Accumulated Homeschooling Wisdom; The Joy of Homeschooling;

Organize Chapters from MOST helpful to least. THINK of what would go in a QUICK START GUIDE and put that at the front.

Go through description and add everything to book mentioned in the description.

Introduction—

In this book, I have collected and put in order the wisdom of years of homeschooling. This wisdom has the power to give your children the keys to transform their life.

It’s been over ten years since I first started homeschooling my oldest son, who was four at the time. He’s in high school now, and the years have flown by. As I’ve homeschooled, it’s often struck me just what a limited amount of time I have with my kids before they are grown.  I’ve tried to learn how to give them as much as I could. I want them to have the greatest chance of success in life as possible, and nurture their every skill and passion. Yet with four kids, I’m sometimes happy to have simply cooked a healthy dinner.

Having devoted these last ten years of my life to raising children, I’ve wanted to learn myself how I can teach them … so in that search I’ve collected homeschooling wisdom from every source possible—wisdom that I have collected over the years of listening to other homeschool moms, researching, reading, etc…audio-books, research on talent, learning, nutrition, brain development, IQ, acceleration and more.

Since I truly have a limited amount of time each day with my kids, and that split up among four, I didn’t (and still don’t) want to risk

I have shared the tips in this book with other homeschool moms and have… Here are some of the ways this advice has helped other homeschool moms.

• A friend whose son increased two grade levels in reading in only one month
• Sdj
• My child is so much more excited about learning… (find true story that is similar)

I have also written a quick start guide on my website, for people who are brand new to homeschooling and…

My thought was that if I at least taught my kids simply the things that I knew, they would have gotten about that much from public school. If they learned more than I knew, then it would be even better.

Lesson Plans and Daily Assignments

Each year I have revised, rewritten, and reprinted a new version of our daily schedule. I don’t write complicated lesson plans because I base so much of our learning on high quality literature. As a base for our lesson plans, I first turn to the plans already created and free of charge on Amblesideonline.org.

Here is a link to a multiple options for downloading a lesson plan for fourth grade off Ambleside:  http://amblesideonline.org/b04sch.shtml

In writing my lesson plans, or school plan for the year, I take the books listed on Ambleside, my own goals for my kids, and other curriculums, books I want them to read, or activities I want them to do, and incorporate them together in one big master plan. I then tweak and change this plan about twice a schoolyear.

For my oldest son who is in 9^th grade, I have created a list with everything I want him to get done each day. As he works, he checks off items on the list. When he finishes everything, he knows he is done. He like the finality of knowing nothing school related with be required of him for the rest of the day. Because I want him to be self-motivated to accomplish all his tasks, I do offer a reward. I know some people might think I’m crazy for rewarding my kids for doing something they should be doing anyway, but it works for me because I never have to do any nagging, reminding, or struggling to get him to do his school. Every so often he wants to negotiate the terms of the rewards, but he becomes super self-motivated when all his assignments are listed clearly and he knows exactly what to do and what he will get from doing it.

So, without further ado, here is the current list.

9^th Grade School Chart and List

I thought it might be helpful to give a small explanation about each of these things:

120 Minutes Assigned Reading—These would typically be books from Ambleside Online, although I will sometimes make exceptions and let Austin complete books from Classical Conversations. I know that this amount of time is not enough for him to stay caught up with Ambleside, and sometimes I feel discouraged that we just don’t have enough time or motivation or energy or whatever to accomplish everything we want to accomplish. But from talking to other homeschool moms, I can’t remember ever meeting one who felt like she really did everything she would want to do with her kids. Sometimes I will also let Austin only read for ninety minutes, but not really for any good reason except that he asks to do only ninety.

60 Minutes CLEP—Book, Flashcards, and/or Instant Cert—It would be lovely if Austin could graduate high school with a college degree, so I have him study for CLEP tests. I still debate if this is the best route, since at this time he wants to be a doctor and I know medical school is hard to get into as it is. I’m pretty sure that trying to get into medical school with a degree gotten mostly by testing may not be a very successful plan. So the current plans is that he gets a degree through one of the big three testing schools (Excelsior, TESC, or COSC) but then goes back to a more traditional school and takes the pre-med classes. That way, he can submit good grades to the medical school from a better college. Also, I’m pretty sure medical school will be expensive, so if Austin has a degree and can work and make his own money, it definitely won’t hurt.

2 Classical Conversations Subjects—We do our Classical Conversations group on Tuesdays, so Mondays are usually spent preparing for the next day, finishing up subjects, packing lunches, preparing presentations, and all that. Thus, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are the only days we really follow the list above. So on those three days, Austin does two subjects a day. The Classical Conversations Challenge Program recommends that each subject be done for one hour a day, four days of the week, but we’ve found that getting two subjects done each day in their entirety works better for us. The exception is reading, which Austin will often do at night before falling asleep.

Bible Reading—I have my kids start at one chapter a day when they are about six or seven. At age eight they move up to two chapters, and then again add one chapter to their daily reading. By the time they are around seventh or eighth grade, they will be at six chapters. Once they reach six chapters, we stop adding more in future years. So Austin reads six Bible chapters a day. If a person reads four chapters a day, they will read through the entire Bible in a year. At six chapters a day, they should read through the Bible about one and a half times a year. I also like my kids to underline one verse in each chapter that they really liked or thought was interesting. I feel that underlining helps them to absorb that particular verse even better.

45 Minutes Khan Academy or CLEP Algebra—The completely free website www.khanacademy.org is a great math program and spans early math to advanced math. When you sign up, your skills are tested and you are then given assignments based on what you don’t know. There are teaching videos and then tests with around three to seven problems on each specific math concept. Parents or teachers can also create an account and monitor each student’s progress from one account. I also have Austin work with me through a CLEP Algebra book (about thirty to forty-five minutes a week) because it covers a lot of concepts quickly and prepares him for college. I sometimes wish I had started my kids on a more time-consuming math curriculum, like Saxon Math or similar. When kids get used to doing the same math problem a hundred different ways, every single day, they stop protesting. Or at least they protest less. And each math concept probably gets really ingrained in their minds.

All boxes checked—Since there is a prize if they complete everything on their charts, this is the box they check when everything is finished.

Pray 10—When I started working as a real estate agent in 1999, the manager at my real estate office sat me down and asked me to name some of my goals. Up to that point, I had never really even thought of my goals before in such a concrete way. He then explained to me the very effective concept of breaking down those goals into daily habits or activities. So, for instance, if one of my goals is to write a book, I would figure out how long I wanted that book to be, the date I wanted to complete the writing of my book, and then divide those two number. Let’s say I want to write a fifty-thousand word book in one year. I will only write Monday through Friday, and take about four weeks off. We need to find out how long I need to write each day to finish this goal.

Here’s the math:

There are 52 weeks in a year. So 52 weeks a year minus 4 weeks off equals 48 weeks.

52 – 4 = 48

48 weeks with 5 days each week equals 240 days.

48 x 5 = 240

50,000 words in 240 days equals about 208 words a day.

50,000 / 240 = 208

A couple months ago I wanted to see how much I could write if I didn’t stop typing. The writing didn’t have to be good. My only rule for this test was I couldn’t stop typing. I set the timer for forty-five minutes and began. When the timer beeped, I had written about eleven-hundred words. But I was exhausted!

If I wrote a bit more thoughtfully, I could potentially write about twelve hundred words an hour.

Using these numbers, and knowing I need to write 208 words a day, I now take 1200 and divide by 60. That tells me how many words I write a minute.

1200 / 60 = 20

Now I divide 208 words a day by 20 words a minute, which equals 10.4 minutes.

208 / 20 = 10.4

If I only write for 11 minutes a day, I will have finished a 50,000 word book in one year!

I will do the math backward this time:

11 minutes a day at 20 words a minute = 220 words a day.

220 words a day times 240 days = 52,800 words.

Based on this idea, I take each of my goals and convert them into daily activities. As long as I write for just ten minutes a day, I will accomplish a lot in the span of a year.

Memorizing Bible verses, learning math concepts, writing, reading books, learning a language, practicing a skill, exercising, and even saving money are all similar in this way—do a little each day and it will add up to a lot over time.

In addition to this concept, I heard in an audiobook the idea of re-writing your goals every single day. The idea is that by writing your goals, you will keep them at the front of your mind and ultimately accomplish them better. I decided to try this, re-writing my top ten goals—which I had broken down into daily activities—each day. It became tedious to write out each goal, so I started abbreviating. Instead of writing, “Read two Bible page each day.” I started writing, “Bible 2.” I knew what it meant. (Instead of reading a certain number of chapters, I just read a certain number of pages. So some days I might read ten Psalms, but other days just a chapter and a half from Genesis. It’s not impressive, but it is practical.)

Since one of my goals is to be a godly woman, I’ve even set a certain number of minutes that I want to pray each day. I promise I’m not legalistic in this. I’m just too scatterbrained to pray (and do nothing else) only when I remember. If I miss a day, I know I haven’t lost favor with God. And if I pray twice as much as the time I wrote down, I know I haven’t gain any righteousness before Him. For me, having a specific number is just a tool. It’s not a means of earning righteousness. Okay, I’m done with my disclaimer. J

For my kids, I want them to spend at least ten minutes in prayer each day. My goal is to build habits. In my ideal world, they would pray for two hours each day. They would be like Hudson Taylor and the sun would not rise on the state of Texas without seeing my children kneeling in prayer.[1]

But alas, yeah, I’m thankful for ten minutes. My youngest son prays for ten people instead of praying for ten minutes, but I’m happy with that also.

30 Minutes Rosetta—I had been eyeing the Rosetta Stone program for a few years when a Groupon for the complete program in Spanish became available at an incredible price. We bought it and I really like it. Though we don’t move at the pace I had hoped, my kids can do this program and none of my time is needed, so it’s great for independent work. Unfortunately, if something is going to get cut out of our daily work because of places we need to go or more pressing school activities, this is almost always first to go.

30 Minutes Reading to Geneva or James—My two older kids have “30 Minutes Reading to Geneva or James” on their schedules, while my eight year old has “Read with Austin or Tyla, or read to Geneva” on his. When the older kids read to Geneva, that is mostly for her benefit. But when Austin or Tyla read to James, I like them to read a book they haven’t yet read through either so they are learning together. When they finish chapters, I like James to give a summary of what has been read (just like he would do if I were reading to him), and then the older kids give a more detailed summary back to James—which also helps him understand the story more fully.

10 Minutes Math w/ Mom—Even though my kids are somewhat willing to do their math on Khan Academy, certain persons in my family strongly protest to the one-on-one lessons. By putting it on their schedules, and for such a short amount of time, I can teach them a new concept and generally eliminate the protests. During this time I try to work on something they haven’t yet learned. I actually really like this time and love teaching math, which I know is funny since I don’t talk to many moms who love teaching math. And even funnier is that while I really enjoy teaching math, my husband is part of the “Algebra isn’t necessary for 95% of all jobs at so why spend time learning it” club. There is no subject I dislike teaching more than how to read and pretty much no subject I like teaching more than math. But I still teach my kids how to read because I believe it is necessary. However, my husband is feels I am generally wasting time when we teach algebra and beyond. So if anything, if you and your husband have ever disagreed on something regarding homeschooling, you are not the only one. And it’s a bummer when it happens. L

30 Minutes Singing Practice, Acting Practice, Speech, Preaching, Writing (Summaries, Book Reports, or Timed Essay), Drawing, Painting, Artist Study, Nature Study, Memorization, Editing, Penmanship, and/or Cursive—The one thing not mentioned on this list is piano practice, but somewhere along the line someone asked me if they could practice piano during this “Fine Arts” time and I agreed, and now piano practice is the favorite in my house. My kids took piano lessons for about two years, and those lessons ended about two years ago. During that time, getting them to practice was not easy. So if funny now that they all want to practice the piano so badly. But I’m thankful for it.

