Shining Examples

“Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend.” – Charlotte Mason

It’s amazing how much character training one has to do with little people. Having all of mine almost all grown had caused me to forget all the hard work one has to put into training, practicing and training again in character and good habits. Now, having spent 6 months in a preschool classroom with 12, 3 and 4 year olds three times a week, I am certainly remembering. I love being with their little selves, but have found myself saying things that I haven’t said in years.

Things like…

“Repeat after me, ‘I obey right away, all the way”.

I said this phrase all the time with Caileigh. I often started the day with this reminder with my little strong willed girl. Along with the reminder that the proper response to a direction is, “yes, Mommy”. I have one adorable student who also struggles with this, and sometimes I have to quietly pull him aside and go through these steps. Sometimes that reminder is two or three times a day. Sometimes, we have to sit out from some fun activities because we need to remember to obey right away. I am reminded that this isn’t about me, which helps me to stay calm, but is about training the habit of obedience. Some kids get it right away, but some need more training. This little student always has a big hug for me and is the first to want to help me in my tasks. He knows that I require obedience, but also that I am on his side and want him to succeed.

“I have faith that you can do this if you just keep trying.”

I have pretty high expectations of my kids and my students. I spend time teaching them step by step how to do a task, then I have them do it with me and finally I have them do it on their own. Generally, they try to give up in the first two minutes but I encourage them to keep trying. They look for the easy way out, but my job as a Mom and teacher is to teach them to be independent. Would it be easier to just do it myself? Absolutely, but my job is to train them not take over for them. Perseverance is very important habit to build. Everyone fails sometimes but knowing how to persevere it is a very valuable life skill and we teach it when they are little whether it be making a bed, getting dressed or learning how to read.

“What are the three things I asked you to do? Repeat them back to me.”

I had forgotten how many words you use when you are with little ones. Having kids repeat back your directions to you before they attempt the task is a very important step. That way, you know that they know what they are to do. I often pair this with an egg timer to help them know how long the task should take and the reminder to, “Stay on task.”. Collin used to tell Caileigh to “stay on task” all the time. As a matter of fact, I heard that phrase used just today as he was waiting for her to get ready to go to robotics. One of my little people has to be reminded of this often and it cracks me up that one of his classmates has taken on the role of helping him to remember all the steps. Sometimes, we have to start with just one task and work up to three of four. Start small and work up to more will help with confidence.

“How are we supposed to act in this situation?”

I did a lot of role playing with my kids when they were little and I find that I do the same thing at school. “When someone says, ‘hello’ to us in church, we look them in the eye and say hello back to them. Let’s try that now.” or “When we are in the grocery store, the mall or church, we don’t run, we walk. Please show me a proper speed.” My kids and I acted out pretty much every situation at home before we went out anywhere so that they would know my expectations, then I would ask them to tell me what they were supposed to do. Kids need to be taught and need to practice those skills in a safe place before they use them in public. My introverted boys really needed this when they were little. Being in public was scary but if they knew what they were to do and had practiced it they were so much more confident.

“We are practicing being quiet.”

Oh my word, we had to play the quiet game with Caileigh A LOT! We started with a minute of quiet on the timer. If she states quiet and still, she picked a treasure. We eventually got up to 15-20 minutes. Sitting in church became so much easier but it took us awhile to work up to that. We knew that self-control was going to be a very important skill for our little girl and, boy, did we need to practice it.

Just as I saw my own kids grow and learn by daily practice, I can see my students doing the same. It takes a ton of time, though. I would estimate that 75% of our time is spent in habit training and practicing. It’s worth it though. The habits we are teaching them will help them to be more successful academically, spiritually and personally. I think habit training is far more important than even reading or beginning math for the first 6 years of a child’s life. A child who knows how to be obedient, to follow directions, to persevere, to stay on task, to have appropriate social behaviors and how to be still and quiet will have a much easier time learning his letters and numbers. They will also be a joy to be around. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

Last week, both Caileigh and Collin got acceptances from their first choice for college. We were ecstatic, there might have even been dancing . As we read further, though, we realized that Collin hadn’t been accepted into the College of Engineering. We did a fast double take. Wait, what? Collin tests in the top 97%, the school offered him a lot of scholarships and he has a 4.3 GPA. He’s been a lead in a Robotics team that placed 3rd in the World Championship. This is a good school, but not a highly selective was one and he’s been accepted already into the highly selective ones. So, either there was some huge human error or God had another plan for Collin.

