Month: June 2016

Posted in Homeschooling

Wisdom and Foolishness

Posted on by Dawn
Summer is a terrific time to read Proverbs and work on character training.  I love that God gave us His Word to guide us in raising our kids.  Throughout the years reading and memorizing Proverbs have held us in good stead.  This is another old post but a good reminder for us all.


I have been reading Ted Tripp’s new book, “Instructing a Child’s Heart”. My poor children, I read a book and then they have new training. It’s a wonder they don’t sit down and cry each time they see me with a new parenting book. Anyway, Mr. Tripp was writing about the difference between wisdom and foolishness. He mentioned a verse in Proverbs which started me off on a hunt in Proverbs. I decided that I would read a different verse to the kids each morning to help remind them that they have a choice in how they respond to instruction – with wisdom or with foolishness. I challenged them to think about what they would rather be known by, their wisdom or their foolishness. I told them that I would use those words when I saw either behavior in them.

So far we have read,

Proverbs 1:77 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 9:7He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself,
And he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself.
8 Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you,
Reprove a wise man and he will love you.
9Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser,
Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.
We did have a brief talk about who they took instruction from and that we need to be wise in those decisions as well, but that they have a choice in taking instruction to heart whether in school or in everyday life. Our children can choose to be fools or to be wise boys and girls – oh and that appropriate consequences follow each decision.  Caileigh does NOT like to be told that she is making foolish decisions so she made much better choices yesterday! I don’t think the boys like it either but they weren’t near as vocal about it.

Categories:

Posted in Homeschooling

“Let me fry you an egg”…

Posted on by Dawn

****Throwback post ***** I still find this advice invaluable.  This year, with Caileigh on all of her different medications which really affected her, I needed to be aware of giving a her a break when necessary.  Taking a moment away from the emotions can also really help to diffuse a situation and be able to look at things with clear eyes.

This spring, I heard Susan Wise Bauer of the Well Trained Mind, speak at the Midwest Homeschool Convention on the things that her parents did really right and did not do as well. One of the things that caught my attention was how her Mom dealt with melt-downs. We all have them and sometimes, our kids have them. This is different than continual whining or complaining which needs to be disciplined. This is the, “I just can’t seem to get control and I know I’m in the wrong but I just can’t do it” melt down. All three of my kids had one of these today. I knew it was coming because we are three weeks into school and hadn’t had one yet so we were due. Susan Wise Bauer’s mom, Jessie, used to ask her kids, ” Do you need a sandwich? A walk? A shower or do you need to take a nap?” when they were in the midst of a melt-down. Growing up, my dad used to ask if he could “fry you an egg”. Either way, sometimes we need to take a moment and help our kids learn to handle these melt-downs. Taking care of our physical needs can sometimes put a screeching halt in these melt-downs.

For younger elementary kids, tell them “We need to get self-control over our emotions and then we’ll take a break for a minute” Maybe go outside and run around for a couple of minutes and then get them a snack and try school again. For older kids, ask them to get self-control and allow them to go to their rooms to do that if needed, have them take a walk or a run, have a snack and maybe move on to another subject for awhile and then hit the hard subject after a bit. Connor often needs a walk outside and success at something else then he can look at the subject with a clear head.  Don’t forget to give them a hug and let them know that it’ll be okay.

I found this to work well on hard discipline days too. Sometimes we just need to break the cycle and get control.  A step away from the emotions can often be exactly what we need to calm the situation.

I needed a nap today. Caileigh needed a hug and a snack, Collin needed a hug and to play with Holly and Connor needed to go to his room then switch to something different for a bit. We all made it and school ended on a successful and positive note. Whew!

 

 

Categories:

Posted in Homeschooling

STEM Activities for Girls

Posted on by Dawn

This page contains affiliate links.

Caileigh and I just finished a Girls in STEAM Camp for our Robotics Team.  I was so proud of Caileigh as she designed, planned and then taught a camp of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) activities that were also Artistic for girls in upper Elementary.  It was a wonderful camp and the girls learned so much and had so much fun.  One of the things that I heard from several of the Moms was that they were so thankful for an all girl camp of these subjects because these girls are usually surrounded by boys doing boy type of activities in these subjects.  The girls enjoyed the all the color, the pretty flowers and that they could still be girly while also being scary smart.  One Mom remarked that it had been so hard to find a place for her daughter to belong.  That is one of the joys of homeschooling.  My girl didn’t know that she was unusual or that she had different interests than most girls.  She was and is free to be the amazing girl that God designed her to be.

