Being a parent of a non-homeschooled child, you are probably busy and think you don’t have time (or energy) to do more where your child’s education is concerned. But your child can benefit from some of small ways home educators (especially BPA educators) approach education. Delegating your child’s education to a school does not absolve you of your responsibility to be your child’s most important teacher. Here are a few easy ways you can take more leadership of your child’s education.

Be involved in their education. Check homework, ask questions about lectures. Offer more than the school is offering. Go beyond, even if it’s only small things like checking out an extra book from the library on the topic.

Make your whole lives about learning. No one only learns in certain locations or during certain hours. Make your home a haven of learning. Set up a science center and/or a reading corner related to what they are learning. Cooking, laundry and chores are also times to learn math, science and life skills. Thinking about these simple tasks in a new way can open up a new avenue to connect with your child educationally. Bringing Biblical principles into the subject (like science)  brings life to learning that will inspire for life in a gentle way.

Read aloud–and read a lot. Mealtimes and car rides are great times to squeeze in extra literary goodness. Offer your child a reading list, especially in the summer. Add to the list your child’s teacher gives and if your child has a choice of books to read, offer a literary classic, a “living book.” (see some of my previous posts on literature.)

Learn alongside your children. Ask them questions and allow them to teach you something. Dig in and learn beyond the homework, which is probably fill in the blank or one word answers. Take a topic and together see what you can learn that s not fact-oriented.

Look for ways to incorporate their learning styles. Homework is a good time to let your child embrace their learning style. Making up songs to study for a test, walking and learning, drawing and doodling can all be done during homework time and help your child get more out of their homework.

Embrace individuality. As long as they are following the teacher’s instructions, why not let your child use colored paper, write with a colored pen, use a cool computer font or anything else that will help your child take ownership of their own learning. Help them make projects their own, not just something they were told to complete. Encourage creative expression every chance you can.

Take field trips. Weekends are for enjoying. Make them fun AND educational. Zoos, museums, aquariums, fire houses all make fun family outings that create memories and offer learning at the same time.

What suggestions do you have?

We often hear about how homeschooling is best for the student. Home education is also great for the mother-teacher as well. Here are just a few of the ways:

time with your children
In my opinion this can’t be oversold. Time with your children should be something you desire to find more of. This seems to be the reason many parents choose not to homeschool–they will have to be with their children all day. I have never understood that sentiment. If that’s the only reason you don’t try homeschooling then let me encourage you to rethink this idea.

you are always learning
Home educating parents are always in school themselves. Learning and exploring alongside your children is one of the greatest homeschool joys, I believe. You don’t have to know it all right now. Taking time to learn together is a wonderful way to bond as a family.

forging relationships
Meeting and praying with other parent-educators forms a strong bond. Finding like-minded parents and children is an important factor in the success of home educating families. It is really difficult to “go it alone,” and with the internet it’s now easier than ever to connect and create life-long friends.

building confidence
Home educating parents are constantly setting goals (and hopefully seeing them through). Looking back over a year, or a semester, is rewarding. You can see how far the homeschool students have come and where you need to go next. Accomplishments such as teaching a child to read are methodical milestones a parent can look back on with pride. This builds confidence that bleeds over into every area of life.

ensuring your desires for your children’s education are met
There is no competing worldview or opposing force vying for your child’s heart and mind. Also you are able to focus like a laser on what you think is important for them to learn. You can also be sure you deal with challenges and giftings as needed.

If you could write this list, what would you add?

Ann has a splendid tradition of naming each new year. Last year I started that little exercise as well. You can read about that word here.

This year I have been carefully searching for the perfect moniker for 2012. It’s not an easy task, to be sure. Something about the process seems weighty and significant and it’s easy to become paralyzed as the word lies just out of reach.

Last year lives up to it’s name. I expect this year to as well. My word for this year is

Salient.

Salient–standing out conspicuously : prominent; especially : of notable significance

It is my aim this year to focus on the salient in my life, to always pay closest attention to the things that are most important and significant. It’s not easy to do in this world where everything—even the trivial—seems urgent and important.  I pray God will help me filter the salient in my life and place it prominently before me.

By shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.                       Romans 3:31 The Message

Two days until we start our new school year! I am peacefully happy about how this is working out for us. In our homeschool we follow the calendar of the private school my daughters attend. They start on Thursday, so guess what. So do we.

My 7yo son has bugged me since Christmas break to homeschool him again. Once we decided to do just that he has never looked back. He hasn’t wavered or questioned his choice once, even when we registered the girls for school and went shopping for school supplies. I am so impressed with his quiet confidence in his choice.

Unlike him, I spend too much time rehashing and questioning and second guessing most every important choice I make. I don’t just let the decision hang out there, small and vulnerable. After I toss it out I quickly reel it back in, clutching it,  frantically searching for any perceived flaw. Upon closer inspection I deem it unworthy and toss it onto the heap with the rest of the changed decisions. Then I make another decision and start the process over again.

