Choosing Cards for Children

Take a look at all the greeting cards designed with children in mind. Most of them have a cutesy look that adults think children will like. The truth is children prefer designs that are pictures of real things that are interesting to them. We all are created with a natural curiosity and children delight is the world around them in ways that adults have forgotten. All I am saying is that children will generally prefer a photo card of a monkey or a wolf or an airplane or the Washington Monument to a whimsical cartoon type card like the ones available in abundance in the card department.



That said, consider making your own cards for the kids by searching for specific "reality" pictures at a sharing photo site such as Photo Bucket. You can open an account for free, search for monkey, wolf, plane, or monument, then move photos that you like to your album. Then you can have them made into prints mailed to your home. Paste these handpicked photos to blank cards and voila! you have educational and intriquing cards that your children will love.

One thing we have discovered from homeschooling is that learning takes place very naturally and thrives outside of classrooms. Children learn like sponges soak up water. Just surround them with worthy information and you won't have to force them to learn.

NEA Seeks to Limit Homeschooling-Please Respond

I received the following note from a homeschooling message board:

Dear Fellow Homeschoolers,
Many of you may already know that the National Education Association
(NEA) has taken a strong stand against homeschooling in their 2007-
2008 resolution. (You can read more about this at the link site I
have provided in this e-mail.) There is an opportunity for
homeschoolers to sign an online petition citing our stand against the
NEA's resolution. It will make an even greater impact if you make a
comment when signing the petition.

The goal is for 10,000 homeschoolers to sign the petition, and
currently a little over 5,000 have signed; please let all your
homeschooling friends, neighbors, and support group members know
about this petition and encourage them to sign it The link is below:

I signed the petition and added the following note:

Homeschooled students have proven by their accomplishments that homeschooling works well and generally produces educated, well-rounded adults. For the common good homeschooling families save the state tax money and produce adults who can think, not having been educated with assembly line tactics. NEA's proposed restrictions on homeschooling would limit the freedom of choice that has been granted by favorable legislation in most states. How in the world does the NEA know what is best for my child? I have 2 sons that were homeschooled from K-12th grade who are both successful engineers. I have a daughter who is receiving her AA degree at 17 who was only homeschooled before she started college. In addition to superior academics, our children have avoided the negative influences which are often overwhelming in the state schools.
America stands for freedom. Let us teach our children and provide opportunities for them to learn in any variety of ways. Real, vibrant learning more often occurs outside the traditional classroom than in it.

PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING THE PETITION, TOO.

Common Stereotypes about Homeschoolers

This is a portion of an interview from May 2007. I was interviewed by a college student for her paper comparing homeschooling benefits to traditional schooling benefits.

What are some of the common stereotypes about homeschooling?

My Answer:

There are negative and positive stereotypes:

Negative:

That they are out of touch with the world.

That they are poorly educated.

They have no social life.

“What do you do all day?”

OR positive

That they are all super smart

Or that their Mom teachers are super smart and capable

I hear both.

Why? Our Reasons for Home Schooling

This is a portion of an interview from May 2007. I was interviewed by a college student for her paper comparing homeschooling benefits to traditional schooling benefits.

Interview Question #2:

What made you decide to homeschool?

My Answer:

Our primary motivation to homeschool was love for our children. As Christian parents, we take our God given responsibilities seriously. The Bible teaches in Deuteronomy 6 that parents are responsible for the teaching of their children:

We cannot obey God’s command when our children are away most of the time. They need to be with their parents most of the time, gradually going away more and more as they grow older.

Also, the Bible and prayer are basically prohibited in state schools and have been replaced with relativistic morality, evolution, and lack of discipline & excellence.

We felt compelled to teach our children God’s truth revealed in His word, the Bible. First and foremost, we desired to teach our children godly character and the way of salvation. Secondly, that all the academic subjects start in the scripture, which gives us the correct way of interpreting the world and the natural law. Additionally, we desired to strengthen our family by learning and playing together and having time to do it.

Social Life Favored by Homeschooling

This is a portion of an interview from May 2007. I was interviewed by a college student for her paper comparing homeschooling benefits to traditional schooling benefits.

Interview Question #1:

How has homeschooling affected your children’s social life? Would you say that they don’t have as many friends as they would have in a school situation?

My Answer:

They might not have as many acquaintances, but I am confident that the quality of their friendships is superior. They have never had any trouble making friends and have never expressed a desire for more associations than they have. We have moved quite a bit, and they diligently keep in contact with their friends in various places as well as making friends at church and home school activities everywhere we live. School is not the only way to meet people. Actually, school separates young people into age groups and is not natural. Our children actually have a wider range in their social life. They have many opportunities to relate to all age groups: babies, toddlers, young children, young adults, parents & adults, as well as older people. They are not separated out from the mix of people, but enjoy sharing activities and being with all kinds and ages of people. In school, young people almost exclusively have their friends from their own age group & grade. This just doesn’t promote good social skills. It rather promotes peer pressure (which usually has negative effects) and a lack of understanding of people from other age groups. A definite advantage of their “social life” is that they began relating to the adult world at an early age, desiring to be mature. They generally did not relate to the adolescent angst, but rather related to their parents, family, and church.

