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Preschool Is Not Brain Surgery

April 17, 2009 by 12 Comments

I have tackled the topic of homeschooling older students while you have preschoolers around several times before, but I’ve never yet directly addressed homeschooling for preschool itself, especially when preschool marks the official beginning of schooling for your oldest child. This changes now: I am here to encourage you that you can teach your own child for preschool. You do not need an advanced degree in education to be able to effectively teach your child at home for preschool.

I have prepared a list of things that my children and I did during their preschool years that cover all of the types of activities and subjects your child will need to prepare them for their future academics. These activities may be done in any order, corresponding to your child’s interests and abilities. Progress according to your child’s abilities: if your child has difficulty understanding any given concept, set it aside for two weeks or two months while you do other activities and see what a difference that makes. Pick it up again later, or set it aside a second time, if necessary. All children learn at different rates, just like they begin to walk or talk or get teeth at different times. Faster or slower is not better, it’s just different.

Multiple activities can be done each day, if it works with your schedule and with your child’s interests. Fifteen minutes at a time may be adequate for the average preschooler, but the child may enjoy several of these short sessions throughout the day. Focus on only one activity at each session, but if your child is really enjoying the activity, you can let him continue playing with it after the formal “lesson” time is completed.

Read books to your child. Snuggle up together for special Mommy-and-me time. Use funny voices for the characters. Vary your tone to match the scene: fast and loud for the exciting parts, slow whispers for the sneaky parts, sniffling when the character is sad, bouncy and happy when the character is happy. When the book is a familiar favorite, stop periodically to ask your child questions: Where is Papa Bear going next? Why is he doing that? What will he find there? These help build your child’s memory by asking him to recall details he has learned from all of the times you have read this story in the past. Which bear is wearing the red shirt? Point to the smallest bear. Can you find a bowl on the bears’ table? Questions of this type help your child notice details and learn to identify colors, sizes, objects, etc. Why did the bears leave the house? Where did they go? What is this little girl’s name? These questions teach comprehension: read a portion of the story, and then ask the child about key elements that were just read. At first, you may want to ask questions about one page at a time, but soon your child will be able to recall details from several pages back.

Include ABC books, even though they usually have no plot or story. As a child, my personal favorite was The Nonsense ABC by Edward Lear. For my own children, their favorite was The Dr. Seuss ABC. What those books have in common are fun, rhyming poems for each letter. Lear’s “A was once an apple pie” was just as easy to remember as Dr. Seuss and his “Aunt Annie’s alligator.” The delightful poems were much more enjoyable than a simple picture book of ABC’s, although those are useful, too, as you will see in a moment.

Learning letters. Gather all the ABC books you have, and compare the pages for the same letter in each book. Linger over one letter per week or a letter every few days, until you know for sure that your child knows that letter. Use sticky-notes or home-made flashcards to label objects in your home that begin with the letter of the week, and help your child make the letter’s sound every time you see one of those objects and say its name. Banana, B, buh, buh-nana. You get the idea — and so will your preschooler. You may need to get creative on a few letters, such as Q, unless you live with a queen in a home full of quilts and have a pet quail. For X, you may need to use words that have an X in them, such as fox. The picture ABC books will come in very handy now, especially if they use several items for each letter. Don’t overlook your public library — they may have ABC books for unique topics, such as animal ABC’s or around-the-world with ABC’s.

Help your child learn to recognize a letter, no matter what font it is written in. Making a Letter Recognition Notebook is an excellent method for this. Focus on the appearance of the letters themselves, instead of what objects begin with each letter. Do one page for the upper case of a letter and another page for samples of the lower case letter. The goal here is for your child to be able to spot an a, whether it looks like a ball against a wall or like an egg underneath a tiny umbrella.

Learning numbers. Repeat the activities from the Learning Letters section above, but do them for the numbers 1-10. Draw a group of dots on the page to correspond to the number represented. Use counting books for activities similar to the ABC book activities. Once your child knows 1-10, you may add numbers up to 20, if you’d like. Your goal here is for the child to recognize each digit and immediately know how many objects that number stands for.

Learn colors. Ditto. A color-of-the-week activity will show your child all the varieties of each color. Light blue, dark blue, bright blue, dusty blue, navy blue, sky blue. Blue jeans, blue socks, blueberries, blue blanket, blue water bottle, blue crayons, blue cars, blue blocks, blue game pieces. How many blue things can you find in your home? You may be surprised!

Learn shapes. Ditto once again. The variety within each shape can be confusing at first to little ones. Is a big circle the same thing as a small circle? Are a cookie and a ring both circles even though one has stuff inside it and the other one is empty? Rectangles and triangles can be particularly tricky. Use a dollar (kids love learning with real money) as an example of a rectangle, then turn it up on end to show the child how the dollar is the same shape as a door. No more tricky rectangles! Long and skinny or short and fat, rectangles will still look mostly like a door or a dollar. Triangles have 3 sides, no matter how long or short those sides may be, and once your preschooler can count to 3, he can begin to recognize triangles. Browse through the snack cracker aisle at the supermarket for some tasty, edible geometric shapes! Careful nibblers will transform one shape into another, naming the shapes as they admire their creations and then eating their artwork.

Fine motor skills. See Preschoolers’ Educational School-time Activities for a variety of helpful activities that your child will enjoy doing and learn wonderfully useful skills at the same time.