All kids, girls and boys, need to be introduced to STEM activities while they are little.  Science is amazing and the design and care that God took shows in things like math are awe inspiring.  However, the tendency is just to get boys building or engineering toys. One because many of the toys are packaged for boys and sometimes because our girls aren’t naturally drawn to them.  However, I think we need to be purposeful in introducing those topics

 

We were browsing in one of our favorite toy stores today and came across some new books and activities designed for girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and I was so excited about them that I not only wanted to share them with you but also put on mu to buy list for the girls in our life for upcoming birthdays and Christmas.

Posted in Homeschooling, Middle and High School

Structuring High School

Posted on by Dawn

Spend some time with your teen dreaming and talking about their dreams and plans for life after high school. We need to be realistic but we also need to make sure we are planning for whatever plans God has planned for our kids. We need to spend some time with our teens talking about their goals and aspirations and helping them to see what is possible.

I personally think that we should plan for college. Even if your kids don’t end up going to college, the academic foundation that you can give them now will hold them in good stead all their lives. Not to mention that I am seeing and consulting with far too many parents and students who didn’t plan for college and in the student’s Junior or Senior year they changed their mind and end up desperately scrambling. It is much harder to play catch up than to plan for it in the first place. I also believe that we, as parents, need to be vision casting for our kids that all things are possible with God and we need to be planning for as many eventualities as possible. I hope my kids get married but if that’s not something that God has for them, my boys need to know how to cook, clean and do their own laundry. If my daughter doesn’t get married, she needs to be able to maintain a car, mow the lawn and have a job that can support her. I work hard at preparing my kids for whatever God may have them so that when that day comes that God asks them to follow Him, they can feel as confident as possible in their abilities. My job is to prepare them as well as I can and that includes planning for the possibility of college. Far better to be over prepared than to be under prepared.

Start planning by finding out what your child needs to get into college.  

Most colleges want to see at least –

3 years of Math (Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry) STEM majors need 4 years, if possible through Calculus.

4 years of English

2 Lab Sciences (Biology and Chemistry) STEM majors need at least 3, if not 4. Physics if possible and and Advanced or AP class.

2-3 years of Foreign Language. Colleges generally like to see all the years in the same language.

2 years of History. 1 needs to be US History

1 Semester of Government

1 Semester of Economics

 

If my child is going to be a STEM major, they need 4 years years of math and preferably, Calculus. Working backwards looks like this:

STEM Majors need 4 years, preferably Calculus.

12th – Calculus

11th- Trig and Pre- Calc

10th- Geometry

9th – Alg 2

8th – Alg 1

7th – Pre- Algebra

By working from what they need in College, you can easily figure out what courses they need in high school.

Carnegie Credit

Per its original definition, the Carnegie Unit is 120 hours of class or contact time with an instructor over the course of a year at the secondary (American high school) level. Strictly speaking, this breaks down into a single one-hour meeting, on each of five days per week for a total of 24 weeks per year. However, knowing that classes usually meet for 50 minutes yields a value of 30 weeks per year. A semester (one-half of a full year) earns 1/2 a Carnegie Unit.[1]

To graduate, most students need between 20 – 22 credits

To have a General College Prep High school students need 24- 28 credit

For a Rigorous College Prep High School students should have 26 – 30 credits

***For a good breakdown on this you can goto the HSLDA website to print out their brochure on Homeschooling Through High School

http://www.hslda.org/highschool/brochures.asp

I can give you a general idea of what colleges want but I highly recommend that you visit different colleges websites to see what each college wants to see in a high school graduate and then what they want for scholarship applicants. I had quite the spreadsheet when my kids were in 7th and 8th grade which helped me prep for high school. As Yogi Berra said, “Know where you are going so you don’t end up somewhere else.”  

Picking Electives

My kids usually have 6 main credits a year (Bible, History, English, Math, Science and Foreign Language) and then 2-3 electives and 2 extra credits.

We have our kids take atleast 2 years of Physical Education, in our case Karate because I feel much better with all of my kids well versed in self-defense.  We also have them take atleast 2 years of music or music theory and atleast 1 of art or art appreciation.  It is important to us that our kids be well rounded and have a foundational knowledge of the fine arts.  We believe that they bring much joy and beauty into life and want to encourage our kids in those outlets. 

