21 Things That Can Slow Homeschooling Progress

January 5, 2009 by 3 Comments

Typically, homeschoolers talk about the blessings and benefits of homeschooling, which are myriad. However, sometimes Life throws us a curveball — and once in a while, several curveballs — too many to deal with casually as part of the normal course of events. If you have found yourself the unwitting recipient of these circumstances, you may be worrying that your family is just not progressing with homeschooling as quickly as you should or even as well as you used to do. If you feel you are on the verge of a homeschool breakdown, the cause may not necessarily be something you are doing wrong — it may just be due to too many complex situations occurring at the same time or in rapid succession. The following list of unique situations may contain some of the things your family has experienced that you previously had not considered as being directly related to your rate of academic progress (or lack of progress).

1. Homeschooling for the first time
2. Leaving public or private school to switch to homeschooling
3. A reluctant learner who balks at the idea of schoolwork in general
4. An eager learner who wants to explore extensively into each topic
5. Pregnancy
6. Childbirth
7. Adoption
8. An infant
9. A toddler
10. A special needs child
11. A chronic illness or other health crisis affecting any family member
12. A severe injury requiring extended recovery or rehabilitation for any family member
13. An elderly parent/grandparent who needs care or must be moved to a care facility
14. Extensive property damage from fire, flood, or natural disaster
15. A legal or financial crisis
16. A job change
17. Moving to a different home
18. A wedding
19. A divorce
20. A death in the family
21. Miscarriage or stillbirth

Please note that this list is not complete. You may be experiencing some things that are not listed here and yet have been just as devastating to your “normal” routine. If your family has experienced more than one of these items in the past year or in consecutive years, please consult the article Top 10 Benefits of Homeschooling with Grace and Topical Index: Doing Your “Best” and Topical Index: Encouragement for Parents for some much-needed comfort and uplifting encouragement. If you have reason to anticipate any of these events in your foreseeable future, try to plan ahead as much as is humanly possible in order to prepare yourselves for the upcoming event and its schedule-altering effects. Please note that some of these factors cannot be predicted at all, some will last only a few months, but others may continue for years or for a lifetime (such as a special needs child).

Above all else, know that when your family encounters the types of situations listed above, your children will have experienced Life up-close and personally, and that in itself is an education that no textbook can provide!

Filed Under: Doing Your "Best", Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Homeschooling as a Lifestyle, Roadblocks to 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

What Made This a “Bad” Homeschool Day?

August 14, 2008 by 1 Comment

This day started with such promise. You planned the lessons, and everyone took their places, but then something, somewhere went wrong. Very wrong. And you may have no idea why. Go fix yourself a refreshing beverage, and let’s see if we can analyze what happened.

In my personal vocabulary, a “bad homeschool day” has one basic meaning: We didn’t accomplish all of the lessons that I had planned for us to do. There can be multiple causes for this “failure,” which is probably not as much of an actual failure as it is just not hitting the bull’s-eye of your intended target of Lessons Mastered. To take this analogy just a bit further, think of your day’s homeschooling plans as a standard target of concentric rings. Landing an arrow anywhere on the target is a degree of success (a partially learned lesson), and even coming close to the target is still a degree of success (learning anything at all about any topic, but not necessarily the planned lesson). A complete and utter failure would mean that your arrow never even left the bow (although that in itself teaches a lesson, but we’ll get to that later*). Also notice that the bull’s-eye of that target is not a pinpoint. It is actually roomy enough to hold several arrows, meaning that two or three arrows can be separated by some distance while still occupying the official center of the target. Consider this for a moment: you can hit the bull’s-eye several times, with the arrows landing fairly far apart from each other. Different arrows in different parts of the bull’s-eye equate to different homeschooling days that reach the goal in different ways. You can achieve success while still not reaching pinpoint perfection. (Perfection and success are two entirely different things — and success is much easier to achieve than perfection!)

Now let’s look at some possible causes of today’s Bad Homeschooling Day.

1) A Family Emergency — File this under “Life Happens.” These often cannot be avoided. Emergency Room visits are often considered by active little boys to be sure indicators of bravery and manhood, veritable rites of passage. Other emergencies can come in the guise of a chronic illness, a death in the family, or an unexpected change in career or place of residence. Marriage, divorce, pregnancy, miscarriage, and many other events can have a resounding effect on homeschooling progress and for much longer than a single day. There is usually no way to schedule an emergency: it just happens. Please do not despair when some unexpected event disrupts your calendar. Do keep in mind that extremely valuable *life lessons will still be learned during family emergencies — lessons that do not come from textbooks and cannot be experienced in classroom situations.

