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Biblical Model of Discipleship

July 20, 2004 by Leave a Comment

It worked for Jesus, and it has worked for me. Whether you are folding laundry, making bread, or shingling a roof, this method works:
You do it with them watching you.
You do it with them helping you.
They do it with you helping them.
They do it with you watching them.
You leave with them doing it alone.

Jesus modeled this method for His disciples by teaching and healing the multitudes. As the disciples watched Jesus, they learned. As Jesus had Peter, James, and John step aside with Him to heal, they learned. Jesus had the disciples try it on their own, while He stayed nearby to assist when needed. Finally, He was able to send them out with confidence.

Now we can apply this same method to teaching many new tasks, from long division to changing a tire. First, you let your students watch to get a good idea of how the job is supposed to go when it is done correctly. For many jobs, your children have already watched you do it over and over, informally — they did not realize they were learning something, they thought they were just watching Mom do her jobs.

Second, allow the students to help with the easier portions of the job and work their way up to trying the more complicated parts. Again, you may have already accomplished this stage, simply taking advantage of the extra pairs of hands.

Third, trade places with your students and take over the role of helper, doing the easy tasks for them, but remaining close by in case the students need assistance with the trickier operations. This can be a scary step — actually turning over the outcome of the task to someone else. But if we think about what really matters, teaching the skill itself is much more important than having the towels folded perfectly straight.

Fourth, step back a little and observe your new trainees as they perform the entire task by themselves. It is often a good idea at this stage to “act busy,” involving yourself in another nearby task so that your apprentices do not get nervous from being watched. Keep watching until they are confident in their newfound ability, then walk away to your next job — or maybe free time!

Remember, practice makes perfect: your new worker will probably not do the job exactly the same way you do it, but they will get better with time, and it is important also to emphasize that to the child. “I don’t expect you to do it the same way Mommy does it because you just started, and I’ve got 20 years of practice ahead of you. But I know you will get better and faster the more you do it.” Then be sure to praise their progress!

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Home Chores, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Role-Modeling, Scripture Applied to Homeschooling

A Homeschool Success Story: Teaching a 5th Grader to Read

July 7, 2004 by 1 Comment

We had pulled our children out of public school with my daughter starting fifth grade and my son beginning first grade. My daughter had been taught to “read” with this farce: when you come to a word you do not know, think of a word that begins with the same sound as the first letter of the unknown word, and if it fits in the sentence, it is probably right. Wrong. As I evaluated her reading ability, I realized she was guessing at more words than she was reading — and guessing incorrectly. She would use most of the letter-sounds in a word, but pronounce them in random order, a process which could lead the unsuspecting to cry “Dyslexia!” But I knew better. She was a very bright child who had grown slower and more despondent with each year of public schooling. She caught on to activities done at home with lightning speed, but the formal education lessons just did not take.

I had learned to read in first grade through a very thorough phonics program and was teaching my young son phonics as well, so I quickly recognized that my dear daughter had not had the benefit of learning to “sound out” entire words, even though she obviously knew the letter sounds. Her government school had pushed reading activities, using the read-as-many-books-as-possible-this-month rallies. Whenever that came along, my daughter would go back through the little children’s storybooks we owned, rereading them year after year, instead of pursuing new reading material. Reading familiar things was obviously much easier and more comfortable for her than the effort involved in tackling anything new.

Trying desperately not to bruise the psyche of this sensitive 10-year-old, I suggested that perhaps we needed to expand her reading capabilities by teaching her a new method for discovering how to read unknown words. Our supervising teacher that year was a close friend and (coincidentally) special education teacher who recommended her favorite remedial phonics system — a 2-week “crash course” in phonics for older students. (Ironic, isn’t it, that the “special ed” kids eventually get taught phonics, but the “normal” ones never do?) Although I knew my daughter’s capabilities well enough not to suspect learning disabilities, I knew she needed help — and fast, before she got discouraged with homeschooling and a mom who corrected her whenever she read a word incorrectly. It was a complete shock to me at that time that she had gone so many years in public school without anyone noticing that she was not reading at grade level (in 5th grade, she was accurately reading only the words for 2nd grade level). That revelation was the point when whatever faith I had left in free government education went swirling down the drain.