Health is an elective we take, generally only .5 credits and includes nutrition and good habits.  Many of the electives we have our kids take are less about the academics and more about training our kids the best we can for adulthood.  We also have them take atleast 1.5 years of Logic and a year of Philosophy as we are training them to think and to be prepared for the world around them.

We have our kids also pick electives that they are passionate about, things like computer programming, art history, psychology, C.S.  Lewis Literature,  Guitar, Piano Composition etc. 

Since our kids were young, they were allowed to pick 2 extra curricular activities.  They have been everything from Bible Bowl, Robotics, Irish Dance, to Soccer, and Baseball. As these are extra curricular, if they don’t have all of their school work done by a certain time, they don’t go.  School is their priority and everything else is dependent on their school work.

This year, the twins 9th grade year looked like this –

Old Testament Survey – 1 credit

Honors Ancient History – 1 credit

Honors English 1 – 1 credit

Algebra II (Collin) – 1 credit

Geometry (Caileigh) – 1 credit

Honors Chemistry – 1 credit

Spanish 1 -1 credit

Intermediate Music Theory – 1 credit 

Formal Logic – .5 credits

Karate – .5 credits

That gives them a total of 8 credits for their Freshman year.  If they continue with 8 credits a year, they will have 32 credits which puts them in range for Highly Selective Colleges. 

***Just a note, not all kids can or should take this hefty of a load.  You must meet your kids where they are at, and as I have said many times, each student should have an individualized path based on their goals, abilities and strengths.  My kids are strong academically but have weaknesses in other areas.  God creates each child and has a wonderful plan for each of them and they should be encouraged in that path and not made to fit in to a one size fits all mode. I can’t sew, knit, crochet or embroider but what I can do is teach, speak and plan curriculum. I would love to do all those beautiful crafts and I so appreciate those who can, but I am going to be content with who God made me to be. We must help our kids be who God made them to be, we strengthen their strengths and help them to overcome their weaknesses not try to fit them into a mold they weren’t created to fit into.  Someone once tried to fit me into a crafty, domestic mold because they thought that’s what Godly young women should be and I managed to break a very expensive sewing machine, horribly burn myself, made me question my entire existence and the apron that took me 40 hours to make, remake and remake again fell apart in the first washing. Many were very concerned (including me) that I would not make a very good wife and mother.  After 20 years of marriage, 3 kids and a house that is mostly clean, I realize that there is no one size fits all.  Don’t do that to yourself or your kids. Train up a child in the way THEY should go…

Weighted and Unweighted GPAs

I know many are going to ask how I define Honors classes and what does that mean? According to the College Board, Honors courses are tailored for high achieving students, covering additional topics and are in greater depth. They are not necessarily AP courses which must be approved by the College Board, although many of our Honors courses are designed to prepare for the AP test.  I plan an Honors course by take the average credit worthy class of 120-150 hours to take 30 hours longer and adds more books and workload. For instance, to take our curriculum’s English course and make it an Honors English class, I doubled the writing projects and added 10 more books to their readings.

Weighted Transcripts and Unweighted Transcripts

When determining a student’s GPA ( Grade Point Average) each letter grade is given a corresponding number. A= 4, B=3, C= 2, D=1 and F=0. If my student had  4 As, 3 Bs and 1 C (this pains me to type as if my student got a C, they would be redoing the course for mastery) which is a total of 8 credits.  I would add the numerical values of the letters which is 27 and divide by the 8 courses to get an average, or GPA of 3.38. This is an unweighted GPA.

Honors or AP courses are weighted differently. A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2 and F = 1.  Using the previous example the weighted GPA would be 4.38. You must know both and probably have a transcript reflecting both as some schools want unweighted and some want weighted.  Connor got an extra $10,000 in scholarships because I could easily send the school his weighted transcript.

Posted in Elementary, Homeschooling, Middle and High School, Preschool

Character and Academics Matter

Posted on by Dawn



Homeschooling is difficult.  It is a constant balance of doing the have to and the want to, it is balancing being the Mom and the teacher.  It means we balance several full-time jobs that all require our constant attention and still strive to have a well-ordered, happy home that our hard-working husbands can come home to each night.  It is a constant balancing act of plates that could all drop on our heads at any moment.  I live this constant high wire act every day and I understand the strain but I want to add two more plates to the act.  The balance of character training and that of academic excellence.

