-by Mimi Rothschild

As autumn comes on, we love to get outdoors into the crisp fall air! You don’t have to choose between study and fresh air when you take some learning scavenger hunts to support your studies.

Just give your students paper and writing implements, maybe a digital camera or a sketch book, and a list of things to hunt for. Have a great walk, and come home with a lot of teaching points for the rest of the day.

Signs of Fall
• Birds flying south for the winter – monarch butterflies, too.
• Color in the leaves of trees and shrubs.
• Seed pods on the ground, sticking to your socks, and floating in the air (collect them and make a lapbook or labeled display).
• Chipmunks chattering.
• Ripening fruits: grapes, pumpkins, apples, more.
• Blooming flowers: Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemum, and bittersweet.
• Cooler temperatures at night.
• Morning mists.
• Pine cones fallen on the ground, along with some nibbled acorns and nuts.
• Yellowjackets getting busy.

Architecture Walk
• A-frame
• Arch
• Casement window (a window that opens by swinging out, not sliding up)
• Columns
• Dutch door (a door divided in half, so the halves open separately)
• Eaves
• Gables
• Keystone
• Mullions (the vertical piece between windows)
• Oriel (a box-like window that sticks out from the wall)
• Shutters

Alphabet Walk
• Try to find an example of every letter before getting home.
• Decide whether you’ll include “accidental letters” – the half-circle gate that looks like a C or the O-shaped manhole cover.

You can take scavenger hunt walks at any time of year, but the fall is a particularly nice time to do it.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

If the leaves are turning color where you live, you can make use of them in your homeschool lessons. Here are some fun ideas:

• Press leaves. Just find an assortment of fall leaves and put them carefully between the pages of an old phonebook or another book you won’t need to read for a while. Lay the book flat in a dry place and set a couple more heavy books on top of it. When you return in a few weeks, you’ll have perfectly pressed leaves for your scrapbook. Label them to make a leaf identification book or leaf collection. See how many different leaves you can find in your neighborhood!
• Preserve leaves. You can buy glycerin at the drugstore. Collect freshly fallen leaves and set them into glycerin just as you would put flowers into water. Soon you’ll have beautifully preserved leaves for plant study, or for household decorating. Spraying leaves with hairspray doesn’t work quite as well, but it’ll do if you don’t have access to glycerin.
• Wax leaves. Old fashioned waxed paper makes great leaf art. Put leaves between two sheets and carefully iron them together at low heat. You can make many different designs, from simple single leaves to complicated pictures built up from leaves, and then fix the leaves in place by this method.
• Rub leaves. Put leaves down on a flat surface so that the veins show. Lay a sheet of paper over the leaf and gently rub with the flat side of a crayon or with a pencil. You’ll have a fine textured tracing.
• Pound leaves. Put leaves between pieces of white cotton (a pillowcase is perfect). Take your cloth and leaf sandwich out to the sidewalk or patio and carefully but thoroughly hammer the cloth everywhere there are leaves. The leaves will make neat patterns on the cloth. Iron them to set the color. Some leaves work better than others. Try different kinds, keep track of your results, and you have a good science experiment, too.
• Bleach leaves. Arrange leaves on the front of colored T-shirts. Put a fairly strong solution of bleach into a spray bottle and spray on the leaves and shirt. An adult should do this part, with care. You’ll be surprised by the colors that appear!

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

By Mimi Rothschild, Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of online Christian programs for homeschoolers.

It is the first day of the new homeschool year. The homeschooling parent studies the faces before her. How shall she guides these children who look to her to open the way of life to them? Her eagerness to help them, her Christian purposes, her knowledge of the Bible necessary as they are are not enough for all that must be done. Children have basic needs. Children need to know that God invites them to enter into a deep personal relationship with him. They need to understand that through repentance and trust naming claim God’s forgiveness and help because he is promised these. Just when the child’s realization of his need for God will come the teacher cannot know. His confidence must rest upon his knowledge that God is the initiator, but his spirit is already seeking after each member of the homeschool group, continually active, continually present in human life.

