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#14-3: Home Schooling Basics and Beyond

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#1 · May 25, 2011, 7:37 pm

Posted by: virginiaknowles <virginiaknowles@...>

Dear Hope Chest friends,


After three articles on home schooling, the rest of this issue will be our family letter and links for recent blog posts. We've got some very exciting news this month!  I've also included some educational links for Google Art Project and Google Sketchup in the family letter section.


I chose two of the articles for this issue -- "The Benefits of Home Schooling" and "Respect the Ages and Stages of Childhood Learning" -- because I am often asked about the "why and how" of home schooling by those who are considering or just starting their home schooling journey.  That's especially true this time of year when folks are making decisions about whether to home school, and if they do, what curriculum or approach to use.   You might like to share these articles with friends who ask you questions.  The first article is excerpted from my book, The Real Life Home School Mom and the second one from my book Common Sense Excellence: Faith-Filled Home Education for Preschool to 5th Grade. I still have a few copies of these books left over from workshops earlier this year.  If you are interested in ordering one, send me an e-mail and I'll send you more information!  You can also find a PDF version of The Real Life Home School Mom in the sidebars of most of my blogs.


The third article -- "Summer Writing with Journals and Blogs" -- will help those who are wondering what to do to continue a learning lifestyle when the school year ends.


I have a much more involved Hope Chest issue planned for sometime in the next few months, but like my last issue (In the Middle of the Story) it's going to take a while to pull it off and I don't want to rush it.  I'll be happy enough if I get it done before the new school year starts!

Blessings,

Virginia Knowles


http://www.virginiaknowles.blogspot.com

http://www.comewearymoms.blogspot.com

http://www.startwellhomeschool.blogspot.com

http://www.continuewellhomeschool.blogspot.com

http://www.finishwellhomeschool.blogspot.com


The Benefits of Home Schooling

by Virginia Knowles


Sometimes to keep ourselves on track, we need to go back to the beginning and remind ourselves why we chose to home school in the first place. Let's focus for a few minutes on the visions we had at the start. If I were writing a pro-con list about home schooling, the “pro” side might be like this. Home schooling allows us to:

  • nurture a lifetime love of learning in a natural, affirming atmosphere
  • grow in unity as we spend time learning with and about each other

  • watch our children blossom and know that we played a major role
  • refresh our own knowledge of school subjects

  • direct the education and upbringing of our children (Deuteronomy 6:4-7)
  • present issues in the context of our family's values and beliefs

  • select and customize effective methods and curriculum for each child
  • give individual attention so each child can work at his or her own level

  • weave school subjects together logically and creatively
  • delve deeper into fascinating topics, while cutting out busy work

  • let our children pursue personally motivating interests and projects
  • find out what truly works for our children with learning disabilities

  • protect our children from physical dangers rampant on school campuses
  • reduce peer pressure and competition, while offering positive training and opportunities for socialization

  • set our own daily and yearly schedules
  • train our children in the work ethic and responsible living

  • stay in touch with our child's environment
  • deal with problems promptly in accordance with family policies

  • teach children to make wise choices and set solid standards for excellence using the Bible, good literature, and mature adults as resources.

