A House of Order

by Melanie Skelton

Mapping Out Your Curriculum

Map out your curriculum as you would a vacation. Although you may want to keep your curriculum flexible so you have time for side trips, strikes, having a basic plan will help your children benefit more from the journey.

Learn to understand the factors that influence learning in your home. Understand where you want to be going. Define the subjects you plan to study in the upcoming year and put a plan on paper that you can refer back to.

Life is part of school. Involve your children in canning, meal planning, and other projects. Incorporate the things that are part of life into your school plan.

Sticking to Your Plan

Establish firm habits with your children concerning television or other distractions from school work. Habit is a powerful tool in helping children remain focused on learning. As the parent you can instill this habit lovingly. The key is consistency.

Help the people who are close to you understand that you will not answer the telephone, door or e-mail during the hours you choose to do school. Choose community activities community carefully.

When creating a "House of Order" by having a plan and having control of that plan, you will find other ways to be flexible, enjoy your children and treasure each moment.

Creating Order from Chaos

  • Organize school supplies and books into one general area so that they are easily accessible. 
  • Assign each child a place to keep their school work. 
  • Consider each room by what its purpose is. Keep like items together in that room.
  • Use totes and bins to provide a place for like items. 
  • Find a friend whose home seems organized and approach them about walking through your house and giving some organizational tips. 
  • Have a system for doing laundry.
  • Insist that your children learn the place you have established for each item.

Dinner Too?

How do we balance the demands of homeschooling and fix dinner too?

Simplify mealtime by having a plan. Write a menu out for a week or two at a time, and do the shopping for those meals.

With a basic meal plan for the week it is easier to choose something from that plan each morning. Make this choice as you are preparing breakfast or at least by lunch.

Involving children in dinner preparations is a perfect way to accomplish two things at once. Children can read recipes, practice multiplication while placing biscuits on a cookie sheet and discuss topics of interest. If they learn the most complicated algebraic equations and can't take care of themselves, what have we accomplished?

To further simplify mealtime try using a crock pot, cooking for more than one meal at a time or making mixes ahead. Be willing to experiment. Not every idea will suit every person, but find the ones that suit you.

Remember, you will feel better and your children will respond more positively if good meals are being served. Behavior problems can be related to food, and children need healthy meals and snacks. Boys in particular seem to be better behaved and more focused when their nutritional needs are being met.

This is an introduction to a 4 part series:


Melanie Skelton/Rebecca Evenson © 2006-2008 All rights reserved. Printed with permission. http://www.utahfamilies.net/

Guitar Notes...

by Kim Kuhn

(You may need Adobe Flash Player to play some of the links in this article... get it here)

For this leg of our musical journey, we’ll visit the guitar.  No, not just the classical kind, but the rock and jazz kind, too.  Maybe the parent and teen can actually learn something together.

First, let’s start with a great rock guitarist, Joe Satriani.  Satriani started playing guitar at 14 when he learned that Jimi Hendrix had died.  He started learning jazz and rock guitar and became not only a musician, but a teacher as well.  Some of his notable students are Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett of Metallica, David Bryson of Counting Crows.  Many of his students have raved about Satriani and his technically demanding way of teaching because of the amazing results.

Some pieces to listen to are: "Satch Boogie", “All Alone” and “Flying in a Blue Dream.”

Second, is a jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan.  Jordan received his BA in digital music composition from Princeton and went on to play with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie.
One of Jordan’s gifts is his touch tapping technique.  Normally, a guitarist needs both hands to pick at the strings and press down on the neck of the guitar.  Jordan, however, uses his touch technique to be able to play the melody and chord at the same time.

Some pieces to listen (and watch on you tube) to are his version of “Stairway to Heaven” and a duet with Chet Atkins in “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
  
Third, we are going to go to Andres Segovia, a classical guitarist.  Because Segovia was from Spain he started learning the flamenco style of guitar music.  However, he eventually preferred the art music of the 20th century music and was discouraged from his family to learn this new kind of music.  Segovia liked the new kind of music because it was so different than the flamenco style that everyone else around him was playing.

