Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. 2 Corinthians 8:11 (NIV)

The snow has melted; the sun is shining, and the end of the school year is in sight.  Now, if only the end of the text book, the final project of the unit study or the last page of the lesson plan were also in sight, right?  The effects of spring break vary from family to family.  It can be the much needed break that provides just the right amount of R&R to refuel you for the rest of the school year. (This seems to be especially true if you can spend it somewhere warmer than West Michigan!)  Or, it can be the realization that you are way behind in your curriculum and have a long way to go before you can take a real break.

In the sixteen years that we homeschooled, there were several years, mostly at the beginning of our journey, when I found myself among the latter group.  It happens to the best of us.  Busy with babies, buried in papers to grade, and behind in the curriculum, you can find yourself on the brink of burnout.  It is at this point that many of us resolve to struggle on.  Unfortunately, instead of helping us finish strong, this usually leads to our fizzling out.

An embarrassing example of this was the year I was head Calvinette (GEMS) counselor at our church.  A special collection was taken on Calvinette Sunday in May.  After church, the head deacon handed the collection to me and asked if I would give it back to him the following Wednesday evening to make sure that it was set aside for Calvinettes and not mixed in with the general collection.  Happy to help, I took the collection home and counted it; at more than $400, the congregation had truly blessed the ministry.  I then put it away in a safe place and completely forgot about it.  Several weeks later the deacon mentioned it to me and said that church members were asking when their checks were going to be deposited. I went home to get the collection but couldn’t remember where I had put it.  I searched the house high and low looking for that collection, but it was nowhere to be found.  I wondered about whether our babysitter was honest, and after a report on Dateline or 20/20 fueled my fears, I worried that I might have early onset Alzheimer’s!  I kept looking….all summer long.  At the end of the it summer, I began organizing for the coming school year, and low and behold, there on the bookshelf, between the papers that still needed grading and my lesson planning book, was the missing collection!   My homeschool burn out had been so severe that year that once the school year had ended, though I searched drawers and shelves throughout the house, I didn’t even look at the school shelf.  I tell you this not because I enjoy embarrassing myself (I don’t), but to let you know that if you are there, you are not alone.

In her book, I Dare You, Joyce Meyer says “No matter how enthusiastic you once were, you can become stagnant if you don’t do your part to keep yourself stirred up,” and “Leaders (or Homeschool Parents) have an additional responsibility when it comes to this, because they not only have to keep themselves stirred up, but they have to help others stay stirred up as well.”  While the first definition of stagnant has to do with motionless water that becomes stale or foul, and that is the example that Joyce Meyer uses, additional definitions include:

• Showing little or no sign of activity or advancement; not developing or progressing; inactive: a stagnant economy.
• Lacking vitality or briskness; sluggish or dull: a stagnant mind.

If you, your children or your homeschool in general are showing signs of being stagnant, it’s time to stir things up in order to surge forward and finish strong!  So, what can you do to stir things up?

• Study something different.
• Connect with other families and work on something together.
• Change your curriculum.  If you are a text book family do a mini-unit study instead.
• Plan an end of the year service project.
• Go on a field trip.
• Let lazy kids off the hook for a day and help them get organized. (If this is a persistent problem, consider whether they have too much going on to keep on track.)\
• Reorganize your daily schedule making sure it is flexible enough to enjoy yet structured enough to make progress in your home education.
• Remember the reasons you are homeschooling.

As winter becomes spring, this year instead of concentrating on what you haven’t completed, make a list of what you have accomplished. You might find out, as we did one year, that you can finish your school year early.  Even if that doesn’t happen, set a date that the school year will end, and let it end.  The books that you feel must be finished can be picked up again next fall.  Either way, as you look forward, focus on the bigger picture and the long-term benefits of homeschooling.

Preparing your children for whatever God has planned in their future is not about finishing the curriculum or even getting to the curriculum every day. It is about fostering a love for learning and cultivating curiosity and creativity in our children. It is about incorporating education into our home and daily life rather than separating school from the real world. And, most importantly, it’s about our relationships with our children and our God.

Happy Spring!
Jeanne


As a young homeschool mom, I was concerned about whether or not my children were learning everything that they needed in order to be successful, and so in the spring of 1997, I tested my two oldest daughters with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. What I remember from the score reports was that there were no surprises.  The girls scored high in their strong areas and lower in their weak areas.  Because they didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know, I chose not to test my children on a regular basis.  But, while the test results didn’t surprise us, I also remember the relief I felt when I received them.  The test results confirmed that our girls were progressing just fine in their academics, which gave my homeschooling confidence a bit of a boost.  Reason #1 To Test – To put your mind at ease.

In addition, with standardized test results in hand, I also had acceptable documentation for the naysayers in our family.  Even though homeschooling is increasing in popularity across the nation, and national test results show that home educated students score better than 30% higher than public school students on standardized testing, there are sometimes still those relatives who aren’t convinced that homeschooling is best for your student, and our family was no exception.  I come from a family of teachers and school administrators who didn’t understand homeschooling, and they were concerned for our daughters. Standardized test results that showed our daughters were working at or above grade level helped the relatives to have confidence in my ability to teach the girls.  Reason #2 To Test – To alleviate Grandma and Grandpa’s anxiety.

But what if your child is one of those whose test results are not shining and positive?  What then? One option is to use the scores as a tool in planning your child’s education and curriculum.  Homeschool veteran and owner of Home School Testing Plus, Linda Nikkel says, “If your child should test weak in an area, you will know exactly what area his or her weakness is in.  This knowledge will take the guess work out of your instruction time; you will know exactly where to direct your energies and how to best help your child be successful in all areas of academic achievement.”  With focused attention on your child’s weaker areas, future test results will show improvement and help build your child’s confidence.  Reason #3 To Test – as part of a student’s individual education plan & Reason #4 To Test – to document a student’s progress and build their confidence.