It sounds exciting, and what's more, statistical research on home schooling shows success. As a whole, home schooled children far surpass the national norm in scores on standardized academic tests and have also excelled on psychological profiles measuring self-concept and leadership aptitude. According to studies by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, the academic scores are not even very dependent on the socioeconomic status, education level, or professional certification of the parents. It appears that the key factor to success is the commitment of the parents to making sure their children receive an excellent education.


~~~


Note: I've been reading the book Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.  (I checked it out from our public library.) He says one of the problems boys have is starting formal schooling at age five.  Since boys usually lag behind girls at that age, they have a harder time keeping up, and often begin to think that they, and school, are dumb.  This initial sour attitude can continue to affect them throughout all of their school years after that. I think home schooling is a great way to counter this problem since you can customize your childrens' learning experiences to their own abilities.  One mom told me today that she is home schooling her adopted son partly because she wants to be able to keep him off ADHD drugs that were adversely affecting his personality.  She nodded her head vigorously when I told her that Dr. Sax claims that ADHD drugs damage an area of the developing brain, called the nucleus accumbens, that is responsible for translating motivation into action.  I don't know all the research behind that, but it's something to think about -- and another reason why home schooling makes sense, even with a challenging child!


Respect the Ages and Stages of Childhood Learning


This is an excerpt from my book Common Sense Excellence: Faith-Filled Home Education for Preschool to 5th Grade.

RESPECT THE AGES AND STAGES OF CHILDHOOD LEARNING
by Virginia Knowles


God has designed human beings to grow into their responsibilities. We don’t birth miniature adults! Children progress through natural stages of learning as they mature; much of our frustration can be avoided if we learn what we can reasonably expect. Then we can avoid the temptation to pressure our children to do things better or faster than they are ready to do them. Parents often ask, “When should I start?” You already started educating your child at birth, and you’ve been doing it ever since. The question really should be, “When should I introduce this or that skill?” or “When should we start more formal academics?” or “What methods should I use at this stage of development?” Here are some tips:


Keep it basic. Elementary education doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s supposed to be just what it says: ELEMENTARY! The dictionary definition of elementary is: “dealing with or arising from the simplest facts of a subject; rudimentary; introductory.” Your child does not have to master each and every concept that he encounters. You don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t get around to dissecting a frog or diagramming a sentence. Think about what he needs right now. Can he use it in his daily life? Does he need this skill to build on in future months and years? Is he even interested in this subject? Can he reasonably interact with the information on his own level, or is it way too much for him? Use these questions to determine how advanced you want your child’s education to be right now.

Establish good habits early on. Work on basic reverence, respect, kindness, diligence, or orderliness from a very young age. This investment of time and energy will pay hundredfold dividends in the future. Imagine teaching a child who is cooperative, willing to work hard, and cleans up after himself! Work on it every day!

Introduce a skill when your child is ready, shows an interest, or needs it to function. There is no set age at which a child is ready for focused paper-and-pencil seatwork, and it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing anyway. You could be doing short phonics or math sessions without having three hours of “school” each day. If you still want a guideline for what your child could be doing at each grade level, you can take obtain a scope and sequence from a curriculum publisher such as A Beka (http://www.abeka.com/Resources/ScopeAndSequence.html), or from your local school district. Our county schools actually put these on the Internet.

Use concrete methods, rather than abstract methods, for a young child. Hands-on learning is so important in a child’s developmental progression. Young children can’t automatically understand abstract concepts. They must start with concrete learning experiences using things they can see, hear, touch, move, smell and taste. Just watch a toddler explore the house -- opening and shutting drawers, banging a spoon on the table, pouring juice from one cup to another, dumping out a bucket of blocks, and hopefully putting them back again. Math is another great example of the principle of concrete learning. You could show a four year old a piece of paper that has “2+3=5” written on it. The squiggles on the paper, and even the spoken words “two plus three equals five” are abstract symbols for something. Unless he can decode the symbols and translate it into real life experience, it means nothing to him. He will get frustrated if you expect him to make sense out of it. But if you put a pile M & M candies on the table, you’ve got his instant attention. He counts out two groups, shoves them together, and counts the total. That’s concrete learning. That’s common sense learning.

Start with the simple and move toward the complex. In nature studies, a preschooler may be able to tell the difference between a zebra and a giraffe in a picture book, but the older student will learn about how they live, what they eat, why they have their unique markings, etc. In story telling, a picture book usually has very simplified plot, setting, characters and ending; a more advanced story adds details, throws in some sub-plots, and develops the personalities of the characters. In math, the young child counts and adds small numbers, while the fifth grader will encounter mathematical terminology, symbols and processes (dividend, divisor, quotient, various formats for division problems, how to do long division, etc.) Looking back to the preschool years, it’s hard to believe that a child has learned so much, because it has come in lots of little baby steps, with an occasional quantum leap forward.