Pieces to listen to are  “Suite Castellana, i. Fandango” by Frederico Moreno Torrobo and “Saraband and Gavotte en Rondeau” by J.S. Bach.

Many people don’t realize that some rock musicians actually like classical music.  Some are even trained in the classical style.  Yngwie Malmsteen is a Swedish rock guitarist that is greatly influenced by Bach and Beethoven and uses some of their music in his guitar riffs.

If you have any suggestions for future articles whether it’s for music or art, just let me know.

- Kim

An Unexpected Lesson

Organic eggs are expensive. So in an effort to eat healthier and save money I decided we needed to raise our own chickens. My husband wasn’t wild about this idea, but I talked it up all winter. In early spring my daughter and I were at the farm store when we heard a chorus of tiny chirps. We made our way to the back of the store, where we discovered hundreds of tiny chicks. Baby chickens are irresistibly adorable!  Next thing I knew we had seven baby chickens in a box on the front seat of the van.  The trunk was loaded with feed, chicken grit, animal bedding and a heat lamp.


Impulsive? Maybe a little, but what a great learning opportunity! We learned about the laying qualities and diverse personalities of the different breeds before we left the store. (Some of our chicks will even lay green eggs!) We also discovered first hand where the term “pecking order” comes from. But one of our hardest lessons came shortly after the boys constructed a cardboard brooder in the laundry room. All of the chicks settled into their new home except one. She continued to chirp loudly all day. The next day she wouldn’t open her eyes and she stumbled about on wobbly legs. A call to the farm store confirmed what we feared: that she probably wouldn’t make it. Neither my husband nor I had the nerve to end the chick’s life quickly, so we watched it die slowly over the next couple of days. That was a heartbreaking experience, but high chick mortality rates were only the beginning of all we’ve learned in the last month.

We’ve learned about chicken health, and all about coop design and construction. However, the most unexpected lesson was more personal. I learned that while raising chickens may be common and easy for some people, it was totally overwhelming for me. I read books, consulted friends, talked to experts and searched the Internet, but I still struggled to figure out what I was supposed to do with all these baby birds. Watching the chicks was so much fun but I muddled my way through much of this experience. As I’ve struggled, I’ve reflected on my children and their own learning process. How many times have I dismissed their complaints about the difficulty of learning something new? Sometimes as an adult it’s hard to remember that long multiplication wasn’t always easy, and writing a five paragraph essay can be very challenging.  I’m fairly certain that not everyone needs to get their own chickens, but I do think everyone should try something new and challenging. We all need to be reminded occasionally that learning can be joyous, and it can be difficult!

Friends and Freedom: What Teenagers Want

The room was full of laughter, chatter, ideas, and energy—it was full of teenagers.  In the middle of the excitement Josh paused to ask me if it was hard to teach this class.  He wondered if he and his classmates annoyed me from week to week.  I told him, happily and in all honesty, that I enjoyed it.  Sure, it was sometimes tough to cover all the material through the giddy euphoria that is teen socialization, but I found the potential, growth, thinking, and enthusiasm of these kids engaging and—refreshing.


Having a 12- and a 14-year-old at home who needed to get something more out of Language Arts, I knew I could either make the experience a solitary environment of drudgery, or I could create an anticipated atmosphere of fun and freethinking.  I knew what I wanted in terms of critical thinking and expression; I knew what I wanted to draw from my boys.  But I also knew that hearty discussion and an exchange of ideas would be more forthcoming with more participants.  And the lure of getting together with friends would make the time a joy rather than a pain.  Thus began a writing class for homeschooled teens at my house.

One of the things I’ve loved about our class discussions is the imaginative and candid way the kids share their thoughts.  So during a class where the topic was interrogative reporting, I took the opportunity to interview the kids regarding their feelings toward homeschooling, so I could do a little interrogative reporting of my own.