Up to this point, I have been talking mainly about standardized testing, but what about general testing throughout the school year, the end of the chapter tests?   While I agree that tests are necessary tools for evaluating a classroom of students, because I worked one on one with my daughters and always had a pretty good idea of what they were and were not understanding, I rarely used written tests to evaluate and grade the girls.

When our oldest daughter Macia had completed her freshman year of college, Greg and I asked her what we needed to do better in order to prepare her sisters for college.  She answered that there were two things; first, they needed to write more (see last month’s article What’s Your Writing Attitude?) and second, I needed to give more tests.  The number of tests and quizzes given in college classes varies by professor, but my daughters tell me that in any given semester they are taking quizzes on a weekly basis and will be tested every other to every third week in at least one of their classes.  If your student is going to go to college, they will have to take the ACT or SAT exams for college admissions, and they will need to be prepared to study for and take various types of tests, including multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer and essay tests.  Reason #5 To Test– to prepare your students for college admissions and college level classes.

With all this said, there are also reasons not to test.  There is no question in my mind that some students are good testers and others are not.  In our home, two of our daughters excelled with testing and one stressed on every test. I have wondered if having regular tests would have changed that, but four years of college where she has taken at least one quiz or test every week didn’t help her to relax with testing.  If regular testing brings on feelings of failure and stress, they may be doing more harm than good.

Another reason not to use regular testing is that they can encourage students to memorize material for the sake of passing the test and then forget the material once the exam is done.  I call this ‘memorize, regurgitate and erase your brain learning’.  It is common in a test and grade driven educational system but doesn’t equate to real learning.  Unfortunately, many students who regularly pass end of the chapter tests are really disconnected from their learning.  An example of this is a student who can pass an examination on the rules of punctuation but is unable to use commas correctly in his or her own writing.  If a student can recite names and dates of historical events but not explain the cause and effect, has he really learned anything?

Finally, tests have a limited ability to measure what a student is learning.  There are attributes that homeschoolers strive to teach their children that are not measured on standardized tests. Things like responsibility, work ethic, kindness, patience, and perseverance in the long run are more important than academics.  If you are still undecided on whether to test or not to test, I would recommend remembering why you began homeschooling in the first place.  If you are teaching to mastery and your child is being successful and consistently moving forward in his or her studies, does it really matter what the test scores say?

Looking back at those 1997 test score reports today, I laugh.  Eight year old Megan, now a college senior honors student with a Creative Writing major, scored highest in vocabulary usage and expression and lowest in punctuation.  (See Meg’s contribution to last month’s article, What’s Your Writing Attitude? for her take on punctuation.) But before you take this as evidence that the standardized test can predict a child’s academic future, you should know that Meg also scored above grade level in all the Mathematic categories and  went on to struggle all the way through high school math, but that’s another story.

Happy Homeschooling!
Jeanne

Additional Information on Testing

Homeschool Progress Report – HSLDA report showing that across the nation homeschoolers score higher than their public school counterparts on standardized testing.

Home School Testing Plus – veteran homeschooler and educational consultant Linda Nikkel MA provides testing, evaluation, counseling and consulting to the West Michigan homeschool community.

Story-telling. It was something that, like most children, I instinctually knew how to do. The plot would fill my head, and I would rush to scribble it onto notebook paper. Words cascaded in dilapidated, misspelled and punctuation-free lines. “That stuff doesn’t matter,” I’d tell my mother, “It’s about the story.” Sometimes she’d try and get me to throw in a period here or a comma there. The little dots, dashes and lines seemed ambiguous and unnecessary to me.

My spelling and grammar were also eccentric. Their, there, and they’re seemed too close to the same to matter differentiating, and did “embarrassed” have two R’s or two S’s? I mixed all levels of tense and narrative style, and since the only place I put a period was at the end of the story, all twelve pages read as one long sentence.

“How do you know when to pause? When does one character’s dialogue stop and the other’s begin? Is ‘dazzling’ supposed to modify the princess or the castle?” My mother would ask as we read through the stories. She admitted that my purple prose was brilliant, but all of her questions were troublesome to me. Sometimes writing, something I loved to do, turned into a scuffle, a fight over the necessity of building blocks and rules. I liked to break the rules in the same way that my characters did. “You have to learn the rules before you can break them,” were the words of wisdom from my mother. Adults were always saying strange things like that.

The answer was to be political: separation of structure and story. I had the freedom to story-tell, minus the appropriate dots, dashes and spelling, as long as I agreed to do my grammar, spelling and punctuation homework. Amazingly, the more I did them separately, the more the two began to merge naturally. The dots and dashes turned into periods and commas, and had many useful siblings like apostrophes and semicolons. The “there’s” suddenly had very separate identities, and my horrendous spelling, (probably the worst of my eccentricities) sorted itself out until “i before e except after c” became ingrained within me.

It’s only now that I realize the trickery my mother played upon me. When two things are very important, they are bound to overlap. My mom knew that. She knew that my love for story-telling would merge with an understanding and respect for grammar and spelling. As long as she didn’t force me to see them together, I would slowly start putting them together myself. I would claim them as part of my own brilliance, and they’d soon become staples of each tale I told.

Meg Noorman

Meg is the daughter of Living the Homeschool Lifestyle’s author Jeanne Noorman. A homeschool graduate, she is now an honors student at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Megan will graduate in 2010 with a double major in English (emphase in Creative Writing) and Theatre.  She spent her Christmas break applying to Post Graduate programs in Creative Writing.

