#11-7: Common Sense Excellence for the Real Life Home School Mom
Posted by: hopechestnews <hopechestnews@...>
The Hope Chest with Virginia Knowles
#11-7: Common Sense Excellence for the Real Life Home School Mom
July 18, 2008
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
"Plan and Assign the Lessons" from The Real Life Home School Mom
-
A Few Extra Notes on Lesson Planning and The Learner's Journal
-
"Integrating Math Across the Curriculum" from Common Sense Excellence
-
"Peeling Back the Mask" from The Real Life Home School Mom
-
"A Time and a Season for Everything" from Common Sense Excellence
-
Book Ordering Information
Review of Common Sense Excellence in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine (scroll down to middle of page)Review of Common Sense Excellence at Homeschooling from the Heart (please note that order links are obsolete)Review of The Learner's Journal in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine (please note that order links are obsolete)
Blessings,
Virginia Knowles
-
Determine the Style and Capabilities of Each Child
-
Provide Appropriate Curriculum and Resources
-
Plan and Assign Lessons
-
Set Up a Daily School Schedule
-
Organize Your School Room
-
Keep Track of School Papers
-
Clearly Demonstrate Each Educational Skill
-
Use Academics and Your Example to Develop Practical Life Skills
-
Add a Little Adventure
-
Develop a Sense of Teamwork
-
Evaluate Success
-
Encourage an Attitude of Excellence
Based on your child's style and capabilities, as well as the curriculum you have chosen, you may be ready to write out specific goals and plans for them. Try to estimate the time each assignment is going to take so that as you try to figure out how to fit each task into your child's daily or weekly routine, you can determine whether your expectations are realistic. At first, pare it down to what you know you can do without a strain; you can always add other things in later.
After you have mapped out a reasonable routine, you can assign work. You have authority as the teacher and home manager to give orders, so don't feel guilty about making them follow through. While we should be flexible and sensitive, we still must be firm. Our children need external discipline until they develop their own self-discipline. If you stick to a fairly regular routine, the tasks become somewhat automatic. Have you tried a routine, only to have it slide into oblivion after a few weeks? Don't give up! Try again! I remember telling myself, “It looks hopeless, but the results I want are not going to happen unless we take another shot at it!” We may only move forward inch by inch, but at least we are headed in the right direction.
What about the child who always claims that he “didn't hear you” assign a job? Make sure that he hears! Don't yell the instruction from another room and hope that it bounces into his ears. Call him to your side. Speak to him face to face, with full eye contact, and have him acknowledge you. When you give the instruction, ask the child to repeat it back to you. If the task is complex, list the steps on paper and have him read them in your presence. Beyond hearing with his ears, make sure that the child listens with his heart and mind. If you have to keep nagging about it after you know he has heard and understood the instruction, you could definitely have a serious character issue on your hands! Even “forgetting” could be a sign of passive disobedience since we can all choose to remember what is important to us!
Academic planning runs the gamut from long-range goals to daily details. Let’s start with the big picture. Do you know where you are headed over the next few years? This will give you an idea of what you need to do this year. If you continually use grade level textbooks from a single publisher, it’s easy enough to just buy the next book for each subject. A look at the “Scope and Sequence” will tell you where you are headed. I have always enjoyed unit studies, but I didn’t want to approach this haphazardly. To make sure we covered all of the important themes in a logical order, I devised a five year plan with about sixty different topics to cover history, science, geography, literature, health, etc. We did history-based units sequentially, from Creation to Life in the Future, and the other units were often related to the general time period, such as Desert Life after Ancient Egypt, or Modern Europe after Renaissance & Reformation. We finished up this five year plan, and while we shuffled, combined and even deleted units, I was quite pleased with the results. We had fully intended to just keep repeating this unit study cycle, but we have altered our course since then and are taking things year by year. Don’t be overwhelmed with this concept if it’s not quite your style. You don’t have to do it this way, or even do unit studies at all, but you should think through how you approach long-term planning.
When our oldest daughter started her high school years, long-term planning became of utmost importance. We joined a private school enrollment option for home schooling families, and the administrators helped us choose courses that would take our daughter to her goals most effectively.
Next, let’s look at annual planning. A few months before the start of the new school year, I look at the calendar and decide when we will take our breaks. Then I choose when we will do each unit study. For subjects like math and language arts, I write goals (desired results) and plans (how we will do it) for each child. I decide how this will be divided into weekly and daily assignments and which curriculum we will use. I had this written down for Mary’s fifth grade Writing:
GOAL: Learn the writing and editing process, from brainstorming to final draft.