Unanimously, this group of teens wholeheartedly declared to like homeschooling.  Why?  Well, Ptolian, my single-minded son, said it keeps him close to food all day.  Not what I was looking for, but it’s a priority to a growing boy.  Megan said that she liked homeschooling because it gives her “more say” in her life.  Madison inserted, “You get to learn what you want to learn.” The others concurred, mentioning other liberties homeschool afforded them.  Freedom—that’s what a teenager wants.
With all that enthusiasm towards homeschooling, I wondered if they felt they were missing out on anything.  Yes, they did.  They lamented the reduced social experience as compared to their public-schooled peers.  Josh talked about being out of the loop when kids at church discussed the public school experience (e.g. quality of specific teachers).  Jacob mentioned things like school dances.  Overall, I sensed from them a general longing to just spend more time with their peers on a daily basis.  Interestingly, after all the raving about homeschooling, when I asked if the social tradeoff was worth it, they couldn’t decide.  Friends—that’s what a teenager wants.

I then asked what the perfect day would be.  What did they think the solution was?  Megan and Madison were both quick to suggest a part time compromise—some homeschool and some public school .  This appealed to everyone in our discussion.  No one wanted to give up homeschooling entirely, yet they all wanted a small piece of the public school pie.  Josh said, “I think there are certain classes that are good to take and others that aren’t.”  He then mentioned some science and history topics that he’d prefer to study at home in order to learn the truth about them.  Heather has already taken some classes at the high school:  Chinese, Social Dance, and Driver’s Education.  She pointed out that some things, like dance, require a group to learn.  Other classes require a specialist teacher and resources, like Chinese.  She could do math and other things like that at home, and does so happily, but these other classes were opportunities that couldn’t be provided to her any other way.

The discussion then turned to our writing class and others like it in our area that have provided simultaneous social and educational experiences to homeschooled youth, which they enjoy.  We have a great local group that’s pretty organized and provides a variety of classes and activities.  Heather was quick to mention how much better she likes it “here” versus other places she’s lived where either there were too few homeschoolers, or nothing was really organized for them as a group.   Josh said he likes being able to tell homeschool naysayers that socialization is alive and well for him because he gathers with friends at least three times a week for things like our writing class.

For 14 years I’ve been dodging the question, “What will you do about high school?” Chances are that many of you are trying to answer that for yourselves as well.  I can’t tell you what to do, but I hope that hearing the real thoughts of real kids will make a difference.  Their needs are valid:  freedom and friends.  Our children are born and we provide healthy meals, safe play, phonics, math, and gospel instruction.  Just as important, we must find a way to fulfill the growing independent and social needs of our teenagers, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances.  It may take you stepping up and making things happen that aren’t in your comfort zone.  It may mean hosting a gaggle of giggling teens in your preferred serene surroundings.  The thing is, though they might not realize it, teenagers are after what really matters:  love and agency, which are God’s gifts to us all.

The First Easter Race

by Rochelle Keogh - Discover the Scriptures 

As a child there are many reasons to be excited about the celebrations surrounding Easter, but perhaps nothing is more exciting than an Easter egg hunt. In our family, the eggs that are hunted represent the rock that was rolled from the tomb and any empty eggs are especially important because they remind us of the empty tomb that was discovered that first Easter morning. 
 
As I have watched my children participate in Easter egg hunts, it has occurred to me that the egg hunt is much more of a race than a hunt. When it’s time to hunt Easter eggs, the race is on! It is not inappropriate to have an Easter race of sorts as it echoes the events of the first Easter. 
 
On that glorious Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away. She ran to Simon Peter and John and told them what she had found. Peter and John were so anxious to get to where they had last known Christ to be, that they ran together to the tomb. John lets us know that he beat Peter to the tomb! That was the first Easter race. Peter and John were not running for eggs or candy. They were running to where Christ had been, running to find that the Lord had risen, running to come to know that He was the Savoir and Redeemer, running to find that, as prophesied, Christ had taken up his body on the third day, running to come to know the hope that Christ holds for all the human family, running towards salvation. Peter and John were running towards Christ.
 
Are you running to Christ?

Two thousand years later, many of us are running in our lives. As we consider the sacred and supernal events surrounding the resurrection morning, ask yourselves, "What am I running towards?" Are you following the example of Peter and John and running towards Christ, or are you more running in many directions and getting nowhere fast? I hope that this Easter we can all make a commitment to run to Christ and believe in him!