And now, some thoughts from Meg’s mother, Jeanne.

Writing is something that has always come somewhat naturally to me. As far back as I can remember, I have always enjoyed writing. Over the years, many teachers and friends have encouraged me to pursue writing. And while my freshman college composition professor, Dr. Adams, was extremely critical of my writing, he was probably also one of the best writing instructors I ever had. (To be completely honest, most of what he taught me probably had more to do with attitude and work ethic than the mechanics of writing, but that is a different story.)

But, what do you do and how do you teach writing if it is just not your forte? Or what if writing is your strength, but your child struggles with it instead of excelling? In situations like these, writing can be scary, intimidating and overwhelming for both students and parents, but it doesn’t have to be.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13 (NKJV)

When our Heavenly Father created us, He didn’t decide to make some of us lousy writers. He instilled in each of us all of the skills that we would need to accomplish whatever He calls us to do including the ability to write creatively and effectively for His glory.

No, I do not mean by saying this that everyone is capable of Pulitzer Prize writing! That would be like saying that we can all sing well enough to win a Grammy Award. And as small as the number of award winning musicians might be, the number of mathematicians capable of understanding nuclear physics is probably even smaller. Yet we all need to be able to understand math well enough to balance our checkbooks. The same is true with writing.

Writing is an essential element of communication. No matter what our students choose to do in the future, being able to communicate effectively will be an important aspect of their ability to succeed.

So, where do we begin? The answer to this question is two-fold. First we have to address our own attitudes about writing. Second, we need to instill positive attitudes about writing (and learning in general) in our children.

What’s Your Writing Attitude?
How do you feel about writing? Do you enjoy doing it? Would you categorize writing as one of your strengths or one of your weaknesses? Would the thought of having to write a report cause you to have feelings of anxiety or excitement? Is just reading about writing causing you to have a panic attack? If so, relax. If the Lord is calling you to homeschooling, He is going to supply everything you need, including providing you with the confidence and ability to teach writing.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)

Having a peaceful and positive attitude about writing (and really everything you teach) is very important because your attitude is contagious. Passing on an enjoyment of writing was relatively easy for me. My math attitude on the other hand was a bit of a stumbling block at times when I allowed it to be. You see, I was never any good at math. When I was a child and my father, who had been a math major in college, would help me with my math homework, I often ended up more confused than before. Unfortunately, many of our math sessions ended in tears. Eventually I came to the conclusion that my dad was smart, and I wasn’t. As a homeschool mom (who was often way too much of a worry wart), I could have easily passed on to my children an attitude of ‘I Can’t Do Math’ if I hadn’t changed my outlook on learning. But, more about that another time!  My reason for even mentioning it here is to point out that no matter how you feel about writing, if you have the proper attitude, your children will become good writers. (All three of my daughters went further and scored better than I ever did in math, and the youngest is planning to pursue a math minor in college!)

What’s Your Child’s Writing Attitude?
If your children love writing or your oldest is still in preschool and hasn’t developed an “I Can’t Do This’ attitude yet, you’ve got it made. But, what about the rest of you? Don’t despair; there is still hope for your children.

The Right Writing Attitude
Think for just a moment about the attitude of a five year old that has just been told that today he or she gets to paint. I’ve never met a five year old that didn’t love painting! Once she was well covered up in one of Daddy’s old shirts, even my oldest daughter who at five years old didn’t like to get dirty loved to paint! When you are five years old and you get to paint, there are no rules. Okay, you’re not supposed to get paint on the floor, the walls or your sister’s paper, but other than that you get to do whatever you want! And it’s colorful! And it’s messy! And it’s fun! Even Mommy likes to paint! Hooray for art day!

Now imagine that same child being told that today they get to write, and the parameters of the writing assignment are the following: 5000 words double spaced in 12 pt. type with 1 inch margins, MLA format, using a minimum of three sources with at least one being a biblical commentary… You get the point, right? What chance would a five year old have of succeeding with this assignment? I believe that my three daughters are really smart, but they couldn’t have done this at five years old, or in fifth grade, and even at fifteen it would have been a stretch!

The key to instilling that right writing attitude in your children is allowing them to succeed. And succeed. And succeed again. Success builds on success just as writing concepts build on writing concepts. In the beginning you teach your children to write each individual letter. (If you want to get technical, this is actually penmanship.) Next you teach them how to combine letters to make words. From there you combine words to make sentences. This step is usually not too difficult because by this time your children are already speaking in sentences. It’s when it comes time to understand all the sentence rules that it gets a little bit harder.

• Capital letter at the beginning – not too terribly difficult as long as they remember
• Punctuation mark at the end – which punctuation mark makes it a little bit harder
• Nouns and verbs – okay, we got that one
• Adjectives and adverbs – yeah, those are okay too
• Commas, conjunctions, semi-colons and run on sentences – what, what are those and which is which, how do I know which one to use when or why, and isn’t a run on sentence one that just uses really active verbs?

No matter where your child is in his writing, that’s where you begin. And that’s where you stay until your child is successful in that place and ready to move on. Even with students who may be several years behind what is considered appropriate grade level, once they realize that they will be allowed to fix what is wrong and can learn from their mistakes, they will become better, more confident writers.

Children of all ages enjoy success. Every time your child achieves success it builds their confidence. When your child is confident and successful with writing they will begin to enjoy it. And once they enjoy writing you have half the battle won!