God, in winning the children for Christ’s. So the homeschooling teacher counts herself a humble coworker with God in winning her children were cries. In order to be effective in soul winning, the homeschooling parent must know these children if she is to win their confidence in each one to become the best that he or she can be. As Emmett A. that’s says, we must learn our children before we can teach them. This is double the true leaders value individual personality and refuse to accept an assembly line ideal as their goal for children’s progress towards Christ likeness of the homeschooling teacher must learn to know her children by every means at her command. She must know what they are like, how they learn and what can be expected of them individually. She must discover their strong points, while not overlooking their weak ones. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways by which an adult leader may be calm, acquainted with her homeschooled children.

Undoubtedly, the people who know the children best, are his parents. Not only has the mother given birth to him, but she has lived with him in closest in Tennessee for all of his life. The parent knows the state of the child’s health, is present stage and rate of growth, what era tapes or embarrasses him, whether or not he reads easily, who are his friends, and if he is over six, but his academic achievements are thus far. The importance of this information is obvious to every homeschooling parent.

Other issues that a homeschooling parent should consider when teaching her children are things like how many and what sort of adults. Does he have to adjust. Is the child lost among many brothers and sisters? Is he a pampered only child or an overburdened oldest child? Is he the only boy among many sisters? Is she the only girl among many brothers? What is his relationship to his siblings like, whether his responses and reactions to others in the family? All these matters are important if the homeschooling parent is to help the individual child to grow

Every homeschooling teacher has a purpose. His or her purpose may be stated in many ways, but however they differ, the goals of Christian homeschooling are almost always centered around bringing our children to a closer relationship with the Lord and a better understanding of His creation. Teachers will be found to have one desire and one goal in common. Each desires to see the children in his or her care developed into a loyal, affected Christians, and each purpose is to guide their child through his throws in that direction. How that dieting will be done, what materials and methods will be used, depends on the wisdom, experience and knowledge of the child nature which the individual homeschooling teacher learns.

Homeschooling programs should have both long-term and short-term goals. The thoughtful homeschooling parent always keeps in mind that Christlike character is one of the primary purposes of the program. Most parents know that Christlike character does not come all at once, but that it is always a matter of slow growth. Homeschooling parents want children in their programs to be interested, engaged and happy while they are learning and growing.

All this means that the homeschooling teachers concerned not only with the kind of man that Terri will be calm, but with what is happening to Terri now. Bus, his purpose includes both a long-term goal of building a Christlike character, and the immediate objective, which may be to beat Kerry to share his new football with the boy next door. The teacher keeps in mind the ultimate goal, which is to help Terri become a Christian citizen will act and react in his homeschool, and in his church, in his community as one who is truly a believer. Parents also want their children to meet the tests of life now, on his present level of development. So sometimes the near and far goldens merge and become one. There are many experiences and opportunities which are homeschooling children need now. With the ultimate goal in mind, the homeschooling teacher plans for her children so that each experience, each opportunity is a step towards that goal. Children need to know that what Jesus said about worshiping God in spirit and in truth, and to discover what this means for a 10-year-old 15 and even a three year old. You must find ways of helping his brother, which will not humiliate him what make it difficult for him to help himself. He must learn the difference between giving and sharing. Through such experiences our homeschool students can grow in sympathy and in understanding.

In all of our planning for our children’s educational christian homeschool programs, we must use our utmost wisdom, and all the knowledge we can gain about the nature and needs of our children. We must strive to give the children many successful experiences in Christian living. Of course, we also realize that none of us grow steadily toward perfection. We all stumble at times and fall: Nice skin and then we need to repent and ask forgiveness which God grants us freely through Christ. It is at such times that we need the guidance of loving and understanding parents and friends, especially while we are still image were in our attempts to live as followers of Christ. The homeschooling parent may sometimes feel inadequate, but we can always remember that we are workers for God and that God’s grace will supply all of our human needs.

“When will I be big enough to go to college like all these boys?” This used to be the favorite question of our seven year old as the father and son walked together through the campus of the University or the father was employed. Although he was thinking of “big” from the standpoint of chronological age, his questions got us thinking about the questions which many homeschooling parents ponder at times. When will my child, be prepared for making his own contribution to the larger society of which he is a part? When will he be mature enough to make his own choices and decisions? Will he develop the degree of self reliance and independence, which all successful adults require?