Gross motor skills. Let your child practice on a “balance beam” made by drawing a straight line with chalk on the sidewalk or driveway. Masking tape on the floor is a good substitute indoors. When your child can do it easily without stepping off the line, switch to using a 4″ x 4″ board (any length) lying directly on the ground. When the child can walk that board easily without losing his balance, prop the board up with a brick or concrete block (or other stable item) at each end — just don’t go too high, so that the child will not be hurt if he does fall. Please stay close by your child whenever he is practicing this.

Other useful concepts. Play. Notice the weather each day. Go to the park. Walk around the block. Smell flowers. Watch an anthill. Put a bird feeder or a bird bath near a window and keep it filled so you can watch the birds and learn to identify them. Make cookies. Add a set of measuring cups to the bath toys. Visit a zoo. Watch a construction site (from a safe distance) and talk about what each man or machine is doing. Learn from life every day.

Social Skills. See Social Skills — What Should I Teach My Preschooler? for a very complete explanation.

What about school questions? Preschoolers ask questions; it’s what they do, and it’s who they are. Your homeschooled preschooler will undoubtedly ask questions about going to school: Why does my friend go to school and I don’t? When will I go to school? Can I ride on a school bus? Can I play on the school playground? Why does my storybook show kids doing things at school, but I don’t have any stories about kids who homeschool? Ah, yes, those questions.

You can share as much as you think your preschooler will understand about why you chose to homeschool, but try not to make other families look bad for not homeschooling. One way around this is to point out what vehicles are owned by the families on your block or in your neighborhood. Some have small cars, some have pickup trucks, and some have minivans. They pick the type of vehicles that they want for the things they do. Some families send their children to public school, some go to private schools, and some homeschool. Each family picks the type of school that they want for their children. Each family can also decide if they want to plant flowers around their house or raise tomatoes in their garden. They can decide if they want to have a dog or a cat or tropical fish or no pets at all. Some families choose to eat in fancy restaurants, some families get burgers at the drive-through, and some families make all their meals at home. Every family gets to make choices, and homeschooling is one thing your family has chosen.

Sometimes the trickier part of answering these questions is to show that not following the crowd can be more fun. Because you are homeschooling, you can go to the park when the other children are stuck inside the school building. This is also a good way to bring weather (good or bad) into the conversation: you can play outside on nice days instead of having to sit at a desk all day long, or you can stay inside where it’s warm and dry all day long on the cold and rainy days. Perhaps you can visit the school playground after school is over for the day or on a weekend or during the summer. Perhaps you can ride on a city bus or a church bus. I have known preschoolers who begged and begged their parents to let them go to school, only to find out that school was not the fun experience they had imagined it to be. One little boy asked his mommy if he could be homeschooled again, because all he really had wanted from school was to play on the playground, and when he was in school, the teacher only let him go out to the playground at certain times and for very short periods. Being homeschooled with his brothers was much more enjoyable.

Many children (and parents) ask about the lack of homeschooling in storybooks. I agree that there are very few books that portray education at home, but I have a sneaky way around that, too. Not all storybooks show everything that a child does every day, and not all storybooks show children going to school. Therefore, maybe, just maybe, the children in some books are homeschooling, but the story is telling about some other part of their day. Our school books were not in every room of our house — ok, sometimes, but not always. When the Bear family went for a walk to let their porridge cool down, perhaps they had been doing their lessons all morning, and now it was lunch time, and they would continue their lessons after lunch. Stories are not always about what you can see — sometimes there are also lessons to be learned in what the pictures do not show. And finding those lessons also teaches your child to think about the story and what it does and does not say.

Do I need curriculum to homeschool preschool? No. If you don’t believe me, take this quick test:

  • Do you know the alphabet?
  • Can you count to 20?
  • Can you identify basic colors and shapes?
  • Do you know how to use a pencil?
  • Do you know how to use scissors?
  • Can you read a child’s storybook?

If you answered Yes to 3 or more of these questions, you will probably do just fine. Use the money you would have spent on curriculum for a family zoo pass or a storage cabinet for all of the arts and crafts supplies you will accumulate in the next few years!

Preschool-aged children need foundational skills: pre-reading (recognizing letter names and letter sounds; visual distinction: recognizing differences and similarities between objects), pre-writing (small muscle skills and coordination: using fingers), and body control (large muscle skills and coordination: using arms and legs). Children who are only three, four, or five years old do not need to be able to identify nations of the world, Presidents of the United States, or the life cycle of seahorses. These tiny tots will benefit much more from spending 15 minutes cutting colored paper into confetti than they would from endless coloring pages for geography, history, science, or social studies topics. I have probably just stepped on the toes of multiple eager teachers, but please understand that your little ones will not remember very many of these superfluous lessons until they are able to read fluently for themselves. Then you can turn them loose on the library shelves and get ready to hear them recount the myriads of fascinating facts they have read.

Once when I was selling some of our outgrown books at a used curriculum fair, my customer asked if I had the teacher’s manual for the 2nd grade reading text. “No,” I replied with a smile, “I thought if I couldn’t figure out the answers to the questions in a 2nd grade reading book, I had bigger problems than the teacher’s manual could fix.” She thought about that for a few seconds and began laughing along with me. “You’re absolutely right!” And she bought the book. Teaching preschool is even easier than teaching 2nd grade reading. And you will be able to do it just fine without a teacher’s manual or fancy curriculum.

More articles related to Preschoolers are listed in Topical Index: Preschoolers.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Deciding to Homeschool, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

Becoming a Successful and Proud Quitter

March 16, 2009 by 4 Comments

[This article was written by Jennifer (Morrison) Leonhard: Guilt-Free daughter and homeschool graduate.]