Faith, Goodness, Knowledge, Self-Control, Perseverance, Godliness, Kindness, and Love –Sometimes referred to as the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Christians, character traits that upon completion of homeschooling we would all like to see in our children.  And the list goes on and on.  Positive Attitude, Responsibility, Respect, Forgiveness, Mercy, Integrity, Honesty, Courage, Duty, Loyalty, Gratitude, Understanding, Empathy, Compassion, Courtesy, Leadership, Confidence, Self Discipline, Accountability, Selflessness, Humility…

After graduating all three of our daughters from high school at home and having them go on to excel in college, Greg and I have reached an important goal that we set for our homeschool, and there is a sense of accomplishment that goes along with that.  Nevertheless, when I think about the big picture, when I look at this list, I know there is so much I have yet to teach my girls.   Yes, I see knowledge and kindness, responsibility, respect, empathy and humility in our children, but I also see strong wills, perfectionism, and intolerance.  Where did those character traits come from?  As I quietly watch and wonder, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ it comes to me.  It is my weaknesses that are staring back at me.  How is it that the Lord has trusted me, someone who is still very much a work in progress, to raise these children?

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

On November 15, 2009, in a discussion about the state of American education, Meet the Press host, David Gregory, asked, “What is the knowledge most worth having in 2010 if you are a high school graduate?  What do you need to know?” In reply, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “I’d say the first thing you need to know is yourself and your own values and your own concerns.  The second thing you have to have is a good work ethic and an ability to be honest.  And the third thing you have to know is how to learn whatever you’re going to need to be successful.”  Values, concerns, good work ethic, ability to be honest, and knowing how to learn – another list.  Rather than answering with standardized testing, state mandated curriculum or increased graduation requirements, Gingrich’s reply listed character traits that all students need to have in order to be successful.

This fall has been a season of contemplation and reflection as Greg and I adjust to our newly empty nest.  As homeschool parents, the scope of our responsibility can be overwhelming, and unfortunately we often get bogged down in the mechanics of curriculum, assignments and our schedules.   Without those things to occupy my mind this fall, I’ve been able to see a bit more clearly.  (Yes, hindsight is 20/20!) The academics are important in educations, but knowledge is just one of the qualities listed in the list from 2 Peter 1:5-8.

In the sixteen years since we began this homeschooling adventure, the gift of knowledge that our three girls, Greg and I have all received is extraordinary, but far more important than the academics are the gifts of love and friendship that we’ve cultivated in our family.  And it is through those relationships, the day to day interactions (late nights, long talks, & laughter), the hard work we’ve done together, and the struggles we’ve overcome that our daughters have developed character.  And let’s be honest about it, once they’re through with school which subject will they be tested on most often in the world?  We’ll eventually forget a lot of what we learned (Could you pass a chemistry pop quiz right now?), but the rest will be with us forever.

As you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior and 2010 begins, please resolve to take more time to relax and enjoy your children.  (They will be gone before you know it, and while the peace and quiet is sort of nice, you will miss them!)

I wish you a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Jeanne

Family Activities for Character Growth

• Eat dinner around the table as a family (several nights a week is best)
• Play and pray together
• Read together – Biographies of great role models
  • Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Family movie night – choose character building films
  • The Ultimate Gift with James Garner ($5 at Family Christian Stores through 12/24)
  • Miracle with Kurt Russell
• Serve together as a family – a neighbor in need, the HSB, a homeless shelter

Must reads for every parent (Both books available at Family Christian Stores)

• Loving Our Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk
• Bringing Home the Prodigals by Rob Parsons  (Read even if you don’t have a prodigal child, you will understand the prodigal in yourself so much better!)

It’s important when Living the Homeschool Lifestyle to incorporate education into your daily life. Sometimes that means taping the spelling list to the kitchen cupboard so that Mom can give a spelling test while she peels potatoes.  Other times it means that the kids sort socks and fold laundry while listening to the current Sonlight history story being read aloud. But, incorporating daily life into your education is just as important in the homeschool lifestyle, and for the kids it can be a lot more fun.

I know homeschool moms who see grocery shopping as a respite, a time away from home and family, one of those rare times when she gets to be all alone. If this describes you, go for it, and get a mocha latte while you’re at it! But, when our girls were young, both grocery shopping and cooking were normal parts of our homeschool week. Not only did the girls find items based on the alphabet (language arts), they learned to use a calculator to keep track of our budget and later determined price per ounce in order to advise me of the best price for a grocery item on my shopping list (applied mathematics). And once the grocery shopping was done and the purchases all put away in the kitchen cupboards, the fun began!

No matter what we were studying, I always tried to find a kitchen tie in. When Meg and Marla were learning their letters (one letter per week for 26 weeks) the highlight of the week was baking day when they got to make that week’s letter into pretzels or sugar cookies. A few years later they used a set of alphabet letter cookie cutters to make and decorate words. In addition to kinesthetically reinforcing the language arts learning, the girls discovered the basics of measurement and fractions in the kitchen. Even doubling a recipe is hands on multiplication practice.

Our family will never forget one lesson in particular (geography and science combined) that came out of our kitchen. It was the very first week of school when Meg was in second grade, and we were learning about Maine using Hewitt Research Foundation’s Across America curriculum. I happened to be by myself at the grocery store (for a change) and they had frozen lobsters on sale. Because lobsters are a product of Maine (and it was a very good sale), I bought one to surprise the family thinking that before we ate it we could look at the different parts of this large marine crustacean. With my unsuspecting family gathered around the table, I put the lobster on a platter and brought it to the table. As I set it down, one of the claws clinked against the side of the plate, and Meg, who had only seen lobsters alive in the grocery store tanks, thought he was coming for her. Once we calmed her down and got her to come back to the table (she was hiding under the computer desk in the family room), we were able to look at the different body parts and eat the lobster. Well… some of us ate the lobster. Meg claims she was scarred for life, and she still doesn’t really care for lobster. Moral of this story – don’t surprise your elementary aged children with scary sea creatures and call it science!

