or occupational class for those legal records you have to keep.)

When my teenager was reluctant to write the long list of papers required for her composition class, I suggested she write most of them on basketball, and post them on her web page. She was a little doubtful, but at least basketball was fun to write about. Her page features the American Basketball League, a woman's professional basketball league. Her first paper was a comparison and contrast of this league and the other women's league, the WNBA. To her surprise, as soon as it was posted, she started getting feedback on it in her guest book and in her e-mail. College students and adults complimented her writing, and a few even suggested she consider a writing career. Others critiqued her arguments. One man pointed out a circular argument we had missed. When my daughter realized her paper was being seriously read, she went back and re-edited it. Her other papers are being written much more carefully, now that she knows people are really reading. More importantly, her articles led to her being hired as the Women's Sports Editor for Suite101, an on-line publication, which means she is now paid to write a good, well-researched article every month.

It seems like every homeschooler in America has a homepage these days. Many of them are tied to the work they do at school. Others are tied to hobbies. Very soon, though, children who spend much time surfing learn that spelling counts. My kids notice that bulletin board writers with poor skills are made fun of or not listened to. When they work on their pages, they want their spelling checked. Good pages require good writing.

School related pages don't have to be full of reports. My eleven year old is doing a pioneer page, because she loves pioneers. She is including book reports of her favorite pioneer books, quizzes, and fun facts. She may write a few pioneer stories as well, and she is working on some drawings. By the time she finishes her page, she will have incorporated most of her school subjects, and she won't even know it. My son's page is on Star Wars, which doesn't sound very educational, but he too is including the books he reads that are based on the program. I'm sure we can get him to do a little astronomy too. I seldom allow my children to work on their pages during school, so they think of it as a hobby, but they're researching, writing, reading, and drawing in their free time.

There are many sources of free homepages on the web. We use Geocities because it's easy and it has a children's neighborhood. Each person has to have a different e-mail address, but there are many sources of these, too. Check out some of my links at the bottom of these articles for help in creating a web-page, as well as a few kid-done pages to use as examples. (If they're not here, yet, they will be soon. Give me a few days.)

You don't have to be a computer genius to make a home page. Many programs, including WordPerfect and Word, let you type in your material, and they do all the programming for you. Most kids, however, take to html easily, and will be real webmasters in no time. Then they can do your page for you. (My teenager does mine. I saw another homeschool page that credited a nine-year-old as the html expert.) I've included a link to the html tutor my daughter used. She said it's clean, easy and funny. In a few weeks, she will have a new page teaching children how to create Geocities web pages, using their own html. I'll put a link here when it's done.

If your children make homepages, let me know. I love visiting homeschoolers' pages. Good luck!