The problem of the child’s readiness for taking his or her place in the adult world, when that day comes, is pushed into the distant future, as parents untangle their homeschool children from the immediate problems of the day. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” They gasp, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Actually, these parents are crossing now, the bridge of the child’s adjustment in later years. What that far off day holds is being determined now by the way parents help the child learn to adjust day, by the maturity parents help them to achieve with the passing years, by the attitudes which he is developing day by day.

Maturity is a possession which none of us can dispel upon our children: the most that we can do is provide them with the experience is and relationships which will enable them to claim this precious possession for themselves. Doing this is one of our biggest tasks as parents. If our homeschooling children are able to cope with the vicciisitudes which life inevitably brings, the personal characteristics which make them so will be the result of guidance given, usually by parents, through the years of their childhood. A wise professor once said, if the early years of life are of such importance for personality development, it follows that the family occupies a commanding position in the field, since the child’s earliest and most profound experiences are with his family. Parents must be concerned with affording the child the opportunities for growth toward maturity during his early years, so that the anticipated adventure of being on his own will be another stage in his development rather than a frustrating and disappointing experience.

How big will our children be when they grow up? Will they have what it takes to measure up to the demands of life? Well, the future of our children is in our hands as parents, for we are entrusted with their training to our relationships with them day by day, right in our own homes: through the attitudes we communicate to them: through helping them to understand a person must learn to trust other people: through helping them to discover their own unique abilities and to trust in their own worth: to helping them to understand that the golden rule is of little use, unless they realize that the next move is bears: through enabling them to learn through experience that the world is a looking glass, which gives back to every man the reflection of his own attitudes.

The strains and tensions of modern life require that our children develop healthy personalities. If our children are to be able to withstand the pressures that are sure to come in later life, the foundation stone of this healthy personality is maturity, which consists of faith in God, devotion to Christian principles, trusting one’s self, and in life as a whole, and independence and reliance on the Lord in thought and action.

Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.

Arguments were heard this week in a California district court case to determine whether the California state university system can dictate that private Christian schools or homeschoolers must teach from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks in order for the credits from those courses to be counted towards admission.

Christians and all of those who believe in the consitutional principal of religious freedom will suffer a major setback if U.S. District Judge S. James Otero rules that it is legal for the University of California institutions to reject high school credits for courses that are Biblically based. Judge Otero’s ruling is expected soon. If the ruling is unsconstituional, it will be appealed.

The University of California system adopted a policy in May, 2007 that dictates that courses based on the major Christian book publishers, such as The Bob Jones Univerisity Press, A Beka Book and Alpha Omega Publications, do not qualify as a core admission requirement due to the fact that those courses are taught from a Christian perspective.

The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents schools serving more than 1.1 million students worldwide brought a civil action against Robert Dynes, the President of the University of California accusing President Dynes of unconstiutional and discriminatory policies that trample upon upon some of the most sacred principles of the American people, specifically the right to religious freedom.

Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that the university’s discriminatory policy creates an ultimatum for Christian schools. “If you want courses to be approved in private education, so your students are qualified to attend (UC) institutions, you must teach from a secular point of view,” he said.

“We believe that UC’s discrimination is clearly unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment, because UC is attempting to secularize Christian schools,” Tyler said.

Mimi Rothschild, CEO if Learning By Grace, Inc. the leading provider of online Christian educational programs, commented “If Judge Otero upholds Robert Dynes and the UC system’s clearly discriminatory and illegal practices, the implications to Christians and to the principle of religious freedom could be catastrophic.”

Rothschild said “It would essentially be allowing the government to tell us that to qualify for admission to a university, we must eradicate God from our high school teaching. This is beyond unacceptable.”

Rothschild implores Christians to speak out against this affront to their beliefs and their freedoms, “Please send me an email telling me how you feel about this issue at mrothschild@learningbygrace.org. I will include it in a filing to the court so that His Honor will know that the freedom to practice one’s beliefs and teach them to our children is sacred. Judge Otero must know that Christians will not tolerate being deprived of that right.”

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS
Academia to high schools: No God allowed
State rejects Christian education as valid for university admissions

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Posted: July 19, 2008
12:00 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks.