So, as the Thanksgiving holidays approach, don’t stress about getting all the school work done before you begin the baking. You need to eat every day, and your students (boys included) need to learn to cook nutritious meals. My advice is even if you have to resort to calling it Home Economics, get your kids in the kitchen. The meals and the memories will be well worth the mess!

I was sitting at my dining room table attempting to use the Pythagorean Theorem to determine the amount of time a train had been traveling.  My hands furiously flew through my dark blond hair in frustration.  I let out a low moan and let my forehead rest on the table.
My mom, sitting across from me instructing my younger sister, Christi, looked up with sympathy.  She tilted her head to one side, thinking.  It was then she said something to me that would change my attitude toward school forever.

“Joey,” she began, “there is one thing I really regret about my school experience when I was your age.”

“Really? What’s that?”  I was mildly curious.

“I wish I would have taken my studies more seriously and not wasted my last few years of school.   Now I realize how important they were, and I can’t go back and change it.”

The word “wasted” rang through my head all day, and the next and the next.  I realized I wanted my life to be meaningful for myself, for others, and above all, for God.  Would I be looking back five years from now, frustrated that I had wasted time that should have been spent more wisely?  I realized I wanted to look back on a life that had been productive, relevant and filled with good memories….. I no longer see schoolwork as a daily torture I have to go through.  I am involved in a life-long enjoyable pursuit of knowledge that I have chosen for myself.  High school is more than four inconsequential years of my life.  It is a training ground, and I must treat it that way.

From The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling
by Debra Bell – Chapter 22, Should You Do It?
Copyright © 1997 by Debra Bell – Used by permission

Frequently, when advising new and experienced homeschoolers and often when asked how I got my children to do their school work without a fight, I recommend The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling by Debra Bell, and specifically Okay, Joey, Here’s Your Chance, the essay quoted above.   In fact, Joey’s essay was required reading for all three of my daughters in their early years of high school, and it also inspired a writing assignment they were required to do entitled Whose Responsibility Is it Anyways?

Though rarely found in the scope and sequence of most standard curriculum, teaching work ethics and responsibility are important aspects of every student’s education.  Fortunately, if you begin early and remain consistent, teaching these concepts becomes a natural part of parenting even before you begin homeschooling.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. Colossians 3:23 (NIV)

William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues is an excellent resource when teaching these concepts to preschool and elementary aged children.  Subtitled A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, it has sections on Work, Responsibility, Self-Discipline as well as many other character building topics.

Assigning age appropriate chores to preschool aged children (when they are still anxious to ‘help’) is the first step in teaching responsibility.  At age two a child can match socks while Mom is folding laundry or sort and put away the silverware when an older child is unloading a dishwasher.  (Sorting and matching are the beginning of math skills too!)

As children grow, the level of difficulty and the amount and of things they are responsible for should grow as well.  When our children were little, they were assigned one household chore each week for each year of their age; so a six year old was expected to do six chores per week.  Each year as they celebrated their birthday, we made it a point to talk about added responsibilities and added privileges that came with getting older.  When you consider that fourteen chores a week (at age 14) is really only two chores per day, the workload is not unreasonable.

Once our teens had part time jobs, we reduced the chores based on the number of hours they were working outside the home.  If a sixteen year old worked ten hours a week outside the home, they were only responsible to do six chores at home.  (Of course, by that time, they were also responsible for their own laundry and cleaning their bedroom and the downstairs bathroom which only they used.) When living and learning become one in the same, work ethic and responsibility lessons will carry over into school work and part time teenage jobs.

The most important key to teaching your students to accept responsibility is to make sure that they can be successful by training them to do the work and giving them sufficient time to get it done.  It is extremely important that you keep the workload (including academics, extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs and family and church responsibilities) manageable.  If a student has so much going on that he or she doesn’t have the time to get it all done, instead of learning to be responsible he will adjust to being over-committed and only accomplish what is urgent.  Teaching time management helps allow students to recognize when they are attempting to do too much and also helps them learn how to set priorities.

I don’t know a single homeschool parent whose goal is to raise below average students and underachievers, yet so many of our students are willing to do only what they have to in order to get a job done.  A solid work ethic and knowing how to accept responsibility are character traits crucial for success in our world, and as homeschool parents it is our responsibility to teach these skills to our children.

Raising Responsible Children Resource List

• The Book of Virtues by William Bennett – fables, stories, poems and essays on many character traits including self-discipline, responsiblity, work, perseverance, honesty, loyalty and more.  Authors include Abe Lincoln, George Elliott, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and many others that our children should know.
• Loving Our Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk – a wonderful book on parenting and parent/child relationships.  Introduces skills and ideas that help parents train their children to accept responsibility and manage freedom.
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey – written from a teen’s point of view the book follows the same pattern as other 7 Habit books written by the author’s father Steven R. Covey.  Chapters include ‘Begin With the End in Mind’ (setting goals) and ‘First Things First’ (setting priorities).  Highly recommended as are Seven Habits of Highly Effective Kids and Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families.
• Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris – subtitled A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, the book contains excellent challenges for teens. The authors encourage their readers to go outside their comfort zones, go beyond what’s required, tackle things that are too big to accomplish alone, to do things that don’t necessarily pay off immediately, and to not be afraid to go against the crowd. Their message is “Don’t accept low expectations–strive higher.”