2) Your Students Just Didn’t Get It — File this under “Not Unusual.” Students vary in how they learn: God made them that way. What bizarre sort of Stepford Wives-world would this be if everyone reacted exactly like everyone else? The lessons for today were probably not presented in ways that corresponded to your students’ learning styles. See the Titles Index and look for Alternate Methods of Teaching [for various subjects]. Even if the exact subject you need is not listed, the articles contain many suggestions for presenting material to the various learning styles, and you will find ideas that will help.

3) Your Students Would Not Stay On Task — File this under “Learning Styles.” Over there is a daydreamer, here is a wiggler, this one is a goof-off, and that one never stops talking. Sound familiar? This category can also be applied to your students’ styles of learning, but this, too, can be accommodated. It’s not that your students are trying purposely to ignore you; it’s just that they find other facets of life much more intriguing than the way this particular lesson is being presented.

A daydreamer may be thinking up a truly valuable invention, or mulling over a tidbit from a recent conversation or book or movie or song, or puzzling over why something works the way it does, and if that does then shouldn’t this be possible, too? Your daydreamer is very likely not dreaming at all, but thinking very deep and elaborate thoughts and ideas. Allow that child to keep an “idea notebook” handy for quickly jotting down thoughts to be explored more fully later, after the lessons are done. The journal will help the child remember those thoughts, and it just might help him get refocused on the lesson at hand. Plus, you get the bonus of voluntary writing: SHH — don’t let the child know that you are secretly counting this as a writing assignment! This is just a special, personal notebook that can be kept handy during any lesson and pulled out for scribbling a quick note without receiving a scolding for momentarily not paying attention. Assure him this journal will not to be corrected, graded, or even read by anyone else until he chooses to share his ideas. My son kept a notebook that we called his Invention Journal, which he filled with complicated drawings and detailed explanations for items he felt would be valuable, time-saving, or just plain fun.

A wiggler has a serious need to move, so use it to your advantage. Send him off to run an errand to the other end of the house or to run laps around the back yard before you begin presenting the lesson. Once his muscles are awake, he will be a much more attentive listener. Include stretch breaks between lessons or between sections of a long lesson. Hindering this child’s need for movement is equivalent to letting his brain run out of gas.

Talkers have just as great a need to express themselves as the wiggler has a need to move. These are the students who can easily be engaged in discussions, debates, and question-and-answer sessions about lesson concepts. They are not likely to read directions themselves: they are much more likely to ask you to tell them what to do. [See Teach Your Students to Teach Themselves for help with this.] A budding comedian needs to get the funny story out of his system before he will be able to concentrate on any academic input, so invite him to tell it, and enjoy a hearty laugh together. He will be much more attentive to your lessons when he knows you appreciate his humor. You can trust me on this one — by the time my son turned six, I had developed a great empathy for what Jerry Seinfeld’s mother must have endured.

A student who cannot keep his hands still is often accused of goofing off and delaying his work by fiddling with anything within reach. This one will drive you straight to the room with the thickly padded rubber wallpaper unless you realize that those busy fingers are the keys to his ears. Just like the wiggler who must move his legs to activate his brain, The Busy Fingers Kid must have something in his hands to stimulate his brain. Once again, you can use this to your advantage: let him hold a favorite toy or keep his special blanket folded underneath him on his chair or give him modeling clay to work with while you read aloud or explain a lesson concept. Do not insist on eye contact with this child to prove he is paying attention — his ears will only be able to listen to you if his hands are busy, and his eyes may or may not focus on you. This child will respond especially well to manipulatives, learning aids, and educational gadgets. It’s not that he wants something to play with, he just needs to feel something with his fingers to be able to learn.

4) A Defiant Student — File this under “Needs a Little More Time.” This most often occurs when a family is involved in a major change, such as the transition from public or private school to homeschooling, especially if the student is not completely thrilled with the idea. Students who have previously been in a classroom situation need time to decompress and shift gears into the more relaxed atmosphere of homeschooling. A good rule of thumb for the length of the transition is one month for every year the child spent in school, double that if the child went to preschool. That period will be a time of adjustment: expect to find and repair potholes, expect to share tears and triumphs, and be as patient, loving, and forgiving as you possibly can muster. Know that every rough patch you can bring your student through will lead to smoother sailing later on. Remember that this child’s entire academic world is undergoing dramatic changes, and your student has no idea what to expect next. Treat your defiant student with respect, and he will respect you in return. [See Troublesome Students for more specific suggestions.]