Morning Routine—We established a “Morning Routine” back when Austin was maybe five years old. It’s been a great part of our lives. We’ve changed what comprises a morning routine over the years, but the list generally includes the following: Get dressed, brush teeth and floss, make bed, brush hair (for the girls), read your Bible chapters, pray and spend time with God, some form of exercise (like three minutes of jumping jacks and fifty crunches or something similar), and then a couple jobs around the house. These jobs have changed each year, but range from things like straightening their bedrooms, sweeping a room in the house, and unloading dishwasher, to simply putting away the silverware for the youngest one.

30 Minutes edX—MIT or Harvard Class

Earn $2

Social activity/reach out

50 Crunches

Memorize next verse from Romans 8

Raw Vegetable

Help someone with their goal

Clean up after yourself

For my younger kids, this list is shorter and tailored to their abilities. I want it to be challenging enough that they grow, but achievable enough that they complete the list each day. I think finding the balance between these two things is always one of the goals of homeschooling.

Assigned Times Instead of Assignments

I remember talking to a mom who stopped homeschooling because preparing each night for the next day became too overwhelming. While I prepare the reading lists and type up the schedule above about twice a year, I don’t do much else in the way of prep work. Most of the books my kids read are free online, so I don’t even need to spend much time purchasing curriculum.

Since I don’t do much prep work, I rarely give specific assignments. For instance, you don’t see:

Monday—Chapter 1 of Princess and the Goblin

Tuesday—Chapter 2 of Princess and the Goblin

And so forth.

(For my younger kids, I sometimes do assign a specific amount of work. But by about fifth grade, it has worked better for me to assign a certain amount of time instead.)

While I have a list of books for each of my kids to read through, I don’t have a formal lesson plan. If they read, write, do math, etc. for a certain amount of time each day, I am happy with that. My assigning times to do work instead of specific lessons, I have very little prep work each day.

Besides being easier than pre-assigning lessons, the primary reason I have my children read for a specific amount of time instead of a specific number of pages is because I have one kid who (when given a certain amount of pages to read) will speed read the passage and finish thirty minutes of reading in ten minutes. I have another who will read so slowly and so carefully that they basically memorize everything they read, but it takes them an hour to read the same number of pages that took the speed reader ten minutes.

But when the speed reader knows that they have to read for thirty minutes whether they read fast or slow, they spend more time on each page and absorb it better.

Reason for Homeschooling—Character Training

Sometimes people will ask me why I started homeschooling, but why I started and why I homeschool today are totally different answers. I started because my dear friend Nicole homeschooled, and she felt so strongly about it that I figured she must be right. Within a year of homeschooling, I wanted to know why I had chosen this for myself. I began to ask other homeschooling moms their reasons, and many of the answers were similar to this: I want to customize my child’s education and use what works best for them.

That didn’t resonate with me as a strong enough reason, but I didn’t put Austin into public school either. Then I read a book called, “Keeping Our Children’s Heart: Our Vital Priority” and I saw the necessity of training character. …

Audiobooks for the Kids (Or how to get a lot done school-wise and still get free time)

In the afternoons, once the table work is done, I have often put on an audio book and let my kids build with Keva planks or legos or whatever is quiet and creative. They have heard many of their books audibly while being creative. I use www.librivox.org to for the books, and they have a huge selection of high quality literature—and it is all free.

Charlotte Mason

Classical

Planning Your Schedule Backward

Write your schedule backward—at the end of the school year, what do you want to have accomplished? Make a list of what you want to have finished, then break up those accomplishments into weekly and then daily tasks. So you want your kids to learn another language? Memorize a chapter or book of the Bible? Create an art portfolio? Read through a list of books? Understand a math concept? Take that goal and work backwards, figuring out what needs to be done each day so the goal is achieved. For instance, if you have a book list you want your child to read, figure out approximately how long it will take to read each book and add the hours for each book together, then divide that number bt how many days you will be working on school that year.

For instance, let’s say you have twenty books on your list, and each book will take about nine hours to read, plus another two hours in narration or report writing. You will work on school about 200 days that year. 20 (books) X 11 (hours) = 220 (hours). Divide 220 by 200 days. 220/200 = About 1 hour and 6 minutes each day. Maybe some days will be spent on fieldtrips or other urgent activities, so you could schedule one hour and fifteen minutes of assigned reading each day.

Teaching More in Less Time

Multi-task…Do more than one assignment at once. For example, teach spelling with penmanship. Often when I teach my son a spelling word, we will use that word to practice penmanship.

Ask yourself, what activities have the highest return? When do my kids learn the most? And then do more of that.

Good, high quality literature—In a good book your child can learn so much, including .. learn sentence structure, new words, grammar, reading comprehension, ideas, life lessons.

Khan Academy does a good job of this as the lessons are focused and based on what the child has not yet learned or mastered. However, sometimes the long math pages with a hundred problems for one concept (like Saxon Math) help the student retain what they’ve learned, when a brief test would not be sufficient to remember.

I think programs such as Rosetta Stone and _____ are also designed from the start to teach a subject as efficiently as possible in the smallest amount of time. They also automate everything, from the testing to the grading. All I basically have to do is make sure my kids start the program, and monitor that they are working, and Rosetta Stone does the rest.

Memorizing concepts in the context of understanding the idea. Doing both together. Learn an idea, and then memorize the most significant part of the idea for learning retention. For example, learn about the details of the Purchase of Alaska, but then memorize only the most important facts.

Ask yourself, “What do I want the outcome to be? What do I want my students to know?” The outcome may be a love for learning, it may be a specific knowledge of math or science. It may be the ability to get a certain score on an important test. Whatever your goals are, if you work backward, it will help you to focus your efforts on your goals.

Testing standardized tests at home helps to teach more also. I will pull up a state standardized test at home and have my kids work through thirty minutes of problems, and then after grading, I will review with them any problems they missed and how they could have found the right answer. This causes us to work directly on areas in which they are weak.

As I type this, my eight year old son is sitting next to me working on a 5^th grade TAKS test. I chose a grade level a couple grades up because, if I chose a 3^rd grade test, which is his grade, he might get most or all of them right and we wouldn’t have much to work on .  By choosing a harder test, I’m thinking he will get more problems wrong and we will have more concepts to discuss.

Homeschooling for Free

I’ve mentioned many of the free resources, books, and curriculums I’ve used throughout this book, but I want to include a summary of how you could homeschool almost completely for free. You would still need to buy paper, pencils or pens, a computer, kindle, or other electronic device, and have internet access, but that is about it. Kindles can be purchased for $49 dollars now, and there are so many high quality books in the public domain (which means they no longer have a copyright and are available for free), that those books can be downloaded onto the Kindle and read without ever having to pay another penny.

So if I had no money to spend, I might first look at a list of basic things a fourth grader is generally taught. Here are the some of the main things a fourth grader will generally be able to do^[2]:

• Be able to memorize and recite facts, although he may not have a deep understanding of them
• Increase the amount of detail in drawings
• Work on research projects
• Write a structured paragraph with an introductory topic sentence, three supporting details, and a closing sentence that wraps up the main idea of the paragraph
• Use quotations effectively in writing
• Use a range of strategies when drawing meaning from text, such as prediction, connections, and inference
• Correct frequently misused words (e.g. too, to, two; their, they’re, there)
• Understand more complex cause-and-effect relationships
• Add and subtract decimals, and compare decimals and fractions
• Multiply multi-digit numbers by two-digit numbers, understanding the concept of place value
• Divide larger multi-digit numbers by one-digit numbers, understanding the concept of place value
• Identify points, lines, rays, and angles in two-dimensional figures

I would take time to teach each of these concepts, but a child may only need twenty minutes to understand how to use quotations or how to add and subtract decimals. However, I would probably spend a bit of time touching on each of these fourth grade basics.

Math—

• Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org)

Science—

• For the primary topics I would want to teach (ex: electricity, geology, earthquakes, the human body), I would simply google a phrase like “electricity for kids” and see what comes up. Here is an awesome site I found when googling that phrase that offers a great one page description of electricity that would be more than adequate for a fourth grader: http://www.explainthatstuff.com/electricity.html
• Then I would use great literature to for the bulk of our science study. As my child read through the book chapters, I would want them to give me a brief summary of what they learned and explain the main ideas. Here are two book suggestions from Ambleside Online:
  • Madam How and Lady Why, by Charles Kingsley (http://manybooks.net/titles/kingsleychetext99hwwhy10.html)
  • The Storybook of Science, by Jean-Henri Fabre (https://archive.org/details/storybookscienc00bickgoog)

For each additional subject, I would look first at Ambleside online for free resources and books in the public domain. I might google commonly taught concepts for that subject and grade level, and then find free online resources for kids explaining that subject. History is ABUNDANTLY featured on Ambleside Online and …

While there are so many free, good quality resources available for most subjects, teaching writing is the only subject that I have struggled with finding free resources. Last year we did the Classical Conversations Essentials program for writing, which includes IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) as their curriculum. This program breaks down the task of writing into a more scientific method.

So many times I have heard parents praise IEW for the writing program. I have also read critiques of this program on the internet, but it has been effective for us. The problem with IEW is they have so many different books and resources that I found it hard to know what to buy before I used their program. Though I have purchased multiple books, the one I used the most also happens to be one of the cheapest. So if you only have the budget to buy one book, I would say buy Ancient History (or US History or Medieval History) Based Writing Lessons—Teacher’s Manual. There is enough information in this book to get the main idea of what how to teach writing, and once you know the fundamentals you can freely add to them based on what you want your children to learn.

There are more dress-ups, specific formulas, and ideas included in the IEW method, and it was often recommended to me before I actually used it. It takes the concept of teaching writing and charts a clear course for people who have no idea where to start. However, it is expensive.

As children get older, Edx.org offers some amazing courses from elite colleges absolutely free. My oldest son and I took a free marketing class from MIT on the edx.org website and it the course taught us so much. I would say to definitely get on the edx.org website and browse the classes, just to see what they offer.

House Upkeep

Being home all day, and using just about part of the house all day long, means housecleaning takes way more time than I’d like. For almost four years we lived in about 980 square feet, no backyard, and no garage. In addition to homeschooling, I did some property management and my husband did maintenance. It felt like we had more stuff than room. When we moved into a larger house, I finally felt like I could breathe. Instead of a house cleaner, I hired an organizer. In only two or three sessions inside my house, we were able to develop a system. Our house cleaning now works like this. Each day the kids and I spend thirty minutes cleaning. My oldest does the dishes, my next oldest does the kitchen counters, my third oldest does the kitchen table, and our littlest makes another mess. When they are finished with their first job, they move to whatever else they see needs to be done or that I assign them to do. I will focus on whatever most needs my help. At the end of the thirty minutes, I will work for another ten minutes going over what my kids have done, getting whatever was missed or still needs attention. It’s not enough time to keep the house spotless, but it is enough time to keep general order. On Fridays and Saturdays we spend a full hour cleaning, and use that time for putting away clean laundry that has accumulated, mopping, bathrooms, and other deep cleaning. While this ebbs and flows depending on the day and what we have going on, it’s the general way we deal with cleaning.

Ideally, my house would always be spotless. And even more ideally, I would have magic powers and be able to pause time and get as much done as I wanted each day. But never of that is reality right now, though I have prayed for both. Seriously, I have. Just in case.

Your Husband and Homeschooling

Be prepared for a husband that does not understand. There have been many times Todd has not understood why I am doing something or why something is not done. I am not the communicator I wish I was. He likes me to say whatever I am going to say in the exact amount of words needed and not a word extra. I like to explain the back story and give details.

Thus, I sometimes feel misunderstood because I have not really had a chance to explain anything as I would like. You may have this experience also. But maybe not. I have homeschooled for over ten years without ever really talking to him for more than maybe three minutes about the how or what or why.

My husband wants me to homeschool. We both agreed on it from the beginning and never even talked about it. It was just something we both wanted to do and so we did it.

Maybe it was because we both wanted to homeschool, but we never sat down and talked about our plans or goals or even the daily particulars or homeschooling.

What Time Does Your School Start?