When giving instructions, use the KISS formula: “Keep It Simple, Sweetie!” You can say, “Give me the book!” to a toddler who has it right in her hand, while a kindergartner could understand, “Go get the red book on your bed.” A 2nd grader could handle a two step command such as, “Look on the bottom shelf for the book called Polar Bears and read it before you eat your lunch.” A fifth grader can follow an even more complicated sequence, like “Go ask Susie where her polar bear book is, then finish reading it to her, starting at chapter five. Be sure to write it down in her record book!” If you need to give a sequence of instructions to a child who has trouble with multiple steps, either write them down, have her repeat them back to you, or give one instruction at a time and then have her come back for the next one.

Work on “readiness skills” with young children. Read stories, recite rhymes, and sing songs. Introduce them to the foundations of early education: letters, numbers, shapes, colors, sizes, sequences, etc. Let them draw, string beads, stack blocks, and do puzzles. This seems like play, and it is! But it also gets them ready, in a gentle and pleasant way, for the more serious stuff down the road.


Use the Three-Period Lesson. Dr. Maria Montessori developed this three-step approach to teaching young children about names of objects, as well as characteristics of size, color, shape, texture, etc. Most parents do this naturally, without knowing what to call it, but here is a summary of the three steps:

  • Period 1 -- Recognition of Identity: The parent tells the child what the object is. This may take several times, perhaps by looking at the same pictures in a book each day. For example, the parent might point to a picture and say, “This is a daisy,” perhaps adding a little description to help the child recognize it in the future. Nothing is required of the child but to look and listen.

  • Period 2 -- Recognition of Contrasts: The parent tells the child to select a particular object from several which are similar: “Which one of these flowers is the daisy?”

  • Period 3 -- Discrimination Between Similar Objects: The parent asks the child, “Which one is this?” and the child must give the correct name -- “Daisy!”

Many workbooks use this Three-Period Lesson concept when teaching letters, numbers and shapes. In a Period 1 lesson, a book may show groups of objects with corresponding numerals, such as five apples with the numeral 5. In Period 2 lesson, the child might be told to match groups of objects with their corresponding numerals, perhaps by drawing lines. In Period 3 lesson, the child might be shown a group of objects and told to write the number, or shown a number and told to draw that many objects. You can also do this concretely by playing with hands-on objects or flash cards. As your child gets older, he will be able to make more subtle distinctions, such as identifying a bird he has just seen, or classifying his rock collection. He will know what characteristics make each specimen unique from the others.

Let the seen explain the unseen. This is another extension of moving from the simple to the complex. There are some things that children cannot see up close and personal, but they can still begin to understand based on what they can see. A child can’t see the electricity running through the wires behind your walls, but he can see the room light up when he flips the switch. If he visits a zoo and lingers to observe each animal eat and move around, he will have a much better understanding of those species that he can’t see in their own natural habitats. If he watches his parents make a budget and then try to stick to it, he can begin to comprehend how business or government leaders must decide where the money goes. We can also use the seen/unseen principle to start teaching about God. Romans 1:20 reminds us: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Even a very young child can grow in appreciation for the things in his own life that God has made (pretty flowers, their beloved pet dog, yummy strawberries, fun siblings and playmates, etc.). As he watches your example of Christian living and listens to the testimonies of others, he may begin to understand the need for personal salvation, and also vicariously see the consequences of wise and unwise behavior before he has a chance to make the same mistakes.


Build a mental framework and fill it in as the years go by. When a child learns new information, he needs a place to put it in his brain. He should develop the capability to create mental hooks to organize the information, especially in relation to what he has already learned. “We are learning about butterflies. They are insects. Ants are insects, too.” or “George Washington became President after the Revolutionary War.” You can help this process by pointing out the natural relationships as they come up. Unit studies are a good way to organize information so that it hangs together in the child’s mental file cabinet. If you are studying pioneer times, you can find a typical wagon route on a map, show pictures of covered wagons and pioneer clothing, eat cornbread, make candles, go without electricity for an evening, and read a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. Your child begins to associate all of these mental images with frontier living.

Aim for at least a basic acquaintance with major topics. As your child builds the mental framework, make it your goal not to leave any glaring gaps. In the early elementary years, the focus is usually on basic skills (reading, writing, and arithmetic) with science and social studies tucked in as you are able. However, by the end of elementary school, a home school student should be somewhat familiar with all of the major historical periods, continents of the world (and some specific countries), kinds of plants and animals, major branches of science, how the human body works, and so forth. You won’t be able to teach everything your child will ever need to know, but you can at least give him a good start! In this book, I try to give a comprehensive overview of possible topics to cover for each subject. What Your First Grader Needs to Know,and E.D. Hirsch’s other core knowledge books can be a big help here.

Develop your child’s ability to work independently. A preschooler or kindergartner is pretty much dependent on you to read to him, help him with written work, explain math concepts, and show him how to do things around the house. Once he learns to read fluently, however, you can often hand him a book to study by himself. By about fourth grade, he might be expected to produce regular written assignments, such as original short stories or factual reports. He can also pursue his own topics of interest, perhaps checking out several related library books on his own. He may even help you select his own curriculum from home school catalogs. Later elementary grades are when home school parents often turn to more structured curriculum for math and language arts, if they haven’t done so already. This saves time, provides for a continuity of skills progression, and gives a child “something to run with.” In Horizons Math, fourth grade is when the work book pages present new concepts directly to the child; there is less reliance on oral instruction from the parent. Throughout this process, you will still be there to provide help, but there is less hand holding and more coaching.