We prayed (and asked all our prayer warriors to pray for clear direction) and sought wisdom all weekend and then on Monday called and sent an email to his college admissions advisor. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings we also called and left messages. Overkill? Maybe, but as they weren’t responding, we needed to make sure we were heard. We had not received a direct, ‘no’ from God so we decided that we would keep moving until we did. This afternoon, we got a phone call from the admission’s advisor telling us that Collin had been accepted into the College of Engineering and into his preferred, very competitive Aerospace. Yeah God!

The lesson here was that we, as parents and especially as homeschoolers, need to be advocates for our kids through this beginning college stage. Collin sat next to me and wrote the email to the advisor. I was modeling how to be an advocate. For Connor, I did the research and found out that he qualified for an extra $10,000 in scholarships, so I called the school, talked to the Bursar’s office and got the extra money. It can be a little scary and intimidating, but after talking to some of my friends who work in schools, the best High School Counselors are advocates for their students in this way. We, as homeschoolers, have to add High School Counselor on to our already full plate, but I have found that colleges are more than happy to work with me. They have been pleasant and willing to answer any questions or concerns, but I have to be persistent and follow through. I am my child’s best advocate. I am polite and respectful but persistent.

By the time Connor was in College, he asked me how to go about advocating for himself but since his first year, hasn’t needed my help. He’s petitioned for a better grade due to unfair grading, which he won, petitioned to skip a lower level class, which he didn’t win, and for an extension for his thesis as he had emergency surgery, which he won. He’s polite and respectful but persistent.

It’s important that we step in and be our student’s High School Counselor and advocate. It’s equally important to teach them how to do it themselves and then get out of the way.

I feel in a bit of a panic this morning. We have had some amazing successes and some confusing set backs in the past couple of weeks. Having three launching, (one finishing college and twins finishing high school) leaves me with very mixed feelings. One day, one child is getting everything they dreamed and the next day, another has a set back. Then within a day or two, it all changes again. Every set back makes me question whether I have done enough, have I given them what they needed, is this my fault? Homeschooling adds added pressure to what all parents feel. It can be really difficult.

As I was sitting in my chair, drinking my tea, God quietly reminded me that He loves them more than I do and that He has plans for good, and not for evil for all of their days. Those plans may not be the neat, tidy package (like everyone staying here in Colorado within 15 min of me) like I want, but in the end, I have to release them to Him. It’s so very hard, but I know His plans are always better than mine.

It’s funny that I struggle with this very thing at all the stages, the first time they went to Sunday School without me, the first time they spent a night away, the first time they went on an airplane without me, the first time they took a standardized test, the first time they drove away on their own. Reminding myself, again, to keep my hands opened towards Him, to let my precious kids go into His care. I think it’s as much of a growth opportunity for me as it is for them.

During Thanksgiving break, we made a prayer advent chain. On one of my links, I wrote, “Connor to feel well”. He’s been struggling with his health and just doesn’t wake up feeling healthy. That’s really hard when you are taking a full college load, working and maintaining an A GPA. He started complaining of stomach pain Saturday night and by Sunday night, we were in the ER with Appendicitis. He went into surgery at 6:00 a.m. on Monday. The Doctor came out after and hour and half with a big smile. She was so pleased because we had caught the appendicitis so early. It was a simple surgery and very little chance of side effects. She said she wished everyone would come in when the problem was this manageable.

As I watched him sleep in recovery, my prayer link that we had prayed on Sunday, came to mind. I guess I could have asked God why He allowed the appendicitis, but instead it occurred to me that God had answered my prayer by getting rid of the diseased member that had been festering in Connor’s body. That was answering my prayer. God isn’t interested in glossing over the problem but in solving the problem and sometimes, that’s painful.

It’s funny to me that just a little advent paper chain had this much meaning. But then, the little activities and all the little homeschool lessons that we have done came to mind. The leaf and plant science experiment in 2nd grade that showed that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches showed my kids that staying in Jesus is the answer. Or the five finger prayer story by Patricia St. John showed my kids how to pray. Those little lessons and activities can have life long meaning. They are worth the time and effort we put into them. They don’t need to be long or complicated. Look at the meaning in a simple 10 minute Advent activity, it changed my attitude to gratitude.

This week the sermon at church was on Haggai and the rebuilding of the temple. The people were discouraged from a lack of progress and here’s what God tells them, ” …’Be Strong all you people of the Land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Haggai 2:4.