My mom (your usual Guilt-Free Homeschooling author) and I recently spoke at a homeschool conference. In one of our workshops, a mother commented that although she and her husband know the school system in which their child is currently enrolled is failing their child in several subjects, they did not want to pull him out to homeschool until the following fall because they do not want to set a bad example for him of quitting.

***Let’s take a reality check time-out here. By leaving the child in a school system that is not teaching him, or that is teaching him incorrectly, what you, the parent, are teaching him is that quitting is not ok, but failing is awesome.***

One of the most important lessons that we learned during our first year of homeschooling was that sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do for your family. This is not to say that quitting is always the solution to a bad situation, but as a society we shun the idea of quitting as if it were a sign of failure. However, if you are already failing, sometimes it is because you have not quit something that you should not have done to begin with.

For example, at one point our family was a part of several homeschool groups at once, and we were going to every event, meeting, play date, field trip, and class day that came up in every one of them. We were over-committed, frustrated, and undernourished in good old-fashioned study and family time. Realizing that we didn’t have to be at every event, or a part of every group in the area gave us more time to concentrate on what parts of education were important to our family — and honestly, sometimes the best field trips are the ones you find yourselves on topics your family is interested in, and in a time frame that works best for, again, your family.

This idea transitions to real, grown-up life, too. I have grown up to be a manager in several retail environments. I was a sales leader in my company and was promoted to management, and when I changed jobs, I was asked to be a manager again after a very short time of being an average joe. After nearly a year and a half of being a manager at the second location, I found myself frustrated that I was never seeing my husband, since we were both too involved in our jobs. I was not getting enough time with the rest of my family — I had to hire my brother and invite him to live with us just to be able to see him once in a while (huge blessing, although it took a little transitioning). And my focus in life was just not where I wanted it to be in the big picture. However, I felt pressure from my bosses that to leave my position for any reason beyond moving away or finding a more profitable job, would be failure. One weekend, filled with tears because it was the first time in 6 weeks that I had much time to see my husband, under huge pressure from work to spend extended hours at the store on a rare weekend off, and under the looming deadline of the homeschool conference that was really a highlight to my year (but for which I had no time to even delight in its proximity), I made the decision that would best benefit my health and my family — I had to quit. At first I felt shame, that I had failed, that I was a “quitter.” I wondered how my friends and extended family would view this decision.

Looking back on my life, though, I saw a lot of situations in which it had benefited our family that we had quit something. Whether it was a textbook that was not suited to our needs, an activity or group that did not fit our schedule, or a day that simply was not going well and we all just needed a day off before diving back into the normal routine, there were many times when quitting was the best thing we ever did for our family. Since having left my position a little over a month ago, I have such a joy that cannot be compared. It was the right decision for my family — and sure, my bosses thought it was a mistake, but it felt really good when they asked me to rethink my decision. They did not think I was a failure, they asked me back because they felt I was a success. There are many times in life when quitting may be a bad decision, having one bad day may not constitute a valid reason for quitting, but there are other times when it can lead to great freedom and joy, and even other opportunities that are better for you and your family. Do not let the word “quit” scare you away from a different opportunity that may equal success.

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Leaving Public School

10 Fun Math Exercises from a BINGO Game

February 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

A standard Bingo game contains several printed cards with numbers arranged into a grid of rows and columns and tokens marked B-1 through O-75, used for calling the numbers when playing the game. These components can be used in other ways for some creative (and fun) variations on math practice.

  1. Play Bingo for number recognition practice and good, clean fun.
  2. Sort the number-tokens into odds and evens. Or sort out just the tokens needed to skip-count by 2’s, or 3’s, or 4’s, etc.
  3. Arrange the tokens into numerical order from 1-75.
  4. Sort the tokens into 1-10, 11-20, etc.
  5. Pick 2 (or more) tokens at random and add their values together. Now try subtracting them, multiplying them, or dividing them. [Hint: Place all of the tokens into a paper sack or a clean sock for ease of random drawing.]
  6. Pick 2 tokens at random and make fractions from their numbers — make both a proper fraction (numerator is smaller than denominator) and an improper fraction (numerator is larger than denominator). Simplify each fraction, if possible, or make a list of equivalent fractions.
  7. Add the columns of numbers on the Bingo cards.
  8. Add the rows of numbers on the Bingo cards.
  9. Write the factors for each number on a Bingo card or for number tokens drawn at random.
  10. Practice rounding with the numbers on the Bingo cards or with randomly drawn tokens.
Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Tactile Learning, Top 10 (and other) Lists

Holiday Survival Tips for Toxic Family Gatherings

December 8, 2008 by 2 Comments

The topic of holiday gatherings with extended families was being discussed recently among some friends of mine, and it became apparent that many families dread The Big Family Holiday Dinner because it can take place under very undesirable circumstances. Regardless of socio-economic status, it seems that nearly every extended family includes a few rotten apples along with the pretty, shiny ones. In some cases, the rottenness is merely aggravating, while in others it can be seriously intimidating… or worse. If you are blessed with a truly wonderful family, take some time to concentrate on just how blessed you really are. For the rest of you, allow me to share the following holiday survival tips and advance planning secrets that worked well for getting us through less-than-festive holidays in classic Guilt-Free style. As always, I advocate doing what works best for your immediate family: your children, your spouse, and yourself. Never mind what the grandparents or siblings or aunts and uncles want you to do, expect you to do, or freely tell you that you should do — Guilt-Free Homeschooling (or Guilt-Free Life in general) is not accomplished according to others’ expectations. Let them do what works for them; you need to do what is best for you.