I bought the recommended book (Mary Pecci’s At Last! A Reading Method for Every Child), took my daughter through the 2-week crash course, and then thought “Now what?” Seeing she needed more practice to reinforce her newly learned skills, I grabbed my son’s phonics book for a guide and wrote my own remedial phonics practice sheets for fifth grade “beginning” phonics. I made up word games and puzzles to make the lessons fun and yet challenging. After I felt she had gained enough skill and confidence (and could actually read big new words), I challenged her to go back to one of the books she had “read” several times and read it again, this time sounding out the difficult words. I was confident that she would see the change in how many words she had guessed at before, but I was not prepared for her response: “Mom, you ruined this story! It’s a whole different book now!” However, her emotion was based more in surprise than anger, because she also realized how poor her reading skills had been. She also saw that her newfound ability to break a word into syllables and sound them out meant that no word in the world was too difficult for her now. We pulled long words out of the dictionary and chemical names from shampoo labels and she correctly read them all. Her desire to read Little Golden Books was quickly transferred to long chapter books, and the bookshelves in her bedroom grew heavy with her expanding collection of favorites.

Once reading was no longer a struggle, her schoolwork became a challenge for me as I was pressed to keep up with her, checking her work and reading over her assignments. During Christmas break of her 7th grade year, she calmly asked if I had ordered her 8th grade English book yet. Baffled as to why she would care nine months early, I said that no, of course I had not ordered next year’s book yet — why would she ask such a silly question? Her reply left me speechless: “Because I just finished the 7th grade book and I’m ready to start the next one.” I ordered the book.

She continued at that pace, to graduate from high school ten days before her 17th birthday — sixteen years old, with 7 credit hours at the community college in chemistry and English composition. She has now graduated from a 4-year college with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration — at age 20. Another day I will tell you about my son who just graduated from Homeschool High with 26 hours of college credits.

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Phonics, Reading, Visual Learning

Meatball Education: Filling in the Potholes of Public School

June 30, 2004 by 3 Comments

Some of you are wishing you could pull your children out of the classrooms they’re already in, but feel that would be too difficult or traumatic. Fiddlesticks. Adjusting from an organized school system to homeschooling does take time and effort, but it is well worth it. I remember hearing somewhere that I should expect an average of one month of homeschooling to adjust for every year of public school — double that if the child attended preschool. My daughter had attended 5 years of public school (K through 4th) plus preschool, making for about a 12-month adjustment period to homeschooling. In her case, that was very accurate. By the beginning of our second year of homeschooling, she was “in the groove” and loving it.

The adjustment was rocky at first for all of us, but grew easier with time. I had never homeschooled children before, but they had never been homeschooled before either, so we were breaking new ground together. Many times we cuddled together and cried together and vowed to get through this together. We changed methods, we changed books, we kept trying new things until we found the things that worked.

So if you do pull your children out of public school, then what? You are thinking that you cannot fix the potholes in their education until they will recognize you as their teacher; you cannot get them to recognize you as their teacher until you can prove yourself by teaching them; you cannot teach them until you can fix the potholes in their education.

A magical transformation takes place on your first day of homeschooling: Student asks a question, and Mom gives the answer. Suddenly Mom is seen as Teacher. Student recognizes that Mom knows stuff. Occasionally, Mom may not know the answer, but Smart Mom will reply, “Let’s find the answer together.” And an exercise in research skills is begun. There is no crime in reading the answer out of the teacher’s manual or answer book — that is why you bought it! (Only purchase those for the subjects in which you really need them — hopefully not for 2nd grade reading.)

I am a die-hard fan of reruns of the old TV show M*A*S*H, in which the surgeons performed what they referred to as “meatball surgery.” They saved their patients lives, then sent them on their way to another hospital for more complete care. As homeschoolers, we often have to do a similar thing, patching up the missed portions of education, so that the rest of the child’s education can be furthered. If you have brought your students back home from government school, you will find potholes. There is just no way to keep a classroom of 30 students moving along without dragging a few along the way. Even if your student was the brightest in the class, he probably got bored waiting for the others to catch up and missed something. That is a pothole. Meatball Education fills in those potholes.

You will start homeschooling and be sailing along, gaining momentum, until one day — BAM — out of nowhere you fall into a pothole. We found potholes called “fractions” and “decimals” and “using commas in a series” and even “how to pronounce the word ‘a’.” A pothole means that you have to put your current lesson aside and fill in the missing part before you can proceed. Try some of these lines to help you and your students get through the potholes and back out the other side:
“I’m not just your mom, I’m your teacher; but I’m not just your teacher, I’m your mom.”
“Love comes free with the education. One free hug with each question asked.”
“You can sit on my lap while we do this particularly difficult lesson.”