For more encouragement in this very important area the Home School Building is sponsoring a free workshop on October 20th.

Raising Responsible Children
Tips for Parents of Toddlers to Teens

Tuesday, October 20th, 6:30-8:00 pm
At the Home School Building
5625 Burlingame Ave. SW, Wyoming, MI 49509
Presented by a Panel of Parents, Moderated by Jeanne Noorman

The workshop will include sharing of personal experiences from a panel of parents on raising responsible, successful children with a solid work ethic. Ideas and resources will be shared on how parents can instill these character traits in their children  so they may grow to be responsible adults.  The evening will conclude with Q&A.

The workshop is open to all parents, regardless of their education choice. Please RSVP to the HSB office.

For more information:
Home School Building
616-532-9422 x 4
office@homeschoolbuilding.org

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

Having graduated all three of my daughters from high school at home, the best advice I can offer about planning for high school is DON’T follow the traditional school model !

The traditional model for high school consists of a list of classes that have to be completed and passed in four years. Once that is accomplished (and a D is passing), the student has completed the graduation requirements. But, are they really ready to move on to college or into the working world? Unfortunately, most high school students are not. The August 9th Kalamazoo Gazette reported that according to an ACT score analysis posted on a Michigan Department of Education Web site Only 16 percent of Michigan high school graduates are ‘college-ready. In response to this a Michigan state official said that the ACT results underscore the need for Michigan’s new high school graduation requirements. I wonder though if requiring additional and advanced classes is really the answer, especially when it comes to students who already struggle academically. But, if increasing the academic requirements isn’t the answer, what is?

Admittedly, because it was our intention that our three daughters would go to college, we did follow a college prep plan for high school. But, we didn’t always use standard curriculum to achieve the credits needed for graduation. As I thought about these disturbing statistics and prepared to write this article, I wondered what my daughters would say was the most important thing we did to prepare them for college.

When we went college visiting, I encouraged the girls to talk to the students, to find out why they had chosen the school they did, what they liked and didn’t like and what advice they would offer to prospective students.

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 15;22 (NIV)

So the remainder of this article is an excerpt of a conversation I recently had with my oldest daughter Macia about what aspects of high school at home best prepared her for college. We began homeschooling Macia in September of 1994, and she graduated from high school at home in June of 2004. In June of 2008, Macia graduated cum laude from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois with a double major in music and theatre performance and a minor in dance. She was active in both the music and theatre departments, spent a semester abroad and worked all four years she was in college. Since college graduation Macia has supported herself working tech in a professional theatre in the Chicago area. She studied classical acting at the British American Drama Academy’s Mid-Summer at Oxford program in England this summer, is auditioning in the Midwestern United States and hopes to use her God given gifts for music, theatre and dance to make her living on stage and screen.

Jeanne – What was the most important thing we did to prepare you for college?

Macia – You helped me develop time management and organizational skills.

Jeanne – Do you think that was more important than the college prep classes you took?

Macia – By far. There is no way I could have graduated from college in four years with my majors and extra-curricular activities without being able to manage my time well. I have several friends that were just as intelligent and talented that couldn’t keep their GPA’s up or didn’t graduate in four years because they couldn’t balance everything they needed to do.

Jeanne – So what specifically did we do that helped you learn time management and organizational skills?

Macia – You made ME responsible for my education. I knew that you were still there to help me figure things out, but you gave me the list of requirements and helped me plan the curriculum based on my interests. Part of what helped me succeed in high school and then in college was that I was able to spend more time studying the things that interested me and less time going through the motions with stuff that bored me even though you still made me take math. It made the transition from high school to college easier because that is the way college works. In college you have your major requirements and there are always a few classes that you don’t like, but you get through them. Your general education requirements are broader, and you can choose from a wide variety which classes sound interesting to you to fulfill the requirements. Basically, my high school was like college without a major.

Jeanne – Can you give an example of how that worked in your high school curriculum?

Macia – I had to earn a certain number of credits in English, but you let me earn them however I wanted. I chose to earn them with in depth studies of Shakespeare and British Literature because that’s what I found interesting at the time. It really didn’t even have to do with my love for the theatre so much. I just loved Shakespeare, and after our trip to London I was fascinated with the British culture. I didn’t even realize until I got to college that I had skipped American Literature. In college there were several classic American works that I never read in high school when everyone else did.

Jeanne – Was this a problem for you in college?

Macia – No, if I didn’t know something, I could look up a synopsis online or get it from the library. It may have meant a little extra reading, but I love to read, and I never struggled because of it. A lot of my friends had to re-read the books anyhow because it had been several years since they had read them.

Jeanne – So, having been through high school and college, what advice would you give to current high school students at home?

Macia – Take responsibility for your own education. Mom and Dad can’t hold your hand forever, and you need to start doing this for yourself. The earlier you start at home where you have the support of your parents, the easier it will be in the long-run, and besides there are no parents there to make you do it in college. If you want to be taken seriously in the future, you need to be serious about your future.

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed. Proverbs 16:3 (NIV)

If you’d like more information on teaching high school at home, please come to my Homeschooler’s Guide to High School and College Prep workshop. The workshop will be held at the Home School Building on Tuesday, September 22nd at 7:00 pm.  Information on the new Michigan high school graduation requirements and how they affect homeschoolers is explained in my August 16th Grand Rapids Homeschool Examiner.com article.

Blessings for a wonderful school year!

Jeanne

Is this how your homeschool year begins? If so, or more importantly, if not, believe me, that’s okay! By the time our girls reached the junior high and high school years, our homeschool didn’t look at all like this. But when we started homeschooling, this is what I envisioned. And in the beginning, I worked very hard to recreate the school experience for my kids. Not only did our days include recess, but we even turned an extra room in our basement into a classroom complete with phonics and penmanship posters hanging on the wall.