Absolutely, definitely, unquestionably prepare your children in advance for things that you expect might come up in the extended family situation, such as excessive consumption of alcohol, smoking, or bad language, and discuss how you want your children to react to the types of behavior they do not normally see at home. Forewarned is forearmed, and no family is perfect. Talk with your children beforehand, preparing them for what they will likely see and/or hear and from whom (read: which people to avoid). If your polite, well-behaved, morally upstanding children know ahead of time that Auntie Mary or Uncle Henry will be chain-smoking and downing an endless supply of adult beverages, they will be less likely to be shocked into uttering a potentially embarrassing response and igniting a scene that would stun the Hatfields and McCoys.

When discussing expected behavior, I explained our family’s rules and standards and contrasted them with other family’s rules, so that my children would understand why we had the rules we did. (Pointing out the absence of certain rules in other families sufficiently explained why some of our cousins behaved the way they did.) When my youngsters questioned why another child was allowed to play a violent video game or watch an undesirable video, I had a response ready that usually settled the matter to their satisfaction: “Well, if he was my child, then he wouldn’t be allowed to do that.” Occasionally, that philosophy would backfire on me, and my children would point out some wonderful privilege that another cousin boasted (usually something that I didn’t want or couldn’t afford for my children). At that point, I had to use the “things are seldom what they seem” tactic and help my children see The Bigger Picture: was that single privilege taking the place of more important things (to us) that we enjoyed every day (such as the privilege of pursuing our own interests through homeschooling)? When we examine all the facets of others’ lives, we can nearly always find areas that we would not enjoy. The trick here is to help your child (or your spouse, or yourself) see all the areas of his own life as a whole, not just the overstocked toy room or the fancy electronic gadget du jour (or the island vacation or the 5-bathroom house or the 4-stall garage filled with shiny, sparkling chrome). A few minutes of focusing on the blessings in your own life will lead you to realize that you really wouldn’t want to trade lives (and problems, debts, or tax brackets) with anyone.

It helped us to have a “code word” worked out ahead of time — something my kids could come and safely tell me while I was surrounded by other relatives (“I have a headache” or “My tummy hurts”), usually spoken while trying to diminish the twinkle in their eyes, that would tell me they wanted Mom’s stealth-mode intervention. Since our large family gatherings were always loud and everyone tends to overeat, the headache and tummy ache lines were spoken in truth, but with the added benefit of our coded meaning. It was the timing of the comment that told me as much as the words themselves. “I’m a little tired” can easily hold the double meaning of “I need a break from all these hyper-sugar-buzzed cousins — please let me sit with you until they get tired of waiting for me and go off to do something else.” I would then invite my child to sit with me for a while, and we would start a table game and change the activity level to something much less toxic than what-new-swear-words-have-you-learned-in-public-school-this-week.

Let your kids take along a “bag of tricks,” containing an assortment of favorite by-myself activities: a book to read, a puzzle book, or a personal video game will allow your child a retreat into a semblance of personal space and provide a break in the midst of the chaos. [Caution: Do NOT take things that could be easily broken by bullying cousins.] Include some one-on-one games, such as Connect Four or Battleships, to play with one special person, and larger group games, such as Apples to Apples, Uno or SET cards, or dominoes so they can invite others to play along with them. Our experience was that the toxic cousins would run far away when my kids pulled out an educational game or activity, resulting in much-coveted peace and quiet! My kids quickly learned which games would attract the intelligent relatives and repel the undesirables, so you may correctly assume that those games became their favorites to take along to family gatherings. (We also learned that taking games with the fewest pieces possible helped avoid lost parts from their favorite games.)

A table game can improve a toxic atmosphere by refocusing some people and disinteresting others enough that they will leave the room. Play the game with just your children, if necessary, or include a few others — not everyone under the roof needs to be involved. My family’s gatherings usually included the men’s cribbage game at the card table, a television in one room dedicated to football and another television elsewhere dedicated to video games, one wide-spreading group game (such as dominoes) on the dining room table, and an assortment of smaller games for the kids to take wherever they could find room enough to play. Remember that the educational games (e.g. Scrabble) that may be fun for homeschooled kids will quickly turn away the cousins/aunts/uncles who do not value learning, knowledge, and brain exercises. Eliminating score-keeping will minimize undue competitiveness, and relaxing a few rules can maximize the fun and adapt the play for various ages and abilities. If you are plagued with know-it-all relatives, bring along a new game that they are less likely to be familiar with. You can selectively choose games that work with only a specific number of players or choose “party” games that work for any number, depending on how you need to manipulate the crowd to your advantage.

My children used to stick their noses in a book just long enough to get away from their cousins (who would flee from anything resembling education or schoolwork). Reading a book can give an introverted child an important quiet-time break, transporting him to a more secluded environment. Historical novels can carry the reader to a peaceful, civilized era where people spoke eloquent language and treated each other with dignity and respect. Detective stories & mysteries focus the thoughts on solving a specific problem, and biographies draw attention to someone else’s life for a while. (If those sound preferable to a day with your relatives, you may want to take along a book for yourself!)

Are you dreading the inevitable homeschooling interrogation? (See Discouraging Families) You don’t have to take on every debate that is proffered. A brief answer followed by smiling silence can do more to make your case than a well-rehearsed discourse. For example, the acid-tongued challenge of “Are you still homeschooling those kids?” can be answered by a very confident “Yes!” and nothing more. That effectively turns the tables back on your accuser, forcing him to come up with an actual line of reasoning against homeschooling, which you can then refute with facts, if you haven’t walked away from the debate by then. (Be aware that offering too much information at once can work against you.) Meanwhile, change your tactics from defense to offense: start dealing out the pack of SET cards and watch your kids astound the crowd with their warp-speed abilities to spot Sets. The same people who were so recently criticizing your “inadequate” academics will slink away and develop a sudden interest in the football game’s halftime show.