One reason homeschooling is great is because each family gets to choose what works for them. One friend starts schooling around 7:30 each morning. We have tried different start times but actually found that—for us—we work best doing school from 10am to 5pm. That gives each kid plenty of time to do their Bible reading, chores, and the rest of their morning routine before the day starts. It also gives me the time I need to recharge.

I am generally useless at night, so if I put my kids to bed early, I don’t get much done in that time anyway. But if I keep them up with me, and then they sleep in an hour or two past me, I love using that time to study my Bible, pray, write, drink tea, plan, or whatever else I am able to get done. Because I value my mornings more than my nights, I would rather have my kids sleeping in the morning than going to bed early. When they do go to sleep, my husband wants to spend that time watching movies with me, and then I wake up with them, the day has started, and I have nothing in my emotional reservoir for others. Not good.

But again, all this is about preferences. Nothing here is better or worse or godlier or less godly. It is about what works for your family and what you are led to do.

The Awesomeness of Audio Books for Me

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE non-fiction audio books. I have checked them out at the library, purchased them from Audible, and bought them used at bookstores. I recently listened to “The Talent Code” about how people learn, and then followed that up with “The Smartest Kids in the World.” Sometimes I listen to Christian books, and sometimes I listen to books about education or habits or how the brain works. When I listen to these books, my children are also being exposed to scientific ideas and studies, well-written books, current research, and so much more.

When the Environment isn’t Perfect

I haven’t done all that I want to do. I did Ambleside Online for many, many years and never made one lapbook. We were only able to observe nature about three times a year. We lived in a townhouse on a street surrounded by other townhomes and apartments, with concrete in every direction as far as the eye could see, with only a token tree here or there. The great thing is their were less mosquitoes than in other parts of Texas, but not much nature to observe. One year we bought passes to a nature museum, and would make the thirty minute drive to see real dirt paths and trees and other things that grow naturally in places where cement has not been poured.

I worried that my kids would lack. Not so much that they would be worse off than public school, but that they wouldn’t develop to their full potential. I still feel that. Is it really possible to develop everything that a child is capable of, when you have multiple children, limited time, and limited resources? I don’t know.

At one point, I became so concerned after reading a study that children who grow up in confined spaces have lower education or I.Q.s or something that I began researching the curriculums, education, schedules, and everything else about the most expensive, prestigious school in the country.

I searched and searched for hours until I found the schedules, books, and even the lunch menu at some of the “best” schools in America. I figured that if I could find out what they did, I could incorporate some of it and give my kids a better education—or at least make up for whatever was being lost by living in a “confined space.”

Affirm Those Who Do or Don’t Homeschool

I like the saying, “You know what you know when you know it.” I like it because there are things I didn’t know, mistakes I’ve made, because I didn’t know what I know now. But I believe God had His hand in all of it, and each decision is part of what He will use to create what He calls His “masterpiece”. (Eph REF)

This statement is also good when I look at other families. Abound in grace. Whether their child is homeschooled or public schooled, exceling or struggling, advanced or behind, just give grace. Unless there is some purposeful, deliberate, obvious sin as the cause of this struggle, just overflow with grace and mercy toward others. You don’t need to compare yourself or your children to others, ever.

See what others have done well and affirm that. Be encouraging.

The Clearer the Path, the Less Resistance to Walking on It

If I were to announce to my kids tomorrow morning (Monday) that we will be working on math for two hours, I would get protest. Especially from my oldest. But if I had been doing two hours a day of math since he was five, he wouldn’t say a word. The clearer you make the schedule beforehand, and the more consistently you enforce the schedule, the easier compliance becomes.

Let my children know in advance as much as I possibly can. Let them know about outings, how much school we will be doing the next day, even the next night’s bedtime. The more they know in advance, and the more they know how firm we are on what is coming, the less they seem to protest when the time comes.

Looking at End Goals – Schoolwork Portfolio

If your child is in high school, you could even plan what type of school work portfolio you want them to graduate with. Then you can plan some of your schedule around making time to   What papers do you want them to write for that portfolio? What extra-curricular activities will you want listed in that portfolio?

For some colleges, a high school work portfolio might be required.  The following things are often included in a schoolwork portfolio:

• Descriptions of all classes including all textbooks used and all major assignments given.
• Final grades for each class and a transcript with all classes listed.
• Writing samples from each grade with a summary of each paper.
• Samples of math, social studies, science and elective work from each grade. Tests or exams from each subject when available.
• Proof of community involvement—newspaper clipping, event program, letter of recommendation, letter of service, certificates, etc.
• Letters of Recommendation
• SAT, PSAT, ACT, AP, CLEP, ACCUPLACER, DANTES, and any other official test results.

Dskdkd

A friend of mine recently put her kids in public high school after homeschooling them all their lives. When they registered for school, she was required to submit loads of records, paperwork, grades, and many other things for any of their previous classes to be accepted. Some of their classes had been through a program for homeschool kids, and her oldest was required to enter at a lower grade because the school did not give him credit for some of the classes he had already completed, all because she didn’t know she needed to keep every single paper and piece of work he did that year.

I helped my friend with preparing her transcripts. I asked her to tell me everything her son did in each class, and I also asked him to tell me everything he did for each subject that he had homeschooled. Surprisingly, while there was a lot of overlap, they also included different things, so it was good that I talked with both of them.

Below are copies of the class descriptions I created for each class. I have edited them a bit but I am including them so you can get a better idea of how to write class descriptions.

Jacob French, Ninth Grade, Homeschool

Course Description

Science: Biology

Primary Text: Exploring Creation with Biology, 2^nd Edition by Dr. Jay L. Wile and Marilyn F. Durnell – Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 2005

Teacher: Paige Tooley

This course is a college-prep biology course that provides a detailed introduction to the methods and concepts of general biology. With a strong emphasis on the vocabulary of biology, the course provides the student with a strong background in the scientific method, the five-kingdom classification scheme, microscopy, biochemistry, cellular biology, molecular and Mendelian genetics, evolution, dissection, and ecosystems.

This course includes study questions, laboratory exercises, and module study guides with color photos and illustrations.

Course Grade

Biology—Completed 06/15

________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve also created transcripts in advance, with exactly what I want them to say after the class is finished, so I know what I want to accomplish in our homeschooling. Here is one sample of a class description I created in advance. (We have not finished this class yet, and I’m not sure we will complete everything on this list, as I think I’ve possibly been too ambitious with this one.)

Student: Austin Hoffman

Course: American Government* Honors – One Semester (½ Credit)

This course involves reading and annotating many historical American documents including “The Articles of Confederation,” “The U.S. Constitution,” and “The Declaration of Independence” in order to create a foundation for the understanding of the U.S. government. The Constitution will be outlined. Memory work will include all U.S. Presidents, the Preamble, and part of the Constitution. Many events, including the Dred Scott Decision, the Civil War, and industrialization will be studied.

Books Used

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Are You Liberal, Conservative, Confused?, by Richard Maybury

The English Constitution, by Walter Bagehot

Essays (from John Hopkins's Notions on Political Economy), by Jane Haldimand Marcet

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine

The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine

Words Aptly Spoken: American Documents

Words Aptly Spoken: American Literature

REA American Government: CLEP by Preston Jones, Ph.D.

Extra Credit

Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith

The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke, 1796

CLEP Score – %

Grading

Working While Homeschooling

Lots of homeschool moms still work, some even work full time. I have multiple homeschooling mommy friends that work full-time, with jobs ranging from helping the husband run a company and nursing to real estate. Homeschooling and working do not have to be mutually exclusive. People have different seasons in life, and sometimes if the mom does not work, the family may not be paying the bills that month. The mom who works is also not any less dedicated to homeschooling just because she must help financially. If anything, she may even be more committed because she is sacrificing even more greatly.

Homeschool Groups and Co-ops

The unintended consequences of joining a homeschool group. There are pros and cons with almost anything. First, the pros. Being involved in a homeschool co-op or one or two day a week class can be great for social interaction, for both the kids and for mom. If you do not have close friends who also homeschool, you will have opportunities at these groups to make those friends. Having friends who fully support you is so important.

And now, the cons. Be prepared for your child to change. Not every child will be influenced, but from my experience, most moms notice a change in their kids when they move from homeschooling exclusively at home to becoming involved in a homeschool community. We’ve done multiple different groups over the years, from the very informal to the rigid and very well-organized. Some of those groups enhanced our homeschooling greatly, but I’ve also seen changes I didn’t want. A very eager, compliant child may become more resistant and negative when he is exposed to other less compliant kids—and that can happen even in a conservative, homeschool environment. One friend whose teenage daughter always dressed very modestly began wearing very short shorts after “every other girl in her homeschool group does.” She dressed modestly with a cheerful spirit, and though her mom told her she could no longer wear the very short shorts, what was once a non-issue became an area of contention in their relationship.

Never Compare Your Husband

Tell your husband “Thank you” on a regular basis. It’s easy to compare ourselves and our lives to others who may have things easier. Maybe you need to work part time and your husband has never been to a child’s basketball game or an end of year event for your child. But you have friends with husbands who make more than enough money for two families, who watch the kids every week so the mom can go to Bible study, and who show up for every sports game and event your child has. If you compare your husband to others, you will only become depressed and bitter. Instead, make a point to find something each day that you are thankful for about your husband.

When we were going through a recent job loss, a sudden move, and subsequent financial hardship, we did most of our schooling for several months in the car through the stereo system. I burned a bunch of CD’s from the Librivox.org website and went through a large chunk of several books off our curriculum while we drove from city to city moving our home.

The Picture of a Well-Socialized Person

What about socialization? It’s not really socialization that’s important, but the result of socialization. While writing this section, I wanted to get a clear grasp of what a well socialized person would act like. I did multiple google searches to find out what socialization really is. After reading studies, research, and other information, I basically concluded that a socialized person is friendly and normal.

In the most practical sense, the point of socialization is personality development. Based on that, my idea of extremely successful socialization (a short list) would be a person who is considerate, aware of others, can carry a conversation easily, has wisdom in everything they say, knows how to make friends with people on all levels, understands social norms and knows what is both normal, appropriate, and unappropriate. They are willing to make conversation with people they don’t know in the appropriate context, and they genuinely care about others.

From a worldly standpoint, the TV show survivor reminds me of a socialization test. The longer you make it (apart from winning immunity or lying), the better your social skills. This is not necessarily the social skills we are trying to train in our children. But when I think of Jesus saying “Be wise as serpents…” I can’t help but think of this show. However, most, if not all of the winners probably were not the second part of the verse: “harmless as doves.”

So how do we teach our children how to be wise as serpents in relating to others? How do we teach them to be friendly and normal? First, it’s helpful to remember than there are many, many public school students who graduate and yet never learn social skills either. Many sociopaths, abnormal, and cruel people graduate from public school every day. If socialization at a public school was the ultimate path to normal, friendly, considerate kids, then there really wouldn’t be anywhere near as much of a need for most of us to homeschool.

The Forgotten Danger of Socialization

My mom worked as a public school teacher for kids with learning and/or emotional disabilities. Though they had a more simple curriculum, they still graduated high school with a diploma that looked the same as every other kid. When I started homeschooling my oldest around ages four and five, I’m not sure if she was very supportive or not. But when Austin was in third grade, she listened to him read and said he read better than many of the kids in her classes—and even kids who had already graduated. I think after this she supported us completely with homeschooling.

I say all this as a precursor to this next story. My mom taught at a high school in a poor neighborhood, and many of her students were in gangs. One year a student made nationwide news when he shot a police officer on the steps of a courthouse as part of his gang initiation. He was my mom’s student. She was very sad to hear the news—especially because he was one of the sweetest students in her class.

This act of violence was very different than the side of him she saw in class. He was a sweet kid in class. But He wanted to be accepted and shooting a police officer was the way to that acceptance.

