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Classes, Sports, Theatre....How Much is Too Much????

Every year, you as parents and teachers, are faced with an ever increasing number of options for your students. Curriculum, Friday classes, soccer, CYT, Youth Theatre, baseball etc. How do you decide?

First, recognize that you can't do it all. Each of us has time limitations, money considerations, and other work, family, and church commitments to fit in. Be realistic. The addition of outside learning can be a fantastic addition to your homeschool day bringing you a break, both during the time of the class and in terms of preparing that subject...but too many outside commitments can compromise what you are trying to accomplish.

Second, evaluate your goals for your child. What are trying to accomplish? Will this activity aid you in that journey? How old is your child? My suggestion would be the younger they are the more carefully you consider the number of outside activities you involve them in. A seven year old should not have a schedule that rivals an overworked middle-aged executive. They should have hours of free play time to build cities in the mud and curl up with books. Children need time, time to be loved, time to explore, time to play. A hectic schedule robs them of some of these most precious years. There will be plenty of time later on to involve them in outside activities, they don't need to 'do it all' in kindergarten.

Every family is going to look different, you all have different commitments and different needs. For us the boys were always heavily involved in family, not just our immediate family, but we have a large extended family that we spent a lot of time with. They were always involved with church, in Sunday School, mid week activities, and special events. To us, these were the center, other things would have to fit around these two. As they got older we added some sports, then music lessons. They still had plenty of free time during the day.

By high school things had changed. High school students are beginning to become independent, they want to try things outside of home, spend time with friends. My boys love having a packed schedule and knowing that they will be jumping from one activity to the next. (You still need to keep from going overboard...but things change.) Time with family and at church remained constant, but they were eager to expand their horizons. I found it healthy for them to develop varied interests and to keep their minds and bodies productively occupied.

I had a couple of criteria I would look at before deciding if we should participate in an activity. I've listed them in no particular order.

Criteria One: Is this something my child will miss out on by not being in school. There are things that happen at school that you cannot duplicate at home with just you and your children...like competitive sports. My boys wanted to play sports so we found ways to add those into our school year. Figure out what things YOUR child might miss by not being in school, evaluate if that is a good thing or not, and then look for other ways to provide that experience.

Criteria Two: Is this something I'm not qualified to teach? I am not musical, all my children are...so I paid for music lessons. It was worth it. We try in our Friday classes to provide those subjects that parents might not want to do on their own, like Latin, Art History or Biology. For me, it was worth it to have someone else help out with those subjects I was tentative about. (Please note that I truly believe that with all of the curriculum choices available to homeschool parents now, if you are willing to put in the time and effort you can teach any subject you want on your own. You need to evaluate whether or not the trade off in having someone else do it is worth it.)

Criteria Three: Is this a subject that is better learned in a group setting? Over the years I've been doing the Friday classes I've discovered several things. First, some classes like Shakespeare, are just more fun to do in a group where you can act out the plays. Second, I've found that in classes like Chemistry or Latin that are especially challenging, students benefit from having others to commiserate (grumble) with. It seems to make the struggle more bearable.

Criteria Four: Will participation in this class/activity provide my children with healthy socialization, a chance to make friends and create positive feelings about homeschooling? While I believe that the non-homeschooling world is far too concerned about the socialization of homeschooled students, (research has shown repeatedly that homeschool children have enhanced social skills) we still want our children to have places to interact with age-mates and make friends. In particular, children who are transferring from a traditional school setting to homeschool are concerned about when they will be able to see friends. Knowing that each week they will be in classes, sports, and activities where they will see other children makes them less resistant to the change, and provides times each week to look forward too. (Conveniently, it also provides an answer to those relatives who are concerned about your child's lack of 'socialization'.)

Criteria Five: Does this activity move me toward my goals for my child, or way from them? Does this activity reinforce what we are trying to accomplish? I had written intentional goals for each of my sons and when it came to choosing between activities we always tried to choose those activities that reinforced what we were teaching them ourselves. With such a variety of good choices in front of us you need a way to weed through all the good and find the best. The 'best' for your child and your family will probably not be what is 'best' for someone else.

To sum it up, we found that adding outside activities was a crucial and fun part of our homeschooling experience adding a depth and breadth to our years that we would have missed without them. We also found that saying 'yes' to everything quickly led to frustration and stress. So while we wish to present you with many choices for the coming school year, and we hope you participate in many of those choices so that you have a rich, productive year...keep in mind that each day only has 24 hours and you don't need to (and shouldn't) fill each and every one of them.