PLAN: Read the entire Writer's Express handbook at the rate of 3-4 pages per day. Work on some phase of a short report, essay, or story every day. Write about our unit study or choose topics from the “Idea List” in your notebook. Use the encyclopedia, dictionary, and thesaurus as appropriate. Meet with Mom 2-3 times per week to discuss your work.
In reality, after a few months I noticed that she wasn’t reading Writer’s Express anymore. When I asked her why, she replied that it was so good that she had already finished it! I find that I often have to change our goals in the middle of the year, setting new challenges for the child who has surpassed expectations, and readjusting the workload for the one who is still struggling. Christmas break is a great time to make these evaluations.
Now, let’s think about monthly and weekly planning. If you are using formal curriculum, you will need to read the teacher’s manual to prepare for upcoming projects, and check your child’s work to be sure he is on target to finish the book on time. When I would prepare for an individual three or four week unit, I wrote lists of age-appropriate objectives, research topics, and ways to integrate each school subject. This helped me to brainstorm for ideas, map out a variety of activities, and determine what supplies and library books I would need. After I brought home the library books, I chose which ones to read aloud and which ones to assign for each child’s independent research. As we proceeded through the unit, I could refer to my plans and keep us on track. Here are some sample objectives for a unit study on Music:
-
Read about several composers and listen to their music.
-
Hear the different styles throughout history and around the world.
-
Be familiar with different musical instruments: how they sound, what they look like, how they work (the science of sound), how they are made.
-
Recognize musical symbols and start to read music.
-
Play easy tunes on the piano.
-
Make simple musical instruments.
-
Find out what the Bible says about music.
Lastly, let’s talk about daily planning. I want my children to have a strong grasp of their school routine, so we use a weekly grid lesson plan / record book. Then they can say, “I've done my math and grammar, but I still need to read this book, work on Spanish, and edit my new story on the computer.” If they do this consistently from week to week, they will make progress and I can be satisfied. But if they slip behind (this does happen!) or we are working on something unusual, I write out a short list of specific items to keep them on track. I also give them on-the-spot assignments such as:
-
“Read this story to me and I'll help you with the hard words.”
-
“Here is your spelling list for the week. Copy all the words, circle the adjectives, and let me know when you are ready for a test.”
-
“Can you build a dodecagon (12 sides) with Cuisenaire pattern blocks?”
-
“Tell me what you learned about Cincinnatus in The Famous Men of Rome.”
-
“Dad just stacked bricks by the garage. Calculate how many there are using the formula for volume.”
-
“Let’s do a bar graph showing the different kinds of canned food in our pantry closet.”
-
“Do one page in your Italic Handwriting book.”
-
“Get the origami paper and the library book so we can make a duck.”
-
“It's time to write thank you notes for your birthday presents!”
-
“Count how many bagels we have and tell me if there are enough for lunch.”
-
“Gently put the egg in the cup of vinegar. We'll check what happens to it over the next few days.”
As children get older, they can take initiative for independently completing and recording assignments. In order for this to work, you may need to streamline the number of subjects studied during a semester. Overloading with electives can lead to confusion, so choose what is important for your family and don't feel guilty about bypassing all the nifty things that other families do. Better to do a few things well than do many of them poorly! This will also give them the freedom to choose some of their own topics for independent “delight directed” research.
-
Simple, functional, flexible format that has been used by hundreds of kids in the past eight years
-
Folks keep coming back for more, year after year!
-
Introductory pages to list your major resources, field trips, accomplishments and work samples
-
Extremely durable, with plastic covers and sturdy spiral binding
-
Attractive cover design which works well for all ages, and it even has some nifty quotes about books on the backside
-
Eye-popping, kid-pleasing colors, so your students can pick their favorites and know which one is theirs at a glance
-
Affordable, at only $10 for the first copy, or $9 if you order three of more of my books (you can mix and match).
-
All profits from the Learner's Journal fund my Malawi mission project.
-
How to Choose Math Curriculum
-
Math Concepts and Skills to Teach
-
Math Equipment and Supplies
-
Using Math Flash Cards
-
Math Teaching Tips and Techniques
-
Integrating Math Across the Curriculum
While we use a structured curriculum for math, I try to be aware of opportunities to integrate the concepts within our other subjects. We can often make up word problems based on a unit study theme. Other times, the questions just come naturally as the children are interacting with the information. It is vitally important that math be applied in real life situations.