Being socialized in public school did not protect this boy from making a bad, unsocial decision. If that boy had been homeschooled, maybe there would have been a firestorm about “Homeschooled kid shoots police officer.” But nobody pointed out his public school education as having anything to do with the shooting. It most likely didn’t. But being around peers in his age group all day long did not …

I grew up in

Characteristics of the Well-Socialized

Where do we really learn to interact in the best possible way with others? God’s Word gives us every guideline we need. The Bible says we must love others fervently. But the real-life how-to is often not always obvious. I remember reading once that when kids great others with excitement, they form friendships faster. So I began telling my kids they needed to greet at least one person with excitement whenever we would go to church or homeschool group.

I’ve observed the characteristics of students who are “well-adapted” or socialized and these are two of the personality traits these kids share:

1. They greet their friends with excitement. Instead of shyly waiting for their friends to notice them, they approach and happily approach their friends. They take the initiative in welcoming others. Sometimes they give their friends a big hug or say their friends name loudly, but however they joyfully greet their friends, it makes the other person feel wanted and special and strengthens the friendship.

2. They don’t withhold love or attention. They openly admire and praise others. Here are two sample text messages. They are both sent to a young girl named Theresa, age 12, by her friend Megan.
3. “Hi, how are you? Megan”
4. “Hi sweet friend! How are you doing? I miss you so much and hope we can hang out soon!!! Call me!  Love, Megan”

Theresa would feel like the second Megan was far more excited to see her than the first Megan. She might feel more attached to the second Megan after reading both messages, because the second Megan is so open with her love.

I’ve also watched the parents of well-socialized kids and noticed the moms include their daughters in many of their interactions with others. They let their kids see how they interact with others, and they make their kids feel special and wanted in those times. They also model for their kids how to greet people with excitement and how to expressively love. They push through shyness and reach out to others anyway.

Maybe it’s because I’m more naturally shy myself that I’ve spent time observing when I should have been doing. But in watching people I’ve learned, and I try to incorporate what I learn into who I am. Especially since loving others fervently, greeting others, and caring deeply all please the LORD. (REF)

Homeschooling is Such a Privilege

Homeschooling is a special, irreplaceable gift. Parents get to spend moments with their child that other families have to miss. We are there when our children first learn to read, learn to add, subtract, and so many other milestones. It is a privilege which should provoke us to deepest gratitude.

My personality can sometimes be a blessing, sometimes not so much. I am generally too laid-back to feel worried about not doing well at homeschooling. …

I have only felt overwhelmed about homeschooling once. I was searching my favorite curriculum website, Ambleside Online, which I used as our only curriculum for many years. I had visited the website multiple times each month, printed the charts, and bought the “On a Budget” books. I was all-in. Or so I thought. Then one day I came across a list: “You know your hooked on AO when…”  and only a few items on the list were relatable to my family at all. And I wondered how I could have missed so much. I wondered why my kids never asked to read Churchhill again, So I cried and felt like a homeschool mom failure.

Homeschool Conventions and Endless Choices

Here is my confession. In ten plus years of homeschooling, I have never been to a homeschool convention. I have never got to browse the curriculum choices in person or feel overwhelmed at everything we won’t have time to do. Now, I did get several Rainbow Resource catalogs and have that same overwhelmed feeling.

Have a Clear Focus for your own Life

At the beginning of this most recent school year, I did something different than on other years. I wrote a list of every goal I might have. Then I prayed over the list and sought the Lord. I narrowed down the list to my top 11. Then I took those goals and broke them down into daily assignments. One of my goals is a particular weight I prefer to stay under. So the goal reads like this: “If I weigh more than _____, go on a walk.” It’s simple and specific. I don’t always go on walks either when I go above my top weight, but just having the goal keeps me mindful of making time to walk.

Two of the things on my list include a certain amount of time to pray each day and a specific amount of Bible reading to do each day. I don’t always fulfill those goals, but they are numbers 1 and 2 on my list—meaning they are most important. I get limited amounts of free time each day. And even less free time with any mental energy, so I must be so diligent to make the best use of my time and energy. Having a clear list of goals—and making it a priority to re-write my goals several times a week so they are always fresh on my mind, has been a great habit. They help keep me focused during the day.

Another goal on my list is to clean the house at least 40 minutes each day. Thirty minutes with the kids, plus an extra 10 by myself. I talk about this somewhere else in this book, but wanted to add that just having this as a goal keeps me motivated and reminded to clean at least 40 minutes a day.

Priority of Homeschooling—The Hearts of Our Kids

The priority of homeschooling is the hearts of our children. It is not pinterest-worthy science experiments or an elaborate schoolroom. The heart of homeschooling is discipleship—raising children who will love and know Jesus. The externals won’t make …

I thought about Hudson Taylor, and how it was said of him that the sun did not rise on China without finding Hudson Taylor on his knees in prayer. I realized that is the type of son I wanted to raise. Though I want him to be able to provide for his family without the seasons of hardship we have had. And though I want him to have a degree and a good job, it wouldn’t matter if my son walked away from Christ.

One time while flying on an airplane to visit my family in California, the airplane had the Justin Beiber documentary on. And the person diagonally in front of me was watching the movie, and soon enough I was intrigued and started watching it myself. And through much of the movie, Justin’s mom is being interviewed. She shared that she is a Christian and tried to raise her son with her values. reminded me of a very close friend, who was also a single mother for many years and wanted her son

An article by a well-known and extremely successful singing coach to stars like Beyonce and … wrote an article titled, “How Hollywood Eats It’s Young.” The title haunts me

One Year of School in Seven Weeks

Story about how Melissa would teach one year of the core curriculum in just 6-7 weeks. I’ve used Ambleside Online as my primary curriculum for most of the time I homeschooled. Even though I now do Classical Conversations, I still try to incorporate as much Ambleside in as possible, as I believe good, high quality literature is one of the primary keys to an excellent education.

I have an extremely organized friend who has found a way to accomplish a year’s worth of school in just six to seven weeks. This is practical and workable in the earlier grades, although by about six grade would be far more difficult (or maybe impossible).

She and a homeschooling friend who lived nearby would be ready for teaching each day by eight in the morning. She would go to her friend’s house and take all the older kids in a room. Her friend would be responsible for all the younger kids, or vis-a-versa. They would spend the morning until noon or one concentrating with laser focus on school. Most of this time would be spent reading good literature and then discussing it with the kids. The literature used would include science, history, biographies, geography, and more. However, certain subjects like art, math, penmanship, foreign language, and nature study would not be included in the intense group days. (Nor are they listed on the school schedule by week that follows.)

To see how this schedule can be accomplished, here is a link to the Ambleside Online website where the school work for second grade is broken down by week: http://amblesideonline.org/b02sch.shtml

Here is the Week 1 work: Week 1
Bible OT: Genesis 1:1-2:4
An Island Story ch 22 Harold
Trial and Triumph 10. Charlemagne Protector of the Church (742-814 AD; optional)
The Little Duke - first half of chapter 1
Tree in the Trail chapter 1
Burgess Animal Book 1 Jenny Wren Gives Peter Rabbit an Idea
Poetry of Walter de la Mare
Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare: The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Pilgrim's Progress: about 800 words every week (you can download a text file that is broken down into weekly readings for two years, or 72 portions)

…

Distracted Days

I did a Google search for "Homeschooling when you get easily distracted" and every result was about kids who get distracted. The problem with distractions is usually me. The only exception is usually my youngest kids, who get distracted even more than I do.

Here's an example of how I get distracted. I had almost a whole day for Austin and I to do school together. My middle two children were in California with their Grandparents, and I had my oldest for the whole day to do school. We got some of his Latin done (for Classical Conversations Challenge 1), studied together for his upcoming CLEP test (Principles of Management) , and then decided to do math. Normally, Austin is totally independent. I rarely get involved because he is self-directed. But I had told him the day before that we would be doing things together, so he went with it. When I moved over to the computer to log into the math website we would be using (www.khanacademy.org), they had a big feature ad for a video contest with a huge scholarship prize.

I wanted to see the other entries, to see if it would be something we might consider doing, so we migrated over to Youtube. Once I was on Youtube, I got distracted by the links and we stared watching them. None of them had anything to do with what we needed to get done. Anyway, I am one of those moms who get easily distracted. (What's weird is that I didn't even realize until recently that I am unusual, and that most moms don't get distracted like I do.)

But I've figured out what works for me.

First, I have all the kids' assignments printed up for the week in a binder. This way, they know what to do even if I am busy that day. I teach them how to teach themselves, so they don't need me and can work independently. (This applies to kids who read proficiently. I heavily emphasize learning to read well so that my kids can work on their own.)

And on video day, I did feel like watching fun videos together was actually a blessing for our relationship, and I believe that a good relationship with your kids is crucial for successful homeschooling anyway.

Memorizing facts, even for Math

How to make school days productive. How to help your child retain what they learn. It’s the worst experience to spend hours teaching your child a certain concept, to experience the relief when they finally understand it perfectly, and then a few months later to realize they forgot it. Oh, that’s one of the worst things about homeschooling for me. I’m like, “Are you serious? You forgot this? AGHHHHHH!!!” In my experience, it happens most often with math. I’m thinking flashcards might be the answer. Flashcard with the steps of long division. See example. Flash cards with the steps to divide fractions. See example. Flashcards with other random math facts. I used flashcards when I took the Clep Algebra test and they were invaluable. I had to remember the formulas or else I wouldn’t pass. Just like history facts, math formulas and facts need to be memorized.

You can’t easily divide a fraction if you don’t remember what to do. There are multiple ways to divide fractions, but formulas help us remember the easiest and fastest ways.

A Strict or Relaxed School Schedule

A strict schedule is great in theory, and it’s my husband’s ideal for our family. So I’ve tried to homeschool that way for his sake. It looks ideal from the outside. But for us, a daily pattern, a daily guide works better than strict, exact times. My son loved the strict schedule also for a season, and when he was doing it, I loved it.

(Put underlines on phrases that link to blog articles throughout the book. At the end of each chapter, an section for additional insight or tips with links to my website.)

Child-Lead Learning

What do your kids want to learn? What are they most excited about doing this year in school? What methods would they most want to learn this information? How can you, as a mom, incorporate your child’s interests into your plan so you actually accomplish more?

The Best Mission Field—

Our current mission field is our children. I LOVE that. Love it. Love it. Love it. Why can’t our children be…

Hudson taylor and the sun rising on China. If the Lord wills, I plead this would be true of my children. We get to disciple them, teach them just as we would any other person on earth whom we are ministering to as missionaries.

The Bible is a necessary Tool

God’s Word is enough. It speaks for itself. We can just open it and read. We don’t need the perfect devotions book or the…

Using Rewards

When your child is unmotivated… we use rewards. The more we need them to be motivated, or the more reluctant they feel, the bigger the reward. God uses rewards—they are all throughout the Bible. He promises that things will go well with us and we will have a long life if we honor our parents. (Ephesians 6:2; 2 Corinthians 1:20) Deutoronomy 28 gives verse after verse of rewards the Israelites would receive if they obeyed and followed God.

So if God, who is the source of all wisdom, uses rewards, I feel pretty confident in using them also.

How to train your children to love Jesus—11 Ways

I’ve read books or heard messages and been left with a resounding “how”? So to address this issue—how can we train our children to love Jesus, I’m just going to tell you each thing that I do. First, I try to get as much of God’s living Word in their hearts and minds as possible. My prayer is you will find inspiration in this list and glean ideas for your family.

1. Each of my kids (once they reach about 5 years old) must do Bible reading as part of their morning routine each day.

This is a rough outline of how much each child would read (with great flexibility; giving more to the speed readers and less to those who slowly, carefully absorb each word—because I have both):

Age 5—look at a Bible story.

Once they can read (and this could be anywhere from 4 years old to 7 years old or more), they would start with stories from the Children’s Bible. My third child probably read through this Bible at least twice when he was about 6 and 7 years old. One day when he was six years old, he gave a presentation in front of his class on David and Goliath, and I realized he was literally reciting word for word the story from the Children’s Bible.

I would encourage you to be very careful about what “Christian” children’s book you pick. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve bought a board book about Mary and Joseph or Jonah or Daniel and found multiple inaccuracies and had to color out words with a sharpie and write the correct ones.

