I enjoy making free educational stuff, and lately I'm getting into making free (and ad-free, except for my begging) educational videos for pre-K to 4th grade: My question to the hive mind is: What are some effective ways I might try to get financial support for my activities? I'm just trying to get ideas to consider and maybe pursue. My videos are pretty darn popular, by the way. The 26 educational videos I uploaded over the past five years or so received over 1,000,000 views, all together, and videos on the more popular topics get around 60,000 views per year. Also, I make these videos quickly—e.g., the dinosaurs video above probably took around five hours for me to make, upload, etc. But this isn't enough for my family to live on...unless I quit earning an income for a year, which I don't have the freedom to do. Thanks in advance for any useful pointers!

@Kfamily, perfect! Exactly what I was after. Thank you!

I replied to this a week ago but apparently it was never saved! Anyway, thanks, Momto4inSoCal. I checked out all your recommendations and I appreciate them. Omnibus looks pretty advanced—original sources, right? I think we can handle some original sources, like The Odyssey (we've read several easier versions of it before so it's not asking so much), but I'm not sure I want to inflict all of the original sources on him yet (e.g., reading all of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch etc. in translation). Britannica's Great Books and the Harvard Classics are both awesome, obviously...but they're also strictly original sources. academybookstore.org looks awesome and I hadn't seen that before, so I'm all over that.

All, we're starting to plan for my older son's "second time through" history. We want it to be more in-depth this time and less based on a "spine." He is ready to start reading some original sources, but not the whole hog of Herodotus and Tacitus etc. Probably Homer, but with a parent reading it to him and discussing it. But he can read Black Ships Before Troy by himself. What I'd really like to find are (a) books that go into the ancient world in some depth, but a step below upper high school/college level reading. We know about (and have) Yesterday's Classics, and we'll avail ourselves of that (already have) as well as the ClassicalCurriculum.com model curriculum. I'm just wondering if anyone has collected any more of that material together either in the form of links to Google Books, a bibliography, or whatever. Of course we do have WTM... The other thing we'd love to find are (b) guided readings of source material like this. There is a little original source material that he can read on his own, like Aesop and a few other things, but what I'd really love to find is guided selections of readings from ancient (and later) sources, from both history and literature. Not sure I'm making myself very clear so please feel free to ask for clarification!

Have you tried ReadingBear.org?

Thanks again, Harriet. I did assign a research report once and more or less tried to do what you say: I let him write a report about a computer topic he is already wonkish about. The trouble is that it ended up being more of a tutorial than a research report. I also bought a research report book once and just never took the time to go through it with him. But anyway, we'll probably try again, before too long. I like your idea about letting structure (and footnotes and bibliography etc.) take a back seat to the writing. Yes, just on his own he started writing a textbook for his little 4-year-old brother, a couple times. But if we made the topic something less textbooky and more inherently to the 9-year-old, I think that'll work out well. texasmama, I don't think trying a report now and then will kill his love of writing...but a program that is unrelentingly dull would, and we won't let that happen. He already distinguishes between dull, difficult writing and fun writing, anyway...

Has anybody anywhere compiled a list of Greek and Latin classics (to read in translation, at least at first) in order of accessibility, perhaps for purposes of study by homeschoolers? I'm aware that this has been a matter of some debate through the ages, but it would be nice to have a list to start from. I found this, but it's just a start: http://thelatinschool.org/booklistclassical/ Another list, for middle school! http://homeschoolconnectionsonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/ancient-greece-reading-list-for-middle.html Here's a massive list: http://www.classicalcurriculum.com/ModelCurriculum.htm... the originals don't seem to be introduced until 9th grade.