Need some ideas to teach your children about Easter?

Help your children appreciate and celebrate the life of Christ in a new way during Easter season this year! Start now teaching your children about the symbols of Easter that point to Christ. Our newest resource, Discover the Joy of Easter, will set you on a journey through the Easter story with more than 40 kid-friendly and Christ-centered crafts and recipes from all over theworld.

Discover the Joy of Easter has memory verses, Easter hymns, gift ideas for teachers, friends, and neighbors, Easter journal pages; and of course...the Easter story. Read how and why Christ celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem. Learn about the Passover symbols that point to the sacrifice of Jesus, and then put on your own Christian Passover for your family (recipes and directions included)! Read about Christ's atonement and death on the cross. Find out about his mission in the spirit world before his resurrection. Walk with Mary and the disciples to the tomb on Easter morning. Read about Easter among the Nephites.

Start teaching your children about Easter now with Discover the Joy of Easter. Get your kids excited about celebrating the life of Christ!

What Does Easter Mean To You?

Easter time gives me a feeling of renewed hope and a calming sense of peace as we watch nature unfold her awesome mysteries before us.  The earth is coming to life everywhere you look. There are miracles that happen right before our eyes every year – green life pushing up through the earth, birds singing to welcome in spring, life beginning to bud on the trees, and precious baby animals. All these are wonderful reminders that yes, there is a God and He does love us.

I have asked myself several times this month, as well as some of my friends and grown children, what comes to their minds as they remember Easters past?  This is what they came up with:

  • Baby chicks
  • Family gatherings at special dinners
  • Decorating eggs
  • Easter egg hunts
  • Going to Church
  • Remembering the Savior throughout the week
  • New articles of clothing
  • The special way mom always set the table at Easter
  • The Easter egg version of the Easter Story

I was fascinated in the variety of the memories.  It wasn't about those expensive Easter baskets that line the store shelves at this time of year or about all the candy and toys. It was the simple memories that involved others that stuck.

On the Monday prior to Easter we always have a special Family Home Evening on the life of the Savior and Resurrection.  We choose to add during the week special DVD's or videos further highlighting these subjects and keeping our thoughts focused on the Savior.

Decorating the eggs was always a highlight with everyone I spoke with along with the icing on the cake- the Easter egg hunt!  One child said it was just like waking up on Christmas morning!

I have never been a mom that went in for the big basket kind of gifts at Easter.  My focus was on the kitchen table that would greet my children on Easter morning.  It was always set with our best tableware and then I added pretty white candles and pictures and/or the statue we have of Christ.  He always joined us for our Easter meals. 

At their place setting there would be a little bag or small pail of a few goodies or a church-related bookmark/picture and maybe a music CD.  Or they might get bubbles, sidewalk chalk, or small shovels and pails when they were little or kites when they were older.  Whatever it was we kept it simple.

It always is exciting to dress up in that new dress or fresh crisp new white shirt and go to church and see how fresh and clean everybody else looks and feels.  I think it is an experience that goes beyond just looking fresh and clean – I think the children, and even the adults, actually feel it.  We couldn't always afford a new outfit, many times it was just a little necklace for the girls or a new tie for the boys but the clothes were always especially tidy and the hair combed just right.  There is just something special about Easter Sunday.  Look for it – Feel it - this year.

 

How do you welcome in Easter?

Here are a couple of activities you can do on Easter Sunday or for a family home evening around Easter:

Schooling: Take Two...

by Doreen Blanding

One of the joys of homeschooling that I experience every day is I get an education too or is that two. I thought I was done with school when I left college, but I was wrong. Homeschooling my children gave me the opportunity to go "back to school." Some of the education I have partaken of has been life changing, some eye opening and some has just been plain fun. I love the education I have gained by homeschooling my children. 