I found an example to share with you just for fun. At the end of a Jonah book, it says, “The people of Nineveh were happy to see Jonah. He told them all about God’s love.” What in the world? This is not a retelling of the story with cucumbers and other vegetables. This is supposed to be the actual story, written in a way kids can understand. But this is not even the Biblical story. Jonah said nothing about God’s love. He spoke of judgment. The people weren’t happy to see Jonah. In fact, they mourned over their sin and stopped eating. I crossed that weird part out of the book and wrote this: “Jonah told the people that in forty days their city would be overthrown. The people believed Jonah and stopped their evil ways. Then God did not bring destruction on the city.”

With a fast reader, I base the number of chapters a child reads on their grade. A fourth grader would read four chapters a day, etc. But I’ve put a cap at six chapters a day from sixth grade and up. So my ninth grader is still reading six chapters each day. For my more detail oriented reader, I do four chapters a day (in sixth grade). I would love to say that we never miss a day, but there are lots of days my kids skip their morning routines. But I’m thankful for all the days they read God’s word and hear truth for themselves.

2. My husband leads family devotions. This occurs 99% of the time at night. We will read through a book of the Bible as a family, with around one chapter a night. Some nights will only be ten verses, and some nights may be two chapters or more. And like everything else, there are nights when we miss devotions. We ebb and flow. We’ve been doing family devotions since our oldest was about three. In some seasons we never miss a night, and some seasons are a lot more sporatic.

3. Mom and Kid’s Bible study—Like family devotions, I’ve had seasons of doing a Bible study every day, and seasons when I’m happy if I’ve done Bible study once that week. I am to teach a passage. For a very dorky audio example—from a real-life Bible study with my kids—you can visit my website to listen. I only include this because I know sometimes it helps to actually see or hear things in action.

4. Christian books used with our curriculum. I try to add at least one or two books each year for my kids to read that will encourage their faith. In fifth grade my daughter Tyla read “How God Used a Thunderstorm” by Joel Beeke and LOVED it. I’ve added “Christian Beliefs” “Mere Christianity” and even my husband’s book “What I Want My Children to Know” to my older son’s school book lists over the years.

5. Chuck tapes and minecraft

6. Bible memory

7. VBS, church, camp, Awanas, etc.

8. Verses on the walls

9. NIV kid’s club

10. Verses to song in the car

11. Simply teaching—using opportunities that arise to remind or teach my children principles from Scripture. Things like, “honor all men” and “speak evil of no one” if my children were to speak badly of someone. Or I may mention verses like “Do all things without murmering and complaining” or “give thanks in everything” if they were to complain.

In addition to wanting my children to know God’s word as much as possible, I want them to also love praying.

Here are some of the things I’ve done over the years.

1. Prayed for my kids. This probably goes without saying, but it’s worth saying anyway. And I’m pretty convinced there is never too much praying that can be done. I remember that while reading Billy Graham’s autobiography, he told about how his parents would go up to their room every day at lunch, kneel together by the bed, and pray for their son. There have been innumerable times when I’ve seen God answer prayer so specifically that I have no doubt God hears and answers our prayers. Not every prayer immediately, because sometimes we may pray things that are based on our own “lusts” and not on God’s will. (REF) And sometimes the answer may be “not right now” though it is still yes. All that to say, prayer is worth every minute of your time that is sacrificed from something else to pray. Sometimes I find it hard to set aside time to pray because I still need to cook dinner or mail a package or return an email or help my kid’s get a school work project completed, but when my focus is sharp, I am convinced prayer is the highest priority of my day and I make the sacrifices to spend time praying.

2. Prayed with my kids. We pray before each meal together, before we arrive at school (one day a week) together, before sports events and other places to which we have driven.

3. Held prayer meetings with kids. I also will sometimes gather my kids for a prayer meeting. We will each share a couple prayer requests, then take turns praying for those requests, their daddy, and anything else happening in our lives. Hearing my kid’s prayer requests is a great way to also get a deeper glimpse of the desires my children have. Sometimes my kid’s will have prayer requests that sound something like this, “I pray I would get the new or [toy] I want.” Sometimes the prayer requests are more serious, “I pray for a baby brother.” Or they may pray for a person in our family. But I pray for each one and then wisdom for myself when I know God has given me the power to answer some of those requests.

How do we improve our chances for our kids to gain as much wisdom as possible? Give them scripture.

Include all graphs and charts mentioned in description in the book, but also include them on my website for easier viewing, better formatting. Possibly make a password membership site that is free, but they would register and log in to see all the materials from the book. ? Or just put them on my website with no login.

How to Make Those tired afternoons super-productive.

If we’ve been working hard all day, by the afternoon we can all be tired. Although we still want to get stuff done, sometimes we need a break. The solution to this is audiobooks! Once lunch was done and our energy was spent, I would lead my kids into their bedroom and put on a CD with lots of high quality literature. Then while my kids played with Keva planks, legos, or any other quiet and creative toy, they would listen. They were not allowed to talk while they played, although I do allow the occasional, “Will you please pass me the red square lego by your leg?” type of stuff. They just need to ask quickly and quietly. In some years, we did large amounts of audiobooks. I would burn an entire week’s worth of reading onto just two or three CD’s (in the lower grades). I also found that the best age for this has been the eight to eleven range.

One of the advantages of doing Ambleside Online is that most of the books used in their curriculum are in the public domain. Generally, in the United States, all books published one hundred years ago or more are public domain property. This means anyone can publish the content of the book, the entire text of the book can be available online, and audio books can be made from the book. People are free to use, sell, or do whatever they want with the book’s content. It is owned by the public.

Many of the great books used in the AO curriculum are also available on Librivox.org as audiobooks. Every single audiobook on Librivox.org is free! Since much of our learning takes place through consuming great literature, the more the better. I like my kids to read some of the books themselves, I read out loud one or two of the books, and then they can listen to a large portion of their reading.

An example of one CD may be just one book, or various chapters of book depending on where they are in the book. I have often burned the CD’s based on the weekly assignments from Ambleside Online. Sometimes I just play the audiobooks from an ipad or computer. On busy or crazy days, my kids may just listen and play. But when possible, I do ask my kids to give me a summary of each chapter as they listen. Or I may come into the room, pause the CD, and ask for a summary of what has happened so far. I always let the littler ones play in the room while the others are listening. And because I have done some of the same books through every child, my oldest knows just about every Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin almost by heart.

Avoiding Mistakes—knowing what you don’t know

If I had one superpower, it would easily be to control time. To fast forward, rewind, and pause. It would be amazing to go forward in time, see all my mistakes, and then go back and try again, with wisdom on what to do right. But alas, I don’t have that power and so I try to gain as much wisdom as I can so I hopefully make as little mistakes as possible. I know I will still make mistakes. But I do want to avoid them when I can. The more I know and learn, hopefully the more wisely I will navigate through life and do okay.

Some of the best ways to learn what I don’t know are talk to people farther down the path than me. To people who have wisdom about what to do and what to avoid, and then learn from them. Of course, the better I know  God’s Word are the best way to improve my chances.

CLEP and Other Tests

My oldest son is a freshman in high school. At the end of eighth grade, he took his first CLEP test. I tried to time the test so that he had a few weeks after homeschool co-op ended to study, but while the local community college still offered the test.

Looking at the End

As my oldest child has grown older, I’ve begun to do so much more schooling “looking backward.” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of where I want him to end up when our homeschool journey is over. What kind of man do I want him to become, and how can I influence that now? What is most important to me? From our own difficult journey, besides love for God and others, my desire is for my son to have a college degree. While I’ve got lots of credits, and a Bible College degree, I don’t have a regular ol go get a job degree. Neither does my husband. We’ve struggled greatly because of it.

I want my children to hopefully avoid the pain we’ve experienced. They can follow their dreams—and I hope they do—with a nice, little degree tucked away in case they ever need it.

Is Your Heart Exhausted by too Much to do?

Psalm 100:3 “Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.”

Just today I felt so overwhelmed by a problem that I cried on my bed to the Lord. As I prayed, several verses about God’s reach came into mind.

“He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.”

“the earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.” I started thinking of everything contained in the earth. The water that flows into my house. Even though I pay a water company, the water belongs to God. Even though I pay for the land my house sits on, God owns that land. Everything in my life belongs to Him. And since He is owner of everything, He will take care of me.

So I began to simply praise Him. “I pray You Lord for…” and then I praised Him for each problem I faced. Each thing I worried about—and the truth is, I probably more concerned that I even need to be.

I so often need to slow down. To take time away from getting it all done and simply sit with the Lord. Yesterday I was so tired I literally just lied down on my bed in the middle of the day. But as I lay there, after a little while of being basically mindless because of tiredness, my mind woke back up and started thinking. Suddenly ideas started flooding my mind. When I woke up, I went to work with renewed excitement.

It’s easy for me to desire to accomplish things, to pressure myself to do so much, and to feel upset if I’m not productive. But while that to-do list may seem like the best use of my time, my heart is aching from exhaustion. I become so focused on a problem and how I can fix it myself, that I forget to praise God in the midst of the problem. And when I forget God, I only increase my ache.

I wish I knew what God was doing in each situation. I look at parts of my life and wonder why. Why is this situation like this? Why did …? But I know God is the author of my life. I didn’t make me. I didn’t choose to be born. I am not the Shepherd. I am simply a sheep. And so I must trust that the Great Shepherd—the one who made me and cares for me—knows my worries. He knows the things I must get done each day. And so I can rejoice—and rest!—in my Shepherd when my heart is tempted to take too much upon itself.

Smart Baby Tips

While my youngest was still being formed in my womb, I finally did what I’d wanted to do for so long. I read books on intelligence. I wanted so desperately to buy a book on “smart baby” subjects when James was a baby. I put them in my Amazon cart and drooled. But the opportunity to buy those books did not come, and I moved on. So when I got pregnant with Geneva, financially I was able to buy one of the books I most wanted. I read it, underlined it, studied it. It’s hard because I want to regret the opportunities I missed with James. I want to be bitter because I feel like I would have done better if I’d have known more. But this is when I must trust God most. When I must believe that He is sovereign over our finances, over what my children learn and don’t learn, over all.

Nutrition and Concentration

Only a few days before we moved to Texas, I took Austin to the dentist for one last checkup. I knew that our insurance would end soon after moving, and I was eight months pregnant with James, so I tried to squeeze in a cleaning. At that appointment, they said Austin had a cavity. I didn’t end up having time to deal with it, and figured as soon as we got to Texas I would have it filled. But our insurance wasn’t accepted in Texas, so I did nothing. About a year and a half later,  when Austin was seven, he woke up one morning with his cheek swollen and extremely sore. We still did not have insurance, but I came up with the money for a dental exam and went to find out the problem.

The diagnosis was either seven or eight cavities, with Austin needing two baby root canals and crowns. The total price was in the thousands. In those days, I was happy if we had $5 in the grocery budget for meat or fresh fruit. The dentist prescribed an antibiotic and I went home and prayed. I asked friends and my church to please pray for me also. I was desperate and didn’t know what to do or how to help my son. It was a horrible feeling as a mother to see your child need care and be unable to provide it. It was made worse by knowing that I actually did a great job brushing Austin’s teeth. I knew the cavities were not a lack of dental care. The dentist said that the raisins I put in our morning oatmeal were probably the main problem, so we’ve generally avoided raisins ever since.

God was gracious and though Austin was not able to get dental care for almost a year, the pain never came back. Finally he did get the cavities filled and the crowns put in place. During that desperate time, a friend who gave me a precious gift. She let me borrow a book called “Nourishing Traditions.”

This cookbook/health book focuses heavily on the foods that impact dental health. One passage from the book (a quote from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) stood out to me most. Weston Price, the president of the American Dental Association in REF… traveled throughout the world studying what people ate and the number of cavities in their mouths. He found certain foods had a healing effect on teeth. Based on what he learned, he implemented a tooth healing menu at lunchtime in a poor region. The kids, who usually ate the equivalent of donuts and coffee for breakfast, had rampant cavities. They would come to a mission where they would be fed this special meal.