As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn’t qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives.

Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that the university’s discriminatory policy creates an ultimatum for Christian schools. “If you want courses to be approved in private education, so your students are qualified to attend (UC) institutions, you must teach from a secular point of view,” he said.

“Christian schools will have to decide: teach from a Christian worldview and eliminate your student’s ability to attend a UC school, or teach from a secular worldview, so that the kids can enter the UC school system,” he explained.

“Essentially what’s happening is the UC has to pre-approve courses taught in high school,” Tyler said. “It’s pretty shocking, because in depositions UC reps made it clear: whether it be English, history or science, the addition of a religious viewpoint makes it unacceptable.”

Tyler also told WND that though a decision from Federal District Court Judge Otero is expected in the next two to three weeks, he fully expects the case to be appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and perhaps even the U.S. Supreme Court, since both sides are firmly entrenched and likely to appeal if Otero decides against them.

“We believe that UC’s discrimination is clearly unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment, because UC is attempting to secularize Christian schools,” Tyler said.

“The UC is intent upon defending some ‘right’ to discriminate unlawfully,” he said. “They seem steadfast that students will not be adequately prepared for college because a Christian worldview was added to their curriculum.

“We won’t accept that, and we’re resolved to take this to higher court if necessary.”

(Story continues below)

Under the admissions guidelines to University of California colleges, in-state students must either score in the top two to three percent on standardized tests or complete a core curriculum of approved preparatory classes (called “a-g” classes) to be deemed eligible for entrance into the state university system.

According to the lawsuit, more than 90 percent of UC students achieved eligibility by completing an approved a-g curriculum.

Under the disputed policy, however, a-g classes based on books that mention God or the Bible don’t count, effectively making a secular education a prerequisite for admission.

After reviewing textbooks from major Christian publishers Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book, UC officials deemed them insufficient, specifically because the books supplemented the basic material with a Christian perspective.

Burt Carney, an executive with the Association of Christian Schools International, said he’s met with officials for the university system, and was told that there was no problem with the actual facts in a BJU physics textbook that was disallowed.

In fact, an ACSI report said, UC officials confirmed “that if the Scripture verses that begin each chapter were removed the textbook would likely be approved …”

“Here’s the very university that talks about academic freedom,” Carney said. “It’s very discriminating. They don’t rule against Muslim or Hindu or Jewish (themes) or so forth, only those with a definite Christian theme.”

According to the lawsuit, a variety of textbooks with supplemental perspectives were accepted – just not those with a Christian perspective.

For example, “Western Civilization: The Jewish Experience” and “Issues in African History” were accepted, but “Christianity’s Influence on American History” was rejected. “Feminine Roles in Literature,” “Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Literature” and “Literature of Dissent” were accepted, but “Christianity and Morality in American Literature” was not.

Most strikingly, “Intro to Buddhism,” “Introduction to Jewish Thought,” “Women’s Studies & Feminism” and “Raza Studies” were deemed acceptable electives, but “Special Providence: American Government” was unacceptable, both as a civics and elective course.

“In other words, (UC schools) routinely approve courses which add viewpoints such as non-Christian religion, feminism, an ethnic preference, a political viewpoint, or multiculturalism, or that focus on religions such as Buddhism or Judaism, (and plaintiffs believe they should evenhandedly approve such courses), but disapprove courses which add viewpoints based on conservative Christianity,” the court filings said.

The official court documents also charge, “Methodically and ominously, (UC schools) have assumed increasingly more authority over secondary schools in California by expanding the reach and impact of requirements for students in nonpublic secondary schools to be eligible for admission to the University of California (and effectively also to the California State University system). Even without authority for and guidance in doing so, (UC schools) press onward from deciding admission guidelines to determining what viewpoints may and may not be taught in secondary school classrooms, which books may and may not be used, and what students with the same tests scores are and are not eligible for admission to the University of California.”

The ACSI, with the help of Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting religious liberty in the courts, contends the university system’s discrimination is unconstitutional on several grounds, including an unlawful intrusion and entanglement of the government in the church.