Is your problem that your toxic older parent treats you (an adult parent yourself) as though you were still a child? Your first duty is to your own children, not to your overly-controlling parent. (See “Parent” Is a Verb) Yes, it is possible to respect an older parent while still standing up for your own children. Others of us may have to deal with the Know-It-All relative, the one who feels the need to be involved in every generation’s decisions, from what foods go on your child’s plate to who puts what decoration on which part of the Christmas tree. (See The Know-It-All Attitude) When a Know-It-All starts imposing his or her views on your unfortunate child, it’s time to intervene and disrupt that negativity.

Let me make this very clear: your family (your spouse and children) are your #1 priority.

  • IT IS OKAY to limit contact (shortened periods of interaction) with those whose rules/standards will have a serious, negative impact over an extended period of time (and your gut instinct will accurately tell you when that time has been reached).
  • IT IS OKAY to supervise contact with those who cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner on their own.
  • IT IS OKAY to cut off contact with those who may actually cause harm.
  • IT IS OKAY to leave early! Make whatever excuse you need to, and leave. You can still redeem the remainder of a miserable day with a *good* family activity with just your own kids: pizza, ice cream, a movie out, family game night, or just a favorite video and popcorn at home. (Trust me — it works!) If you absolutely cannot depart, take your kids for a walk or go into a back bedroom and read them a story or watch a family-friendly video or do whatever you can do to disrupt the impact of the negative influences and create some happier moments in the day.
  • These are YOUR children: if you need to limit, supervise, or cut off their exposure to certain toxic relatives, do it. Nothing — especially not the pseudo-feelings of a drunken, vulgar, distant relative who won’t remember his abhorrent behavior tomorrow and would deny it anyway — nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of your children (and your spouse) in these formative years. (You will be surprised at the amount of respect you will gain by standing up to oafish brutes who can’t remember how to behave in public.)

Don’t shut family members out completely UNLESS they have proven themselves so extremely toxic as to be a genuine danger to the health or safety of your children, your spouse, or yourself. That circumstance is at an entirely different level from the typical family gathering with merely annoying relatives. This may include your child’s extreme food allergies and the relative who thinks “it’s all in your head” and insists on slipping the child some of the suspect food when you’re not looking, or it could be a relative with pedophilia issues that the rest of the family casually dismisses as “harmless.” Follow your instincts: they will seldom be wrong. Don’t allow something now that you will regret later.

It is not necessary to be insulting or to purposely hurt feelings by bluntly declaring “We can’t stand to be around you any longer!!” It is usually enough to say “We need to go now.” Use the weather or the traffic as an excuse, if needed, or say “Joey’s tired, and we need to take him home.” (Little Joey may not actually be in need of immediate sleep, but Joey may certainly be tired of being picked on by his bigger cousins, or he’s tired of Aunt Sarah pinching his cheeks every 8.3 minutes, or he’s tired of Uncle Joe reminding him of how Joey is his namesake — when the last thing Joey ever wants in this life is to grow up to be anything at all like creepy, stinky Uncle Joe!) Family is forever, so tolerate as much as is reasonable by finding ways to make the uncomfortable situations more bearable. You could ultimately end up with a fabulous reputation for being the fun and smart branch of the family who always bring those great games!

What if you’re destined to spend several days with tiring relatives due to air travel restrictions? Take your children for a walk around the neighborhood, take them to a movie, play a game with your kids, read a chapter or two from a good book together. Change the activity. Change the topic of conversation. Change the channel. Do something to break the cycle and disrupt the toxic flow. Even if you are not normally the intermediary type, try to stretch yourself in this situation for the sake of your children. Speaking up once may be all that is required to let others know where the line is and when they have stepped over it. There may come a point where continued exposure to certain relatives can become a negative influence to your children, instead of your presence being a positive influence to the others. If affordable, retreating to a cheap motel for even one night will give your family a break from all the relatives and allow you a few blessed private moments to yourselves. You may indeed by trapped in a relative’s home this year, but you can plan ahead for diversions while you are there and make other arrangements for next year.

Are you hosting this year’s family dinner? Invite an individual or family from church/work/etc. to join your family gathering who would not otherwise have close family with whom to share the holidays. They can serve as a “buffer” for keeping your relatives on their best behavior — most people are less relaxed around strangers and won’t be as likely to speak or act as freely. Use this to your advantage! You get the double blessing of hosting your friends (and the alternate topics of conversation they provide), and your troublesome relatives will be more likely to behave themselves.

Remember that your lives may be the only “Bible” your extended family will ever read. Don’t take that lightly. While there may be relatives who won’t listen to (or won’t allow) your testimony or attempts at sharing your faith, they will still see your lives, your actions, and your reactions. That “silent” witness will speak to them much more loudly than mere words ever could.

Yes, most of these tactics will mean that you spend your holiday working like an activities director or referee, rather than sitting back and catching up on all of the family gossip. However, sailing through the day and avoiding any huge blow-ups will be worth every bit of effort on your part, and that in itself will bring blessed relief from the previously anticipated tensions. Plan ahead, prepare your secret bag of tricks (games, books, etc.), and enjoy your holiday the best you can. Being prepared means fewer surprises, fewer shocks, fewer uncomfortable moments, and truly happy holidays!