I very much appreciate Harriet's wisdom here! Yes, even though the structure of Writing With Skill might look nice after several years of unstructured writing, I'll be a little surprised if he ends up liking the WWS exercises I'm seeing in SWB's generous 100-page sample. What I feel we need is some hand-holding when it comes to the processes of creating research reports, book reports, and other such things. Mama and I could also use some help making the time to give him feedback...so we might invest in a tutor or class. texasmama, are you saying that maybe we just shouldn't bother teaching him stuff like research reports etc. at this stage, and save it for later when he has more discipline and it's just easier for him? It's definitely the case that he can be motivated to write stories and about his interests and a few other things, but anything that requires organization and research that takes more than a day and is not about his hobbies...well, I'm sure we can teach it, but it's going to require handholding, not just because it's more difficult but because he just doesn't wanna. Still, frankly, my view there would be that he ought to start developing his skills at writing a five-paragraph essay and that sort of thing, and if he doesn't like it, too bad, he'll learn to like it. Signing him up to a $100 class for eight weeks (as on Time4Writing) seems very doable. I'll look more into BraveWriter, too. Any other such online writing classes?

Thanks, sportsmom, I hadn't looked at those, and they look like just what the doctor ordered!

Can you help me narrow down my writing curricula options? Maybe some suggestions to add to the list? My ds, age 9, has been writing random stuff almost daily for the last four years. I just tell him to write 150 words or more and he does. Mostly, though, he's writing about his interests—computer stuff (he's a geeky kid), and stories. In the past, we sort-of kind-of tried to go through a Spectrum Writing workbook, but this didn't work very well for us (writing in the blanks was a problem). We've also followed a la carte instructions for writing book reports, lab reports, etc. Here's something he wrote about a month ago (not edited or commented on by anyone): The Life of a Mouse The intriguing story of a shy but surprisingly brave animal. Once upon a time, there was a mouse who lived in a compost bin in someone’s yard. He was a little mouse, and had been separated from his family six months ago when a cat tried to eat them. His family was very kind, and the mouse wanted to go back. The compost bin did provide enough food for a little mouse, and there was plenty of moisture that had collected in the bottom of the compost bin, so the mouse could eat and drink, but he didn’t feel happy without a family. He was also getting tired of the same old leaves and branches every single day. His old home was inside a farmhouse, which means that he got delicacies, such as crumbs of chicken and bread and the like. He could also go outside the house, to the fields, when no one was watching and the farmer wasn’t plowing the fields. Then, he could fill up on wheat. The mouse remembered all these good things about his old life while he lay on a pile of leaves one night, trying to sleep. But, thinking about all this delicious food made his mouth water. So, the mouse tried counting sheep. But, every sheep baaed at him until all that baaing rang in his ears. So he tried thinking about tomorrow and breakfast and the fact that he could eat breakfast after he slept, and this finally made him fall so fast asleep that a lawn mower could not have woken him. The next morning, the mouse decided to go find the farmhouse, where his family must be hoping that he would come. He ate a breakfast of leaves, and burrowed out of the compost pile. It was a hot day outside, and all the flowers had closed. The mouse had been chased many miles away from the farmhouse by its cat, and he had no idea where he was, because his family had never gone this far away from home, in fear of getting lost. The mouse took some leaves, and wove them together to create a handkerchief-style net to put some more leaves in to eat. He decided he could find water and that he didn’t have to bring it with him. He would have brought water, but if he did, it would leak out. So he just put the leaves in the net, tied it onto a stick he had found earlier in the compost bin, and set off on a quest to find his family. The first person he met was an old, crippled mouse, who was very hungry and desperately needed something to eat so that he could stay alive! The former walked up to him and asked, “Don’t you need something to eat?†“Yes, I am starving,†said the old, crippled mouse. “Here, take some of my leaves,†said the younger mouse to the older mouse. (not finished) We've decided we finally want to do a more systematic writing program. He's done a variety of writing types, but since he mostly does stories and writing about his interests (computer stuff), I think I'll want him to do more essays, research reports, and book reports. We haven't decided on this, but here are some features we'd like: Something in the way of a textbook explaining stuff would be nice. (Not strictly necessary.) We'd like to avoid writing in a workbook. Assuming that the child will be handwriting is annoying. We'll have him do this from time to time, but mostly he types. We like videos (e.g., we're fans of the Cozy Grammar videos), but they also aren't necessary. Any good free video series on YouTube??? We'd definitely consider a program in which he works with a real writing teacher, if it weren't too expensive. We want the curricula to have been prepared by somebody who is obviously intelligent, educated, a good writer, and actually an expert. In my experience, a lot of homeschooling curricula fail this requirement. For example, the guy on IEW turns out not even to have a college degree. Sorry, and I don't mean to sound snobbish and I mean no offense to anybody, but I'd need to be convinced that he's a great teacher and knows what he's talking about before considering him. We dislike the usual sorts of "schooling" busywork. We want to get down to the business of actually writing. (And background reading, planning, revising, etc.) We don't need grammar, spelling, etc., exercises as part of the course, i.e., we are definitely studying that stuff, but separately. Secular or only very lightly Christian (like SOTW) preferred. Programs we've considered so far, which look good, and which we haven't ruled out include: Time4Writing, Brave Writer, Basic Cozy Essay Course (Marie Rackham), Writing Strands. What else should we look into?