As I was sitting there with my kids, I was reminded of how many times in raising and teaching them I had to “be strong, work hard and trust God’s with us”. I was reminded of how many times I had to sit with them while they were struggling with math or spelling or just not feeling smart enough and tell them that our job is merely to, “Be strong, work hard and trust that God is with you.”

It’s not rocket science, it doesn’t take special skills, He just requires us to be strong and take the next step. We don’t have to stress about high school when our kids are in elementary school, we just do the next thing. Worrying about things that are to come do not help us. We just need to do the next thing. Like the Israelites who just needed to put the next brick on the wall and not get frozen by how big the job was, we need to focus on the job at hand. That might be introducing letters or teaching multiplication or training our kids in first time obedience. Walls, temples, (children) get built by being diligent and doing the next thing.

I needed that reminder. Even though it’s the last year of homeschooling for me, I need to keep focused and work hard. That’s how I managed all these past years. I got up, I got ready and I did school. I stayed focused and diligent and just did the next thing and God created a wonderful testimony in the lives of my kids.

Some days are just not great. There is no good reason why they are bad, they just are. Today was one for me. It wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t good. My homemade bread looked like it was stepped on by trolls, the soup in the crockpot didn’t cook in time, my hair is bad and I swear my eyelashes are trying to blind me. Bad days happen. Unfortunately, when you are homeschooler, you generally don’t have the option of going back to bed and hiding from the world. The world finds you and wants you to make them breakfast.

My advice? Know your limits, know your have to’s and for goodness sake, have a written lesson plan or work boxes or some kind of independent work pre-planned for your kids.

Today, I knew my limit was Trigonometry. I just could not work through an extra set of trig identities today, so we did the minimum and moved on. I knew I could do extra history so we spent extra time on that and Bible and got a little further so we could make up the extra trig later.

When my kids were little, I had folders with quiet independent work in them filled with daily handwriting pages, spelling work, math fact memorization and maybe copywork. On bad days, I might just have them do those things and then we might read extra in our read aloud. I also had math programs like a Life of Fred or Mathtacular that the kids thought of as the “fun, extra math” and we might just do that for math that day. On really desperate days, we might just do math and LA and go for a very long nature walk.

Bad hair days and bad homeschooling days happen to everyone. Having a plan in place to mitigate those bad days will save your sanity and possibly, stop you from having to apologize to your kids about losing your cool over fractions that day.

I am working part time as a preschool teacher (and a substitute teacher for grades K-8th) in a Charlotte Mason Classical School, which is lovely. I am consistently reminded that we have to train good habits in our kids, minute by minute, day by day. They have to be gently reminded to obey right away and directed to do the right thing. They need taught to be diligent, even if we need to sit with them in those early years and teach them to stay on task. They need to be stopped as they are interrupting and taught to wait to patiently. It requires training.

I think we often just expect these habits to happen or we think we taught it once so we need not do it again. Habit formation is a daily task. Remember that Charlotte Mason says that, “Education is a Discipline”.

Discipline is defined as, “ practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, “.

We need to get in the practice of training our beloved children to obey, to be diligent, to do everything without whining or complaining, to persevere. It’s not easy and it’s really exhausting but that’s all apart of educating our children properly. Training in habits will, eventually, make your academic training go much smoother but it takes dedicated time in those younger years. It’s as important as learning to read or how to count. Our teen years have gone so very smoothly because of those earlier years of training. Those early years were hard and draining and seemed to last forever but all that hard work was worth it.

If you haven’t read, “For the Children’s Sake” by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, start today. It helps to break down those vital habits and gives a great foundation in the tenets of a Charlotte Mason education.

****repost. This is always a good idea!****

Sometimes, it is hard to find balance.  Balance between the have -to and want- to.  Balance between being a Mom and a Homeschool Mom.  Balance between being a Mom and a Wife.  Balance between work and play.  This year, I have found that I am not so great at balance.


This year has felt like a year of all work and no play.  There are some key areas that I have found lacking in my life.  Areas that I have let go and they have cost me.  God has been really dealing with me heart in the matter of balance and showing me areas in which my pride and my lack of balance is wrong and is costing me.