~~~~~

by Virginia Knowles

We are officially finishing our school year this Friday, though we have been tapering down for a couple of weeks.  I still want my kids to keep their brains active over the summer, especially with math, reading, and basic writing skills.  (Those are the 3R's, right?)  Yet I don't want them to feel like they are "doing school" (or at least much of it) during our time off. Two of my kids have some of their math workbooks to finish up (oh well!), but I think we can also come up with some hands-on projects and games to use their math skills.  They already like playing Monopoly, Pente, Yahtzee, and other games.  They can read books of their choice from the library about subjects that interest them.  

For summer writing, my first big idea is to have them keep informal journals about what they are doing and thinking each day.  In fact, my 10 year old daughter has kept a journal this past month, and it seems to be an engaging and fairly painless way to get her to write.  Not only that, it gives me an extra window into her world.  The journal is a cute, colorful little one with puppies on it.  I bought it at a dollar store.  Nothing intimidating!  She likes to write about her baby nephew coming to visit, or what she is making, all the fun things she thinks our family should do this summer, or sometimes that things that frustrate her.  I didn't start journaling until I was a teenager, and though there were long gaps during my adulthood where I didn't keep one regularly, it's still I habit I try to cultivate.

My second summer writing idea, also something we're already doing, is blogging.  All of my school age kids, except for the one in kindergarten, have their own blogs.   This is a particularly fitting idea for middle school, especially if your kids know how to upload photos and videos.  Most of them are private, accessible only to family members, but it gives them a way to learn and have fun at the same time.  They often write about educational activities like bird watching or science experiments.

Give it a try!


What are your plans for continuing a learning lifestyle during the summer?  Leave a comment for me at this link: Summer Writing with Journals and Blogs

There is another related blog article I would really like you to read because it talks so much about independent delight-directed learning, but I'm not including it right here since it has so many photographs in it.  You can see it on-line here: Learning on Their Own. Another one, in my Friday Favorites series on http://www.comewearymoms.blogspot.com, contains a video for a neat science experiment demonstrated by my son Andrew, as well as links for making a kaleidocycle paper toy and playing Pente.  You can find it here:  Friday Favorites #6 ~ and ~ A Curiosity Journal

Knowles Family News in May 2011



The
big news this month is that our 22 year old daughter Julia is engaged to Alex Corbett.  He proposed to her on a recent Saturday
morning in a flower strewn gazebo on Park Avenue in Winter Park.  She thought he was “at the beach with the guys”
and she was supposedly just going with his sister Hannah to the farmer’s market on Park Avenue.  So he was actually able to
surprise her – no small feat since Julia has always been so observant.  Hannah stayed nearby to snap some pictures
from a discrete distance.  We all
celebrated with an engagement party at Alex’s parents’ home that afternoon.  Alex just graduated from UCF with an accounting degree, so double congratulations are in order.  The big day is October 15, and all 12 of their
siblings plus my grandson Jacob and some of their friends will be in the
wedding.  Alex and Julia met at church as
teenagers, have both been on mission trips to Bolivia, work for the same
company, and have been best friends for several years, so this has been a long
time coming!  See Julia and Alex are engaged for a picture or two!

