-by Mimi Rothschild
Most households have a digital camera nowadays, in our phones if nowhere else. We don’t have to worry about wasting film, having pictures developed, or any of the other complexities of traditional cameras. So let’s make best use of these handy tools for homeschool learning!
These are just ten of the ways you can use your camera to liven up lessons. Once you start, many more will occur to you. I suggest joining (free) www.gloryLane.com where you can create a personal family profile and upload your photos to share with other members of this Online Christian Community.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.
-by Mimi Rothschild
Do you study in units? Do you have separate subjects at different times of the day? Do you get together with other families for special learning projects? There are many ways to organize the school day, and being able to make it just right for your particular students is one of the best reasons to homeschool.
Yet all these approaches can lead to a lack of integration of studies. Do your students end up with the idea that Ancient Egypt happened, and then, when it was all finished, along came Ancient Greece? Do you feel frustrated sometimes when your students don’t make connections that seem obvious to you? Do you love to follow the kids’ lead when they’re excited about a subject, but worry that your studies are too fragmented and might have gaps?
Timelines can help with all these problems, and many more. If you make a schoolroom timeline, you can add any lessons to that timeline in minutes, helping your kids to see the context, regardless of the subject area.
The time when a person lived, a nation was established, a picture was painted, a scientific discovery was made, a natural disaster took place – all these things can be marked on the timeline, giving you opportunities to put new information in context and review previously learned information as well.
You need to begin with a line. A long strand of string or yarn, a stretch of painter’s tape, or a banner of paper are all practical options. If possible, put your timeline on the wall of the room where you study so it’ll always be available. If this just won’t work with your decor, think about using an accordion fold or roll of paper so it can be stretched out and viewed all at once.
Now here’s your chance to integrate math and history. Calculate how long your timeline will be and how many years it will cover. Now, calculate how best to divide it: one inch per year is one option, but you might prefer to use one foot per decade or one yard for each century. Since these decisions depend on the space available, the length of time you’ve decided to include, and the number of events you want to be able to mark, this can be a terrific opportunity to practice problem solving and working well together.
Actually constructing the timeline will require measurement and more calculation. Mark and write in the basic time divisions neatly. This can be a chance for computer practice, if you want to print out the dates, or it can be an art or handwriting project.
Now, each time a date comes up in your studies, add it to the classroom timeline. You might want to start with some special family dates: the birthdays of all the kids, for example. Then, when you read about a person or place or thing or event, find its spot on the timeline.
You can use labels, strips of paper, lengths of yarn radiating out from the date points, or index cards lined up along the timeline. Add drawings, quotations, and even small objects. Soon, visitors to your home will be admiring your handiwork – and your students will really understand the relationship between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.
-by Mimi Rothschild
Valentine’s Day is a light-hearted holiday, a time for thinking about the people we love. Bring some hearty fun into your homeschool lessons with these ideas:
• Take leftover candy canes from Christmas (don’t we all have a few squirreled away still?) and make easy heart candies. Put parchment paper or foil onto a cookie sheet. Lay the candy canes in pairs with the curved hooks at the top and both ends touching to form hearts. Bake them in a 200 degree oven for about five minutes, just till they melt together. Let them cool before removing from the parchment paper or foil.
• Fold construction paper in half and cut hearts, discussing basic shapes or symmetry while you do so. Cut lots in different sizes, and lay them out on paper to form bodies, heads, hands, feet, and other parts of people or animals. Draw in details for your heart creatures.
• Study heart health. Learn about heart rates, heart-healthy foods, and how the heart works. Older students can check the details on the rates of heart disease in our nation, combining math and science in a sobering lesson. Move on to plan healthy meals for the family, and an exercise plan with the recommended amount of cardiovascular exercise for the week.
• Send valentines to friends and family, using the lesson as an opportunity to practice handwriting, letter writing, or poetry, depending on the ages of your students. Free ecards are an environmentally responsible possibility, but real physical mail is getting so rare that sending a card in an envelope can be an exciting event for the recipient.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.
-by Mimi Rothschild
Fashions in education come and go. As homeschoolers, we can usually ignore them. One of the areas that comes up repeatedly in different guises, though, is the question of critical thinking skills.