Do not be discouraged — finding a pothole simply means you are educating. Look upon potholes as merit badges: I have found another one; I am filling in the gaps in my student’s education.

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Leaving Public School

Who Wrote This “Rule Book” and Why Do I Think I Have to Follow It?

June 14, 2004 by Leave a Comment

It took me a few years to learn how to homeschool. At first, we tried to duplicate school at home. Bad idea. Public school held too many bad memories for my daughter, and she needed to be freed from that bondage. My son had only experienced Kindergarten at the public school, so he did not have as many preconceived ideas of what school was supposed to be like and readily accepted whatever we did.

Each successive year brought new changes for us as we relaxed more and more and allowed formality to drop away in favor of a more comfortable, Guilt-Free style. I stopped keeping a detailed journal of what my students accomplished each day. I developed a check-off chart system for lesson plans that showed where we were in our schedule and made the journal redundant. I relaxed my schedule to allow for unexpected illnesses or unplanned days off. I realized that time off before Christmas is much more valuable than time off after New Year’s. I forced myself to ignore the guilt feelings that came from skipping an uninteresting field trip with our homeschool group. Since my students voluntarily reported on everything they read, we opted to skip the questions at the end of the chapters in science or history and moved on to reading the next chapter. They obviously had learned the material and were just anxious to keep going. We passed over writing assignments in language arts that we felt were especially tedious or irrelevant. I read aloud to my children each day, sometimes several chapters a day when we were in a particularly fascinating book. We kept the learning methods we enjoyed, and we explored other materials for the subjects we detested.

As we began to do school our way, I began to feel more confident. I found myself encouraging other beginning homeschoolers that once you have achieved your second September, you begin to feel like a veteran. You think to yourself, I have done this before. I know how to handle it.

Whenever I caught myself doing something strictly because I thought I was supposed to, without any concrete reason for doing it, I defiantly shouted my new battle cry: “Who wrote this ‘Rule Book’ and why do I think I have to follow it?” It was my own personal declaration of independence. I had realized that there are as many correct ways to homeschool as there are correct reasons to homeschool. I saw that just because someone else teaches in a certain way, it does not mean that my children will benefit from that method as well.

Another facet of this freedom was discovered when my students confirmed my observation that if the teacher and the student are both at the point of tears, it is not the fault of either of them — the curriculum is to blame. The curriculum itself is not necessarily poorly written, it just does not present the material in the way the student will best learn it. I studied learning styles and discovered that students do not all learn in the same ways. When I changed materials and techniques, each student learned better. (Learned, period.) I began tailoring assignments to match each student’s interests and then practically had to step out of their way — it was like adding gasoline to a flame. The right presentation of the material “connects” with the student in such a way as to promote self-teaching. I no longer had to nag or badger — they would eagerly go through the material on their own.

If you or your students are having difficulties in your homeschool, take another look at what “rule book” you are following. Ask yourself if you are doing things in a way that is comfortable and relaxed and fits your family’s lifestyle, or are you going against the natural grain and suffering the guilt and stress of unsuccessful struggles. Discover your reasons for what you teach and how you teach it, then proceed Guilt-Free.

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Encouragement for Parents, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Styles

Summer — a Help or a Hindrance?

June 10, 2004 by 3 Comments

A common question among homeschoolers is: Should you teach through the summer or let your students have the time off? Perhaps your students need extra help on lessons, but you need the break? Summer can be a relaxing time and a difficult time all at the same time. (Sometimes students may choose to use summer to get ahead, but that does not usually upset routines too much, so I will save that topic for a later date.)

Speaking from personal experience, our family did something a little different each summer. When the extra help was really needed to catch up, a 1/2-lesson in math was assigned for each day. However, when only one student was assigned schoolwork and the rest of the household was operating on a looser summer schedule, getting those lessons actually done was often as tricky as threading a needle in the dark while wearing mittens. I must admit, on some days it felt like punishment for both student and teacher, rather than the reality of extra time devoted to learning.

Our best success in retaining knowledge came from playing many games that used math skills during the summer and finding other creative ways to keep using the recently-learned material instead of allowing it to slowly fade into oblivion. Any game using money or keeping a running point score provided painless practice in math. When all the board games and card games became boring, we invented new ways to combine them and keep on playing. The “Gee Whiz Quiz” came about during one of these summers, adding a scavenger hunt atmosphere (and some age-appropriate math) to the well-used game closet.

