Category Archives: Homeschooling

Life Summary for 08-08

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I “sat a booth” at my local state fair for five hours today.

Then I collected my children from my mother before meeting some friends who proceeded to keep me company and help corral kids until nearly 10 tonight.

The interesting thing about sitting a booth is that you see people you may not have seen in a long time.  And, of course, you exchange the obligatory How are you? and must make that devilishly challenging choice of how much to say.

Personally I hate “Fine.” as an answer.  Just because it means *nothing* and you might as well not have spoken.

So here’s the line I actually managed to pull off the top of my head for someone who hasn’t seen me since I was wearing my second child (in a sling).

I’m keeping busy (an equally useless alternate for Fine.): three kids under age six, teaching myself guitar and working on a novel. (At this point I get the same twinge as I do when I tell people I’m 29 and add defensively:) I’m almost finished and I’ve had an editor ask me to send it to her when it’s done.

Why I feel this need to justify or explain myself to near strangers who care no more for me than for anyone else in this aimless mass of humanity, I don’t know.

And I forgot to mention at the time I start officially homeschooling my oldest this fall.

But I’ve got another 3 hours in a different booth tomorrow, so I’m sure I’ll get another chance to try and squish it all out.

July Links– largely homeschooling

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Stuff I’ve left open in tabs for a few days and decided I wanted to link.

  • Practical Ways to Cultivate Spirituality in a Child: Part 1
    • For the youngest children, i.e., mine are almost there.
  • Your time: Ten not so respectful answers
    • Deliciously snarky answers to express your busy-ness.  The type you’re glad to read but doubt you’d have the gumption to use.  I *loved* #4, and #2 was great, too.
  • Separation of Church and Home(school)
    • This was the timely finding of a discussion I wanted to watch people thinking about (confused yet?)
      • I had just this week been wondering how I could call myself consistent if I accepted the classroom model for Sunday school and not general academics.
      • Can’t say I align myself with everything discussed here, but I appreciated the point about the church having a mandate to teach (e.g., to help and equip the parents to teach their children) while the gov’t, via public schools, have basically created their own mandate.  This distinction worked for me.
  • 50 Reasons Why I Could Never Homeschool
    • Very straight forward and defensiveness-inducing for anyone resisting the idea to homeschool.  Rather encouraging for those seeking affirmation to go for it.
  • An essay/article-writing contest with a big-mag paycheck ($3000) for the prize.
    • If I don’t get around to writing something myself, I’d love to recognize the name of the one who did. ;)

Made for Useful Work

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Remembering this line of thought I tried to articulate some months ago, I found an excerpt that put a nice bow on it:

I think the feminist movement has denied a good deal of what it is to be a woman by denying the innate desire to be home, raising children. But I also think the church has done the same by denying her desire to work. In reality, the desire to labor productively and to rear children are two halves to the same person.

From Dana Hanley’s article in Home Educating Family magazine.

I appreciated hearing her say about the “Proverbs 31” woman, Her day was not focused on entertainment, nor her children, nor fellowship with other believers. Her day was filled with useful labor, and through her Godly example, her entire family grew spiritually.

We all admire the intelligence of those who think as we do, but I hope that doesn’t negate the validation I felt reading that statement.

Made for This

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Do you ever get the idea that you’ve been in training all your life for something, and didn’t know it?

And, maybe, the quirky parts of your personality that felt more distracting than helpful, that they advanced this something?

I have been wrestling the ugly side of my propensities for as long as I can remember (well, at least since 8 or 9), and my distaste of those things have made me distrust even the strengths that are related to those weaknesses.

And now (in the rare moments that allow me to think on it), I’m beginning to see things that I viewed in generous moments merely as distractions have a purpose.

~ ~ ~

Sorry for the lack of specifics, but wanted this to be applicable to more than me.

My example just now is very specific:

I have a propensity to latch onto an idea, research the snot out of it, collect what is interesting to me now or might be useful later.

Then it gets essentially left behind except for the (potentially) new angle it gave me of looking at reality.

Then after a while I do it again.

This is nearly compulsive for me; I may have mentioned here before that I get a type of buzz out of it.