Often we hear that we must choose our priority in homeschooling, whether we are going to strive for character developement in our children or that of academic excellence.  I think this is a faulty premise.  Character training and academic excellence are not mutually exclusive.  They are not an either/or propsition, they can be different sides of the same coin – a great homeschool enviornment.

One of the goals in our homeschool has been to train and prepare our children for whatever God has for them.  In Jeremiah 29:11 it says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  He has plans for our children and whether they are to be a wife and a mom or a Pastor or a Professor of Mathematics, I want them as prepared as possible to walk the path that God has set them on.  To do that, I believe that we need to focus on character developement, spiritual disciplines and academic excellence.

Perhaps we are simply not asking the right question.  Perhaps the question isn’t whether we should focus on character or academics.  Perhaps we need to simplify the choice by focusing on excellence.  The philosopher Aristotle said this, ” We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.”  Perhaps this is what we need to focus on, striving for  excellence in whatever we do and making it a habit. If we are training our children in character, with patience and diligence, we refuse to accept unkindness or dishonesty.  If we are teaching our children we refuse to except a paper that is less than their best.  We need to calmly, lovingly and consistently ask for our child’s best whether we are dealing with sibling rivalry, their bed not made or a math paper that is not done correctly.

Excellence should not be confused perfection.  I love what the actor Micheal J Fox says, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.  Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”  We are not asking our children or indeed ourselves to be perfect, we are asking for diligence and the perseverence to strive to do better.  We are not asking a child to get the answer the right the very first time but to promise them that we will keep going until they have it mastered.  We need to promise our children that they are not alone in this process but that we will be there to stand beside them encouraging and mentoring them.

At the beginning of each year, my husband and I set goals for our children in three areas, spiritual, personal and academic.  We recognize that our children need all three areas to be properly prepared to do what God has for them.  They need to know and love God, they need to be able to get to a class on time with all of their books and be able to to have the education they need to succeed.  We want to stand beside them and say, “You have some wonderful gifts that God has given you.  Let’s work on your strengths to make them stronger and strengthen these areas of weakness”.  Let us not limit our children by failing to recognize that we need to ask for excellence in whatever they do, whatever they say and how they act.



Posted in Homeschooling

I Love Homeschooling 

Posted on by Dawn

Pathos.com – Notes at the End of a Long School Year

Hmmm, I have some mixed emotions about this blog.  First, I really want to take this Mom to tea.  She sounds exhausted, as we all are, at the end of a School year.  I know, personally, how hard homeschooling can be.  It is hard, it is draining, no question about it. However, it is my favorite thing to do and I love it.  Not every moment of every day do I love  but for the vast majority of my days and overall, I completely love it.

I also understand what the author is trying to say about the world. The world is a scary place but so was the world when I was homeschooled 25 years ago. We were facing the Iraqi war, terrorism was beginning to effect the world and the economy was in bad shape.  During WWI and WWII the world was a scary place, during the Reformation or in Ancient Rome, the world was a scary place.  We should not base how we happy we are or the joy in our home on how scary the world is.

Homeschooling is hard and the pressure to make sure our kids are learning what they need to know is huge.  It feels like the weight of the world is on our shoulders.  However, I do my homework, we write our achievable goals, research the best curriculum and we step in and work hard at it.  We work hard, we are diligent and we give it to God. I do my part, make it my priority after my relationship with God and my husband, and then I let God do His part. I actually do feel confident in what we do with our kids and I don’t have a teaching degree or a Master’s in Education, I am just a Mom who works really hard at it. I think we can feel confident in what we are doing with the understanding that no one’s perfect, except Jesus, and my kids are not going to be super stars in everything and I don’t expect that.   I find that if I keep my eyes on God and what we are doing, refrain from comparing myself to others and keep realistic expectations, I stay pretty confident.

I think that if we surround ourselves with people who also keep God in the center of their lives and we can help and support each other in this crazy life and can keep a good sense of humor, we’ll be fine. The majority of my Homeschool friends are also pretty happy and confident in the job they are doing.  We help each other and provide a listening ear when necessary. 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that we can have those idyllic Homeschool days.  Maybe not every day.  Some days may be  a ‘terrible, horrible, no-good’ Homeschool day.  If we have a plan, keep a schedule, keep up with our academics then on that horrible day we can just snuggle in, have a cookie and just read our read aloud that day. I think if we plan something fun everyday, even a little craft or a fun snack, and keep our outside commitments to a reasonable amount then we can find joy in our school.  It is possible and I want to strive for that.