Quote from Forum Archives on January 18, 2002, 10:14 am

Posted by: homenews <homenews@...>

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THE HOPE CHEST: Ideas and Inspiration for Home Education
Issue #47 part 3
January/February 2002
Educating for Excellence
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EDUCATION AT OUR HOUSE
by Virginia Knowles
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I can’t claim to be an educational expert, but I did want to share a few
examples from our house of some areas where we’ve seen a measure of
success at the different age levels.
But first, a reality check! It’s easy to read about other home school
families and think they have it all together. Then you look at your own
children and get discouraged! Once when I was sick, I lay in bed and read
several home school magazines one after another. I felt sicker than ever.
My family would never match up to these shining examples of virtue and
educational excellence! But I had to keep in mind that these families
have their own struggles, even if they don’t seep through into the
articles. Each family is different. We have different temperaments,
different resources, different interests, different children... So take
what you read for what it’s worth, and please realize that I am sharing
strengths right now. I would get too depressed if I had to tell you all
the things that are STILL tripping us up! 🙂 Just know that the Knowles
family has its bad days too!
Anyway, back to the examples -- the GOOD ones! Since education starts at
birth and lasts our whole lives, I’ll begin with the youngest and end
with the oldest!
Naomi is now 11 months old. A few months ago she started pulling up on
the couch and taking tentative sideways shuffles. Since she’s my 8th
baby, I didn’t bother to consult the expert books on whether she was "on
time" or "early" for this skill or not. It didn’t matter! We just smiled
and clapped our hands! Then she progressed to walking along holding on to
our hands with one finger. A few weeks ago she decided to she was ready
to go solo, at least for one step. We knew when she did this that she
would soon be trotting gleefully across the room. All she needed was
confidence and practice, so we played the back and forth game with her.
Two of us would sit several feet apart. One of us would stand her up and
aim her in the right direction, and the other one would tempt her with a
colorful toy. What a game! Sure enough, a few days later she could walk
down the hall, stoop down, get up again, walk some more, and take a turn
into the kitchen! That’s talent! Of course, now we have to watch her like
a hawk! Who ever said home schooling with toddlers around would be easy?
Micah is 2 1/2, and such a jolly boy. He picks out big piles of board
books at the library, and loves to have any of us read to him cuddled up
on the couch. Somtimes we point to the pictures and say, "This is a
squirrel," or "1, 2, 3, 4 teddy bears!" or ask "Where is the green
balloon?" or "What is this?" He’s learning to count: "1, 2, 6, 1, 3
balls!" That’s OK! He’ll get it soon enough. Right now he’s just busy
absorbing everything like a sponge, and he’s having the time of his life.
Andrew is 4 1/2, and just as cheerful, affectionate and book loving as
his little brother. He’s gotten past counting to 10 and is working at
getting the 10-20 sequence sorted out. His little Match Box and Hot
Wheels cars are perfect for tallying real life objects. One area that
I’ve been concerned about is Andrew’s speech. He knows what he wants to
say, and can put together great sentences, so we know that this is a
diction (output) problem, not a language processing disorder. In December
I called the speech therapist at the local public school and made an
appointment for an evaluation. I must say it felt VERY strange for me to
be escorting one of my children on to a public school campus!
Nonetheless, the therapist, Mrs. Sjoberg, was very sweet and encouraging,
and Andrew was in a cooperative mood. She gave him a hearing test, a
mouth inspection, and several lists of words to pronounce. We got it
narrowed it down to four sounds that cause him problems, all of which he
CAN pronounce if he really tries! She informed me that he does qualify
for public school speech therapy, which would be in a small group setting
twice a week at 11 AM (a bad time for our school schedule). HOWEVER, she
also said that this was not totally necessary, since she thinks he can
improve just as well at home with me, given a few more months. This was
music to my ears! To assist me with this, she gave me several ideas for
helping Andrew position his mouth correctly, including putting peanut
butter on the back of his top front teeth to show him where to hold his
tongue for the "l" sound. I am also planning to get a copy of Marisa
Lapisch’s guide book called Straight Talk, which is a home school speech
therapy program published by NATHHAN (www.nathhan.com).
Next in line comes Lydia, who turned seven in October. I had originally
started her in kindergarten a year early, as I had done with her sister
Joanna. By the beginning of this school year, I regretted that decision.