Chapter 1, now with pictures! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0PItTarUGOTaW5NclFXRDNmbGM/view?usp=sharing

Yes, I have thought of teaching a class locally. I'd be open to it. But frankly, I do everything online, and it's so much easier to get a wide variety of feedback online than offline (at least for me) that that's what I'm more inclined to do at least at first. I have written texts (for philosophy and for fiddle) while teaching meatspace classes, and it's doable, it's just quite a bit of work. The video above took me about two hours to construct out of the basic chapter (it's just me reading the first section of the first chapter, with lots of illustrations—58 powerpoint slides), then another hour to record, process, and upload. In my opinion, philosophy is inherently wordy, if you're doing it "right." It's about words, or concepts anyway, to a very great extent. Basically, the text is what it is. If people don't like it because it's wordy, too bad for me. I didn't set out to write the best possible philosophy text for children, but just one that I would be inclined to write for children, and for my boys in particular. We do follow a classical approach but with a lot of book-reading, preferably of "real" books a la Charlotte Mason. That's why it's so easy for me to get excited about a chapter book about philosophy for children. (Still, I do want to add some illustrations in, approximately one per page. It's unlikely I'd go to the time and expense to hire a professional illustrator. Maybe if the book is popular enough in a self-published form, I'll do that before publishing it with a real publishing house.) I really appreciate all the advice, but the point of posting the chapter here is to see whether people would like what they saw enough to maybe buy it/support it and maybe videos, etc. The question is about the actual book I'm writing, not about the best possible way to write an elementary-level philosophy book. I'm not even saying this is the best way to approach the subject with children...I'm just saying it's the way I'm inclined to do, because it's easy for me and seems to work well with my boys. Besides, there is method to my madness: if they read this, they're getting an introduction to the sort of language and narrative that they'd encounter when they read books like Philosophy Rocks (my favorite middle-to-high-school text so far) and the history of philosophy. That's not so much the case with some other children's philosophy books I've seen. I don't talk about which part of the brain: yeah, well, I'm trying to keep it restricted to minimal necessary details. My approach is to explain everything very slowly and carefully, and giving details about brain science would be very difficult to make as clear as I make the rest of the stuff. Besides, the details of brain science are not strictly speaking necessary to understand to grapple with the more purely philosophical issues. (Although they do help, of course!)

Here's the sample video!

Awesome! You can tell your daughter that a materialist is someone who believes that there are no mental things that are not material (or physical) things. There is one kind of materialism, eliminative materialism, which denies that there are any mental events at all, so there is no need to translate talk of "mental events" into talk of "physical events" at all. I've looked at Sophie's World. If your nine-year-old is able to read it, she's pretty advanced for a nine-year-old. Again, this is considerably easier (especially if you start from the beginning) than that. I don't know, obviously, but I'll bet it would have been accessible to your daughter when she was five. My son thought it was quite easy when he was six. In fact, I think I started writing this text after I looked at Sophie's World, and tried it out on my then-six-year-old, and we decided it was too advanced at the time.

JDoe, totally—I intend to use a few public domain illustrations in the text, and the videos would be more fully illustrated (similar to the videos in the YouTube playlist linked above). By the way, is there any appropriate place on the WTM forums to post a kickstarter notice? Or is that a strict no-no?