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's

The Holidays Are Unit Studies — Learning During the Busy Season

December 2, 2008 by Leave a Comment

[This article was written by Jennifer (Morrison) Leonhard: Guilt-Free daughter and homeschool graduate.]

The holidays are a hectic time: relatives are coming over, the house needs to be cleaned, presents must be bought and wrapped, and food must be prepared. The schoolwork either gets lost along the way or becomes an added frustration as we try to get everything done at once. Mom planned our school schedule with the knowledge that Dad would be home from work around this time and regular schoolwork wouldn’t get done, but the learning was just beginning.

Mom usually gave us a break from lessons during the entire week of Thanksgiving, and we often stopped our official schoolwork well before Christmas, since extra time before each holiday was more beneficial for Mom’s preparations than time off afterward. However, we found many opportunities for learning, even when the schoolbooks had been put back on the shelf.

Shop Class
Dad usually did some project around the house during his time off from work (after all, you can’t get Dad to just sit around the house doing nothing). We learned to fix cracks in walls, paint, and generally drive Mom crazy with home repairs, all while she was preparing to have people over. Creating homemade presents, like building blocks, picture frames, and ornaments, teach handcrafts while theoretically cutting down on the expenses for gifts.

Math
Mom has always used cooking as math. Make a recipe smaller or larger, and you are automatically learning fractions: 3/4 cup of flour times 2 equals 1 1/2 cups. (Sure you could just use the 3/4 cup twice, but then what are you learning?) The economics of having a budget for Christmas will never fail to provide an opportunity for learning. How about learning some geometry and spatial relationships when wrapping presents? A lesson in possibility vs. impossibility lurks in the concept of a jolly and fat Santa squeezing down a chimney (which also brings up the lesson of “don’t try this at home”) or reindeer in flight (although one can argue that bees are also supposed to be a flight impossibility, and yet they consistently defy logical aerodynamics).

Music
Obviously, Christmas includes music — but that can take on many different forms. You can find many genres of Christmas music, from a symphony orchestra to the sounds of animals barking and mewing Away in a Manger. The latter is rather amusing the first time, but it gets harder to appreciate with frequency. The library and your friends will likely have a variety of holiday music that you can sample. I found a simple song book and learned how to tap out a few tunes on the piano. I knew what Christmas songs were supposed to sound like, so they were easier to learn, and I got a small taste of playing the piano. Explore the lyrics of Christmas songs to learn a little about Christmas history — have you ever wondered why the lyrics to I’ll Be Home for Christmas talk about presents on the tree?

History
Beyond the lyrics of songs giving us a glimpse into Christmas Past, there are many other subjects you can study for history. Thanksgiving is a history lesson in itself, from the voyage of the Pilgrims to learning why we celebrate it in November. American history becomes an interesting pastime instead of boring history when reading a Pilgrim’s personal account of coming to this country. Do you know why we celebrate Christmas around a tree? Or who started the tradition of sending Christmas cards? Do you know how the first Christmas trees were decorated — or the stories behind your family’s favorite decorations?

Literature
From studying Christmases past to reading about the Ghost of Christmas Past, ample literature can be found about others celebrating Christmas. In the spirit of the season, reading holiday stories aloud by a fire while drinking hot cocoa certainly doesn’t feel much like schoolwork!

Spelling
The holidays can provide much inspiration for spelling, from Old World words in songs to sitting around after dinner, playing Scrabble with friends and family. Reindeer pulling a sleigh will provide you with more exceptions to the rule “I before E, except after C.”

Language, Geography & Social Studies
Research the different names for Santa Claus around the world. (And for math, estimate the number of stops he must make in a single night.) Various traditions surround Santa’s visit, from cookies and milk to leaving shoes instead of stockings to be filled. And don’t overlook the traditions of Hanukkah: many interesting studies reside in the holiday celebrations from other cultures.

Cooking
Besides being recruited to help Mom with preparations for large family dinners (and vying for turns at grinding the fruits for our traditional cranberry relish), we often made a variety of cookies and candies to have available during the season. Occasionally, we also made an assortment of mini-casseroles and other freezer meals as gifts for elderly grandparents. Perhaps you could experience popular foods from holiday celebrations in the past — and who doesn’t enjoy a chance to try yummy new foods? You may end up adding a new favorite to the season, or (if you don’t like the new dish) you can at least learn to be more thankful for the old standards your family regularly prepares for holidays.

Many more lessons can be found in the holiday seasons — just make sure to keep your eyes open for learning opportunities and your heart open to the most important lesson of all: being thankful for the Son.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning

How Can I Teach Out-of-the-Box Thinking?

October 30, 2008 by Leave a Comment

[This article was written by Jennifer (Morrison) Leonhard: Guilt-Free daughter and homeschool graduate.]

Society spends years conforming our minds, teaching us to follow certain conventions and rules, and then once we reach college and business, we are asked to be “out of the box thinkers.” I turned to my brother for inspiration at this point. My brother has never been accused of being “in the box” unless it was a large cardboard box, wrapped as a Christmas present during a white elephant gift exchange. (Yes, he really did that.)

In math class, when presented with a hexagon and asked to “Name this figure,” he simply wrote “Bob.” When Mom asked what direction he would be facing if he went out the front door, walked 3 steps and turned right, took 3 steps, then turned right again, took 3 steps and turned right again, he said, “Forward!” By nature I am more of a conformist, striving to give the answer that was expected of me, and when faced with an “out of the box” question, I was often lost. Given no absolute and no example upon which to base my answers, I didn’t know where to look and often called my brother from college to see what his answer would be. After an hour or so of brainstorming, I could find a direction that suited me for forming my own thoughts.