Lydia is very bright but also very bouncy. She’s what you call a
kinesthetic learner -- she’s got to be moving! I didn’t feel comfortable
with her starting second grade while not reading fairly fluently. Since
we were enrolling in a home school academy and I had to declare an
official grade level for them, I decided to hold both Lydia and Joanna
back to their regular age level. I didn’t see any sense in pushing them
to do advanced work and making us all frustrated, just to get them done
with school a year earlier. After all, I’m in no hurry to get rid of
them, nor do I need to have child prodigies to prove my worth as a home
school mom! Anyway, back to Lydia’s story. She did learn to read this
fall, going from stumbling over simple isolated phonics words to zipping
through entire books by herself. (It’s true: when they’re ready, they’ll
read. If we give flowers the right nutrients and atmosphere, and then
wait patiently, they will eventually unfurl and burst into bloom. It
doesn’t help to pry the petals open...) She finished Horizons first grade
math last year, so I ordered her the first half of the second grade
program, figuring she could take her time and do the remaining half next
year. However, by the end of November, we were still in tears over math.
She could do it, but it was a major brain stretch for her. I knew we
needed an immediate change, so we went out to the nearest book store and
bought a Spectrum workbook illustrated with Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter
characters. It’s still a second grade book (the first grade ones were WAY
too simple), but it is infinitely easier for her than Horizons, which is
advanced. She has galloped through this book with ease and enthusiasm,
and now my only worry is that she’s going to be finished with it long
before the end of the school year.
On to Joanna, our nine year old bookworm! She was one of our early
bloomers, reading books when she was four. When I’m writing weekly
records and ask her to bring me the books she’s finished, she carts them
in by the armload. I do not exaggerate! She has polished off several
series of biographies and historical fiction. I have a slight problem
with this, and I know you’re going to laugh at me. She has plunged
wholeheartedly into American history, and that’s what I planned to do
NEXT YEAR! Not only that, but THIS year I wanted to cover European
history from the fall of Rome up through the Explorers! I know you all
are rolling in the aisles right now at this inflexible mom, but I am
going to get the last laugh after all. See, the deal is that she likes to
read about history in a lively narrative story format. Most of the Europe
books I’ve brought home from the library or bought at the convention are
too hard or "boring" for her to enjoy by herself. (There have been some
great exceptions, like Marguerite deAngeli’s Door in the Wall, which she
loved.) Even though she was an early reader (hence you might think she
would be far ahead in literature), the CONCEPTS in most of the titles are
too advanced for her to either care or comprehend. I just got smart and
figured out that if I order some of the books from the Trailblazers
series by Dave and Neta Jackson, I’ll be blazing my own trail to success.
These fictionalized biographies tell the story famous Christian heroes
from the perspective of a child who might have known them. I am ordering
ones about Martin Luther, Menno Simmons, John Bunyan, William Tyndale,
John Wesley and George Mueller -- all the European dudes I could find! My
other girls love these books too (there are a few in our local library)
so I know I won’t be wasting my money at all. I would usually order them
from Christian Book Distributors (www.christianbooks.com) but I
have a balance on a gift card from Barnes & Noble. In this case, I have
to ask the store to special order them as they don’t have them in stock,
but at least I can get a 20% teacher discount. (Ask about this at any
major book store chain -- many of them extend this to home educators!)
But I digress again. The moral of Joanna’s story is that we DO have to be
flexible with our children’s interests each year, but we can also be
creative about getting them to do what WE want too!
Rachel is the next sister up. She’s turning 11 in a couple of weeks, and
I’m happy to say that she is an enthusiastic student. (She learned to
read when she was four, too, as did Mary.) She took one look at her
Horizon’s fifth grade math book and said it was too simple, so I am
letting her do half of the Saxon 76 book this year. No sweat, we already
had it! Rachel has a particular fascination for geography. Our Geo-Safari
and World Discovery Deluxe CD-ROMS have gotten major use from her, and
she’s knocked everyone else off of the "best time" score boards for the
map activities. If she sees me folding laundry, she grabs a basket and
offers to help fold IF I will give her little quizzes as we work. I have
to wrack my brain to remember the capitals of all the different countries
and states. I usually resort to our two world atlases for help. Then I
can give her toughies, like asking her for the names of the nine
countries which border France. Can you do it? Yes, I know you’ve thought
of Germany, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. If you’re good, you got
Belgium, and if you’re thinking about water borders, you’ve listed the
United Kingdom. Did you miss the tiny principalities of Luxembourg,
Monaco, and Andorra? Have you ever even heard of Andorra? I hadn’t until
I started looking at the atlas! Ah, another advantage of home schooling:
learning with your children!