Hate HIstory???

Do you hate history? Are you one of those adults who remembers watching the clock tick slowly around as you tuned out the droning voice of your history teacher. Did you suffer through reading dry textbooks, memorizing meaningless dates, and answering pointless review questions? Do you dread subjecting your child to the same boring process?

Early on in my homeschooling career I decided I would avoid textbooks as much as possible. There were many reasons for this...some are enumerated in the following quote by Neil Postman in his treatise, “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School” where he advocates the removal of all textbooks from classroom teaching.

"most textbooks are badly written and, therefore, give the impression that the subject is boring. Most textbooks are also impersonally written. They have no human "voice," reveal no human personality. Their relationship to the reader is not unlike the telephone message that says, "If you want further assistance, press two now." I have found the recipes on the backs of cereal boxes to be written with more style and conviction than most textbook descriptions of the causes of the Civil War. Of the language of grammar texts, I will not even speak. To borrow from Shakespeare, it is unfit for a Christian ear to endure. But worse than this, textbooks are concerned with presenting the facts of the case (whatever the case may be) as if there can be no disputing them, as if they are fixed and immutable. And still worse, there is usually no clue given as to who claimed these are the facts of the case, or how "it" discovered these facts (there being no he or she, or I or we). There is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human judgment, no hint of the possibilities of error. Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward truth. Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning. They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the minds of students is a blight and a curse." (116)

I could not agree with this sentiment more. I began to understand my aversion to textbooks in college. I remember sitting in the library studying with some friends for an upcoming test for World Civilization. We were reviewing English history during the 1500's and my friends were busy memorizing dates and names and complaining loudly...well, not too loudly...it was the library, about keeping it all straight. Now, personally, I find this period of history fascinating and I was trying to figure out why when it hit me, for a year in high school I had read a series of historical novels set in the courts of England. Nothing boring or dry there. There had been romance, court intrigue, religious conflicts, betrayal, heroes and villains. I'd cried for Queen Catherine as she watched her marriage and family crumble because she couldn't produce a male heir, and was horrified as her daughter, Bloody Mary, turned her reign into one marked by revenge, fanaticism and bloodshed. I wrestled with the issues that caused England to break from the Catholic church and was fascinated by the complex and fragile allegiances that were formed to consolidate power. The characters I met were complicated individuals who were forced to make decisions that would affect whole countries, individuals often beset with self-doubt and questions. I found myself caught up in their dilemmas wondering what I would do, what they should do...and rarely finding a satisfactory answer.

THIS is history, the stories of people ruled by greed, cruelty, or a quest for power or the stories of the men and women who were courageous, honest, and ruled by ideals bigger than themselves. Most often and intriguing is that history is made of individuals who are a combination of both, whose lives are marked by incredible achievements and equally incredible failures. The more you know of history the more amazing it is that textbook writers can manage to suck all the life from these stories and present them as dry facts. Even more disturbing to me is how textbooks present the facts in such a way that the student is led to believe there is only one way to look at an event.

Every episode in history has multiple perspectives. Just a quick glance at Germany in World War II will give you a wide variety of viewpoints...should you tell the story from Hitlers viewpoint, the average German trying to survive in a war torn country, a Jew in a concentration camp, a college student in the resistance movement, a child in the Hitler youth, or maybe a common soldier who has been drafted. How do you, in a paragraph, sum up the German perspective on World War II? You can't and you shouldn't.

Children who are exposed to multiple perspectives are not confused, but challenged. They are forced to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to live a substantive life in a complex world. We don't do our children any favors by pre-digesting their work for them and telling them what they should think. No wonder they are bored. Instead we should allow them to struggle to understand and deal with history in all of it's complexities.

I never had to study for that test in World Civ because I knew those people, knew their struggles and heartaches. England in the 1500's isn't a bunch of dates and faceless rulers to me so I'm not likely to forget the details I read so many years ago. This is what I wanted for my kids and with Amazon just a click away it is easier than ever to introduce our children to quality literature about just about every event in history. The list of resources is only limited by time and creativity. Biographies, autobiographies, novels, artwork, collections of essays and speeches, diaries, letters, volumes of poetry, music, quality non-fiction resources...the list is endless and so much more beneficial than reading a brief chapter in a history textbook.

So this year I challenge you to choose an era of history you know nothing about and explore it with your children. You will be amazed at what you learn, enjoy, and retain.