The first area that God has shown me that I have been seriously lacking balance has been in my marriage.  Everything is mostly fine but this year has the one of the first years that I have not felt that deep connection to my husband and it has been my fault.  I was so focused on making sure everything else was running on all cylinders that I let my husband fall from my top priority list.  I even forgot my Anniversary this year until Scott reminded me and it was my 15th!  ( I know, I know, so horrible!) As the end of September rolled around, I realized just how big of a problem this could potentially be.  At first, I blamed my husband, cause that is so much easier than taking the blame myself.  Then God grabbed me by my collar and kept me up all night.  In order to finally go to sleep, I promised that I would try the “Love Dare”.  I knew we had it in the house and it would be a tangible way of putting my husband first in my time.  It was amazing just how quickly my marriage and my attitude changed after putting my husband first.  I think there is a Bible verse about that somewhere….

I remembered all that advice I give to young Mom and new homeschoolers about taking time to date your spouse and I made time.  They haven’t been big dates but little ones to go get ice cream or go dream big about where we want to be or even just have a quick dinner at Wahoo’s.  We have had a great time and have re-connected in those quiet minutes.

Balance is hard to find but I am going to strive to attain it.   Next, balance in homeschooling…

Categories: parenting

 Most of us grew up in a traditional school atmosphere.  There were desks in neat rows where we sat alphabetically and all of our textbooks fit inside.  When it was time for math or reading or history we all took at our textbooks and followed along.  When that class was over, we put the book and away and failed to think of it again.  We didn’t need to, that class was over for the day. When we start homeschooling many of us revert to what’s familiar – the traditional classroom.   I felt the need to just do what I knew, use a textbook, a workbook and have a little desk bought from a school sale and set up school at home. Fortunately, God and my husband had another plan.
In order to break out of that cycle we have to recognize several things:
1. In a traditional school setting we wouldn’t have more than one age group.
2. It is not necessary to stay in one room to school all day.
3. This philosophy of learning may not be the best learning style for active young minds and bodies.
4.  School can be fun and still be rigorous.

One of the main goals in our home school has been to teach our children to love to learn and we began to find that very difficult in the traditional school setting with all traditional school texts.

We believe that if we help our children to be life long learners because they love to learn then anything we might have missed, they will pick up on their own. Really, we think of it as one of our educational safety nets. If we raise children who maintain a child like curiosity and a joy of learning through out their life there is nothing that they cannot do. Einstein says, “ It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” We want to awaken and nurture that innate curiosity. We also want them to understand that learning and knowledge doesn’t take one form. It’s not just from 8:30 to 2:00 or only to be found in textbooks, learning can be found in many different places. Charlotte Mason, who was an educator in the early 1900’s, had a motto for the children in her school which was, “I am, I can, I ought, I will.” but what I find more interesting is the motto for the parent and/or educators was, “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” Elsie Kitchling wrote in a 1935 Charlotte Mason’s Parent’s Review, “We have a definite mission – to bring the fullness of life to the children. It is more possible to carry this mission in a home schoolroom.” Those statements resonate with me. Education is an atmosphere that we can create but is also discipline, not everything is going to be fun and games sometimes we need to just memorize those multiplication facts but our mission is to make our children’s education a way of life.

Multi-Level Combined Learning
How do we think out side the box? One of the easiest ways to immediately make an environment of learning is to combine your children’s subjects as much as possible. My kids have Bible, History, Art and as much science together as possible. This allows you do all the projects together. This also allows you to have a commonality to talk about through out the day. The side benefit that I have learned of combining my kids is that they will play together about what they have learned about in school. Without any direction from me, my kids will build a Lincoln Log Jamestown or create an oasis in the Sahara desert for the Bedouins in the sand box.

Buy Curricula Early in the Summer
To start the process of thinking through the year, I buy my curriculum early in the summer so that I have time to look it all over. I read my Teacher’s Manual all the way through and start notes on the main topics.
I take the time to look through all the books in my curriculum.  What do I have and what do I need?  We use a boxed curriculum as our starting place as it  saves me time and money and then I can start individualizing from there.  Spend time making a master list of major Bible, history and science topics to refer back to.  Make a list of your priorities for teaching that year based on your curricula.  If we have a plan ahead of time we are less likely to stray from our main goals and it allows us to evaluate opportunities as they come up.

Get your spouse involved.
My husband is a great resource for me, especially when it comes to fun and games.  I can tell him the main topic of what we are learning and he will begin his search for great things.  He’s a computer guy so he will always start there.  Amazon is his friend.  He also loves unique game stores and will spend time looking for games that we can play as a family.  If I share my prioritized list with him then he’s good at starting to think about and look for things that will enhance our school year.  The more our kids “live” what we are learning the more memorable it becomes.