Teach Your Children Well

Homeschooling is a misnomer. This term developed because the beginning home learning movement needed to inform the authorities and the doubters that we were teaching our own children. The world’s understanding of teaching and learning includes school. So now as then, an increasing number of families are homeschooling, but their teaching rarely resembles traditional school and for the early grades, home school may look like play and family togetherness. 

When you walk by the way...

Our goal is not to have school at home. It is to live life according to God's commandments. As parents, that should be our number one focus everyday. Learning the Truth and learning about our created world is naturally part of that.

We should not try to have a school in our home. Traditional school is not even biblical. Even so, every day there are hordes of children going away from their parents and families to be taught inside a room by a stranger? So how does God expect children to learn without school?

The answer is exciting to read because it is so simple:

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in you house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.           Deuteronomy 6: 5-9

So that is God’s foundational commandment for teaching children and also the most important truth that must be a part of all that they learn, to love God and understand the world through His revelation.

After 24 years of teaching our children, I enjoy sharing with other families that teach their own. I invite you to visit my how to homeschool website.

Homeschool Unit: Ears/Sound/Music

I introduced this unit to the children by first pointing to ears and hearing as a gift from God. I asked them to tell me what they were thankful to be able to hear. Birds, Mama & Daddy, friends, music, stories, movies, and on and on they went with the list. “We must use our ears as well as our lives to glorify God. Now, what is the chief end of man?”

Nathan5 and Lane7 quickly answered, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” (We have been working on The Westminster Shorter Catechism and they have learned the answer to question #1 without hesitation.)

In order for them to learn a little bit about the way the ear works, I asked them to trace a simple drawing of the ear's anatomy and then label the outer ear, the eardrum, the hammer, anvil, & stirrup, the cochlea, and the Eustachian tube. For Nathan5, I wrote the words and he glued them to his drawing and drew lines from each word to the correct part of the ear.

Two games were played. First, I blindfolded the boys and asked them to identify sounds like tapping with a pencil, shutting a door, hanging up the phone, or anything else I could think of. They were both quite good at guessing correctly and were enjoying their success. Then I asked them to point in the direction the sound was coming from. They were usually correct. In the second game (or experiment), they remained blindfolded, but they also plugged one ear with cotton. Our plan was to test whether two ears are better than one. I kept moving around the room to make the sounds. This time when I would clap or ring a bell, they had a much harder time getting the direction right. Through this activity, they could readily see that two ears working together are needed to help us know the direction a sound comes from.

The highlight of this day was setting up a giant ear for them to crawl through. We attached an old sheet between two chairs to serve as the outer ear. We cut a hole in it just big enough for them to crawl through. Then we made a tunnel of blankets to serve as the ear canal. We placed a toy drum at the end of the tunnel and touching it was a hammer, and two tools representing the anvil and the stirrup. We couldn’t come up with a good symbol for the cochlea, so I just drew a large picture of it. An extension cord went from the cochlea (drawing) to the brain (which was imaginary). We just used what we had, but the boys loved it. It gave them first hand, touching experience with the parts of the ear. Robert2 loved popping through the sheet hole and crawling under the blankets to the inner ear parts.

I started reading aloud a book titled Helen Keller’s Teacher.

We really liked this book. It told the story of Helen Keller from the point of view of Helen's remarkable teacher, Annie Sullivan. The author reveals the character of Annie Sullivan through her childhood background, her difficult circumstances, and her blindness. The reader appreciates her discipline, determination and tenacity as she applies her skills to the spoiled hard case, Helen Keller. This book was easy for my 5 and 7 year olds to understand.

Proverbs 4:20 My son, pay attention to what I say, listen closely to my words.

Learning about Attentiveness

(We began doing KONOS unit studies when Lane was 8 and Nathan was 6. Robert was 2 and Sara was a new baby. I kept a record of what we did )

Attentiveness-General

I Samuel 3:1-14

I started by reading this account from the Bible of Samuel when he was a child and how he listened attentively and responded to God. Then, Lane8 and Nathan6 acted out the parts of Samuel and Eli. The boys are always eager to dramatize stories and I know that they remember with a special clarity, whatever they act out. We also read about Mary and Martha in the gospels. I asked the boys what was Mary attentive to and what was Martha attentive to.

Next we practiced eye contact when we spoke to each other. I decided then to make a real effort toward making eye contact with each child whenever I ask him to do something. Then I can be sure that he is getting my request. Not only does eye contact develop better listening skills, but it develops good manners. Looking at people when they speak to you or vice versa is courteous. It helps us focus on someone besides ourselves. Just by practicing this with my children and praising them when they remember to do it, can easily make it become a habit. That is what I want to see.

We spent part of the morning playing games that require attentiveness: concentration (with cards), Simon Says, and Mother May I. Robert2 loved playing these with us. He didn’t always ‘get’ how the game worked, but he always felt a part of school and that kept him happy.

Highlights magazine is famous for its Hidden Pictures. My children love to try to find every one of them.

The last game is the Can You Remember What You See and is easy to set up. Just fill a tray or a box with an assortment of items (the more items, the harder it is, so keep in mind the ages of your children.) . Set the collection down and let everyone concentrate on what is there. Then take the tray to another room. Now comes the fun. Each player tries to remember all of the items on the tray. This can be done orally as a group, or you can have each player write a list of what they saw or even draw a picture. This is a lot of fun and is harder than it seems.