Their only changed meal was lunch. Based on what they were fed, I  They would get a small amount of cod liver oil with juice at the beginning of the meal. Then they would receive a pint of soup with meat and vegetables, cooked in stock made from bones, sprouted wheat bread with pasture butter, and fruit.(Put in exact quote with footnote)

It’s interesting that not only did the obvious dental health of the children improve, but that nutrition made an obvious difference in the attention span of the most difficult children.

A while back I tutored a fourth grade girl who was preparing for her TAKS test (an annual test the state of Texas administers). She was such a sweet girl, but she was failing most of her classes and her mom desperately wanted her to pass this test. When I would go to her house, she always had a coke in her hand. A regular coke with all the caffeine and sugar of a regular coke. She seemed to be smart, and she wasn’t the type who would purposefully misbehave or fail her subjects. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was the amount of soda she drank that kept her from being able to concentrate on her school subjects, almost as if she had a coke induced type of ADD.

With one of my own children, I notice this child has a horrible time concentrating when they eat a very sugary breakfast. Almost to the point where if they go out with Daddy and get donuts or Gatorade or something similar before school, I pretty much figure it will be a day of reading for them. I know that if I try to teach math or writing or some subject that requires them to concentrate on what I am saying, it will be a very frustrating and likely unproductive time.

But when this same child has a healthy breakfast before school, they concentrate easily and learn quickly. I do believe that many problems (not all, but many) can be greatly helped or solved with nutrition.

After reading, and basically memorizing the quote above, I began having my kids swallow a spoonful of cod liver oil with a chunk of butter from pastured cows. There are great (expensive) products with fermented cod liver oil and butter oil and fancy versions of this, and I bought and used those a few times. But finally decided that the seven dollar bottle of cod liver oil and the four dollar block of Pasture Butter was just fine. I would give (and still do) my kids this as often as I remembered.

Austin also started drinking multiple cups of milk a day and I believe this has also been hugely beneficial. The milk is usually not organic but just the regular grocery store milk. On occasion I buy organic, grass-fed milk, but for budgets sake I usually just buy whatever they sell at Aldi.

Whenever I buy a rotisserie chicken, I debone the chicken and stick all the bones and skin in a pot of water. I boil the water and then let it simmer for a few hours. Finally I strain the chicken stock and use it for chicken soup, Italian wedding soup, chicken tortilla soup, or even for the making brown rice.

In addition to this, I try to limit white flour, use brown rice, and do all the other things that help with nutrition. I occasionally make raw juice, kombucha, kefir, and my oldest daughter Tyla makes fruit smoothies almost every day.

Since the time Austin was diagnosed with the eight cavities and they were treated, by God’s grace, he has never had another cavity. Those baby teeth have all fallen out now and been replaced by adult teeth that grew in straight. None of my other four children have had any cavities in their last three years of dental checkups either. And that is with them having way more sugar than they should probably have. So I am thankful to God.

Me, on the other hand, I am horrible about taking the cod liver oil and I’ve also needed to get cavities filled just in the last year. I say all this because I believe nutrition can greatly help a child’s concentration and help them learn more, but also if there is any way I might save you the heartache I experienced from having a child get so many cavities all at once. So—as gross as it is, cod liver oil and pasture butter every day. J

What I Have Learned About Learning

My fascination with learning has been going on since my oldest was in about second or third grade. I watched a documentary about toddlers in New York City and the ambition of their parents to get them into the best preschools. Since the 92^nd Street Y seemed to the best of the best, I began to learn all I could about that preschool. After all, most of my total time is spent teaching my kids, so I figured I would learn about this school and implement what they did.

The price tag for one year of nursery school going five days a week was around $30,000. The application process was intense, and most applicants would never actually go to the school. As I searched for the schedule, I basically expected magic. After a few hours online, I finally found the magical daily schedule.

It looked something like this:

• 30 Minutes outside play.
• 30 minutes with blocks.
• 30 minutes art time.
• 30 Minutes reading time.
• 30 minutes free play.
• 30 Minutes Letters and Numbers time.

It’s been about six years of more since I did that research, and I can no longer find the schedule online. So I may be totally off on times and such—and even on certain activities—but what stuck out to me was that every activity was something I could do easily and basically for free at home. All I really needed to do was make sure my younger kids weren’t watching TV and I’d probably be doing pretty good. They would naturally be creative, and get out the blocks or the paints or other learning activities.

I’ve had years where I didn’t do so good with the TV. I’m definitely not perfect in this area. But I’ve seen what a difference keeping the TV off makes, and so now with my youngest, I just try to read to her or have an older sibling read to her around 30 minutes each day. And no TV until the evening.

As my kids got older, I knew I would really have to up my game on teaching them. But again, a great education was closer than I expected. I looked at the list of the top ranked schools in America. I then studied one of the top private schools, and again searched for the daily schedule. I remember seeing that one scheduled activity was reading for pleasure, or something like that. Again, reading was emphasized. And reading is free.

I found that if we just kept the electronics off and required them to read a lot of high quality literature each day, they would have an exceptional foundation.

However, I did not end my research. I continued to read and listen to audiobooks on everything that related to learning and kids.

Summary of the talent code…

In our brains, the more we use a part of the brain, the more the brain becomes wired to perform those tasks better and faster. The myelin coats the nerve sheaths, and each time we practice, a little more myelin is added. The more myelin that coats a certain part of our processing, the “smarter” and more “talented” we basically become in that area. We accelerate this process—wrapping our nerve fibers in myelin—when we practice at a level right above our current talent. Basically, when we push ourselves just a bit and struggle to do well, the brain must adapt to this new challenge.

There have been so many times in writing when I just didn’t have the words to say. I couldn’t produce anything thoughtful, or think of any applicable stories to explain my point. As I would sit and think, trying to think of a good example, I literally felt like my brain hurt.

In “The Talent Code,” Daniel Coyle explains this more scientifically.

“The revolution is built on three simple facts. (1) Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electric signal traveling through a chain of neurons—a circuit of nerve fibers. (2) Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. (3) The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become.

"Everything neurons do, they do pretty quickly. It happens with the flick of a switch," Fields said, referring to synapses. "But flicking switches is not how we learn a lot of things. Getting good at piano or chess or baseball takes a lot of time, and that's what myelin is good at."

"What do good athletes do when they train?" Bartzokis said. "They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire—lots of bandwidth, a highspeed T-3 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us."[3]

So when my brain begins to hurt because I just don’t have the skill to think of anything interesting, I will make myself keep at the task, knowing I’m helping grow this skill for the future.

“Q: Why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective?

A: Because the best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option: it's a biological requirement.

Q: Why are passion and persistence key ingredients of talent?

A: Because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don't love it, you'll never work hard enough to be great.”[4]

Summary of the smartest kids in the world…

The PISA (The Programme for International Student Assessment) is a test administered to 65 nations and territories worldwide. The score from these test are used to rank each country in terms of the education provided to the students. Shanghai, China ranks number one in each of the three subjects: Reading, Math, and Science.

Three kids go to different countries where the test scores on the international test,  is much higher than the scores here. In Korea, doing well is school is every thing. The kids basically go to school twice a day. They go to the regular public school, then they go to a Hagwon until late at night where they learn again.

The difference in scores between Shanghai, China and the United States is about a three grade level difference. However, in countries like China and Korea, school hours can be almost double the hours here in the US. While a student here might go to school from 7:30 to 3:30 and do an hour or two of homework, in some of the Asian countries, a student would come home at 3:30, do homework, and then leave again for another schooling session (this time with a private class, hagwon, or private teacher) from 5 to 11, but sometimes until 12 or even later.

Finland was studied extensively after the tests because they manage to get exceptional results with similar school hours as the ones in the United States. While there are multiple differences between Finnish schools and schools in lower performing countries, here are a few of the highlights:

• “Becoming a teacher in Finland is highly competitive. Just 10% of Finnish college graduates are accepted into the teacher training program; as a result, teaching is a high-status profession.”[5]
• “Diagnostic testing of students is used early and frequently. If a student is in need of extra help, intensive intervention is provided.”[6]
• “Groups of teachers visit each others’ classes to observe their colleagues at work.”[7]
• “College is free in Finland.”[8]

Additionally, and what I think is possibly the very smartest part of Finland’s educational system, the more advanced kids tutor kids who are struggling. This method both provides every struggling child with a tutor, it also causes the advanced kids to learn the material even better as they now must teach it. I’m probably a big fan of this method also because we already do this in our own home.

One of the assignments each day for my older kids is to read to one of the younger ones for thirty minutes each day. I have the kids read books that either they read when they were younger, but have probably forgotten a lot of the content, or books that I meant to have them read when they were younger, so they are learning alongside the youngers. (If they are reading to my three year old, then I usually let them read simple books on here level.) But if they are reading with my eight year old, then in addition to reading, my older kids must also encourage James to give them summaries. Then they tell a summary back to him so he understands the story even better. Right now we are using “Trial and Triumph” for the sibling reading time.

While sports and the arts are emphasized here, often above grades, in Korea and other Asian countries, grades and test results are everything. Yesterday was Superbowl Sunday, and every grocery store was packed for last minute items, evening church services were cancelled, and everything becomes about this one football game. But in Korea, everything is about the national test. On the day of their big national test (College Scholastic Ability Test or CSAT), all flights are cancelled so no student gets distracted by the noise of a plane. From Wikipedia, “On the test day, the stock markets open late and buses and subways are increased to avoid traffic jams that could prevent students from getting to testing sites, and planes are grounded so the noise does not disturb the students. In some cases, students are also escorted by police officers. Younger students and the members of the students' families gather outside testing sites to cheer on the students.”

The Most recent results listed on Wikipedia are from 2012. I am posting the country list here and the resulting math scores so you can see just how many countries participated in this international test, and how the United States did in comparison.

At our homeschool group last Tuesday, we did an activity that may have been my favorite so far this year. I was in the class with my eight year old son James and other kids his age. The kids were given a stack of books and two chairs. The chairs we facing each other and about two or three feet apart. The kids had to work together and use the books to build a bridge between the chairs. They had about fifteen minutes to figure this out, so us moms just sat back and let them at it. I think the reason I liked this activity so much is it reminded me of one of those very expensive schools I mentioned earlier. In addition to reading during the school day, one of the huge things that set this school apart was an activity very similar to the ones my kids did. The kids in this school were given boxes full of blocks and about an hour every day. I can’t remember if they would be given a picture of a structure or if they would pick that pictures, but each group of kids would work together to build a reproduction of some great architectural work—such as the Eiffel tower or similar. This activity builds so many skills. Kids must learn to work together, to communicate clearly, to listen to what others saying, to solve problems, and to develop engineering skills. Each day they continue working where they left off from the day before. They may be given a month to finish a project, but the results are stunning. The kids have figured out and built a large, intricate, and complicated structure all on their own.

In a news article from the New York Times, block play is associated with higher test scores and math skills:

“Studies dating to the 1940s indicate that blocks help children absorb basic math concepts. One published in 2001[9] tracked 37 preschoolers and found that those who had more sophisticated block play got better math grades and standardized test scores in high school. And a 2007 study by Dimitri Christakis[10], director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Hospital, found that those with block experience scored significantly better on language acquisition tests.”[11]

Block play is also a great way for kids to keep their hands occupied while listening to audiobooks. If we had only one toy in our house, it would be our Keva Planks because they take up relatively little space, require no batteries, and develop the same skills as larger block sets. They help with hand-eye coordination, focus skills, and thinking through problems. And with all they, they help my kids to play quietly while they listen to lots of big words and high quality literature in their books from Librivox.org.

Classical, Charlotte Mason, and the Other Homeschool Methods

The “Grammar” of Educational Methods

I will start with the definitions of Classical Education, since I am borrowing the term “grammar” from this type of schooling.

Classical Education—built on the three main ideas of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. These three are called the Trivium.