The court documents state, “Entanglement with religion results from (UC schools) and the state parsing through the viewpoints and content of Christian school instruction and texts to ferret out disapproved religious views, and intruding into the content of religious schools and texts, and doing that when there is no deficiency at all reflected in their scores or grades.”

“Every teacher teaches from a point of view,” Tyler told WND. “We all have a worldview, and if you teach from secular perspective, it’s a viewpoint.

“Our argument is that the government has to be neutral when it comes to viewpoint.”

By Mimi Rothschild
Founder & CEO, Learning By Grace, Inc.

One of the reasons why parents choose not to homeschool their children is because of the extracurricular that public schools offer like team sports, clubs, music competitions, and others. Most homeschoolers are not allowed to participate in those things because they are reserved for students who attend that particular public school system full time. So, many parents give in to the pressure and ultimately trade a better education for their children’s social life.

Certainly homeschooled children need to learn social skills, just as we all do, but parents must not let them spend the bulk of their time with others who will not be a good influence or example to them.

It has been shown that more often than not, homeschooling parents in general are very diligent about the people their children socialize with. They want more control over their children and situations with those people their children are spending their time with, so they choose to monitor their children’s friendships and relationships more closely.

When we began homeschooling our children, one of the first concerns others would convey to us was about the “extras” that our children would miss out on. We were constantly being warned that our children would be isolated and socially inept when it came time to get a job, go to college, date, or just make friends. They even called them social misfits. However, now that our kids are grown and have moved on with their lives and their own families, those same people have come to us with a different story.

Now these folks are telling us how happy, encouraging, congenial, and respectable our children are, how wonderfully they get along with people of all ages, and how proud we must be of them. One gentleman even told us he had been wrong about his statements in the past, and he apologized.

My encouragement to you is to keep your children’s academic education first and foremost, and let their social skills develop naturally through time.

Selected by Mimi Rothschild

More than 3 million enrolments in online courses in the USA are reported by American sources. The essay investigates the role of online studies within the American educational system and tries to find out more about the exact meaning of these extremely high figures. The research discovers astonishing facts and relations: Public schools offer more online courses (82%) than private schools, and 52% of all online courses are offered by 2-year colleges for the associate degrees (and only 8% for the bachelor). A majority of online courses fulfill the role as “remedial courses” that serve for “credit recovery” (U.S. department of Education).

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a department of the U.S. Department of Education, is a rich source of data on the American college system, the courses it offers, distance education and the students of America. NCES reported in the Statistical Analysis Report February 2002 “Distance Education Instruction by Postsecondary Faculty and Staff” (Ellen M. Bradburn, NCES 2000-155)(43) that the USA had an impressive 16.5 million students, of which 3.3 million enrolled in at least one online course, that 5.9 % of courses were being offered as online courses (Distance Education, DE) and that 6% of the teaching staff at colleges offered at least one DE course. This would indeed not only be a significant number of students in eLearning and of online courses but also of dedicated teachers.

In the NCES Report “Distance Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions” (2003-017) Tiffany Waits and Laurie Lewis estimate that the number of “credit-granting” distance learning courses offered at various college levels is 118,000. However 76% of these courses are designed for undergraduates. They estimate that 2,876,000 students enrolled in online courses, 82% of which are undergraduates (I will explain the meaning of ‘undergraduate’ in this context at a later point). Hans Weiler (2005)(55) who was previously a professor at Stanford University and co-founded the Viadrina University is also of the opinion that “the U.S. Distance Learning market has expanded rapidly in the last few years”. Although he advises caution “the figures should be handled with care”, he is, nonetheless, clearly impressed by their magnitude:
“But the dimensions and growth rates are striking: from 1997-98 to 2000-01 the number of students taking DE courses more than doubled to 2.8 million; almost all public colleges (97 %) now offer at least part of their courses online; in 2004 approximately 3 million students availed of some part of this service, 600,000 for their complete course of study”.

In their report “Entering the Mainstream: The quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004″, carried out for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman reported that 1,602,970 students took at least one online course in 2002 and 1,971,397 in 2003. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) which is part of the Department of Education has published projections which forecast a tremendous increase of up to 20% in the number of students by the year 2013. This figure is sure to frighten many European education policy-makers involved in tertiary education.