Surprisingly though, I have often been considered by my peers as a bit out of the box. For the past few years, I have dressed in costume for work during the holiday season. It started when I worked in a commission environment (selling fine jewelry) and had to find a way to gain attention and get customers to talk to me. Dressing in a Santa hat and curly toed shoes with bells on the ends made customers want to greet me, instead of shying away when I greeted them. Getting the initial greeting with the customer was the hard part — after that I could gain the information I needed to learn who they were shopping for and what that person might like in a gift. My costumes prompted the customers to speak to me first.

Last year we had too much Halloween inventory at our retail store, and it wasn’t moving out the door fast enough. I started dressing in costumes, and children would beg their parents for a costume: after all, that girl over there (me) is dressed up, and it isn’t Halloween yet! It worked. I started coming up with as many costumes as I could, digging through our old dress-up box to come up with ideas. Many costumes were based on a single hat and accessorized to fit the theme. A witch’s hat turned an ordinary black dress, green tights, and green eye shadow into a complete character. The same idea worked with an inexpensive pirate’s hat and a striped shirt, dark eyeliner, one hoop earring, and a gold blazer. Everyone at work asked where I got these elaborate costumes, but most of them were things I normally wore to work any other day, but they were just combined differently to go with a specific hat. It seems simple enough when explained, but my coworkers simply can’t get over each costume I wear. They laugh at my courage to wear a costume to work, since many are not planning to wear a costume on Halloween, but I’ve been wearing costumes every day for weeks.

I don’t know exactly what factors made my brother and me the way we are, but I do know that we were encouraged to have an imagination much bigger than ourselves. We drew Dr. Seuss characters with chalk on the sidewalk and tried to create Seuss-like characters of our own. Mom had wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up, and that same desire to shoot for the moon was passed on to my brother and me.

When my brother and I were growing up, Mom would ask us questions that would get us to think situations through. Along with asking us simpler questions, like what sounds certain animals made, she would ask us more intriguing questions, such as how would we get our shoes tied if we had a broken arm. She asked questions that would get us to anticipate the future before it happened, and consider how different variables could alter the outcome. We were encouraged to look at questions from different angles, to experiment to see what happened, and to have the imagination to believe anything was possible.

Mom created new games using parts from the other games we had — usually to teach us something. I hated spelling, but using Scrabble tiles to form my spelling words made the subject a little easier to grasp. Math was more fun when it involved a scavenger hunt for us and a friend. In fact, Mom always called math a puzzle. She enjoyed algebra, and as annoying as that was sometimes, she taught us how to see it as a puzzle, too. Mom used her math skills to scale down the solar system to the size of our block — the sun was as wide as our street, and we drew its outline with chalk right there in the middle of the street, and then we mapped out the planets to scale, too. Seeing how far the planets would be from each other if the sun would fit on our street helped us to imagine how far away from each other they must be in real life.

I’m not especially talented, I am a horrible artist, the musical talent went to my brother, and I wouldn’t make a good actress. I’m also not the homeschooler who is likely to be featured on the cover of a magazine. I enjoy math, but it doesn’t come easily to me. However, I did learn to visualize things, whether possible or not, in order to come up with solutions and decide on the best one. Although a lot of my homeschooling came from books due to my love of reading, some of the most memorable parts were when our family got out of the textbooks, out of the classroom, and out of the box.

Filed Under: Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Roadblocks to Learning

Preschoolers’ Educational School-Time Activities

September 4, 2008 by Leave a Comment

How much trouble can a bored preschooler get into while you are trying to help your older children with their lessons? Don’t answer that. Instead, let’s just focus on providing your preschooler with some fun activities as his own version of “schoolwork.”

Preschoolers can begin to learn school-time skills with a few simple projects of their own. Try some of these activities by setting up your preschooler with his own individual work area, just as though he were another “real” student, but your space allowances will determine whether your preschooler is seated near his siblings or in his own special location with plenty of elbow room. If it is possible to group your children together in the same area, your preschooler can begin to observe how his siblings sit and work independently, so that he can learn to duplicate their actions. Not every preschooler will be eager to sit still and “play” school for long periods, but for those who are determined to mimic their older siblings, these suggestions offer safe, semi-supervised activities that will develop essential skills. Activities can be changed periodically, just as your older students change subjects throughout the day. These projects can work to lengthen a short attention span, as well as keep your little one occupied in fascinating, educational activities while you explain a lesson concept or demonstrate a few math problems to your older students.

You will probably need to work back and forth, setting up the preschooler with his activity, then starting the older children on their lessons, checking back on the preschooler, following up with the olders, and repeating the cycle as often as needed. Yes, at first you will feel as busy as the old-time plate juggler who balanced spinning plates on tall sticks placed around a table, running and spinning and running and spinning and running to catch the far one just before it falls, but your diligence will quickly pay off with rewards of students who can work independently for a few minutes until Mom is available for help.

The following is a list of materials and activities to help keep your preschooler occupied and give him a boost in the learning department, beyond the usual board books and wooden puzzles. Whether these activities look educational or not, they do include getting-ready-for-learning skills, often disguised as creative fun. Reserving these materials (especially the scissors and glue sticks) and activities for use only during school-time or at the school table will help reinforce the idea of schoolwork in your preschooler’s mind and help him become accustomed to your family’s homeschooling routine. If the “fun” activities can only be done during school, it helps to plant the idea that learning is fun — plus it keeps those activities from becoming boring. Many other activities and playthings also have educational benefits, so please extend this list with your own activities and variations to fit your child’s interests and skill level. Be sure to swap ideas with your friends, no matter what the ages of the children, because ideas can be adapted to suit any age level.