Learning Vacations and Grandparents
Another benefit of planning early is that you have time to plan and schedule family learning vacations.  We usually plan one vacation a year that is an extended field trip.  When we were studying American History we went to Washington DC and Mt. Vernon.  When we were studying Colorado we traveled our state for several weeks to see what we were learning about.  When we were studying Teddy Roosevelt and the beginnings of the National Parks we went to Yellowstone in the winter and then followed up in the spring with 5 National Parks in 5 days.  When we purposefully schedule these things to coincide with our academic learning we begin to take learning outside the box and it becomes real to our kids.  When our little girl stood on the porch of Mt. Vernon and looked over the Potomac she told me that she understood why Pres. Washington wanted to come back to his home, it was too pretty to stay away from.  These things stop being academic and become understandable when our kids experience them.

We like to take Grandparents with us on these trips as it’s fun and they bring another level of understanding and it shows our kids that we are never to stop learning and that learning is a family event.  Plan some time to research.  Find some guides that will help teach your kids about where you are going.  Have a blank notebook for each child and each day day have them write a summary and draw a picture of where you went and what you saw.  I also like to have a read aloud that is specific to the place that we are going. Because we homeschool, we generally don’t have to visit places during the peak season. If we are going to a place that has historical significance, I like to have the kids do a time line piece before we go to fit into our master time line.  It helps us to mentally fit in where this place fits chronologically.  When you get home have your kids do a hands-on projects on one portion of your trip.  When we did our study on Colorado and spend several weeks traveling, my oldest did a report on the history of Colorado but more specifically a report on how our family got here.  My daughter took pictures of wildflowers everywhere we went and identified them and put them all together in a lapbook my other son did a diorama  of Mesa Verde and  wrote a short report on who lived there.  They had a great time and they learned a ton.

Early Learning
At the youngest stages of learning, that from about 2 years of age to 6 or 7 years of age hands-on learning is so important and the more fun school is, the more they want to learn. The more they want to learn, the happier every home school Mom is. As a matter of fact, at this age, I had to tell my kids that Mom had to stop teaching because I had to make dinner. I believe that at this stage kids need to feel it, touch it, live it in order to learn it. The more you can have them feel it, touch it, live it, the more they will remember and retain the information.
Here’s some ideas for the youngest stage of learning.

Read a Book and then do something from the book. Reading about Jonah? Put a blanket over the table, open a can of tuna and talk about how bad that “time out” would be. Read “Give a Mouse a Cookie” and make cookies together – maybe make a mouse too and act it out.
Read a book about manners like one of these and then go act them out. You be the child and have them be the Mom. “Suzie, this is Mrs. Gray.” Your response as the child, “Hello, Mrs. Gray. How are you?” We had a little tent playhouse and we would take turns and model these behaviors.
To learn their letters sing the sounds and go around the house and tape letters on anything that begins with the letter they are learning. Then when Dad gets home have the child bring him around the house showing him everything that starts with that letter.

The Sand box is a great tool at this stage. You can practice writing letters, learn about erosion and build the Tower of Babel.

M&M math is one of our favorites. Teaching addition is a breeze. You have one m&m and I give you one more how many do you have? Two! Subtraction too. You have 4 m&m’s and Mom eats two of them. How many do you have now? Oh sorry, you only have two. How many do I need to give you to make 5? Skip counting, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division can all be taught using m&m’s and at the end we all get to have some. It’s a win for all involved.

The point is not that you have to do some great big craft session or set up something elaborate. You can and many Mom’s are great at that. I am not one of those. I am more of the, “Let’s see what do I have right now that will help me explain and teach this concept well?” And by right now, I mean this very second. To have my twins practice math, I wrote numbers on the play food and made some quick “Grocery lists” gave them some accurate play money I had in a drawer somewhere and had them play store. One was the customer and the other the store keeper. They had to do the addition and give the money to the store keeper and the store keeper had to check their math. Then they switched. They played this way for hours each week and did more math then I ever could have gotten them do in a workbook. It took me approx. 10 min to set up and it allowed us to fulfill our goal, “to teach our kids to love to learn”.

Once our kids got passed that early Elementary stage, I had to start looking harder at what activities we could do that would catch their interest but would still help to nurture the love of learning that we had instilled earlier on.