• Grammar—The word “grammar” in classical education is not used the way most people are used to hearing it. We think of grammar as periods, commas, and sentence diagramming. But in classical education, grammar refers to the memorization of facts. So “grammar” in classical education is teaching your children as many facts as they can remember. These facts are called “memory pegs.” Like a peg board, these facts are in place for additional information to be added. For instance, a child memorizes this sentence, “In 1867, President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward led the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000.” Then, when they are reading a book that mentions Alaska, they think, “I know about Alaska! We purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867!” Or if they hear the name Lyndon Johnson in a history book, they realize, “We purchased Alaska while he was President!” The facts they’ve learned become “pegs” in their memories where additional information can be added. The Grammar stage of any subject refers to learning the terms and definitions of that subject. Basically, memorize the flashcards and the vocabulary before you read the book.
• Rhetoric—see practicum notes… Lots of discussion. Instead of lectures, the teacher asks questions and the student must develop his or her own ideas…

Charlotte Mason—living books, recitation, nature study

• Living books—tell facts through interesting stories. So instead of dry facts about beavers, the charlotte mason method chooses a science book (for the lower grades) written by a guy who watches beavers and writes down everything he observes. He tells the story of the beavers instead of just reciting dry facts.
• Recitation—After listening to a section of a book, a chapter, or possibly a few chapters, the child retells the main idea of the story in just a few sentences.
• Nature study—learning about nature through hands-on exploration. Observing insects, rocks, birds, and everything else in nature and then writing down and/or drawing what they have observed. Learning is done from direct experience rather than from a textbook.

Unschooling— When we started homeschooling, I said I did this method. …

Unit studies—

University Model—

K-12 or other online programs, possibly through the state—

Eclectic—I can’t imagine there are many homeschooling family who are not eclectic in their approach at some time. This type of homeschooling simply means you pick different books you believe are best for your family. So you may use books recommended by a classical program, but then choose Singapore Math, and a difference science program or whatever. Eclectic just seems to me like the method of everyone, but to varying degrees. …

Classical Education

When I started homeschooling, my friends all had older kids then mine and had already thought through all the tough choices. It seemed silly to do all the research they had already done, especially since I wasn’t yet very interested in homeschooling methods anyway. So I would listen to my friends talk, and when multiple friends from different states (who’d already tried lots of things) kept mentioning the same curriculum, amblesideonline.com, I just went for it. I still LOVE the same curriculum I’ve been using (loosely) for ten years. It seems like every curriculum describes itself as “advanced” no matter how easy it actually is. But from using different things, I still think amblesideonline.com is actually advanced and an exceptional program. I did use other things over the years also, as friends would recommend them. I even had a friend buy a very popular curriculum and then give it to me when she was done. I used that curriculum, and added it into our schedule. But because we had gotten used to Ambleside, it just seemed too easy.

Then a few years ago, my husband wanted our kids to have a more structured experience. I’m such a casual person. I believe my kids should learn at a high level, but I don’t have a very structured daily schedule. I have a list they work through each day, but I let them pick the order in which they accomplish the list.

And although Ambleside is advanced, it’s so easy for me to implement. But again, I don’t do it perfectly or probably even very well. I’m too scatterbrained. Which is probably why I need a more advanced curriculum, so my kids at least have a chance, since I probably won’t teach it very well. But even though I don’t always have my kids recite back each section we read.

Badly Educated Homeschooled Kids are not the Fault of Homeschooling

I went to the park when we lived in Dallas to meet a hang out with my homeschooling coop group. The moms sat on the grass while the kids played. Then a reporter showed up at the park with a camera man and began doing interviews with the moms about homeschooling. I sat back and watched. When the camera was off, I asked the reporter about his interviews. While I don’t remember too much, I distinctly remember he had a low view of homeschoolers. He seemed fascinated by them though. He told me a story about the day he visited a remedial math class at a community college. He stood in front of the classroom and asked the class, “How many of you were ever homeschooled?” He then told me that a good number of the kids raised their hands. That, to him, was the proof that homeschooling didn’t work.

Yet what he didn’t ask was, “How many of you have homeschooled since kindergarten?” I bet that question would have sent most, if not all, of the hands down. I have met many moms over the years who ask me about homeschooling, and even start homeschooling, in this context: “My child is doing horrible in school. Their last couple report cards had almost all D’s and F’s. I’m thinking about homeschooling.” These moms then pull their kids from school and try to repair what was already lost.

This is not a fault of homeschooling. On the contrary, some parents resort to homeschooling to try to repair a broken education. This is not to say that all public schooled kids have a bad education. I was public schooled all but two years of my life—and went to private school those two years—and I do believe I got a great education. I remember learning many of the same things I teach my kids.

But I also went to a high school that is rated as one of the best in the country, and my dad would teach me math in his free time just for fun. So not all my educating was done at school. At my parent’s encouragement, I spent much of my free time reading. And my dad would drill me on multiplication tables or math formulas at home on weekends. And so I had a bit of the homeschooling experience without even knowing it.

That reporter looked at kids without knowing the years they homeschooled or why they homeschooled and found fault with homeschooling, though

Sometimes Public School is Great

I sometimes hear the term that homeschooling parents are “redeeming their education.” In other words, they are finally learning the things they weren’t taught in public school. This hasn’t been my feeling at all. I feel blessed that as I teach my kids, I remember the class or time when I learned those things myself. The one exception is history. I definitely know more history now than when I was in school. The classical conversations history sentences and timeline have definitely put “memory hooks” in my brain that never existed before. I do remember being taught history, but it’s a subject (for me) that I must apply myself to to remember. And I didn’t. So it wasn’t the fault of my teachers. I actually had an amazing teacher in my public school junior high in California that played us the entire Jonathon Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon over a couple class periods. I probably talked more than any other student during those classes, but I grew up to be theologically aligned in many ways with Jonathon Edwards, so something stuck.

I almost wonder if maybe she prayed for me, since I was talking when I should be listening, and maybe the sermon did even more for me.

Never Judge the Family who Doesn’t Homeschool

Never judge or overly praise one person’s decision over another. In other words, a family who choose to homeschool is not automatically more virtuous than a family who chooses for their children to go to public school. We don’t know God’s plan for each child’s life, so while homeschooling may be the perfect route for one family, God may have an amazing plan for another family that involves public school. Whenever I talk to a public school family, I try to quickly affirm their decision so they know that I do not think I think any differently about them. They are just simply called to a different path.

It reminds me of the whole baby-wise/baby schedule versus attachment parenting debate that raged around us when my first child was born. Because we initially tried a schedule and found that attachment parenting worked far better for us, we did the co-sleeping and nursing on demand with our babies. We loved this. But we were criticized by a few people who thought we weren’t raising our kids correctly.

And so I don’t want a family whose kids go to public school to feel that they are somehow any less in God’s will than a family who doesn’t. It is okay for Christians to make different decisions in these areas, and one decision for one family is not the best decision for the next family.

Testing at Home

Just like we forget things, so our kids can learn something and then forget it later. I occasionally like to have my kids take a test so I can see gaps in their learning. Especially in math, having my kids take a test shows me areas where they didn’t fully understand a concept, where they didn’t practice a concept enough to fully remember it, or where I maybe haven’t even taught something they need to know. So every once in a while I will sit my kids down at the computer and do a google search for “Standardized Test 6^th Grade” or something similar for the grade and test I want. California and most other states have their tests from previous years online and completely free. After my kids finish the test, I will score them and then we will work through the problems they missed. Sometimes the missed problems will determine what we do in math that whole week. With reading or other tests, I will also go through the test with my kids so we can discuss each problem they missed and the right answer. What’s awesome about doing that is when kids take tests at school or anywhere else, though you can find out the score, neither the parents nor the kids get to see exactly what problems were missed. Doing the tests casually at home means that you can fix the specific weaknesses in that subject and significantly improve in a very short time. I’m sure that just taking the tests is also great practice for the kids, as they will likely be taking tests in college or in other areas as they get older.

Talent is Learned, Not Genetically Imbedded

You can be the best at anything. Really. I’ve come to believe that almost everyone has the potential to be considered extremely talented at anything. In most cases, I don’t think talent has as much to do with genetics as it has to do with environment. So, while I believe that just about anyone can be “gifted” in any area, I also believe this training, practice, and exposure must very consistent. Even better, if a person can start learning, practicing, and being exposed to this skill at a very young age, they have an even greater chance of becoming best in the world.

Another thing that researchers have found is that the first teacher of any skill needs to be extremely warm and nice. The job of the first teacher is not to teach at a world class level, but to be so kind and encouraging of the student that they inspire passion. Time and time again, when people will great, world-class skills were interviewed, they described their first teacher as one of the nicest people they had ever met and extremely encouraging. These teachers were not teaching a perfected version of the skill, but simply letting the child come to love what they were learning. REF

Once a child has come to love the subject they are learning, they can progress to more intensive training. Sometimes this happens organically and sometimes through the influence or hiring of coaches or teachers for higher level students.

One example of this higher level training happening organically is in Brazil. Children play futsal from very young ages and spend a large amount of time doing so. They use any empty lot or field and organize their own games. The game of futsal is very similar to soccer, but instead of the #5 ball typically used in soccer, futsal uses a #4 ball, which means there is 30% less bounce. This smaller ball makes the players more skilled with their footwork. “Clubs across Brazil, Spain and Portugal use futsal as development tool in the younger age groups before they make the step-up to full size outdoor pitches. It’s a proven route to success too, with nine winners of the Ballon d’Or since 1997 starting out their formative years playing the game.”[12] Brazil consistently produces soccer players that outshine the rest of the world.

Another example from sports I’ve seen in my own life is that every single time when my children played sports (through the YMCA, Upward, or a city league) on an undefeated team, the child of the coach was one of the top one or two players on the team. Somehow my oldest son was put on winning teams for every single sport he played in every single place. This is true. No matter where we moved or where he played, he would end up on the undefeated team. The first time his team ever lost a championship was only a few months ago, on a YMCA football team.

So do I think that people inclined to coach a sport, and who are so good at doing so that their team wins the championship year after year? That their children are just born with the genes to be naturally talented in that sport? Or is it possible that the same personality of the parent that knows how to coach a team to victory has also trained their own child to be the best in the league? That their child is so gifted at a sport is because their parent has exposed their child to the sport and given them more opportunities to practice and improve than most other parents who put their kids in sports.

I think that the actual skill may even be the easy part. A person can become excellent at anything if they spend enough time training and receive excellent guidance and correction along the way.

It’s the character trait of the person willing to work harder than anybody else in the world at this one thing that makes a person truly unique. I think so-called talent can be taught in any subject. When I hear someone say that a person is talented, I just translate that statement in my mind to “That person has put in more effort and work than most people.”

I came across a quote from Teller, one of the magicians of the Penn and Teller group, a month of two ago that accurately sums up what I am saying. “Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”[13]

I think that may be true for all talent. People are excellent at something because they have spent more time (or have spent their time in a better way) learning something than others would have expected them to.

Which again brings me to my point, talent is not so much becoming great at something as it is being someone who will spend more time on something than anyone else might expect.

I think of Taylor Swift, a singer and songwriter who has won ten Grammy Awards, one Emmy Award, 22 Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, and eight Academy of Country Music Awards. She could easily be considered to be a singer who is in the category of “best in the world.” I don’t remember where I learned this, but I remember hearing that when Taylor was ten, she decided to write a full length fiction book. She spent the entire summer writing that book, and by the end of summer has finished it. What strikes me about this is that a ten year old usually does not have the dedication and self-motivation to spend every day writing a full length book. Most adults cannot write a full length book in just a few months, so for a ten year old to accomplish this tells me so much about her character when it comes to dedication, persistence, and hard work.

Solomon, the Old Testament king to whom God granted wisdom… “Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore…For he was wiser than all men” (1 Kings 4:29, 31a)

He said, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men” (Proverbs 22:29)

When I first learned this verse, it was in the King James Version, which is why it comes to mind now. The verse starts with the question, “Seest thou a man diligent in his business?”