It’s just recently, as I’ve been learning more about the teaching side of homeschooling (and solidifying how I want to do it), that I’m seeing this pattern is *very* conducive to my current plan of compiling and creating my own teaching content.

Anything you want to teach you must either know already or learn before/along with your pupil(s).

Something that embarrassed me (This is *such* a waste of time! Why do I love it?) has essentially been training for more purposeful stuff I expect to be doing increasingly in coming years.

~

Realizations like these are *so* encouraging, and I can see parallels in other areas that would be even harder to describe.

I may still be struggling with the same propensities and sins that I recognized at 9, and 14 ,and 22, and 27, but at least I can see they have become more subtle or disguised.

This is positive not because I delight in hiding things, but because it means I’m being faced with new– sometimes more challenging– tests, rather than the same ones over and over again.

I feel reassured that I am growing up.

If you promise not to make-fun

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You may go look at the curriculum I’ve finished collecting for Natasha’s first year (all disclaimers are on on that post).

~

Jay’s been correcting my effervescent method of presentation when I say we’re homeschooling.

“It’s so cool here! I don’t have to *do* anything!”

He says that it gives people who love and care about our children the wrong impression.

I hope that list will also reassure them.

Jay’s suggestion of much more mature and useful way for me to communicate our current goals:

“When I began researching in preparation to homeschool Natasha, I was surprised to learn that there are no set requirements in Alaska for parents teaching their own children.

“This is very exciting to me, because it gives me the freedom to create my own course of study that will meet our objectives for our kids’ learning.”

He says it will allow me to share my delight at the freedom available, while still making it clear we have standards and a plan.

And he’s right, of course.

Talk about planning ahead…

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I bought 3rd grade, middle-school and high school textbooks today.

That bookstore I’ve mentioned *loving* was having a half-off sale today for the last day of spring break and I was there for over two hours, combing the shelves (and, yes, I broke my resolution and bought some things utterly for my own reading).

Several of these were individual illustrated stories or collections of folktales, and so could be argued as for the children/education as well as for me, but a good handful were truly “unnecessary but interesting” books that I got simply because I was curious.

You might say I’m willing to buy outrageously far ahead because of the way I do the math.

I (think I) learned this formula from my mom:

Is the cost of storing the item greater than the cost of buying the item when you actually need it?

Since we don’t buy storage outside our home the question of cost is mostly about space.

With the extra set of bunk beds that have been taking up space in our garage for, hmmm, 5+ years, the calculation has always been right on the edge, but with books there is no question.

We have only one level in our smallish house, but we have a crawl-space under the whole of it.

This means that we literally have no need to get rid of anything we think we might use again— as long as it can go through the hole in the floor (sounds scary, doesn’t it?).

So the question really comes down to organization: whether we can create a system that allows us both to accrue what is needed, remember that we have it, and get it out at the right times.

As I’ve always bought my children’s clothes this way we are already aware both of the benefits and the dangers/drawbacks of this method.

But even with all the challenges it inherently holds, the cost/benefits ratio can hardly be quibbled over while we have any space.

For the nearly 3-foot stack of textbooks and reference materials that will be going under the house (including a *nice* Complete Works of Shakespeare that made up half the cost) I spent $27.50

God’s provision is so good.

Peers are more scary than the system.
A little.

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With my solid, unwavering expectation to homeschool it may surprise some of you to know that my dad is a public school teacher.

I’ve wondered for months now when or if he would say something in response to my assertions against my kids being in public school, and he finally did.

“You know,” he began, carefully as usual, “people objecting to public school seem to imply that the system or the teachers are the problem. Really it’s the other kids. I’ve seen what kids can do to each other.”

And my mom pointed out that “Broken homes make broken children, and they carry that where ever they go.”

And I rushed in to agree that he has some amazing and gifted teachers at his school, and they are an asset to the community and a blessing to the students they teach.

And I also agree that unhealthy peers are a large part of the reason I wish to avoid public schooling.

But I also know there are teachers out there with an unhealthy agenda (King and King— at first if it isn’t still– was an entirely teacher-driven choice as a grade-1 read-aloud).

I am quite sure there are good teachers here that my children could learn from, and classrooms that my children could be safe in.