When we first started homeschooling, the differences between going to a traditional school and homeschooling were mostly unknown to us. I knew that Meg needed to be able to move around, that Macia would be happier learning at her own pace, and that homeschooling could provide those things for them. So, like so many other homeschoolers, we committed to taking it year by year, and we began. At the end of the first year, things had gone well, and there were more positives than negatives. So we decided to give it another year. Year two went by, and we proceeded with year three, then year four, and five. I’m not sure when we knew that we were homeschooling for the long haul, but little by little, homeschooling had become our lifestyle, and we had discovered its many benefits.

But I have to be honest; there were a few rough spots when we first began. The first day when I decided that we would do math (not my favorite subject) before lunch to get it out of the way, Macia informed me that in her real school they had always done math after lunch and if I was a real teacher, I would have known that! Then she stormed down the hall and slammed her door. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. It was to be a time of learning and adjustment for all of us.

More than anything else, it was grace (Not something I’m always good at!) that got us through the initial period of adjustment. After giving each other time to settle down, I reminded Macia that each teacher’s way of doing things and each new year’s schedule had also been different in her other school. We discussed the good and the not so good things that would be different about homeschooling. (I did, of course, put more emphasis on the good.) And Macia agreed to give my schedule a try. Naturally, with all this drama going on, math didn’t end up happening until after lunch that day, but It doesn’t hurt to let your kids win an argument every once in a while as long as they are still learning!

We survived our humble beginning and even began to see the benefits of homeschooling on that very first day. Because I had been able to take the time to deal with the problem when it happened, it ended there. And when Macia realized that she would be allowed the time and grace to adjust to our new way of life and more importantly that I would listen to her, our relationship began to improve. In the fifteen plus years since that day, all three of our daughters have on occasion stormed down the hall and slammed their doors. I admit that I haven’t always handled the situations with as much grace as I would have liked, but looking back, it was much more common in their younger years than it has been in their teen years. I know that this isn’t typical in today’s American households, but neither is homeschooling, and I believe there is a direct correlation. As homeschoolers, we were able to recognize and work through many character issues with our daughters when they were young. These early efforts paved the way for understanding and stronger and better relationships with our daughters. In turn, while it has never been an easy walk in the park, the often difficult teen and young adult years are going fairly smoothly all things considered.

Living the Homeschool Lifestyle means teaching character alongside curriculum. It means incorporating education into your everyday life, doing a phonics lesson while the baby naps or dissecting frogs for Biology on Monday night rather than watching TV. It also means incorporating your everyday life into your education, folding laundry while listening to a story read aloud or learning about glaciers while on vacation in Montana at Glacier National Park. It means having the time for long conversations with your kids, telling them stories from your childhood and listening when they talk. It means learning right alongside your children, those subjects that you never learned and maybe one or two that you didn’t do so well in or have forgotten. It means nurturing the natural curiosity and creativity in your child, taking the toaster apart to see how it works or maybe why it doesn’t and gluing all the broken toaster doodads and parts together afterwards to create a sculpture that represents the weather!

Every family is different; therefore every homeschool will be different as well. As parents, we each bring unique gifts, talents, and personalities to the mix. Our children also bring their individual strengths and weaknesses along with their abilities and interests. Throw these all together, give them a good shake, and what works for one homeschool family will be completely different from what works for another. The key to creating a homeschool lifestyle for your family is not to recreate the traditional school experience or even someone else’s homeschool experience in your home. Instead, seek God’s grace and guidance for what works best for each individual child and for your family as a whole, and do that.

No matter where you are in your homeschool journey, starting from scratch, pulling your students out of a traditional school system or entering your final years after homeschooling for many, there are several keys to Living a Homeschool Lifestyle that will help your family find its focus and achieve success.

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. Matthew 6:33 (NLT)

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. James 1:5 (NIV)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV)

I wish you a blessed homeschool year!

Jeanne Noorman

Let all things be done decently and in order. 1 Corinthians 14:40 (NKJV)

From the story of creation in Genesis, to the instructions on how to build and decorate the temple in Exodus, to this verse in First Corinthians, we see that our God is a God of order.  One of the things I appreciate most when it comes to homeschooling is the flexibility, but order within the flexibility allows my days to flow more smoothly.

Living the Homeschool Lifestyle means learning to relax and have fun with your family while incorporating education and a learning lifestyle into everything you do, and that includes cleaning your house!  Life skills such as grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and maintaining your home are just as important to teach as the academics.  Let’s be realistic, when they are out of school, which information will benefit your children more, the who, what, where, when and why of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination or how to stick to a grocery budget and make healthy meals on a shoe string?  Yes, boys need to know how to do laundry, cook, clean and budget as well as girls!  (Just imagine how thankful your daughter-in-laws will be one day!)

In our homeschool, we have several routines that keep our house basically clean and clutter-free most of the time, Summer Sorting, Monthly Mondays, Children’s Chores and Pick-Up, Put Away.

Summer Sorting is probably what non-homeschool families call spring cleaning.  (We are too busy with finishing up the school year to start in the spring!) Over the years, I’ve developed a habit of sorting shelves and cleaning closets that friends tell me goes way beyond the norm, but it works for me!  Each week throughout the summer I choose a room to clean and begin by emptying any clutter from that room into the garage.  Once emptied, the room is cleaned top to bottom, windows are washed, curtains and linens are laundered, and carpets are cleaned before we reassemble the room with a place for everything and everything in its place. Anything that doesn’t find its way back into that room or another stays in the garage, and at the end of the summer, anything left in the garage goes into a great big garage sale!