Food and Cooking
 We love food and we love cooking together at our house and I have found this to be a great way to bring school into our everyday life. Studying fractions? Make a pie together. You’ll get to talk about fractions as you cook and then you can teach fractions as you cut it up. When we first introduce fractions we have a pizza and pie night to introduce this concept in a fun manner. “We cut the pie into 8 pieces so right now we have 8/8th or 1 whole. If we serve one piece or 1/8 of the pie how much will we have left? 7/8th. If Daddy eats ½ or 4/8th of the pie what fraction of the pie is left.” Yes, we could do this with a manipulative but it’s more fun and more memorable with food way and not only am I doing school but we’ve made dinner too! Cooking can be used in so many different applications. Learning about the beginning of the United States? Make Johnny Cakes or studying Ancient history? How about having a real shabbat or passover. Learning geography? Plan one night a week that you make food from around the world. There are tons of cookbooks out there that can help you plans these. Here’s a few that I use all the time. ( The US History Cookbook, Celebrating Biblical Feasts, Cooking Around the World – Dawn’s) This method is one of my very favorites as it accomplishes so much in so little time, my kids learn how to cook, we’re making learning come alive, dinner is made and Dad gets to be involved in the learning because he gets to eat it with us. It’s multi-tasking at it’s best. My husband had a great time being the Lord and Master at the Medieval Inn night and we all learned how hard it would be to be a monk when we had pea soup, black bread and were unable to talk through the entire meal. We also learned so much when we did a full shabbat from Friday sun down until Saturday sun down. Not doing dishes is hard but spending a whole day resting and just being together was wonderful.

Toys and Games
I love to buy learning toys and games for my kids for presents. It’s a good thing they have grandparents who love to spoil them and just give them something just for the fun of it because I am always looking for things that I can use for school too. This is also a great way to get my husband involved. Talking about home schooling theories and debating which book to use is not his idea of a good time but if I say that I need a toy or new games that will help cement some of the things we are learning in school? He’s in and the bonus is that he’ll usually play with the kids using these toys and games. Legos are one of these things that we love and I can use for school. When we were learning about the WWWI and WWWII, I bought several sets of the green army men and we used them to demonstrate trench warfare as well as play a few mock battles. Studying medieval history? Get one of the castle sets for a present. Two birds with one stone. Games are the same way. Scrambled States was a great game to help us memorize the states in a fun way outside of school. Settlers of Catan was a fun way to introduce the difficulty in setting up new settlements during colonization. A few comments about what we just studied and suddenly my kids understood more about how and why colonies were settled and how they depended on each other. When I go to a toy store I am continually thinking. “ How can I use this for learning purposes?”  What here can make our learning come alive? If I know my topics for the year, I can plan ahead.  As a matter of fact, while we were opening Christmas presents this year, my oldest son stopped and asked if the present he was opening was for fun or for learning? I told him it was for both. Thankfully, he really liked the present. As our kids became teenagers, these games morphed into game nights where we invite several other families to bring food and play games long into the night.  Most of the kids had no idea that we were buying and playing games that were learning games.  Settlers of Catan is a great game to beginning exploration and settlement.  Ave Caesar was played while we studied the Roman Empire, Lancaster was played while we were studying the Middle Ages and each player had to create a fiefdom.  We got Timeline so that our kids could memorize historical dates and have fun with their friends.  Pandemic was played while we studied Biology, Axis and Allies, during WWII.

Christmas Break
I love Christmas and I love taking a long Christmas vacation from school but I never feel good about not doing any school and I need something to help keep the kids and the Grandparents busy so I started planning Christmas unit studies based on what we were learning in school. This helps us to really enjoy the Christmas season, keeps what we are learning fresh in our minds but seems so different and fun. I always plan a Biblical aspect that helps us to keep the real reason of the season in the forefront of our mind, a read aloud aspect and crafts and food. When we were studying Rome, we read Jotham’s Journey, made Jewish and or Mediterranean goodies and made Christmas ornaments that told the Christmas story. Last year when we were studying the 18 and 1900’s we learned about Charles Dickens, read Christmas Carol, studied the Biblical truths evident in the story and made crafts and goodies that were applicable to that time frame. This year, as we have been studying geography and cultures we did a unit study on Christmas around the world. We read tales from around the world, made cookies and treats from different countries and made traditional Christmas crafts. We had a Christmas party with several families in which everyone brought food from around the world and talked about being missionaries to those all around our world. We ended our unit study by having a La Posada. If you have a friend who is home schooling too, Christmas unit studies are a fun way to get together and divide the work.