Language Arts: Your child needs to be able to read and write mathematical words and symbols. As he is writing factual or creative material, he will often need to include number, time, and measurement and other mathematical concepts.
Science: If you do science experiments, many of these will require careful measuring and calculating. If you study farm life, make up problems using numbers of horses and apple trees. An ocean unit might include mention of how many pounds a baby blue whale gains every day, or calculate the depth of the Atlantic. When studying the forest, you can find out how tall the redwood tree grows and then measure the length on your sidewalk.
History: How many years elapsed between one event and another? If a person was born in 1745, who old were they when the Declaration of Independence was signed? How many passengers sailed on the Mayflower, and how many died the first year? Which army was bigger, and by how many soldiers?
Geography: How far is New York City from Boston? How much did the population of Orlando grow over 100 years? What time is it in New Zealand if it is noon here? How long would it take to drive to Miami if we were going 55 miles per hour? How many islands are there in Indonesia? What is the population density of Calcutta compared to Chicago or Tokyo? Which is the biggest country in Africa in square miles? What is the per capita income in Germany?
Music: Math is integral to any serious study of music, especially when you learn to read rhythms of whole, half and eighth notes. Studies also indicate that children who listen to classical music from a young age do better on math.
Art: When a child is drawing, he may need to measure (at least mentally) to make an accurate rendering of an object. He will also need to know the characteristics of flat and solid shapes in order to draw them correctly. If he is doing a craft project, he may need to count or measure supplies. This is a good time to stress the need to follow written directions!
P.E. Have your child keep score during a game, measure how far he can jump, or count how many times he can bounce a ball. Use large muscle movement during math time. An active child can count numbers or chant math facts as he jumps rope, throws a ball back and forth with a sibling, or does jumping jacks. Calculate statistics of sports teams.
Cooking: Measure out ingredients. Double or half a recipe. Calculate price per serving. Graph calories. Cut sandwiches into geometric shapes, and measure the perimeter and area. Check out The Math Chef: Over 60 Math Activities and Recipes for Kids by Joan D’Amico and Karen Eich Drummond (j 641.5123).
Money Management: Make a budget, and add up the expenses to see if you will have enough.
Computers: Use a spreadsheet program to compute formulas. For example, you can have it sum up your test scores and compute an average.
These are just a few ideas, so have fun seeing how math invades every area of education!
"The chief value of arithmetic, like that of higher mathematics,
lies in the training it affords to the reasoning powers,
and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders.
There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more,
as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results.”
Charlotte Mason, in Home Education
This section comes from the chapter "Your Support Network." If these thoughts touch your heart, you might also want to read the Metro Mom's blog from our church, which has several articles related to this right now. (If you scroll to the bottom of the page or click here, you can download the audio messages on "Am I My Sister's Keeper?" that noted author Elyse Fitzpatrick presented to us at our ladies' retreat last month. These are about how much we need each other as women. So true!)
Peeling Back the Mask
What if you are afraid of investing yourself in others or letting them see you as you are? I did not have many close friends when I was growing up, since I was viewed as a loud-mouth geek. As that image gradually softened over the years, the Lord graciously brought new friends alongside, but there is still a chunk inside my heart that feels unlovable, unworthy, and unattractive. I have known the pain of being betrayed in friendship, of finding myself outside the circle of those I thought had accepted me. The fear remains. If people really knew me, if they saw me in my unguarded moments, would they still like me? Are they just being polite? If you wrestle with thoughts like that, you are not alone! We are here! We are real! We labor with you, flawed as we are. It is well known that pastors' families shoulder a burden of stricter standards in the public eye, but it's the same for many home school families. We feel that we must fulfill certain expectations to be a good advertisement for home schooling. The literature of our home school subculture is full of worthy examples of piety and devotion. While we longingly read it, we must reluctantly admit that we are still human beings with human problems and oh-so-human children. We may wear a smiley mask in public, but our own families know what really goes on behind closed doors when frustration or fatigue sets in.