5) Using a Homeschooling Style That Is Counter to Your Family’s Lifestyle — File this under “Common Mistakes.” Many families who are new to homeschooling, especially families who are leaving public or private school, make the all-too-common-but-well-intended mistake of trying to duplicate a formal school routine at home. Reasoning that the children have been used to precisely timed periods, clocks and bells to signal those periods, structured lessons, and periodic tests, innocent first-time homeschoolers may think it is wrong to finish a subject in less than 30 minutes (or to extend it longer than 60 minutes), wrong to start the day’s lessons after 10 AM (or before 8 AM), or wrong to finish all of the day’s lessons in only 2 hours (or wrong not to have everything finished up by 3:15 PM). Let me assure you that you may use as much or as little time as seems fitting to your students’ abilities, and daily variances are not at all uncommon. Furthermore, it is absolutely permissible to take stretch breaks and play breaks and snack breaks as often as they may be necessary. You are allowed to teach students of close but differing ages as though they were in the same grade at the same time, if that fits well into your situation and their needs. You are allowed to skip a lesson now and then, spread a single lesson over several days, take a day off when you really need it, and choose educational materials that match your family’s values and interests.

If your students need structure and precise scheduling, then by all means use it. But if your family feels stifled and pressured by demanding schedules and tedious lessons, explore learning in a more relaxed, more motivating environment. Perhaps your plans have been too aggressive. Perhaps you do need more personal discipline. Whatever your family’s needs may be, find the combination of lesson materials and supplemental activities that works for your family and begin to thrive.

I cannot promise that you will never again have a Bad Homeschooling Day. I cannot promise that every Bad Homeschooling Day can be magically transformed into an Exceptional Learning Day. What I can guarantee is that you will get out of homeschooling exactly what you will put into it: if you work toward teaching your students in the ways they learn best, you will reap attentive, eager learners who may often be several steps ahead of you. When a student’s interest veers away from the planned lesson, do not be afraid to pursue his suggestion — you may both end up learning much more than the textbook’s authors intended.

The poet Robert Burns is often paraphrased, The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Proverbs 16:9 provides a more optimistic conclusion: The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. No matter what your plans may be, remember that they are only plans: ideas and intentions of what you hope to accomplish with your students during a set period of time. Some days are slow learning days — you know yourself that on some days you can think faster or more clearly than you can on other days, depending on the weather, a mild illness, or the unpredictable distractions of life. Your children are exactly the same: some days their progress will be slow, and on other days they will make up for lost time and amaze your socks off! Give yourselves time to adapt to learning at home, and experiment with schedule changes until you find the ideal solution for your family’s needs. Use Life’s interruptions to teach the lessons not found in books, and recognize the lessons your students are learning, whether or not the worksheets get completed today.

For further encouragement, please see these additional articles:
Redeeming a Disaster Day
Homeschooling Is a Choice
What Is Your “Best”?
Reschedule, Refocus, Regroup

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Behavior, Discipline, Encouragement for Parents, Family Unity, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Tactile Learning, Top 10 (and other) Lists, Visual Learning

Felt Shapes

July 18, 2008 by 1 Comment

Do you need a new idea for keeping the kiddies occupied indoors when it’s too hot to play outside? Are you looking for a “down time” activity? Have you had it with the constant noise of TV and kids and more TV? Here is something that will occupy their minds as well as their hands, stir their imaginations, and give your ears a few moments of blissful solace: a box of felt pieces.

This was a favorite activity for my tactile child. It makes a great “lap toy” for quiet time. I started with some leftover pieces of craft felt, cutting them into geometric shapes and random shapes. A piece of flannel fabric (approx. 18″ x 24″) served as a background and could be spread over a sofa cushion, the carpeted floor, or a bed pillow, then folded up easily to fit into the storage box when playtime was done. [Hint: cut up an old flannel shirt, nightgown, or pillow case.] I used felt in bright colors, pastels, neutral colors, and black and white for squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, and ovals in a wide range of sizes. [Note: thin sheets of craft foam can be used, but the foam pieces tend to jump or cling from static electricity, and they lack the softer flexibility of the felt cloth.] The child makes “pictures” and patterns with the felt shapes on the flannel, stacking or layering pieces as desired. Smoothing the pieces in place provides an important tactile connection for a touch-feely child.