Once I suggested that my children host a backyard carnival for their neighborhood friends. The planning and preparing of simple, midway-style games kept their minds active in anticipating problems and finding solutions. Another time we researched the solar system and plotted it out across the length of our lot, starting at the front sidewalk near the street and ending at the alley behind our house. Seeing the actual scale-model distances between the planets gave us a better idea of the vastness of the universe. The family vacation could be chronicled as a newspaper for Grandma, or simply journaled one entry per day in a hardcover notebook.

Free reading time has always been a summer favorite. Reluctant readers can be enticed to try something different by letting them watch a video version first to capture their interest. My son watched Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and found it so fascinating that he read the entire book. I try to read a couple of books over the summer, too. It is a recharging time for me, and my students get to observe reading as a not-just-for-kids activity.

Our minds often need the summer break, just as muscles need a rest period after vigorous exercise. Whenever possible, allow the time off, but with a few mind-stretching activities mingled in to keep the thinking processes sharp. Encourage your students to use their “free time” to expand their knowledge of a hobby or pursue an interest they do not usually get time for during the school year. Just because the lessons are on hold, it does not mean they cannot be learning.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning

Learning to Walk — Seen as a New Lesson

June 3, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Do you remember when you were teaching little Johnny how to walk? He would grip your hands with all his might, rock and teeter on his shaky legs, and wobble forward with one reluctant foot while the other remained behind, planted firmly but not really lending support to the Herculean effort being attempted. Eventually, those little feet learned which direction they were supposed to point, the leg muscles strengthened and coordinated their actions, resulting in step after step after step. Still a few attempts failed, bringing the whole body down with a jarring thud, only to be met with the determination and concentrated effort that propelled little Johnny once again to his feet and across the room to your waiting arms. You scooped him up in a giant bear hug, smothered him with kisses, and squealed with delight, “You DID it! You walked to Mommy! I KNEW you could do it!”

Now apply that picture to the latest lesson you are trying to teach homeschooler Johnny. Assure him that you know he can do this. Hold him tight until he gains his footing — do not let go too soon. Expect a few failures along the way, but do not take them to mean all is lost. Help him back up, dust him off, point him in the right direction, and allow him to try again — even if it means he might fall again. Not one of us here today is walking on our own without countless falls in our past. Success has been simplified to “getting back up,” and so it is with homeschooling. We will all fall. Those of us who have succeeded have simply refused to stay down.

Filed Under: Doing Your "Best", Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's

Too Much, Too Fast = Burnout

May 24, 2004 by Leave a Comment

Do not let anyone guilt you into doing more than you (or your kids) can handle. Burnout comes from too much, too fast. Just because another family is studying Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in Kindergarten, it does not mean that you should, too. It also does not mean that the other family will actually learn anything from it, or continue it to mastery. They may be well on their way to being the next family to give up homeschooling and re-enroll in public school.

The “right way to homeschool” is the way that is comfortable and relaxed and fits your family’s lifestyle. Do not take this business too seriously — make it enjoyable. Homeschooling already far exceeds the standard set by government schools, and Homeschool Burnout is caused by trying to do too much, too soon, to other people’s standards.

Begin by teaching your beginning student to read and count. The simplest methods are often the best: Alpha-Phonics teaches reading just as well as the $200 programs, but for 1/10 of the price. If you find you need flashcards or other manipulatives, make some yourself with your student’s help, or shop your local thrift store and see what goodies can be found there. The Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting Series was my favorite for very simple-but-elegant penmanship that, incidentally, converts later to cursive with few changes and little difficulty. Pick up a set of Cuisenaire Rods and introduce Miquon Math at 1st grade. If you already have some simple storybooks and a library card, you are now well equipped for the first few years of homeschooling. History, science, geography, health — all those can wait until 4th grade when your student has a confident grasp on reading and is ready for some broader subject matter and a wider look at the world.

Language Arts is a catch-all phrase for reading, phonics, spelling, handwriting, grammar, and composition. My advice is: you know what your child is interested in, and you know what your child is capable of. If little Melissa wants to write stories, by all means let her, even if it means she dictates while you act as scribe. If Scotty gets bored stiff doing workbook pages for spelling or phonics, dig out your old Scrabble game and let him form this week’s words with the letter tiles. “Thinking outside the box” may be a modern cliche, but it definitely applies to homeschooling. Playing with letters/sounds, forming those letters/sounds into words, and grouping the words into sentences is how we all learned to talk. Now it is how your student will learn to read.

Filed Under: Curriculum Choices, Homeschool How-To's
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