Those little decisions never reach maturity. They never see the light of day. I hang onto the familiar, even when it’s not in my (or my family’s) best interest. I pray Jack’s unknowing example will help me be braver as the months go on and that some of my wee decisions will have the chance to turn into great things.

Let your “Yes,” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No…” James 5:12 NKJV

This is another fantastic post from SisterLisa. This is a great topic that I am glad she has addressed. It’s easy to get your life out of balance but she gives you practical advice I really appreciate.

Many moms of faith have very busy schedules at home and it has limited their opportunities to reach out to minister in their own towns, but can reach out to minister to their online communities quite effectively. In this day of a growing awareness of the incredible need for powerful moms to be at home to raise and educate their children, we see an ever increasing need to minister to one another online.

We were once a part of a church that emphasized outreach in their ministry, but our lives were so busy that we couldn’t fit everything in to our schedule. It grieved us to hear the leadership was not in support of online ministry, but we continued nonetheless. However, even with online ministry we need to find a healthy way to balance our online ministries and our home. Sometimes we can be physically at home full time, but not mentally or spiritually.

There have been countless times in the past when I have been off balance. Those times when I am consumed with in- depth thought as I type out an article, I have been oblivious to the kids saying, “Mom? Mom! LISA!” and all of a sudden I am snapped into reality by my own children who wondered ‘where I was’ even though I was sitting right in front of them.

I am thankful that my husband and family have been supportive of my blogging and that they see the need for my online time to be a vehicle for me to express my faith and minister to others, but we have to re-evaluate my time and each week is adjusted as needed, because life has its way of throwing curve balls.

These are just a few things I take into consideration for balancing my home and online time for faith.

A blog post has lasting influence. The beauty of writing a powerful faith provoking article can have insurmountable opportunities to minister to millions of people all over the world, whereas ministering in town has limited reach. I’m not intending to minimize ministering in town, for the words you speak to a broken mama at the nursery counter can positively affect her faith for years to come. The love you show people in your town can lead them to healing. However, when you’re blogging your faith effectively, those words remain online for many to read and be fed through. Don’t underestimate your online time to minister to others.

Set aside a block of time to write uninterrupted. I have Sundays set aside for my uninterrupted time. My family knows that Sunday is my day to write several blog posts that will minister to my readers and online friends. Just as I would not interrupt my husband ministering in real time to a homeless man, they do not interrupt my writing.Family still comes first. Even though I want my family to respect my writing day, I will pause as necessary to minister to them as well. Thankfully, my husband is home on Sundays and takes care of things on that day for me, but I’m still a mom who has kids with needs. Moms can be a little lighthouse for our families and keeping a good schedule can be a lantern.

Prepare for your writing day in advance. If you don’t want to cook a large meal on your writing day, prepare something the day before. You can make a larger meal earlier in the week and save it for your writing day. We often have fajita leftovers or chicken in the slow cooker.

Take breaks. This isn’t always the easiest thing for me since I love writing, but we need to take breaks from the computer and re-enter the realm of the home. Not only do we need to be mentally home for the kids, but we need to make time for our husbands too.

Schedule your commenting on blogs and other forum conversations. The online community is filled with people from all different time zones and we can easily get sucked into the computer screen at any time day or night. They aren’t going to ‘fall’ if we aren’t online to answer their questions. We aren’t the Holy Spirit. Even if there was such a thing as a curfew where the internet can’t be accessed worldwide, people would still live life and be able to walk by faith without us.

Remain humble. A mom who has left the realm of humility and put herself on a pedestal of pride can destroy a family and her online ministry. Be willing to listen to your family asking you to step away from the computer for family time and don’t assume that you have all the answers for everyone online. It’s perfectly acceptable to downsize ministry to take care of the family first.

So we are counting down the days until we get back into the school swing. My two oldest attend our church’s private school and I am teaching the younger two at home. I have a preschooler and a 2nd grader. Here’s what the big picture looks like for this school year.

• Bible/reading: NP 2nd grade lessons Bible as Reader
• History: MWOG
• Literature, geography, science: NP 2nd grade lessons
• English: Rod and Staff
• Art: NPCG Art, with supplemental materials
• Math: Making Math Meaningful

Almost everything here is planned for me. Because I work full time and attend school myself, I can’t get into a lot of lesson planning from scratch. This is a very workable plan for us. It keeps us in the BPA but not overwhelmed with creating my own plans.In the near future I will go into a bit more detail about what we are going to do.

My sons and I can hardly wait for the new school year! I know God has good things in store for us.

The internet has a funny way of making with world smaller. It also has a way of opening doors to connect with people you would otherwise never meet. SisterLisa has become just such a friend. We are doing a bit of a blog cross pollination. Here’s her post.

