June 18

Outside my window...

...it is very warm. Amazing. It has been a mostly cool and rainy spring with unusual flooding. There have been occasional warm days though.

I am thinking…

...about relationships. About unhealthy attachments to earthly possessions. About how to educate our children. About how we judge people. Too many thoughts...

I am thankful for…

...fresh garden things. Lots of milk. A cool house. A washing machine.

From the learning rooms…

The whole household is learning, learning. Learning on the construction site. Learning in the garden. Learning from books. Learning from people. Learning from mistakes.

From the kitchen…

I am trying to be more saving. To buy what is on sale. To use what I have on hand and not try to "keep up with the Joneses" by making fancy meals or worrying about what people think of simple food.

I am wearing…

...normal, everyday clothes. Here's what I look like today. (Would you know? I took a selfie!)

I am creating…

...meals. Blog posts. 

I am going…

...to a family reunion, Lord willing. Yippee!

I am reading…

...the Bible. somehow I haven't been able to get into another book lately.

I am hoping…

...the garden will be productive after a late start.

I am hearing…

...the washing machine. The AC unit. The dryer. My keyboard.

Around the house…

We are working on cleaning, repairs, repainting, and etc. We have so many ideas and so little time. Christopher is into redoing furniture. That's his latest inspiration.

He decided to redo a twin bed frame we had setting around here to use in his room. There were four layers of paint and some stain to take off. I remember when my brothers painted it blue for their use and then we girls painted it pink for ourselves. Underneath those layers were black and white. (It had a twin that we gave away years ago.)

The head board had flowers and leaves. He opted to chisel those off and he'll probably do a picture with wood burning in that space.

Sample of the layers of paint

 

Christopher is using dark stain and white paint.

One of my favorite things…

Chocolate pie.

A few plans for the rest of the week…

The peas, strawberries and blueberries need to be picked. Picking means doing something with them after the picking.

There is a constant supply of milk that needs to be made into yogurt, butter, cheese and puddings, or eaten with cobbler, muffins or pie. 

The pantry needs to be restocked, which means a trip to town. 

I want to clean a few areas and do some mending.  

Here is picture thought I am sharing….

Homemade yogurt with local honey, fresh blueberries and strawberries from our garden/orchard.

Homeschool Boot Camp

Begins today!

Don't be scared off by the title. These are free live videos featuring instructors instructing instructors. If you are a parent, a school teacher or anyone who works with children in any way, this teaching is helpful.

I have learned so much over the last several years as I've listened to the instructors at HECOA. I learned about how children learn best. I learned how to make the most of the educational years by not sticking to graded curricula (not very possible in a traditional school setting).

I learned about mentoring a child. I learned methods of teaching math, history and etc. I learned the importance of reading aloud. I learned that grades were developed to keep children in school until they are the age where factories can hire them (which purpose is no longer valid). 

And I learned how much there is to learn!

This event and others like it at HECOA are free for basic members. (Membership is free also.) You can attend the live event and listen to the replay for 24 hrs afterward. 

After that, you will need to pay to listen to replays. There are many videos from prior events in the archives. There is usually a free video up on your member dashboard page that changes periodically.

The current free featured replay for basic members is of Shiloah Baker talking about the importance of reading, and especially reading aloud. Shiloah is a mother of 11, a number of whom have disabilities including autism and dyslexia. 

The link she shares for her website is no longer valid. This is a replay of a video from a number of years ago. What she shares is so interesting.

Back to the Bootcamp. There is a good lineup of speakers for this week, including Steve Demme who shows you how to see math, Patrick Nurre who is excited about learning from nature, Blaine Rindlisbacher who talks about relationships, and Jill Stowell who shares how to help your struggling student.

There are many speakers who come from many different places, religions and educational views. Listen, as always, with discernment.

Be blest!

Words of today-
Ganglion
Approbate
Cesium

Notebooking Pages

This is a website review. (I do not get reimbursed for anything on my blog. I only give honest reviews of whatever I like!)

The search for a good way to educate children led me to NotebookingPages.com. Don't ask me where I first heard of this website. Several years ago they offered a lifetime membership and I bit. I've never regretted it and have often been grateful for this wonderful site.

Have you ever wondered what you learned in school? Have you wondered what to do with all the school books your mother stored for you? What about all the workbooks your children fill out? Should everything go in the trash? All that labor? Should you store it? To what purpose?