But the amount of involvement I’d need to invest to be sure of that (with 3 children x 7-hours/day x 5-days/week) can’t be less work than I’m doing for homeschooling.

~

On a much less “logical” level, I will admit (almost unashamedly) that I am not yet ready to share my children’s affection with someone who does not share my passion for them.

This could be accused as insecurity on my part; an inability to “let go” of my children and allow them to “grow up.”

It may be true.

But no one I’ve yet met will disagree with the idea that (little) children are forced to grow up too quickly these days, and I am willing to look (and even feel) silly if that means I can also feel my children are safer.

Why is “Sheltering” a Bad Word?

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“Clearly there is an appropriate kind of sheltering. When those who are opposed to homeschooling accuse me of sheltering my children, my reply is always, ‘What are you going to accuse me of next, feeding and clothing them?”
— R.C. Sproul Jr.

I was at my moms’-group yesterday, and heard a pair of women exclaiming incredulously over a young lady who realized much later than most that sex happens outside of marriage.

“I don’t know how in the world she missed it that long,” said one. “I mean, it’s even in the Bible.” The tone hovered somewhere between scorn and pity for this poor girl, and I (with my latest thoughts and feelings) couldn’t help saying, “Maybe it was a mercy.”

I had no opportunity to expand on this, because at that point I accidentally knocked over a cup of juice and spent the next five minutes dealing with that.

But I have been frustrated hearing this sort of talk before.

Talking with my uncle late last year, I endured his monologue about how worried he’d been for us kids because we were homeschooled and sheltered from the real world. I didn’t think at the time to say I was grateful for my ignorance.

~

Via e-mail this week I got a little article by By Gena Suarez, one of the owner/publishers of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, that articulated perfectly the way I feel about this.

Do you “shelter” your children?

We’re finding that’s a bad word in some circles. Something is creeping into the church (and even the homeschooling community), and it isn’t biblical. It is an “anti-sheltering campaign” of sorts, and it’s full of holes. Think about it. What does it mean to shelter? Protect. Defend. Guard. Preserve. Watch over. Shield. Safeguard.

Hmmmm, so far so good, right? Sure, until “pop psychology” comes in and tells us we should allow our children to taste a little of the world in order to understand it or pray for it – that we should not “over-shelter” them. Nonsense.

What’s the opposite of shelter? Expose. Endanger.

I’ve observed the arguments against sheltering typically fall under one of two categories:

First, the warning that the poor child will suffer culture-shock upon entering the “real world,” and the second, that his/her uninitiated palette will irresistibly succumb to these new and tantalizing flavors.

Leaving aside that these two possibilities seem a little contradictory, lets look at them.

First, the second (I love writing that): never having seen an actual study, I can’t even stay whether this theory is statistically true, but I don’t think it is.

My educated opinion is that when children leave the faith or are “led into sin” there are more factors than just sheltering involved.

I would blame, for example, a controlling environment where independent thought is not taught or encouraged. This lack of preparation for making choices would leave anyone vulnerable.

As to “culture shock,” I think that the majority of Americans are more “sheltered” than all but the most sheltered of children.

If they ever got the culture shock of abject poverty, of the continual fear and violence common in other parts of the world, would they be more or less likely to be thankful for the security of the familiar?

This is how I felt upon my greater acquaintance with “the real world:”

Thankful it hadn’t been foisted on me sooner.

And why the implication that culture shock is inherently negitive? (But that’s another post. Moving on.)

~

Ultimately, I think we have to look at what our goals are. Sure, perfect children would be the ideal, but as they will make their own choices that we cannot control, we have to eventually accept that.

People who do not shelter their children will make the same discovery, and I wonder if they will have more questions about whether they left out something important.

My goal is to give my children enough of a “boost” toward Truth that their own leap toward faith may not have to be into the perilous unknown.

It’s a well-established fact that humans both fear the unknown and resist starting things they don’t know will succeed.

As a parent I want to remove what stumbling blocks are in my power to remove, and one of those stumbling blocks is the outside influences that can distract from Truth or skew a developing perspective towards a more hardened heart than God intended.

Sheltering is part of meeting this goal.