One year the pendulum swings so far that educators are saying, “It doesn’t matter what they learn, only that they learn how to learn.” The next, it’s back to the basics, with rote memorization of facts at the center of teaching. Then we’re back to critical thinking, but calling it “problem-solving.”
The latest version of this debate is being called “21st Century Skills,” and some educators are hailing it as the most important new thing on the horizon. Critical thinking, creativity, problem identification, and the ability to work with others to solve problems are all part of this new constellation of skills that we’re told has arisen from new technologies and new ways of approaching the world.
As homeschoolers, we aren’t bound by educational fashions, so we can see that there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
James 1:5 tells us, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him.” The source of wisdom is, and always has been, God, who created us with the ability to reason. The book of Proverbs talks often about critical thinking: “A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps.” (Proverbs 14:15) “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” (Proverbs 19:2)
Critical thinking means that we read and listen carefully, making sure to understand and search for evidence for the claims made. We must be able to dissect the reasoning behind an argument and judge its validity. We should think creatively, since we are made in the image of the Creator God, and have the God-given the ability to think and to delight in new thoughts.
As for working collaboratively with others, we have the example of Jesus before us, as well as the word of God on the subject: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:13-18)
So how can we help our students to gain the ability to learn, understand, reason clearly, and yet also to work with others to solve problems peaceably?
Read together, and use questions like these to guide your children toward wisdom:
Approach problems, such as puzzles, complex math questions, and practical challenges, with a spirit of inquiry. Questions like these will help lead your kids to take a critical thinker’s approach to problem-solving:
Finally, we should make sure that we don’t confuse critical thinking with a rebellious spirit. “Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you,” says Proverbs 32:9. Our God-given understanding allows us to delight in learning about God’s ways, not to refuse the wisdom of God’s word.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.
-by Mimi Rothschild
Probably most of us have had days when we think it might be better for us as homeschooling parents if we just had a set of twins. Then we could do one lesson for all our kids, instead of hopping back and forth from one to another.
On most days, though, we realize that it’s a blessing to have all the different ages together. Mixing up the ages helps our kids have the natural socialization of the family instead of being segregated into age groups. It gives the younger children the opportunity to look up to the older ones, and it gives the older children the chance to show care and tenderness for the younger ones. It lets children see how far they’ve come in their skills and learning, and look forward to where they’re going.
Can we have all those blessings without exhausting ourselves? We can, with a little planning. Here are some tips for homeschooling when you have a range of ages in the family:
Dovetail the work.
Work with the younger children while the older ones work on their own, and then settle the younger ones with play or a project while you check in with the older ones. It’s a sensible approach, but we have to plan ahead in order to accomplish it. Otherwise, we find ourselves getting one child started while the others wait, then starting the next one, and then the next one – and finding that the first child needs us again before we have the last one settled into work. This is a recipe for feeling frazzled by the end of the day!
As long as we get each child’s first activity of the day organized and set out before the day begins, we will be able to start everyone at once, with only one activity at a time needing us.
Get the older children involved.
Older siblings’ reading skills can benefit from the chance to read to the younger children. A six year old can cement his understanding of counting by explaining it to a five year old. A teenager learns from helping younger siblings plan and produce a play on the subject they’re studying.
Again, it takes planning to make sure the older child’s involvement in the younger ones’ lessons fits into the older child’s lessons, too. It helps to list an objective for each of the lessons. When our seven year old reads a story to the three year old, the three year old is practicing listening and the seven year old is practicing reading aloud. It will be a cherished memory for both of them.
Take time for yourself.
With all the planning and thought this requires, you need to be sure to build time for yourself into the day. The kids’ reading time could be your recreational reading time. Their time with online lessons could be your quiet prayer time. Nap time for the children should be nap time for you, too, and the kids who are too old to nap can spend that time in quiet play.
Once our family was driving to the nearby botanical gardens for a visit to support our lessons on plants. As we drove, we were talking about the history lesson the older children were working on: the Renaissance. In a break in the conversation, our baby spoke up: “Ty-renaissance rex,” he said confidently.
We all laughed. We figured he had put together snippets he’d heard from our study of dinosaurs with the history discussion he was listening to, and made up his own new word.
Over the years, we’ve seen how the younger kids’ enjoyment of family lessons has made it easier for them when they get ready to study, and encouraged the closeness of our whole family. It can be hard, but it’s certainly worth it.
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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.