It took me just over a year to shake the strict standardized style of education when I brought my kids home. Our homeschool days seemed so sterile, cold, rigid, and bland. I needed to draw out the adventure, intrigue, and exploratory imaginations of my children and the itemized memorization of facts wasn’t a success. How were we going to break out of the mold, how could I get the minds of my children off the conveyor belt of dictation, and how could I restore the youthful crusade for adventure they had before kindergarten?

I decided I would have to break the mold and halt all stagnant studying that was putting my kids into a slumber. I had to wake them up! Sometimes education can become so mundane that we get lulled into an almost hypnotic trance of numbness. We needed a spark, a jolt of excitement. I needed to go for the shock factor. So we put down the schedule and headed up to the hills to go for a hike.

What? No school today? Was this spur of the moment field trip mom’s fancy way of saying she hadn’t carefully scheduled out the lesson plans for the week? They were apprehensive about what I was doing, then again so was I. They sense that in us. They knew I was trying to fly by the seat of my pants that day and somehow it made them all a bit nervous, wondering what I was up to. I think we all had those inner butterflies and wondering if we would get in trouble for this. No classroom, no textbooks, no schedule. What was I thinking?

We packed up the water bottles and snacks, grabbed the sunblock and tied up our shoe laces. We were going to brave the outdoors as our classroom that day, we were facing what it meant to be organic homeschoolers. We needed to get out of the house and head out for some sunshine!

As we hiked up the small mountain before us, my son noticed an odd looking rock at the top and recognized it from a previous trail excursion with daddy. “Mom, look! It’s Monkey Face Mountain!” Such an odd name for a rock, but that’s just what it was, a rock formation that looked like a monkey face. It was my first opportunity that day to spontaneously teach some history about the city we live in. My oldest daughter joined the conversation as she shared about a report she once wrote about the woman who founded the city alongside her husband. General Bidwell and his wife Annie created a heritage for our town. This was the very park that she donated to the city in her will and we began discussing the importance of respecting the legacy she left us with and why it was important to her that we keep the park clean and as natural as possible.

{photo credit Sisterlisa at Pix-O-Sphere}

The conversation turned toward recycling and how the homeless helped to keep the park tidy as they collected any cans left by irresponsible hikers. When we finally reached the top, we could see the whole city beautifully garnished in green trees for as far as we could see. The history lesson continued on as I explained how Annie Bidwell and her husband imported trees from all over the world into the town and how our town has the nickname of The City of Trees. Then, right before my eyes and ears, I heard the most amazing thing as we sat on that mountain. Their imaginations began to flow again as they embarked on an imaginative adventure of day dreaming about walking trees and monkey mountain coming to life to join the adventure with us. The day of spontaneous learning had finally sparked and together we broke the mold of traditional learning.

We had so much fun that day and as we hiked down the mountain we planned to head straight to the library to find books about environmentalism, the history of our city, and social studies about how to be a community. My older two girls went straight for the library’s computer to look for books while I directed my younger two to the children’s section. We found an array of books on these topics for all their ages and turned the day into a vast unit study that the whole family could enjoy together. This was the kind of organic living that my heart desired for so long. This is what has helped to instill in my children a heart for this beautiful planet they live on. This was just the beginning of my daughter’s passion to speak up when rain forests are being destroyed unnecessarily.

Something new was birthed in my children that day, a charity of the heart for this home away from home. A new passion for living in the kingdom while still on earth, a passion to learn how to be a participating member of the Kingdom, a passion to be charitable, a reason to live and to learn how to bring the Kingdom to earth and how to care for the earth.

This was how we broke out of the box. It was a leap of faith to follow my heart, trusting in God to guide us that day, living in the spontaneous moment that only homeschooling could afford us. It is with much excitement that I share with you what gave us a new birth experience with our homeschooling.

1. Homeschool by faith: Lesson plans and schedules are great and needful, but spontaneous learning can happen anywhere.
2. Fear not: Don’t be afraid to follow the guidance of your heavenly Father in your homeschool.
3. Listen to your heart: He gives us the desires of our hearts and it is safe to listen within. The Spirit will teach you all things and bring to remembrance the things He has taught you.
4. Use your imagination: If we want our children to tap into imaginative learning, we must do so by example.
5. Be willing to use a variety of books: It’s ok to grab an elementary age book with beautiful illustrations to break open the imagination of your older children. Allow the whole family to participate in the learning adventure with many resources on the subjects you’re introducing to them.

Do you have any additional thoughts to spark the imaginations in homeschooled children?