My homeschooling education has been life changing and happened in a way I least expected. I set out to show by my example how to study the scriptures.  Along the way I have gained a stronger testimony of the scriptures. I took up the study of the Bible and the words of our modern prophets and my knowledge of places, events and people has grown.  I found the words of Isaiah (gasp) weren't so hard to understand. I found I could follow the lives of the ancient prophets and their teachings with better clarity.  I came to understand the history of the Lord's chosen people. As I study the General Conference talks from our modern day prophets, I have found answers to some of my daily struggles. My desire to do the Lord's will has increased. The problems of each day have scriptural and spiritual answers which are found in the words of our prophets both ancient and present.  This education has been totally life changing. I look to the Lord's word first and not rely on "the arm of the flesh." I truly didn't expect my life to change all because I set out to be an example to my children. My studying the scriptures not only set the example of how to study but helped my own testimony grow.

My homeschooling education has been eye opening.  When I was in school a long time ago, I was sitting in my tenth grade geography class when the teacher said, "During World War two…" I didn't hear the rest of the sentence because I sat there dumbfounded! There was a World War TWO? I know that says volumes about the education system of my youth, but all of us have missing pieces to our education no matter where we received it. In my home we never talked about war except to say "the war."  I knew what war that was; the war my uncles were involved in and the one my parents lived through.  The only other wars I knew about were the Revolutionary and Civil. I have now come to know that America has been involved in many wars, The French and Indian War (and it wasn't the French versus the Indians), the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American war, the Mexican-American War and so on.  I know this because my children and I have sat around our school table and talked about them in great detail.   What an eye opener this education has been to me and to think I might have missed one of the world's wars.

My homeschooling education has been fun. Learning can just be downright fun! When I was a little girl our family was too poor to afford swimming lessons so I never learned to swim. There was much I missed out on as a young girl and I didn’t want that to happen for my children. I also wanted them to be safe around water, especially since we live by so much water. We could afford swimming lessons so I enrolled my children in swimming lessons.  I don't know how many swimming lessons I have sat through over the past 14 years of taking kids to my neighbor's pool as she taught my kids to swim, but I'm sure that number is pretty high.  One summer I worked up the courage to ask her to teach me to swim.  I met her very early one cold summer morning. Are you kidding, I would rather freeze my little toes than let the children see a 40 year old chicken flounder in the water.  But I guess all that time sitting at the water’s edge, cheering my children on and listening to the instructions, paid off because 45 minutes later she told me I was a swimmer and, that if I just practiced my strokes, I wouldn't need to take any more lessons.  I had mastered the four strokes. As the rest of the summer passed, I was able to join my children in their fun.  During the fall as we attend our local gym, I am no longer sitting on the edge of the pool in a plastic pool chair watching the fun. No way! I'm joining in the splashing, jumping, and the pure fun of swimming. Other fun things I've learned while homeschooling my children are baking, cooking, the weather, knots, photography and the list goes one. Learning can just be downright fun.

Homeschooling is so rewarding. I always get a new education, sometimes it is life changing, sometimes it is eye opening and sometimes it is just downright fun. I'm so glad I'm homeschooling my children because I sure would hate to miss this education I'm getting the second time around.  As I tell my friends who ask why I homeschool, "I'm learning too and loving it." After all, President Gordon B. Hinckley told us all to "Be smart."

Do Your Dots

When my daughter, started school, I made her a chart with everything she needed to do in the morning. There were 12 things on her list. I thought it would be satisfying to earn stickers as she completed the list..I was wrong! The list was overwhelming and now she didn’t want to do any of the things! Thus a new approach was created, and “Do Your Dots” was born!


I limited the things I wanted her to focus on to four things. This was do-able and we made it fun. Each of our kids now has a small 3 x 5 inch chart of “dots” to do each morning before school starts. Each of our charts has different dots that are unique to the person. For one child whose morning struggle was hair styling, “Brush Hair” became one of her dots… each chart was individualized to the person. (possible dots: brush teeth, play piano, get dressed, do job, make bed, go to the bathroom, etc.)

With this approach, the chart tells the kids exactly what I expect of them every morning. All I have to do is say, “Do your dots!” and they know exactly what needs to be done. The chart becomes the master and we cheer each other on to finish before the school starts.

Now days, the kids are older and we still do our dots!