“Sample” Notebooks
Materials: an assortment of old magazines, newspapers, greeting cards, sales ads, junk mail, etc.; spiral notebooks and glue stick, or magnetic photo album/pages. Store these in a specific box for the preschooler’s use, to prevent him from cutting up your newest magazines, unpaid bills, and expensive set of leather-bound first edition books.
Method:Let your child find and cut out pictures, letters, or numbers that fit certain criteria:

  • Objects matching a specific color (use basic colors to allow for variations in shading);
  • Objects starting with a certain letter of the alphabet;
  • Letters and/or numbers in a variety of fonts/typefaces.

Use each of the above groups to create individual “sample” notebooks, making 1-2 pages for each category: color recognition (separate pages for red, yellow, etc), letter-symbol recognition (separate pages for a/A, b/B, etc), letter-sound recognition (separate pages for things that begin with “a,” “b,” etc), number-symbol recognition (separate pages for each numeral, 0-9 or higher, if desired), number-value recognition (groups of 2 items for “2’s,” groups of 3 items for “3’s,” etc.), etc. (Recognition of the letter or number symbols is important because the variations in fonts and typefaces can be quite confusing to beginning readers.)

Keep the child busy looking and searching on his own for the needed samples and let him do the cutting, so that this activity lasts more than a few seconds. Samples can be glued into an old spiral notebook with a glue-stick or put into an old photo album or 3-ring binder with “magnetic” photo pages for minimal mess. The notebooks can also be “studied” for help in recognizing colors, letters, etc. Occasional supervision may be necessary to help the beginner understand the placement of the samples. A younger child may just enjoy cutting/gluing random pictures into a notebook without any specific categories. Pictures can also be arranged so as to tell a wordless story: This little girl went to this house to visit her grandmother…
Skills Developed: visual recognition, cutting with scissors, glue-stick, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: paper scraps from cutting; glue-stick residue

Tangram Pictures & Patterns
Materials: felt pieces, flat craft foam shapes, colored paper or card stock pieces (cut into circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, parallelograms, etc.)
Method: free play; challenge student to duplicate patterns; challenge student to keep enlarging designs
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Stringing Beads
Materials: wooden, plastic, or craft foam beads; empty thread spools; leather boot laces, shoestrings, or plastic laces
Method: Tip of shoelaces can be stiffened by wrapping with masking tape to form a child-safe “needle” about 3″ long. Free play, or challenge student to duplicate patterns.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Sewing/Lacing Cards
Materials: cardboard or poster board shapes with holes punched close to the edges; plastic canvas; yarn, heavy string, shoelaces, or plastic laces
Method: Sew through the holes to outline the shape or loop around the edges. (See above for creating a safe “needle” with masking tape) Plastic canvas can be “stitched” randomly or into any pattern desired; it can be cut into shapes or used as squares or rectangles (circles can also be found in most craft stores). Blunt yarn needles (metal or plastic) can also be found in craft stores, if desired.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: strings to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Building Blocks
Materials: Cuisenaire rods, building blocks, etc. (may be interlocking or non-interlocking)
Method: free play; building/stacking; pattern matching (include paper patterns to reproduce with blocks); counting, matching, & sorting. Simple patterns may be drawn as a guide for the child to reproduce over and over: red/red/blue or square/rectangle/triangle, etc.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition, basic math awareness
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Buttons
Materials: jar or box of assorted clothing buttons
Method: free play; sorting, matching, & counting
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, basic math awarenes
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (Store the pieces in a box large enough that your child can easily return the pieces himself at clean-up time)

Wikki Stix
Materials: Wikki Stix (like chenille sticks, but made of wax)
Method: free play; pattern duplication; shaping into letters or numbers
Wikki Stix may be stuck to windows, table tops, paper, or stuck to each other for 3-D creations.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pattern recognition, creativity
Mess Alert: may leave slight waxy residue on surfaces, depending on brand used

Cutting Practice
Materials: child-safe scissors, construction paper or newspapers (Again, have a designated supply of papers for the child to use, avoiding accidental cutting of valuable materials.)
Method: Let child practice cutting photos or ads from newspapers, cutting along lines, etc.
Let child practice cutting by reducing construction paper to bits! Leftover scraps of paper, torn sheets, or less-pretty colors may be used up in this manner, giving valuable practice in scissor skills.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, cutting with scissors
Mess Alert: paper scraps

Handwriting Practice
Materials: newspapers, junk mail (Again, have a designated supply of papers for the child to use, avoiding accidental drawing on valuable materials.)
Method: Let child practice handwriting by tracing lines inside the thick lines of headlines and large font letters and numbers. The child may also like to copy letters or entire words onto blank sheets of paper or wide-lined paper.
Skills Developed: eye/hand coordination, fine motor skills, pre-handwriting basics
Mess Alert: paper scraps; marks from pencils or other writing implements

Activity Jar
Materials: Activity Jar full of assorted items
Method: (see this article for details)
Skills Developed: sorting, matching, counting, fine motor skills
Mess Alert: pieces to pick up (children can easily help toss pieces back into the large container). Pieces may be poured out onto a cookie sheet or cake pan to minimize scattering.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Role-Modeling, Sibling Relationships, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning
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