 

The
other big news is that Rachel and Joanna arrived home safely from Italy three weeks
ago.  They had a wonderful time there
teaching English as an outreach in the town of Chiavari three times a week.  On weekends, they traveled to cities like Rome,
Florence, Venice, and Udine, as well as Paris and Nice in France, and the tiny
country of Monaco.  They are still
working at getting their pictures up on their blog, http://www.abbondanzadivita.blogspot.com.
 I have loved looking at pictures of the
museums and landmarks they have visited. 
(This morning on our daily one hour walk, my friend Tonya mentioned http://www.googleartproject.com/
which features masterpieces from some of the major art museums around the world.  This is good since photography is very
restricted in the Uffizi in Florence and the Louvre in Paris that the girls
visited.  This site will be a wonderful
resource for home school families and everyone else!  You can read historical notes about each
piece, as well as create your own on-line art collection. There is nothing
quite like going and seeing it yourself in the actual museum, but for most of
us, this is the next best thing.)  Rachel, who graduated with her AA from Valencia
in December, has been accepted to the UCF nursing school, which she starts in
August.  She is looking for a summer job
until then, so if you hear of anything, let us know!  Joanna got a job as a Disney photographer and
will start at the Magic Kingdom in early June, as soon as she officially
graduates from The Regent Academy.  My
mom and dad are flying down from Maryland for that weekend, which includes a
graduation banquet the night before.  In
the fall, she will continue at Valencia, where she dual enrolled for three
semesters.

 

Lydia
is doing quite well in public high school this year and just took her AP
tests in English and World History.  She
is also taking at least one class on-line with Florida Virtual School (http://www.flvs.net) this summer and will also have a
full load of advanced classes at public school next year.  She hasn’t yet decided if she will graduate a
year early.   Andrew, who turned 14
earlier this month, just finished up FLVS 8th grade math and has started
an FLVS high school credit of Physical Science for over the summer. When he’s
not doing school work, he loves to do magic tricks and card tricks.  He’s pretty amazing at it!  I’m always asking him, “How did you DO that?”  He’s looking forward to going to Lake Baldwin
Church’s summer camp in Tennessee next month.

 

The
five younger kids (Andrew, Micah, Naomi, Ben and Melody) have been involved in
the home school P.E. program at the YMCA, which ends with a pool party today.   We are also finishing up our home school year
this week, reading about animals in classic literature in Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Misty
of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, and, if we have time, Shiloh by Phyllis Naylor Reynolds.  On Saturday, we went to the Orlando Science
Center to see a presentation on the Orlando night sky, as well as two huge
screen movies about animals around the world and the Grand Canyon.  I found the free SkyView app for my iPod
where you can point it at the night sky and it will identify what is up there. The
kids have also been sprouting seeds to plant a backyard garden, as well as
setting up temporary habitats for assorted lizards and toads.  Micah spends a lot of time with the Google
Sketchup 3D drawing program creating elaborate houses.  You can download it for free here: http://sketchup.google.com/ -- another amazing educational resource from Google!
  All of the kids except for five year
old Melody have their own blogs, too.  We
will return to the Providence Home Educators co-op program next year, after
taking this past year off to read through our bookshelves at home.  I will be teaching middle school English as I
did for the four years we were there before. 
I love that age group and subject, especially since I get to integrate
art, music, history, and Bible in with the literature and writing lessons.  If you live in the Orlando area and you are
interested in this home school co-op, let me know!  They are still accepting applications for
next year.  See What We're Doing for School in 2011-2012.

 

My
daughter Mary and her husband Ryan are planning a small Noah’s Ark themed
birthday party for Jacob’s first birthday next month.  Time sure has flown!  Jacob is starting to walk a little, and loves
to wave and giggle.  His aunts and uncles
all make him laugh when he comes over on Wednesday afternoons.

 

I
guess that’s most of the news for this month! 
If you would like to read the blog posts I’ve written recently, you can
find them here: 

I'd love to hear from all of you, too!  

Blessings,

Virginia Knowles

http://www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com


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