It works best to keep the smallest pieces larger than a coin — anything smaller will be difficult to cut. The largest pieces do not need to be bigger than your hand, since larger pieces will be more difficult to store flat. (An older child may enjoy cutting the pieces for younger siblings to play with, but remember the size limitations.) If you are feeling especially creative, add some half-circles, crescents, teardrop/petal shapes, stylized leaf shapes, and a few 4″-10″ strands of yarn (useful for flower stems, kite strings, and other necessary lines). Pinking shears can add variety to some pieces, but will be difficult to use on smaller pieces; the shears must also be quite sharp to produce a good zigzag edge. (Optional: applying iron-on interfacing will stiffen the felt, making cutting easier and the pieces more durable.)

Remember that this project will be a plaything, so your shapes do not have to be exactly measured or accurately cut. Keep it simple: free-hand cutting is adequate. Circles do not have to be perfectly round, and squares, rectangles, and triangles do not need perfectly straight sides or precise corners. Your child’s imagination will be broadened through playing with the felt shapes, and imagination is a great substitute for precision.

Quick trick for cutting triangles: cut squares or rectangles in two diagonally.
Quick trick for cutting petal shapes: cut a rectangle in two diagonally, making two long triangles, and round off the short end opposite the long pointy tip, producing the stylized silhouette of a single-scoop ice cream cone.
Quick trick for cutting leaves: round opposite corners of a square or rectangle, leaving the uncut corners as the pointy ends of the leaf.

Don’t feel that you need to make shapes that look like real objects. Your child’s imagination will take over, transforming those simple rectangles, circles, and triangles into wonderful things. A child who has always relied on printed coloring pages for “art class” may need some time and a little help to activate his imagination, stop depending on literal representations, and begin developing creative thinking skills.

Store the pieces as flat as possible in a box large enough to make clean-up easy for the child, and a container with a tight-fitting or locking lid will prevent accidental spillage. Any pieces that are wrinkled or folded when put away will be wrinkled and folded at the next playtime, so try to smooth each piece out as flat as possible. (The tactile child will actually enjoy this step.) Badly wrinkled pieces can easily be ironed flat again.

A solid felt board or “flannel-graph” can be made by covering heavy cardboard or a bulletin board with a large piece of felt or flannel fabric. The board requires more storage space than just a loose piece of cloth, but the board can be useful for illustrating lesson concepts to more than one child at a time by propping it up where all can see it at once. A small strip of felt on the back of paper pictures will make them cling to the fuzzy board — the entire back surface of the picture does not need to be covered. Sandpaper can also be used as a backing by cutting thin strips of fine sandpaper (1/2″ wide by 1″ or 2″ long) and gluing the strips to the backs of cardstock pictures or word/number cards. Large cards may need wider or larger pieces of rougher sandpaper to help support their weight. All sorts of visual aids for lessons can be used with flannel boards. Christian bookstores usually carry Sunday School lesson materials for felt boards, including great pictures of Bible heroes or generic pictures of children and families.

Ideas for Lessons:
Sorting — Can you sort pieces by color? By shape? By size?
Counting — How many of each color/shape/size?
Matching — Can you find a piece that is the same color/shape/size as this one?
Patterns — Circle, circle, square… can you make a pattern that matches this one?
Sequencing — Red, red, blue, red, red… what comes next?
Explaining Processes (using flannel-graph letters or cards)– To make the word kitty work for two kitties, we change this y to an i and add es.
Phonics & Spelling — C-a-t, b-a-t, r-a-t… can you make more words that end with -at?
Reading — Put these word cards together to make a sentence.
Fractions — Is this rectangle divided into halves or fourths? (Use several squares in the same size to form rectangles.)
Arithmetic — How many ways can you group these pieces? (Use matching sizes & shapes to teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, perimeter, and area. Ratios and percentages can be illustrated with a mix of colors, sizes, or shapes: 3 red squares and 1 blue square = 3/4 red and 1/4 blue, or 75% red and 25% blue.)

Felt shapes and felt-backed pictures can be used for just about anything you can think of. Let your creativity take over as you adapt the felt pieces and pictures to whatever lesson you are working on, and watch more applications come to mind the longer you use them. Whether you use this as an educational tool or a quiet-time toy, the learning possibilities will be unlimited!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Learning Styles, Math, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning
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