Keeping the Doors Open

When you begin to homeschool you face the inevitable questions and confrontations from people who basically think you are nuts. When you choose to continue to homeschool through high school, believe me the confrontations become much more heated. I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts on why continued to homeschool through high school with our four boys. Even if we had the money for private school or lived in the county with the top rated public schools we would continue to homeschool.

When we are in high school we begin to make choices that effect the rest of our lives. We begin to decide what kind of people we want to be, to visualize our role in the adult world. Oftentimes the choices we make have far-reaching effects. They either open or close doors. Decisions regarding drugs, sex, alcohol, and peers can affect us for the rest of our lives. Doors can be shut that can never be opened again. Emotional scars can be formed at this tender age and can last a lifetime and shut even more doors.

It is easy to see these shut doors when they are glaring and obvious, like a teen age pregnancy. Harder when they are shut in more subtle ways, like lack of time to pursue an interest, the closing of a mind due to boredom, the slow sink into depression because we don't seem to fit in. When I considered what I wanted to do about high school I found the concept of opened and closed doors very revealing. Let me explain.

When Timothy, our oldest son, was in Jr. High he had had an unconventional schooling experience. He had never attended school and had met very few actual textbooks. Instead we had tried to instil in him a love of learning. We have exposed him to the exciting world of books, of nature, and of music. We have made sure he is as comfortable in libraries and museums as he is in his own home. We have encouraged him to be observant of the world around him, whether it be the current political climate or the wildflowers on the side of the road.

We have tried to open up for him as many doors as possible. Not so he could master a set of facts, and thus be declared "educated," but so he would realize that no matter how long he lived there would never be enough time to explore all that interested him.

(This picture is of Timothy the summer he spent working as an intern at a training center/children's home in Kenya.)

Academics are very important. We have tried our best to hold up a standard of excellence in terms of our children's academics, but it is certainly not the most important aspect of education. Giving our children a strong grounding in God's word and a solid understanding of how they can have a personal relationship with Him provides the foundation for any education that follows. More than a good "education' we wanted our children to have good character. What good is knowledge without integrity, compassion, and strength?

When I considered our high school options it helped to think of it in terms of open and closed doors. I believe wholeheartedly that a home education has served Timothy well in the area of academics. I believed that even with a homeschool high school experience he would be able to get into the college of his choice (which he did). I knew that he could continue to play the stports he loves so much in venues other than high school. I knew that he would have time to pursue his interests in music, to write songs and stories, to play in sports tournaments, to work, and to serve in various church ministries.

All of these might have to be drastically curtailed if he were in a traditional school dealing with the extended schedule and homework. I know that he is free from undue peer influence, not from all contact with peers as is often feared, but from the constant pressure that can undermine his own sense of self.

We need a vision for what education can be. We need to move beyond meeting minimum requirements or keeping up with relatives expectations. We need to throw off the mediocre and even the good to pursue the excellent. Our goal should be far beyond reaching graduation, it must be to inspire our children to be men and women of integrity, curiosity, strength, and courage.

Elementary Science

On Friday's I teach some classes for students in our school. One of my favorites is elementary science. This year we are working through a great book published by Apologia called Exploring Creation with Zoolology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. (I highly recommend this entire series...fabulous.) This Friday we were doing a series of experiments to use for our Open House at the end of the month.

Here the girls are getting our sand ready....

Our experiment involved testing where the best fossils would be formed. We used sand, dirt (mud...the boys were a little over-enthusiastic with the water) and clay. Then we took a shell with a lot of ridges and made depressions in each of our materials. Plaster of Paris was quickly (we weren't quick enough and had to make a second batch) pored into the depressions...and in a mere 30 minutes we could pull out our 'fossils' and see if our hypothesis was correct .

Here Garret (really cute guy that you can't see) is pushing our shell into the mud.










Here Linda is working quickly to get the Plaster of Paris in place.

Chemistry

One thing I've learned about doing science with High School students is that most concepts that they are learning can be demonstrated with common household chemicals. It's amazing the number of concepts that can be taught with vinegar, baking soda, a balloon, and liter bottle.

On Friday my Chemistry students were doing a more advanced experiment using conversions and stoichiometry to figure the pressure of the gas within the balloon.


Once we figured the Radius of the balloon, then the volume of the balloon, found the atmospheric pressure, temperature, water vapor pressure we could calculate the pressure of the CO2 that was formed. Okay, all of that took a while and we are all very grateful for calculators. Then we could figure the moles of CO2 used in the reacation...to (with the magic of stoichiometry) figure that 4.50% of the venegar was acid. YEAH!!!