Monthly Mondays are my way of keeping the clutter to a minimum through the school year.  In order to keep up with the chores that pile up and the piles that need purging, the first Monday of each month is devoted to cleaning house.  This is the day that the girls muck out their bedrooms and Mom does deeper cleaning such as cleaning out the refrigerator or inside the oven (whichever is grungiest!)

Children’s Chores were assigned and done on a weekly basis, and as the years went by, the girls did more and more of the household cleaning.  From the time they were little,  until they got a part-time job outside the house, the girls did as many chores per week as they were years of age.  In other words, a five year old did five chores a week (one per weekday), a ten year old did ten chores per week, etc.  Even at fifteen, three chores per weekday was not an unreasonable number.  These weekly chores included washing dishes, dusting and vacuuming, folding laundry and in their adolescent and teen years even preparing a family meal.

And finally, every afternoon before Dad got home from work we used to do a quick 15 minute clean up called Pick-Up, Put-Away.  Each girl (and I) took a room and as quickly as possible picked up and put away everything that was out of place.  Sometimes if we had a room that was really trashed, dolls and toys from one end of the family room to the other (dangerous to walk through!) then we would all work on the same room.  The sense of accomplishment is great, and it teaches your children that even small amounts of time can be put to good use.  If you do a quick pick-up-put-away every afternoon, it will work wonders towards keeping your house in order.  And it is a whole lot easier to begin school in the morning when there is no clutter in the school area!

Living the Homeschool Lifestyle means incorporating education into your everyday life, but it also means incorporating your everyday life into your education.  If you have taught your children how to learn, they will know how to find the information when they want or need to know about Abraham Lincoln.  Cleaning out the clutter allows us to not only have the order we need in our homes, but also in our time, and in our minds so that we can put first things first!  June, July and August are great months to spend getting organized!  I wish you happy summer sorting!

Time is flying by. Unfortunately, instead of it flying on the wings of an eagle, if often feels like it is racing by on the wings of a Lear Jet! When I imagine this picture in my mind, I see Chicago’s O’Hare airport full of people and full of energy. There is an ever-present hum of activity, constant movement and long lines in which to hurry up and wait. I guess that’s fine if you need to get somewhere fast (like at the beginning of a fun vacation somewhere far, far away), but it’s not the pace at which I want to live my life. Just thinking about it is exhausting!

Yet, that Lear Jet life is exactly the speed at which many homeschool families and so much of our society tends to function on a daily basis. We have fast food restaurants for drive through dinners, and even when we stay home to cook, we have microwave meals and instant rice. We live in a world of high speed internet and cell phones that we carry around in our pockets and purses so that we can have constant connections. Instead of taking the time to read books we rent the movie and call it good. (I’ve never seen a movie that measured up to its book yet!)

As young parents, we are told to cherish the time we have with our little children as it goes by way too fast, and it is true. I remember one of the first times I spoke at a church mom’s group. I cautioned the moms (many of them younger than myself) about this very thing. “We have just eighteen years in which to raise our children, and they are flying by.” Our oldest daughter Macia was nine years old at the time, and I remember saying, “Half of our time with her is gone already, and if the second nine years go by as quickly as the first, she’ll be in college before we know it.” After I was done speaking the pastor’s wife came up to me and said, “I hate to tell you this, but the second nine years will go by twice as fast as the first nine years did,” and she was right.

It seems like just last week when I was giving that talk, but Macia is now 23 years old and has already graduated from college! Time flies. We can’t stop our children from growing up, and we really don’t want to, but we can determine the pace at which we choose to live our lives. When I think of time flying by, I prefer to picture it on the wings of an eagle, soaring majestically from tree top to tree top, never growing weary or faint, in other words, never experiencing exhaustion and burn out due to the busyness of life. I know that the Lord isn’t talking about time when he paints the picture of an eagle in Psalm 40; He is talking about us, those that hope In the Lord. Scripture also tells us,

“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day,” 2 Peter 3:8 (NIV).

God isn’t worried about time flying by. He has all the time in the world, and in reality, if we are His, so do we. So, why are we always in such a rush?

As we come to May, the final month in the traditional school year, I know there are homeschoolers out there feeling stress to hurry up and finish. (I know because I’ve been there.) And there are also many homeschoolers who have just resigned themselves to schooling through the summer to get finished. Year round homeschooling is a common homeschool lifestyle choice. It does, however, need to be a choice and not the byproduct of a too busy life.

As the traditional school years comes to a close, no matter where you are in your curriculum, consider switching gears and slowing down for the summer. If you’re Living the Homeschool Lifestyle the learning won’t stop. You can study the dune grasses of Lake Michigan or learn about birds at the PJ Hoffmaster State Park nature center. (Both of these can be logged as biology.) You can join the library’s summer reading program and take the time to enjoy great books that might not be on your curriculum reading list. A math lesson done just once a week will keep your student from forgetting what he’s learned this year. Or you can do what we did. Put the math book on the shelf for the summer; it will still be there come fall. Then, back up a chapter (6 to 8 lessons if you are using Saxon Math) and pick up learning where you left off. Your student will retain more math lessons using one of these methods than if you push through to quickly finish no matter how long it takes.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV)

Winter, spring, summer, fall; life happens in seasons. Infant, toddler, child, teen; take the time to savor each season. The transition from one season to the next will flow so much more smoothly, as will your ability to embrace and enjoy each new season. Time flies. It’s your choice whether it’s on a Lear jet or on the wings of an eagle.