On to Julia! She’s 12, and another active kinesthetic learner. Julia has
had a wide variety of hobbies in the past several years, and each one has
enriched the whole family in some. Right now her three hands-on interests
are basketball, sign language, and piano. She got the "most valuable
offensive player" award at her first official basketball game. (Go
Julia!) Upwards is a Christian, church-based program with separate boys
and girls teams, and for us it’s a Godsend with its wholesome devotional
approach. I’m not really a sports mom, but this I can handle. For sign
language, she’s learned some from friends who have taken classes, and she
found a CD-ROM set at Sam’s Club which she likes. A few years ago, Julia
started taking piano lessons twice a month from the pianist at our
church. She stopped after a year and a half since she wanted to devote
more time to sports, but she has recently started playing again on her
own. (She is also teaching Lydia!) Julia heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D
Major (a guitar version on Naomi’s baby classics lullaby CD!) and fell in
love with it. She begged me to get the piano music, and we found an easy
version in a book at Borders after Christmas. When she’s first learning a
new song, it’s almost auditory torture for the rest of us. That’s when I
start drooling over electronic keyboards with headphone jacks. Once she’s
gets going, though, it truly is music to our ears. When she started
playing Canon in D, she had to ask for help with the difficult measures,
so for several days, I played a few tricky bars over and over. I got
hooked. Once I started playing this song, and hearing Julia play it, I
had to learn it for myself! And I did! There’s something about actually
playing a song with your hands that gives you a deeper appreciation of
the melody, the chord structure, the rhythm. It’s called learning by
doing, and that’s the beauty of a kinesthetic approach to education.
Mary, our oldest at 14, is a freshman in high school and a serious
student. On Mondays she takes English, American History, Biology, Bible
and Debate at Smith Prep, a classical Christian education program for
home schoolers. She’s in a class with about 20 other girls, and this
group format is great for Debate. Her first topic was the Graduated
Driver’s License. The teacher said she debated well, but lost the
classroom vote. When Mr. Smith asked for volunteers to do an extra
debate, Mary signed up. She and her partner chose to debate the upcoming
introduction of the euro currency. Just before Christmas break she
researched and studied hard, not only for that, but for her history and
biology midterms which were on the same day. To her disappointment, the
debate was postponed until after the New Years introduction of the euro.
Then, at the last minute, her opponent changed two of her supporting
points. This required her to ADAPT, which is a real life education skill.
She won the debate this time too! Her spring debate topic, assigned by
the teacher to coincide with their history studies, is the Scopes
evolution trial of 1925. She doesn’t know which side she’ll have to take,
but she had to research the subject and write an essay on it first. We’ve
covered the creation vs. evolution issue a few times during our home
school years, and I’m glad she has this background for her debate. She’s
been pulling stuff off the Internet, visiting the ACLU web site, reading
books, and hashing it out. She’s learning about public speaking, history,
law, science, community politics, the educational establishment, et al.
She’s truly in what classical education fans call the "rhetoric" stage of
learning!
OK, that’s all of the Knowles children, but as I said, learning is a life
long process, so on to Mom and Dad! At age 38, I’m still the younger of
us two, so I’ll go first. I’d much rather read than clean house, but I am
trying to get more of a balance in this area. Other than the countless
books I read with my children, I am currently working through two
different books on my own. I ordered The Education of a Child from the
Wisdom of Fenelon, which is chock full of wisdom and educational
philosophy. I’ve found so many great nuggets here, I actually take notes
and copy quotes when I read it! (I have included a lengthy excerpt and
ordering information after this article.) Sometimes I feel like Fenelon
is peering into my house when he writes about various topics that I
struggle with. His old ideas are so very relevant to the times we face!
The other is A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. I read it a
few years ago, but I recently pulled it out again. I suppose it’s my
favorite overall book on home schooling; it has so much meat in it. I
read a chapter here and there as I have the opportunity. I’ve also been
pursuing education other forms. The one Internet discussion board that I
go to each day is Terri Maxwell’s Titus 2 Mom’s Board
(www.titus2.com). I like the spiritual encouragement and
exhortation I find there, as well as practical hints on home schooling
and homemaking in a large family. From this web site, I also ordered S.M.