That word “skilled” or “diligent” refers to the person who has learned something well. Ezra was called this same Hebrew word for skilled: “This Ezra went up from Babylon, and he was a scribe skilled H4106 in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given” (Ezra 7:6a). Becoming skilled at the law of Moses takes lots of time and diligence in study. I believe skill and diligence go hand in hand.

In another study done on talent versus practice, children were told one of two things. They were either told how smart they were (implying they had an inborn, fixed …) or they were told they must have exerted a lot of effort.

Give info from study…

From this, I tell my kids often that effort is really the determining factor of how smart you are…

Teaching Creativity

That’s almost an oxymoron. Like saying, sweet lemons or quietly yelling or dark sunlight. We think of creativity as something that comes naturally. Like talent, we often think creativity is a genetic trait, something someone either has from birth or not. … So is there a way to inspire greater creativity? …

Creativity is defined as, “the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.”[14] It is the ability to make new things or think of new ideas. Some people are naturally more creative,

Painting station in our garage. Just by having the supplies ready and set up, even my oldest who never shows any desire to paint went outside just a couple days ago and decided to start a picture.

So, help children harness that enjoyment by finding their own niches, and support them in following their interests. Encourage them to meet their every-day responsibilities but also to make time to reflect, dream, and create. And model creativity yourself because it really does matter. - See more at: http://www.creativitypost.com/education/why_should_creativity_matter_to_kids_whats_the_big_deal#sthash.9ACZzwNT.dpuf

Children can excel in creative ways when… already a subject they are passionate about and have a base of knowledge. A person can excel in creative paintings when they have already learned the basics of painting… I think of my most creative ideas on any subject when I have recently learned more about that subject. When I’m listening to an audiobook with some practical skills, for example, developing better habits—during that season I start waking up each morning with creative ideas for ways I can personally implement or use the advice given in the book.

If your child has an interest, as much as possible, provide a means for your child to pursue that interest. One way that may happen is by given your child school time to develop this passion. It can be called passion directed learning or “delight directed learning.”[15]

Sometimes financial restraints, space restraints, or other limitations can make it unrealistic for kids to pursue any passion they have, or sometimes we may not be on board with the passion (becoming the best minecraft player in the world, for example J), but giving your children a chance to pursue what they love can both help them become more self-directed and look good on a transcript. I learned this from Lee Binz’s website—on her sons’ transcripts she included classes like chess and computer programming?. Her son’s pursued these interests out of their own desire, but since they had gained such a deep knowledge of the subject, it was …

Socialization

If you homeschool, you will probably get asked about how you socialize your kids. It’s part of the journey. I usually name the church activities, sports, or whatever else and the person is satisfied. But without explaining the ultimate reason why I homeschool—which is to train godly character in my child—that person may not realize that many “socialization” activities are really times when my child might be exposed to the very influences I am trying to prevent. Those child who don’t love God and who want to encourage sin in others are not the type of socialization I want.

An Extraordinary Life Right Where You Are

Sometimes, when I am thinking about how I can most fully life for Christ, I can tend to feel like my life is lacking a fire for God. Now, when I say this, I’m not talking about the passion I have for God in my heart, but in my daily activities, everything is often so mundane and ordinary. I doubt anyone looks at me and says, “She is living such a radical, sold-out life for Jesus.” From the outside, my life often looks almost identical to a moral but unsaved homeschooling mom. We all do the same things each day: cooking, laundry, teaching, etc. And so I’ve often prayed about how my life can be more “radical,” for lack of a better word. As I’ve prayed over this subject, and sought to gain wisdom, there has been no call to missionary work or for me to pursue any major life change.

I think the issue is partly that I began with a false idea of what living for Jesus really looks like. I thought that if I really lived for Jesus, my life would match the stories of women in church history. Or at the very least, I didn’t imagine it would look so similar to a moral but unsaved homeschool mom. But I have realized two things about serving God as I have searched for an answer.

First, God is looking at my heart. What will define my life as sold-out mostly occurs in the places that no one but God can see. Does my heart hold on to anger or am I quick to forgive? Do I desire what others have (talents, ministries, resources, physical appearance, relationships, etc.) or am I thankful and content with my life exactly as God has allowed it to be? Does my heart trust God and thank Him or do I fight and resist His will when I must submit to things I don’t like?

When a woman has a gentle and quiet spirit, that is the part of her that God sees. There are clues, of course, that might let us know when a woman is rebellious or disobedient to God. But whether she is fully committed and loves Jesus with all her heart, or whether she harbors unbelief, bitterness, or a defiant spirit is not always so evident.

Thus, I first need to remember that “radical” is not what others see, but what God sees. It doesn’t matter if people think I’m sold-out or not. God knows and He is the only one I need to please. (Gal. 1:10)

Second, I already have an incredible ministry right where I am. This has hit me again and again, but most clearly in a recent conversation I had with a missionary. She came with a friend to our homeschool group as a visitor. She mentioned to another friend that one of the issues she dealt with were Christians “an inch deep and a mile wide.” In other words, they ministered to lots of people who claimed to be saved, but had very little understanding of His Word and how to have a relationship with Jesus or live for Him. Because of this, she said they focused on discipleship.

She worked in an orphanage and much of the work involved the same things we do as homeschool moms. A lot of the care of orphans is mundane work. But in the ordinary parts of raising kids, they took a bit of time to focus on discipleship.

Have you ever known something, and then you realize it again as though you never knew it? This happened to me at that moment. I’ve had seasons where I did a great job and teaching my kids the Bible and giving them what they would need to know the Bible more. But then life takes over and I make it less of a priority. And this cycle has repeated throughout the years.

Another event occurred the same week that again struck me with the importance of discipleship. Without giving too much detail, I had contact with someone who prolifically used God’s name in vain and was openly not a believer. However, the grandparent of this person loves Jesus and follows Him. Though the grandparent was a Christian, the grandchild no longer had any interest in the things of God. The faith of the grandparent had dissolved in just two generations. That is a scary thought. I would be devastated to see my grandchildren walk away from Jesus. Again I was hit with the reality that I truly must send my kids into this world with as much discipleship and prayer as I possibly can.

I have such an incredible ministry opportunity each day to take what I know and multiply it by four, and like arrows in the hand of a might man, send out my kids with a depth of character and wisdom that will benefit them all their lives.

The same week I also saw a quote by Rosaria Butterfield that said, “God is calling us to so greatly love others that we do not desire for them anything that might separate them from God.”

When I want my older children to have more social interaction, if that means they will be exposed to things that could draw them away from Jesus, then my desire to see my kids become more socially savvy is not worth the cost of their souls. If a prestigious college would spark in them a desire for the things of this world and ultimately separate them from God, then I need to love them enough that I don’t desire what seems good in pursue of what is best.

So on a practical level, I’ve added thirty minutes a day of Bible time with Mom. In this time, I read my kids a Bible passage and explain it, then read another passage and explain it, and so forth until the time is up. This has been a very sweet time with my kids, and knowing this will happen each day has made them not feel resistant to a surprise extra thing they have to do that day.

If you are curious about what this Bible time is like, I have actually recording some of these times and put them on my website, (link to website). I know some people feel intimidated by doing Bible study with their kids, so I provide my own examples to show that it doesn’t have to be fancy or formal.

Read the passage and just explain what you do understand, and if you don’t know something, read the passage again and move on. Hearing God’s Word will make a huge difference even if you don’t feel knowledgeable enough to teach it.

What makes me think that discipling four people in another country is more virtuous than discipling four people to whom I’m related?

The one instance where God places special importance is the care of widows and orphans. …

Day to Day Methods

While there are so many way to actually homeschool day to day, I want to address the four methods we have used: a separate schedule for each student by time, a separate schedule for each student by assignment, homeschooling by subject together, or a schedule with predetermined together times.

A separate schedule for each student by time—This is when I determine how much time my kids will have to spend on each subject each day to complete the work I have for them, and then I write up a schedule for them that maps out their days. I may have one child scheduled to do Rosetta Stone from 10AM to 10:30AM while another child is doing reading lessons with me and the third is working on assigned reading. This preset schedule by time allows me to rotate my one-on-one time with each child. At the end of the day or in intervals, I will check the work my kids have done independently and work with them on areas that need improvement.

A separate schedule for each student by assignment—This type of method is similar to the last one in that I determine how much time my children will spend on each assignment in advance, but they have the flexibility to do those assignments in any order they want. I have included a sample of these charts on my website at: LINK. As long as each child does their assignments by the set time, they have the freedom to work as they please. This method works much better the older my kids get. However, younger kids (fourth grade and earlier) seem to need more parental oversight. The upside to the method is more sanity for the homeschooling mom. J The kids learn to keep a schedule and regulate themselves. The downside to this method is that an easily distracted child may have unrecognized periods of getting nothing done.

Homeschooling by subject together—Many, many homeschooling moms I know use this method. I am probably rather unique in that we don’t often do this. Homeschooling by subject together is when we all sit at the table and work on math for a set amount of time. For me, I go a bit nuts as there always seems to be a waiting list for my time as each kid needs me to grade a paper, explain a problem, all at the same time. After math, we would all move to assigned reading or whatever subject is next. The advantage of this method is the high level of accountability for each kid. You are literally working with them all day long and so very aware of exactly what they are doing.

A schedule with predetermined together times—This method combines the separate schedule for each student by assignment, but …

Preparing Transcripts

Some

Links to My Favorite Free Websites, Books, Audiobooks, Study Materials, and an Entire Curriculum

Throughout this book I have included the links to many of the resources included in this list. However, I wanted to make a comprehensive list of free resources in one place for easy reference.

In the “Homeschooling for Free” section, I explain how you can homeschool almost for free because of the abundance of free resources now available online. Here are my resources in a list format:

Complete Curriculum: www.amblesideonline.org THE BEST EVER!!!

Complete Math Program with Other Subjects and Test Prep: www.khanacademy.org

Huge Library of Audiobooks: www.librivox.org

Huge Library of Free Books in the Public Domain: www.gutenberg.org

The Online Medieval and Classical Library: http://omacl.org/

British Historical Documents, a History Timeline, and Other British History Resources: http://www.britannia.com/

The Baldwin Project: http://www.mainlesson.com/

Here is the List of Authors You Can Read for Free on the Baldwin Project: http://www.mainlesson.com/displayauthors.php

Some of the more prominent universities also offer free online libraries, math “labs,” and other great resources that can be found through Google.

Ambleside Online Offers Free Study Guides and Testing Questions for Their Curriculum at: http://www.amblesideonline.org/ExamAOExams.shtml

For Parents Homeschooling High School, Ambleside Online Has Composed a Page of Resources, Requirements, and LOTS of Answers to Questions:  http://www.amblesideonline.org/HighSchool.shtml

Blue Letter Bible is AWESOME for Bible Research: www.blb.org (From any verse you can see the Greek or Hebrew original text, and link to the corresponding Greek or Hebrew Dictionary. You can also find verses related to the verse you are searching, as well as multiple commentaries on every verse.)

For Researching a Verse, John MacArthur’s Free Resource Library is Fantastic. Search the GTY Library by Scripture or Topic: http://www.gty.org/resources (This resource does not include commentary about every verse like Blue Letter Bible.)

[1] “These forty years have not seen the sun rise in China without my father kneeling in prayer.” —Howard Taylor, son of J. Hudson Taylor. Quote from: Zuck, Roy B. The Speaker's Quote Book: Over 5,000 Illustrations and Quotations for All Occasions. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009. Print.

[2] http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/fourth-grade-benchmarks/

[3] The Talent Code page 32

[4] Ibid.

[5] http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/u-s-students-compare/, February 8, 2016

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Journal-Research-in-Childhood-Education/80711096.html

[10] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001172822.htm

[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/with-building-blocks-educators-going-back-to-basics.html?_r=0

[12] http://www.worldsoccer.com/blogs/falcao-pele-futsal-351602#MIr6Tl7mvz41z7PG.99

[13] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/teller518579.html

[14] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=define%20creativity, March 3, 2016

[15] I first heard this term through Lee Binz? Of the website www.thehomescholar.com?