Homeschooling: Take a Deep Breath— You can do this (a book review)

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(Thank you Terrie for writing this book. It’s been a delight.)

Oodles of practical stuff here:

  • convincing people whose opinions matter to you (husband, parents, friends), and some astute observations:
    • “Emphasize that it will be very, very hard, but you are willing to make the sacrifice for the good of your children. (Say this dramatically and nobly. Practice until you can say it without giggling, because giggles ruin the effect of noble statements.)”
    • “If it’s nearly time for your husband to be home…head for the kitchen and look busy. Husbands sometimes presume that if you are relaxing when they walk in, you’ve had an easy day. Look busy.”
  • ideas for organizing all that stuff you collect to enrich the teaching experience (and the paperwork when necessary)
    • along with the friendly observation that stuff can be a security blanket
  • what jargon to use as you’re starting out
    • This was useful to me as someone looking for a simple answer to move the conversation on.
  • using pre-made lesson plans
  • creating original lesson plans and unit studies
  • sections on major subjects (math, history, etc.) that have broad application, age/grade-wise.

I also found a friendly, enthusiastic voice of experience with a values-base similar to my own.

Most of all I appreciated the attitudes expressed in the answers she offers. Among other things I can see an attitude of homeschooling being valuable work and children being worth that investment.

~

I expect I’ll be linking this review quite a bit, because this book was everything I wanted when seeking reassurance as a preparing homeschooler.

It encouraged me, gave me a boatload of practical information, and a vaguely comfortable outline both of what my days can look like in the beginning and as I go farther along the journey.

Just what I needed.

Wow. (Homeschooling Simplified Again)

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This (PDF) is *exactly* what I’ve been wanting to find.

I don’t know if school districts elsewhere do this, but, thankfully, mine does, and this (again) has simplified my world.

I’m sorry if that sounds like the all-consuming goal of my life just now, but it nearly is. To be able to add the necessary new things to my life (e.g., children’s schooling) with limited upheaval is *highly* desirable— at all times.

I googled my school district and found their curriculum page.

At the bottom of the list of of curriculum guides, there is a Parent Guide to Elementary Curriculum.

Just, Wow.

Talk about your checklists. And I like lists. They make comparisons so simple.

For example, I can look at goals for kindergarten Language Arts:

  • letter names
  • most sounds
  • recognize and write first name
  • begin to listen without interruption
  • express ideas through speaking, drawing, or writing
  • demonstrate awareness of relationship between speaking, writing, listening, and reading
  • hold pencil, crayon, or paintbrush correctly
  • share enthusiasm for literature

and Language Arts for 1st Grade:

  • use decoding and comprehension strategies to read and understand simple stories
  • write an original sentence beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period
  • use spelling patterns and some high frequency words
  • form manuscript letters correctly
  • speak audibly in complete sentences
  • demonstrate age appropriate listening skills

and know what I need to teach next (or first, as our case now stands).

With these lists to look at, I can quickly see that we’ve accomplished everything in the kindergarten list, and some from first grade, so we are definitely starting ahead of the curve.

~

Knowing this isn’t the case for all subjects I’ve been trying to determine what I should teach at the 1st grade level and what at kindergarten level.

At my library I had found the “Core Knowledge” books for Kindergarten and 1st grade, but trying to compare overviews (in paragraph form) and tables of contents was not really working. It was too unwieldy.

That’s why these lists earned this reaction— they were *such* a relief to find.

Another encouraging thing is that the listed points for Mathematics lend themselves, at least for my imagination, to exercises and physical activities that don’t require any textbook yet (being mostly about concepts).

This aligns with my goal of minimizing pencil-and-paper work as much as possible in the beginning.

~ ~ ~

You know, I’ve never questioned whether homeschooling was what God “wanted” us to do. Jay and I just knew we were going to teach our children.

Some people might say making that assumption was foolish.

But as I continue to prepare and (a little bit) start, I see “the floodgates of God’s mercy” opening on us, and the assurance that His provision is proceeding us here as it has led us before, guiding us on the right paths.

Call it a honeymoon if you must (though “engagement bliss” might be a more accurate term just now), but remember, please, that is something to be enjoyed— not scorned.

It exists for a good purpose.