How about allowing your children to build their own memories? Make books for your shelves that are worth re-reading? Wouldn't that be a better option?

That is what we've found. Reading through textbooks where others have done all the research and are telling you what to learn is both boring and ineffective. 

Reading from the sources of information and writing your own "book" will cement information more firmly in your mind. And it will give you a beautiful book to look back through, full of memories that you created yourself.

Write down what you learn rather than being tested to see what you don't know. How would we adults function if we were constantly told that we're less than we should be because of all we don't know? 

Oh, the world is full of so much to learn. Let us give our children the joy of learning it in their own way and time! As we ourselves do.

We did a little of that at Kid's Club this year. I wish we would have done more. If we only lecture, tell stories and etc., the retention is nearly zero percent. But if a child knows she must fill out a paper with facts (written or drawn) from the evening's lesson, she will listen more carefully.

The girls are great artists. These papers come from Notebooking Pages. 

Then the thing I really, really like is their Notebooking Web-app. I designed the papers below with the app. They recapture many of the stories we went over this year.

Borders were already there and I did everything inside the borders. You can see how a child could write and pull in clip art to create pages with beautiful memories.

There are lots of free pages available at NotebookingPages.com for you and your child to print off and enjoy. 

With the Web-app (which you must purchase) you can also design and make greeting cards. Or use their ready-made designs.

Be sure to listen to Debra tell how she decided to use this method of teaching her 10 children.

Get ready for fun learning with your own child(ren).

Back to School Prep and No Boredom Regimen

A moth found on the patio. What kind is it? It flapped onto an overturned camping chair. Hence the frayed label..

Okay, so I'm a home educator- a tutor if you will. One of those people you hire for your children and which mine are privileged to have at all times. Definition of tutor- a private teacher, typically one who teaches a single student or a very small group. 

So... I'm no smarter than you, I've just decided to give my sons individualized attention rather than putting them on the educational conveyor belt. You can be a home educator though and not be a tutor. This happens when you try to recreate school at home. You just make the children do all the workbooks in every subject. If they can fill in the blanks and pass the tests, you are content.

But have you thought about it that for your child's calling in life he/she may need something outside the books? Gasp!

Your child may not need a diploma? Gasp again! How dare I suggest such a thing?

The Thrifty Couple sent a post out the other day about how to prepare your child to get back into the swing of school. They gave a couple of website suggestions that your child can use to start getting their brains back into school mode. 

My first feeling was horror. You will put children on devices to get them ready to be doing the academics again?! Then I decided to write my own post about how to get children ready to go back to school.

This proves a bit difficult because I have been out of the classroom for so long and my view of education is very different from the classroom. So my advice may or may not fit the child going back into the classroom. I want to think it will apply across the board.

Whatever you do, GET OFF THE SCREENS!!! Yes, I'm yelling. Did you hear me? 

Screens kill. They kill imagination. They kill desire to learn. They kill motivation to work with your hands. They kill ability to relate to people. They might even kill your soul depending where you go.

(So why do I tell you this on a screen? Good question. There is good in everything. Tell me if I'm wrong.)

The children I teach at Kid's Club every Tuesday evening are nearly all from conventional schools. During summer vacation, when I ask, "What did you do today? the response is, "Nothing". Or maybe it's, "I stayed in my room all day". Or, "I was chatting with my online friends". They have nothing profitable to do. And though I call them children, by the standards of a hundred years ago or more they are adults or about to be (ages 11-14). (Read the book Do Hard Things.)

Get your children outside. Give them work to do. Don't do all the work yourself. Work together where you can. When they are old enough to have the skills and have developed physically to where they are capable, give them responsibilities they can claim as their own. 

If you don't have a farm, give your child(ren) the opportunity to stay with friends or family at their farm for a week or two. They will see what work is. (Yes, you may send them my way.)

You have no opportunity to do this? Then find a place to walk; and walk daily: in a park, along a country road, in your back woods, down the sidewalk. Wonder at creation. What kind of tree is that? I wonder what bird made that call? What is that flower? Is this plant edible, I wonder?

Oh! What kind of dog is that barking at us? Is that a Siamese cat on the porch? Why does grass grow in the cracks of the pavement in some places and not in others? Look at those interesting clouds overhead. What kind are they? Will they bring rain?