Davis’ cassette tape on The Language of a Christian’s Clothing. I’ve been
making a concentrated effort to upgrade my wardrobe to be both modest and
feminine, and hoping that this will trickle down to others in the house!
Then there’s Dad! He’s the building manager for the large Downtown
Orlando YMCA Family Center. Occasionally he has to drive down to Ft.
Lauderdale to take a facility management certificate course from the
Building Owners and Managers Institute. This involves cramming for a few
weeks ahead of time, then three days of classroom lectures and the exam.
He often listens to tapes on his way to work, so I ordered him the
Manager of His Home set by Steve Maxwell (available from
www.titus2.com), and he’s been gleaning insight from that. When we
were preparing for our support group’s science fair this month, one of
our daughters was interested in doing a solar system project. Thad said
it would be a great idea to do a scale model and hang it from the ceiling
of the exhibit hall. He calculated the sizes of the model sun and
planets, and the distances between them. Once we got it put together, it
was pretty impressive! I never could have figured it all out by myself,
and I’m not very good on a ladder either, so I was glad to have his
brains and brawn on board.
That’s a little bit on education from the Knowles family!
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EXCERPT: EDUCATION OF A CHILD FROM THE WISDOM OF FENELON by Francis
Fenelon, edited and rewritten by Mark Hamby
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[Virginia’s note: As an ardent student of the Reformation period, I find
it interesting to read in the forward of this book that Francis Fenelon
was the Catholic archbishop of Cambray and a tutor to royalty. After the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes instilled terror in the hearts of
persecuted French Protestants, it was the wise Fenelon who persuaded King
Louis XIV to ease up and leave the Huguenots alone. This is personally
fascinating to me because my ancestor Andre Lamoureux was a Huguenot who
emigrated to America in 1700. This book was originally written in 1687,
but has been updated and republished by Mark Hamby of Lamplighter Books.
You can order it, as well as A Charlotte Mason Companion and lots of
other fine books at http://www.cindyrushton.com.]
Excerpt from Chapter 2: Defects in the Common Mode of Education
Children well educated, who employ their minds on serious objects, have,
for the most part, but an ordinary share of curiosity; what they know
gives them a sovereign contempt for many things they wish not to know.
They see the emptiness and the futility of the many things which the idle
and the ignorant pursue with so much eagerness and passion.
Children ill instructed, and not accustomed to application, have
wandering imaginations. For the want of solid nourishment to the mind,
their curiosity turns towards objects which are vain and dangerous. Those
who have wit, often become conceited, and read books which nourish their
vanity; they become passionately fond of romances, comedies, and novels,
which silently instil into their unguarded breasts the poison of profane
love. These imaginary adventures render their minds visionary, in
accustoming them to the strained sentiments of vain romantic heroes.
Children filled with thoughts of their romantic heroes, become astonished
when they look around in real life, and cannot discover a single person
throughout the world bearing resemblance with their ideal hero. They
would wish to live like those princes and princesses who are always
charming, always adored, always above every care. What a disgust for them
to descend from a hero and heroine, to the low detail and drudgery of
taking care of a family.
Children should be influenced by books that vividly portray life in all
its trials and victories. Divine providence should echo throughout its
pages. Characters who suffer wrongfully in a righteous manner, and
display humble dispositions, will lay a secure foundation for the time
when childhood may be stolen away; perhaps through the death of a loved
one, sickness, or calamity. Children need informed instruction, and
models of heroes and heroines of righteousness to fill their reserves for
such a time. In literature as well as in history, God who doeth all
things well, must be seen through the filter of His divine love and
tender care for His children and as an avenger of all who harden their
neck.
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POET’S PEN:
HEROES by William Canton
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[Virginia’s note: I know y’all said you could do without the poetry, but
I think you’ll agree this one fits right here! Besides, how COULD we do
without poetry in a well-rounded home school? This one comes from The
Moral Compass anthology edited by William Bennett.]
HEROES
by William Canton
For you who love heroic things
In summer dream or winter tale,
I tell of warriors, saints and kings,
In scarlet, sackcloth, glittering mail,
And helmets peaked with iron wings.

They beat down Wrong; they strove for Right.
In ringing fields, on grappled ships,
Singing, they flung into the fight;
They fell with triumph on their lips,
And in their eyes a glorious light.

That light still gleams. From far away
Their brave song greets us like a cheer;
We fight the same great fight as they,
Right against Wrong; we, now and here;
They, in their fashion, yesterday.