Bible Application
We can often find things that help us to make learning real for history, science or for our read alouds but how about for Bible?  When we think about it, this is the area in which we most need to be deliberate about taking our learning outside of the classroom but sometimes it’s also the area in which we struggle with the most.  I have found that opening up a discussion up with my kids about what we are learning in Bible and how we can take it outside our four walls has been the most enlightening.  Kids want to do something, they want to reach out and help and sometimes we just need to ask them what they feel like God is calling them to.  It was my kids idea to sponsor a child,  it was my kids idea to have a lemonade stand and to donate the proceeds to Bible translation because we had read a book about people not having a Bible in their own language.  It was my daughters heart for the homeless that had us start going to feeding centers or to canvas the neighborhood for extra canned goods for the food center.  One of my sons friends felt the need to raise money for children in Ethiopia so she talked to my son and their friends and they put on a piano benefit.  A bunch of middle school kids using their talents to play piano to benefit children across the world, absolutely priceless.  It was only our job to say okay, what can we do to help you?  We need to tell them that they can do great things for the kingdom of God, read them stories of people who did great things for God and then let them go.  Support them and no matter how busy we are, find a way to make it happen.  I want my kids to understand that they can make a difference all we need to do is pray about it and then obey. We can also be looking for books that help us explain this or bring the matter to mind with a different perspective.  Reading stories of people who did great things for God is a great way to also help our kids learn Bible application.

Older Kids

As my kids became teenagers and moved into Middle School and High School, we still tried to live what we were learning but it morphed a little.  We still do foods that relate to what we are learning and games and field trip but they have become much more social outings.  Now we take a group of teenagers to the Art Museum to study art.  If we are doing foods, we invite other families to do it with us.  Our game nights have been up to 40-50 people.  If we want our kids to enjoy this kind of learning we have to be willing to be the ones who are willing to have people over, set up the game nights, plan the museum outing.  It’s not always convenient and I have learned that a messy kitchen floor is fine, the teenagers don’t care and they will probably spill something anyway so I might as well wait until after the party before I clean.

The other thing I have learned with teenagers is that we have to start asking what they are interested in and helping them schedule and find the time to do what they are passionate about and helping them to live our their learning.  My oldest was interested in programming so we started a FLL team.  He loved SCRATCH and he spent a lot of time programming on it which led to him being asked to be a Curator and Tester, which led to him meeting some of the creators of SCRATCH which led to him developing an add on to control robots from SCRATCH. Which led to him speaking at SCRATCH conferences in Barcelona and MIT to Computer Science educators around the world.  He then taught kids in inner city LA and online basic programming and circuitry.  Kids that had never seen how computers and programming worked and began in his class to program basic games. Which thankfully led to some very prestigious scholarships so that he basically has all of his College tuition paid for.  Our daughter is interested in plants and gardening and read tons of books on aquaponics and she decided to set up a working aquaponics systems with fish that fed our family fresh herbs and vegetables last summer.  Most of the supplies were from earlier learning toys and scraps in our garage. When our kids were little our job was to lead them to the outside learning opportunities but now as our kids are older, our job is to say, “sure, let’s try it and see what happens”.

Stay on Task
Here’s where it gets hard.  There are a lot of great opportunities out there.  Opportunities that have great learning benefits but if we fail to stay on task then we will be so over committed to things that are not helping us to enhance what we are learning that the school year will get ahead of us.  We have to be deliberate and be able to evaluate what things will help us with our task of learning and what things will detract.  Great opportunities may come but we need to be willing to say, “not right now”.  It may a no answer for this year.  I know I have turned down opportunities to go to things because they weren’t what we were studying at the time but that allowed us to have time to go to something that really brought to life what we were learning about.  I know this is almost sacrilege to the homeschool Mom but we need to pick and choose what will get us the most ground.

Schedule Unstructured Time
We need to give ourselves time to think this way.  Schedule structured school for the mornings and work hard at it and then allow for unstructured afternoons where you can play a game together or cook a meal from your history book or have the kids build the Taj Mahal out of building blocks.  Don’t over schedule yourself and your kids so that there isn’t time for anything else.  Make your home an atmosphere of learning but don’t let it become a mark you check off.  Just like the parent and educators in Charlotte Mason’s schools we need to make “education an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”

Categories: parenting