Ugh! There's a spider! Oh, but what kind is it? (If you haven't jumped on top of the picnic table.) And that butterfly passing by. What lovely colors! Do you know what it is? What does it's caterpillar look like? It's cocoon? Will it migrate?

Alright. You get the idea. Ask lots of questions that will arouse curiosity. Maybe your last stop can be the library where you can check out a bunch of books to help answer these questions.

To pique your own curiosity. Tell me what you see in these photos..

Challenge your children to read lots of good books. Not a bunch of silly stuff. Books that will make them think. Give them a list of different genres to choose from. History. Science. Fiction. Math (story type book). Biography. DIY or craft. Poetry. Have them choose one of each and when they have read them, done a project out of one and can give you a good (oral) report of each book, treat them in some way.

For starters, read Gifted Hands by Ben Carson for some amazing inspiration. Read it aloud as a family. Or read it to yourself. Just read it.

Make sure your children get exercise and sunshine. They need at least 15 minutes of sun a day to build their Vit D levels. Can you find a bicycle for your child to ride? This provides practice in balancing, develops good leg muscles and involuntarily gets them outdoors. But just a good hike is great.

Other options- Take them fishing. Swimming. To the park to swing and slide. Allow them to climb trees. Play basketball (yes, mother, you too!). Pitch a softball for the child to hit with a bat. Or a tennis ball if the harder kind frightens you.

Oh, the list of things to do is endless. And my sons and I would just love to have help with canning green beans or pealing peaches for the freezer, getting corn husked, cooked, and cut off to freeze, making pickles or any of the myriad things that need to be done when you grow your own food. Maybe you can help someone like us, near you.

Otherwise, find a farmers' market, international food store or just the grocery store to take your children to. Find out what the different foods are and try something new. Be sure to ask the vendor at the farmers' market for a recipe. If you've bought something strange and new from the grocery store, try Google for a recipe.

After doing some guided activities together, allow them to do things on their own. Allow them to do dangerous things. Especially boys. They are born to be wild. To conquer. Give them that liberty. Within reason, of course. Having five sons myself, my mantra is, Pray a lot and don't watch.

My friend had a post on her blog this summer about how to keep your children from getting bored. Honestly, that is not a problem at our house and, in my opinion, it is fostered by the conveyor belt schools we send our children to.

Their lives are constantly mapped out for them, nine months of the year. Where is their time to think? To explore? To be?

If they are constantly told what to learn, their imaginations are stifled and they don't learn how to think for themselves. They constantly have to think, "What is the book (or teacher, parent) wanting me to think? How can I get the right answer?" This method of teaching makes good factory workers. Great soldiers. Compliant citizens. But entrepreneurs? Hardly.

Get your children off screens today and out and about doing good. Their minds will develop far better and be more prepared for those academic challenges in a few weeks. 

You can find a couple sheets of "random acts of kindness" ideas in this free download "The Ultimate Homeschool Printable Collection".  Have fun reaching out to others.

And for your information, life around here is not as glamorous as the above picture (walks, etc). That was born out of the necessity to think what could be done if you didn't have our farm workload. 

Life at our house is laundry, dishes, cooking breakfast, cleaning off surfaces, baking, feeding calves, laundry, dishes, cooking lunch, cleaning the toilets, canning, milking the cow, chasing the stray cattle back where they belong, laundry, dishes, cooking supper, cleaning the floors, weeding the garden, feeding the dog and cats, mowing the lawn, laundry, dishes, cooking for the fellowship meal, cleaning the windows, attending meetings, planning menus, shopping, repeat and repeat. 

And me, myself and I find time in between all that to nurture my love of reading and writing. The boys find time to carve, read, play basketball, build log cabins, create hydrocycles (as they call the contraption), go fishing, track deer. Thankfully I don't have to tell them what to do. Beyond the normal work, that is. They don't much like me for that. They'd rather be thinking their own thoughts and doing their own things. Oh, but so would I. All those other things are "necessary evils" that weigh me down. 

And FYI, a commitment to home educating your children will definitely help that summer boredom issue. You don't even get to have a half a thought about the relief you can have by sending them off to school. You are together 24/7/365 and beyond. They and you grow together as God intended. 

Best wishes as you prepare to go back to the academic things in life and work to keep the boredom at bay.

"The more I learn, the more I learn, the more I have to learn."

.. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, ... for God was with him. Acts 10:38

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Mark 10:45

 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Who... took upon him the form of a servant.Philippians 2:5-7

Culture Fair

This post has been in the making for a long time. Ancient "news".

The three youngest boys joined our church school and other homeschoolers for a culture fair on January 27, 2017. We got the details for the fair about 4 weeks before it was to be. Talk about panic! Two of those weeks were already carved out to work at my parents' house.

How was I going to help Melvin (who is dyslexic) and Christopher to get their reports done? Part of the requirement was a 600 -700 word report from both of them. That meant a lot of my time helping with a writing project bigger than anything they had yet accomplished and not enough of my time to do it.

The deadline for the report was a week before the fair. Most of my time had been spent helping Melvin by reading to him and writing down his thoughts and paraphrases. By Thursday morning Christopher had about 200 words done. As I set out to see how I could help him, I realized he had been copying some of it from the encyclopedia. I said, "Oh, you can't do that!" He burst into inconsolable sobs and declared he didn't want anything to do with the fair.

After talking about how he might still accomplish the task using speech to text accommodations we got him happily on his way again, telling the computer all about Germany. He really waxed eloquent on the history.

Christoper chose Germany because his aunt comes from there.

After contacting the teacher and realizing he didn't even need to see the reports (they would take points off toward the prize if it wasn't finished) I relaxed. Mostly. 

Pakistan, Melvin's country of choice was so foreign to me that I didn't know where to begin to find clothing or how to make the food.

Matthew chose Switzerland and truffles were his "food" choice. How hard is that? Christopher chose sour kraut and sausage. Another easy one. 

Matthew chose Switzerland because he has roots there.
Take notice of the upright display. He built that and it swivels, showing info on both sides.

Pakistan? Oh, what do they eat? Google just about had my mind made up on a chicken dish.Then my memory was jolted- we knew someone who had married a Pakistani. She had died but surely the family could tell me something. And indeed! I called Reuben Yoder and spoke with him awhile. He was full of such helpful advice. Rice and Dahl was a common food in Pakistan he said.

Google to my rescue again, I found an Easy Peasy recipe for rice and dahl.

Reuben told me how I might make clothing so Google helped me there again, once I knew what their clothes were called. I found tutorials for making the Salwar, Kameez and turban.

Melvin chose Pakistan because his finger landed there when he spun the map!

Everything turned out great and we had a fun evening. I will include pictures from all the students. I've blurred the faces of all children but mine for privacy reasons. I missed one girl who had Chile.

Buddhism

Japanese 

A bit of the Japan display & part of the flag of Malaysia

Stephen (in the background) was photographer for the evening

English

Italian

Egyptian

Netherlands (Dutch)

French

Chinese

Iraqi (because his brother is a missionary there)

Mexican

Polish

Chechens

Malaysian

Mr Vernon (right) and Miss Rose (back left) are the brother/sister teacher team at school

Don't you think the children (and their moms & teachers) did just a totally amazing job?

Which is your favorite? (We were supposed to vote.)

Do you realize how much you learn when you have a project like this to do?

Homeschooling joys

What is an entrepreneur?

What does nuance mean?

What are forbs?

What is an ungulate?

What is scintilla?

These are a few questions that arise in an evening as we read this and that. The love of learning has not been diminished by stuffing noses into textbooks and workbooks. When the Field and Stream magazine author uses words that are above my son's understanding he wants to know! What do they mean?

That's true learning, friends.

Not poring over textbooks looking for answers to fill in the blanks.

Not answering questions that someone else asks.

True learning occurs when I want to know! When I am the one asking the questions and finding the answers.

Not when the test I took has a grade of 50% and I must do it over.

True learning happens when I read to discover what I want to know. Not what someone else wants me to know.

I read this from the DEN website- "Dyslexics are 10% of the population, 35% of entrepreneurs and 41% of prisoners."

Having a dyslexic son, we celebrate his unique strengths. Why are so many prisoners dyslexics?  To be honest, our wholesale method of teaching all children by the same methods and from the same books, leaves dyslexics feeling like hopeless failures.

Enough said. There is joy, joy, JOY in homeschooling! Joy for the parents, joy for the child and joy for the community who has one less potential prisoner.

Hopefully you can follow the thoughts of my weary (10 pm) mind. 

I would love to hear your thoughts and questions on the subject. 

Do you homeschool? Why or why not?