Sisterlisa blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a Contributing Team Member at The Homeschool Post. Other articles that might spark some imagination for your homeschool:
Homeschool Fun with Google Maps
God’s Curriculum
Eliminiate Distractions

It was in a nursing theory class a couple of weeks ago. It was another in a long line of Power Point presentations on theorists and their ideas. (I know, you probably had no idea nursing even had theories. Just stay with me.) We were discussing a particularly weird interesting theorist when the words popped up on the screen.

Human Becoming Theory

Hmmmmm. Not human being, human becoming. It took a moment for it to sink in. Her idea is that we are all growing, so becoming is a better word choice than being. I am quick to acknowledge that not everyone is growing, especially spiritually. But hopefully most of us are.

There wasn’t much I agreed with in her theory, but this is something I can really embrace. I like to think of meeting other people as a snapshot. People are a movie but all we get is a snapshot. If I see someone who’s not agreeable I think, well maybe they are struggling with something. It’s so easy to judge people in a second. No one wants to be sized up like that. There’s not much room for kindness or forgiveness that way.

I am a human becoming. I pray I am becoming–more like Jesus. I pray as I grow up in Him that I am less like my old nature and that I live as I have become a new creation in Christ.

And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. 2 Cor 3:18 The Message

Okay so I’m really laying myself bare here. I’m going to say out loud what I  have been keeping under wraps for a while now.

I’m writing a book.

(ahem.)

I’m writing a book.

Okay, I’m not ready to shout it from the rooftops just yet but I am terrified excited to share this news with you here. Brooke, author of Warrior Prayers and Notes to Aspiring Writers: Your Dream, God’s Plan (due out next week), encouraged her blog readers to come up with an elevator pitch for our books, so here it goes:

The working title is “Bountiful: Cultivating a fruitful life in dry seasons”

Where can we look when find ourselves in a season that is painful or dry? Galatians 5 is a gift from God for a parched soul.  My book walks us through the lush garden of the fruit of the spirit, picking one fruit at a time and examining its healing properties for hurting lives. We can find that place of refreshing and renewal in Christ.

I pray this is only the beginning of great things. I am writing this book because someone (maybe you!) needs to read it. God has help for others on the other side of my faltering pen.

I’d appreciate your prayers as I struggle to complete what I feel God has placed on my heart to share.

I’m writing a book!

Mrs. Smith is the founder of Pilgrim Institute. She has written a history series for home educators called “The Mighty Works of God.” I have used this myself so I feel I can give an honest review. For this review I will refer to this title as LJFA.

This is the second book in the MWOG series, intended for younger elementary ages. First off, this is not an intimidating tome. The student text is less than 200 pages and the teacher’s text is only a few pages more. It is an easy read for the students.

The teacher’s guide provides three or more lessons per chapter. Mrs. Smith has supplied a leading ides for each lesson, along with reasoning questions and a synopsis of the chapter. A CD-ROM is included with the teacher’s guide full of printable maps, notebooking pages and charts that correspond with the lessons.

If you are new to BPA it can be a terrific way to ease into a subject without having to build lessons from scratch. And if you have Mr. Rose’s book, this text corresponds with year 3 (second grade) in the chart on p. 207.

LJFA covers all of history, from creation to today. She uses the theme of liberty to connect the lessons throughout the year. I like this because it adds continuity to the lessons. There are scriptures, poetry, biographies and more sprinkled throughout the text. Many color drawings add to the enjoyment as your child reads about Moses, Marco Polo, William Penn, Jedediah Smith and more. Benjamin Franklin seems to be a favorite historical figure with children and the stories about him in this volume are inspiring and a great place to pause for a “rabbit trail.”

Why you might like this

• She weaves a beautiful story, revealing His Story as it marches through time. It is taught from a Providential history perspective, focusing on Biblical reasoning to learn about historical individuals and events.
• It makes history an easily teachable subject.
• You are provided the leading ideas for each lesson.
• It is flexible. Because there are no daily plans you can use as many lessons as you like. You aren’t left feeling as if you haven’t covered something.
• Reflection and reasoning are supplied.
• It inspires affection for America’s Christian history.

Why you might not like this

• Your educational philosophy doesn’t jibe with a Biblical Principle Approach philosophy.
• You want daily lesson plans.
• You want literature-based history.
• You don’t want to teach from a Christian history worldview.
• You want a textbook.
• You want something the child can do independently. This requires the teacher to reason alongside the student.
• There are no tests or quizzes. (or maybe this should be in the list above!)

I enjoyed using this with my children. We learned a lot. I didn’t feel rushed through a huge lesson schedule, so we could take out time and focus on reasoning and not just facts. I was also able to teach multiple grades with this (4th and 1st). A little modification makes this easy to use with several ages at once. And because the leading ideas are supplied, I didn’t have to do a lot of preparation before we could sit at the kitchen table and talk about His Story together. It began a lot of great conversations about the why’s of history. Not “why do we need to learn this” but why people do what they do and why things happen.