Quality Chemistry instruction all with items from the kitchen....all kitchens have extra balloons, right?

Shark Dissections

A group of our High School students decided they wanted to do a Marine Biology Course this year. All of these students have finished a traditional Biology course, and two of them are taking Chemistry concurrently with this class. We have had a lot of fun, this is a fascinating topic. Here is one of our dissections...we also did star fish and clams. Enjoy the pics.

Getting through the tough skin is more of a challenge than you would think...after breaking some dissection tools we resorted to steak knives.


Here is Joseph abandoning tweezers and tools in favor of fingers...can't be to squeamish.




















Hands on learning isn't just for the little kids.... And yes that is a tie around Brad's head. We don't try to explain Brad's fashion quirks, we just enjoy them.

Homeschooling Might Be For You.

There are times when every homeschool parent is beset with doubts. It's a serious responsibility, taking on the education of your children...they are depending on you to give them what they need to go out into the world and make a life. (And when they are looking at you with this much trust who could let them down. For those of you wondering...this is Caleb.) With the recent decision of a California court deciding against homeschooling there has been increased scrutiny of the homeschool community. Many parents I talk to have been confronted more aggressively in the past weeks about the wisdom of keeping their children at home. The court decided that only teachers with a credential are qualified to teach. I, along with many of my homeschool cohorts, would respectfully disagree. There is no reason that a motivated, disciplined parent can't provide an outstanding education for their child. Let me list just a few advantages.

First, a parent has the advantage of working with their child one-on-one. The benefits to this kind of teaching cannot be overemphasised. The child can work at their own pace in each subject. There is no need to labor over concepts that have already been grasped or to move on to new material before a child is ready. The parent/teacher can adapt easily to the individual needs of the student.

Second, a parent has intimate knowledge of each child's strengths and weaknesses and no one is more motivated to see their child succeed than a parent.

Third, quality curriculums abound. The homeschooling movement has been around long enough and represents enough paying customers that curriculum developers have addressed the issues unique to the homeschool family. No matter what the subject or what the learning style of your child is, there is a curriculum out there. Curriculums are written with the knowledge that parents are not teachers or experts and addresses those challenges. Many provide on-line assistance or phone support.

Fourth, and my personal favorite...I can adapt whatever curriculums I use to suit my children. There are advantages and disadvantages to every system, and the advantages differ from child to child. I can use what is good from each to create a well balanced approach.

I don't think homeschooling is for everyone, but for those who choose it and pursue it with diligence it is a rewarding and effective alternative to a traditional education.

Court of Appeals Rehearing Case

Good News! The California Court of Appeals has agreed to rehear the case decided last month that banned homeschooling in cases where parents did not have a teaching credential. This is great news and HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense) will be filling an amicus brief with the court. For more details on this, and on other legal matters pertaining to homeschooling go to the HSLDA website. Have a great day.

History Day

This is my first post and I couldn't quite decide what to start with. Since last weekend we competed in the National History Day Competition at the County level, I decided I might as well start there. My sons have competed in this competition for 8 years. It's the oldest humanities competition in the U.S., although with budget cuts who knows how long it will continue. Students in public and private schools compete at District, County, State and National levels. We have been to the National competition at the University of Maryland 3 times . What a great experience each trip was. Especially last year when all 6 of us were able to make the trip and watch my two youngest sons do a performance on Honour Crimes in Pakistan. This picture was taken last summer as we explored Washington D.C. during breaks in the competition. (The lovely girls in the pic are the Miles sisters who we have teamed up with each year as we developed our projects.)

This year's theme is Conflict and Compromise. My son Caleb wrote a historical paper on the conflict in Northern Ireland. A new experience for Caleb, as he has always competed in the Performance category. We didn't know how he would do since we haven't seen many of the papers submitted for competition so this is a learning experience in many ways.

Joseph competed with 4 of his friends in the group performance category. They studied up on the conflicts and compromises on the New York Stock Exchange due to SEC regulations. I have to say Joseph had to spend alot of time explaining things to me as this was an area I knew little about.

Our school, Grace Prep, had a third entry, a group of Jr. High students did a project on Conscientious Objectors. They did a fabulous job.

Turns out all three Grace Prep entries won First place at the Riverside County competition and will be moving on to the State competition in Sacramento over Mother's Day weekend. In the meantime the kids will continue to fine tune their projects and add to their research. They have more interviews they would like to do before the State competition.

This is truly a great way to get kids involved in history, research, writing, and communicating. I hope more homeschoolers take advantage of the opportunity.