I would love to preserve a spotless public reputation, but I am not perfect or even close to it. I disgust myself routinely. I feel like a hypocrite when The Accuser condemns me and tells me to give up. Thank you, God, that you are merciful and forgiving. Do not cast us aside in our foolishness! We are complex people, heir to the human pathos which has fueled writers, philosophers, artists, and theologians through the ages. We are not isolated or immune from our world of poverty, greed, ignorance, profanity, prejudice, and disease. We don't even understand ourselves. We do the things we don't want to do, and don't do the things we want to do. Becoming a Christian or wife or home school mom does not solve all our problems. In many ways it brings them into sharper focus. What we do with our problems is the big issue. Pride may tempt us to deny or hide them, even from ourselves, with a smoke screen of spiritual talk, but hypocrisy is no witness for Christ. At the other extreme, airing all our “dirty laundry” in public is not healthy for anyone either. We need a balance of reserve and transparency. While we shouldn't get overly explicit about our troubles, it is liberating to confess that life can be a zoo at our house, our children are not always excited about their lessons, and that Mommy occasionally explodes. We can say this and still affirm that home schooling is a precious blessing in the middle of chaos. Our credibility is intact because we are not hiding skeletons in our closet. Real people can relate to us. They can approach us with their own frailty and know that we comfort them from experience.
Super Mom can leap over a mile-high mound of laundry, banish children's tears with a mere glance, and zip through grading papers faster than a speeding bullet. However, even with our fatigue and frustration, we have something better: the blessing of being Real Life Home School Moms. Our toil and trouble is mixed in with love, adventure, the freedom to be ourselves, and the comfort we share with other muddling mothers. If you have been holding back from investing yourself in other women, you are robbing yourself of one of the most profound blessings God has given us. Having true friends means taking the risk of being known intimately and loving unconditionally. For us home school moms, it means going beyond our four walls and pristine public images. In our emphasis on family autonomy and self-sufficiency, perhaps we forget that women need each other. We mothers must mother one another!
As I have become more intensely involved in raising my family, I have had less time to spend with friends. Jesus had scores of followers and a dozen apostles, but only three close companions. Likewise, we can have many acquaintances, several good friends, but few very intimate relationships. I have also found that at various life stages (such as marriage, motherhood, the start of home schooling or when switching to a new church), I have had to shift my attention from old friends to newer friends who share our lifestyle. While we shouldn't just abandon our old friendships, this change is quite natural. As the ditty goes, “Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.” How I cherish the special friends I have made in the past several years! I rarely get a chance for a one-on-one visit anymore, but I’m glad I can pick up the phone for a chat. We share cries of pain, sighs of frustration and squeals of joy. I treasure their prayer, advice and understanding. A few of these women have the insight and courage to help me refocus when I get off track and to counsel me when I confess my sins. What a divine gift!
- Where Are You Coming From?
- Common Home Education Approaches
- Synthesizing Your Own Style
- Duty and Delight
- A Time and a Season for Everything
A TIME AND A SEASON FOR EVERYTHING
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
At various points in our home school experience, I have held certain strong opinions about which educational approach we should take. I’m sorry to say that I have also, at times, looked down on other people for doing things differently than I did (note the past tense here!) in my “enlightened” state of mind! “Oh, I would never teach my children that way,” I would think. Never say never! You just may end up doing it yourself! What is right for you now may not be suitable next year or even next week. Over the years, I have sought to know my children more intimately. They each grow and change, and I must grow and change with them. They are so different from one another that I can’t assume that what worked with one will work with the next. There are also more of them to teach now, and that requires new strategies. I can no longer spend intensive amounts of time with each one every day, and neither can I teach them as a whole group anymore. I hope that I’ve become more flexible in this process!
Let me give you a few examples. I was an eager mom who couldn’t wait to start home schooling! Of course, we did this from birth, with lots of reading aloud and fun activities, but we started in earnest when Mary was four. I joined a local home school support group and enrolled her in a Friday morning co-op class. She taught herself to read, with minimal help from me, and was quite fluent with it by the time the big yellow school bus, which could have carried her away to kindergarten, rolled past our house the following August. I was determined to teach her with all natural methods. Workbooks were few and far between in our house. We had Cuisenaire math stuff, lots and lots of books, a library card, and bins of art supplies hidden away in the kitchen cabinets. And so we learned together. Nobody could really criticize us for home schooling back then, because we already had plenty of success to show for it. Even having our fourth baby just before Christmas during that kindergarten year didn’t slow us down much. I thought we would take off a month, but Mary kept right on going without me. Ahh, self-education with discovery methods and lots of reading -- my ideal!
