Blogs
Raise your hands if your kids are just ITCHING for some social time with all the craziness of this COVID year! If that’s you, I have a little tip to share. It’s something I did a few years ago over Christmas break, but you can totally do it right now at the start of a new school year. If you belong to a local homeschool group, it will be easy peasy, but if you don’t, search for a Facebook group for homeschoolers in your area and look for like-minded moms with kids the same age as yours.
How can “1 + 1 = 2” be anything but neutral? How can math facts be approached biblically?
If you’ve ever wondered how a biblical worldview applies to math, I’d invite you to join me on a little exploration. We will take a look at some biblical principles that give us a framework for understanding math, explore the worldview conflict in math, and examine how we can “reclaim” this vital subject for the Lord.
Someone once asked my daughter if she had used Math on the Level when she was younger. She said that it wasn’t called Math on the Level then because we hadn’t written it yet, but yes, that was how she had learned math. The lady then asked her if she had liked math. To my surprise, my daughter answered, “Actually, I thought I hated math.” But then she continued, “All my friends hated math, so I just assumed I did, too. I didn’t know I was doing math – I thought I was just having fun with my mom!”
“Where do I find a nature notebook?”
“What does it look like?”
“How do we go about creating a nature notebook? Is there a template somewhere?”
Questions like these cross my desk regularly. So let’s reveal the secret of the mysterious nature notebook. The secret is: it’s empty. That’s right. When you first get a nature notebook, it will be empty. A nature notebook is simply a blank notebook with stiff covers and heavy paper for writing, drawing, and painting. A sketchbook works well.
“Children, come here, quickly!” I beckoned, careful not to frighten the awkward four-foot tall heron which landed abruptly on our porch. Within seconds, five pairs of excited eyes peered intently through the kitchen window to partake in an impromptu nature study.
ACE THE SAT—NO CHEATING OR WEALTH NEEDED
Do you need some good information to read for a change? Did you know that eighty-five percent of colleges will admit and give money simply based on an SAT score? Deciphering how to read this test is crucial for success since this one exam stands between you and entrance to the college of your dreams. Armed with this knowledge, families across our nation are on the hunt to find a way to get a hold of this golden ticket—a high SAT score.
“Good readers will become good writers!” A mantra frequently heard in the lecture halls of academia, echoing along the corridors of middle schools, and boldly preached from the homeschool conference lectern, most often out of the mouths of the more wizened and experienced parents and educators, this statement strives to be a truism. But it cannot be such, because it isn’t true. At least not always. Certainly, it does happen that good readers can become good writers, but to extrapolate from that fact that good readers will automatically, naturally, and inevitably become good writers is to warp a truth into an untruth, which when preached long and hard, becomes—if you will—a myth, an unfounded belief.
Last week we introduced you to the Inner Lawyer who lives inside of each of our kids. The inner lawyer’s only job is to protect, preserve, and get our kids out of trouble by any means necessary. The Inner Lawyer is not a team player, and that’s a problem because when our kids make a mistake, we don’t want them preserved in the mindsets that created the mistake in the first place! We want them to learn from their mistakes and to grow.
Why did you decide to homeschool? It’s probably a different reason than our reasons. Jody tells the story of when her son asked to be homeschooled when he was 12 years old. She didn’t see it coming, and she had no idea how to handle it … at first.
There are two people who live inside our kids. We’ll introduce you to a great one next week, but for today, we want you to meet their Inner Lawyer.
When my sixth child was two-years-old he started sleeping in his own room. Until then, he had slept with us, which was very handy for breastfeeding and early potty training, but once he began transitioning into his own space, I was on the hunt for the perfect room, and Montessori had the answer!
Out of all the different ways that parents can improve a child's education, the number one thing costs no more than a free library card and time. We can read to them. In 1983, the U.S. Department of Education was concerned about low academic performance scores, so they funded a Commission on Reading who spent two years combing through thousands of research reports conducted over the previous twenty-five years, and in 1985 they published their findings in a report titled Becoming a Nation of Readers. Amidst all of their digging, they discovered that reading out loud to kids is the number one most important thing we can do to help our kids become successful learners.
Almost twenty years ago, my athletic, top-of-his-class and popular son came to me and blew me away with an unexpected question. As it turned out, he was battling an emotional turmoil, and the only way he could see out was to be homeschooled.