The summer before first grade, we moved from Maryland back to Florida. With a few steps toward a little more structure in our home school, I decided to spend a year doing unit studies based on the days of Creation with Mary: a month on the solar system, a month on plants, etc. Over the next year or two after that, I wrote out a list of sixty unit studies to be covered over a five year period. I was a bonafide Unit Study Queen for a long, long time! We studied history chronologically from Creation to modern times, and science and geography units somehow related to the adjacent history ones. My intention was to finish this whole cycle of units and start over again at an advanced level for the older children and an introductory level for the younger ones. We actually started doing it the second time around, but we’ve since made big changes to this approach. Mary, now in high school, began attending a classical Christian home school program one day each week, and gets most of her assignments from the teachers there. My middle schooler wanted more science every day, not just every three unit studies or so. The younger ones weren’t always “catching” the topic the older ones were studying. It’s pretty hard for a first grader to comprehend the concepts behind the Protestant Reformation! I also decided a few years into this process that we weren’t getting quite enough skills practice from just unit studies, so we started buying math work books and even some formal language arts materials along the way.
Though I once thought I could tell you exactly what we would be studying three years from now, I can’t anymore. I have to take it year by year, child by child. I still have many years left as a home school mom. I’ll be nearly sixty years old by the time my last child graduates, and I don’t want to burn out. I want to make sure that each child gets the very best education that they can. As I update this book in 2007, my children are enrolled in a one day per week formal academic co-op for the four core subjects, so our educational style is vastly different than it was at the start. Yet I still have to adapt the assignments to each child, and not just settle for whatever the classroom teacher has planned. They are still my children.
I write this to encourage you to be open to lots of different ways that your children can learn over the years. You don’t need to be afraid of methods which don’t seem to make sense to you at the moment; they may be just what you need later on. Keep an open mind! There are different seasons for different things. God’s purpose in this is to make us grow, not let us become stagnant or shriveled. He also wants us to depend on him daily for wisdom, not just assume that the way he led us before is the way he will lead us forever. I encourage you to continually seek God’s face for the hearts and minds of your children. He loves them more than you ever could. He knows what they already know, what they still need to know, and even when they need to learn it. What, then, is your job in determining the course of their education? If you keep a soft heart of worship before God, abiding in him as a branch abides in the Vine, he will pour into you everything that you need to be a fruitful, effective teacher. He will give you a vision that will carry you through times of confusion and frustration. He will lead you from season to season, from glory to glory. How do I know this? I have lived it! There is absolutely no way that I would have or could have continued home schooling my children without the assurance that God is right there with me, leading the way. I may falter, I may stumble, I may even veer off the path here and there. Our Gracious God, ever so patient and kind, has taken me by the hand again and again and again. He is faithful, even when we are not! You can trust him with your child’s education, and with your whole lives as well!
I would also like to prepare you for when you don’t see results right away, even when you are doing the right thing. Just as there are seasons of the year for sowing seeds, and others for reaping the harvest, so there are months and years when we invest heavily in our children without seeing much progress. Don’t quit now! “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
Shipping in the U.S. is 10% with a minimum of $2.50. If you live in outside of the U.S., please e-mail me so I can calculate the shipping charge based on your order.
Ordering just one book in the U.S.? Here are the simple totals...
The Real Life Home School Mom: $18 book + $2.50 shipping = $20.50 <OR> $21.93 in Florida ($1.43 sales tax)
Common Sense Excellence: $20 book + $2.50 shipping = $22.50 <OR> $24.08 in Florida ($1.58 sales tax)
Learner's Journal: $10 book + $2.50 shipping = $12.50 <OR> $13.36 in Florida ($0.86 sales tax)
If you order 3 or more copies of any combination of books, you can take a $1 discount per book. Here is an example of a quantity discount for 4 books: If you order 2 Learner's Journals, The Real Life Home School Mom and Common Sense Excellence, the amount would be $9 + $9 + $17 + $19 = $54 plus $5.40 shipping for a total of $59.40.
Wholesale prices are also available for orders of 15 books or more. Ask for information!
I would prefer orders by check sent in the mail. Make the check out to Virginia Knowles and send to 1925 Blossom Lane, Maitland, FL, 32751. If you would rather order by PayPal, please e-mail me for more information. Either way, please e-mail me a preliminary order right away so I can get a count of what I need to have printed.
Let me know if you have any questions about the books or the ordering process!
~*~*~
-- To subscribe, send ANY message to: hopechest-subscribe@welovegod.org To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: hopechest-unsubscribe@welovegod.org Visit my web site at www.VirginiaKnowles.com