Here is how we do it:

1. Each person has a 3x5 card with four dots and a reward. (At our house the reward is electronics—computer for entertainment, tv, gameboy, etc. after 4p.m. & school work is done) The dots are unique to each person, but the reward is the same. I sit down before each school year and discuss with each child what they think their dots should be…and we come to a mutual decision.

2. Mom sets out the cards on the counter the night before and the jar with dots (our dots glass beads or anything that jingles) and the “DONE” jar.

3. Kids know what is on the chart (when our kids were small we had pictures) and they can do each dot INDEPENDENTLY!

4. As the kids do their dots they drop the beads into the “DONE” glass jar.

5. If you do not finish your dots, the glass bead does not go into the “DONE” jar. The child does not get the reward for the day.
a. *on our 3x5 cards, everyone has the dot “JOB”. This is their allowance job and they get paid at the end of the week for doing it. If they do their job, they mark off on the Allowance Chart. If they do not do their job before school, they do not get paid, or the reward. They still have to do their job before the next meal—they do not get to eat until their job is finished.

6. When the “done” jar is full (after about 1-2 weeks and longer as they get older) we celebrate by having a special family activity. As the kids got older, we started to take out the beads and sort them into different colors. We’d graph them then roll the dice and the number was how many cents each colored bead was worth. We added up the beads and took the money and did something as a family! (it’s usually enough for a gallon of ice cream!)

This has been one of the most effective things we’ve done in our family. Kids know what to expect. Every time I think we’re too old or we can do without “dots”, I am mistaken! Even I do better with a morning routine and a deadline. We do dots Monday through Friday. During summer vacation we continue dots but change the time of when they have to be done.

We have night time dots too…but the reward is reading with Mom or Dad, This chart hangs in their bedroom and is done on a personal basis.

Building a Family Culture Based on God

by Tracy Ward

Nurturing Spiritual Relationships 

I believe that one of my primary responsibilities as a mother is to nurture my children’s relationship with their Heavenly Father. I have found that this is not nearly as hard as some would have us believe, because children are innately drawn to spiritual things. Their eyes and ears, fingers and toes, their hearts and souls yearn to see, hear, and feel things of God. They yearn for the surety that He provides, and the foundation He gives their life. Our family strives to allow God into our lives in several ways. First, we acknowledge that everything testifies of Him. The earth we walk upon, the birds that fly, the food we eat, the friends we love, the new baby growing inside mommy, are all a demonstration of God’s love for us. It is our job to recognize Him and to let Him into our lives. We include Him in our conversations. We include Him in our family rhythms. We look to Him for answers to our questions. We rely on Him for strength and comfort. We live our lives according to His commandments. 

As we do these things day in and day out, our children trust in God as naturally as they trust in us, as naturally as they breathe. The earth, as God’s creation, testifies of Him. When we go exploring, we investigate bugs, rocks, flowers, and trees. We talk of how greatly God loves us to bless us with beautiful surroundings. We ponder why God may have created a slug or a prickly plant that hurts our fingers. We have amazing discussions about God’s world and how we can be better stewards of it. This helps my children to learn reverence for all life. They know they are serving God when they pick up litter, save an injured bird, or speak kindly to a squirrel. We believe pregnancy and birth are powerful teachers for children. In our home, our babies are prayed for by the family from the moment they are conceived, and often even before. As a couple, we teach our other children how babies grow, how they are born, what they can do to take care of the new baby. We teach them babies need mama’s milk, mama’s warmth, a family’s love, and little else. They learn that God gives our family a new baby to bless us and to teach us. We use this time to teach about the powers of procreation, the sanctity of their own individual bodies, the stages of development, and the need for families to have a mom and a dad who will lead in righteousness. 

Practical Gospel Applications 

In our family, the scriptures and gospel stories are part of daily conversation. We have found that family and personal scripture study are not adequate for our family to truly be immersed in the teachings of God. We have incorporated games, plays, and discussion into the flow of our daily family life. For example, we have a game where we name all the people from scriptures whose names start with a certain letter. Another favorite is to name all the prophets, name all the martyrs, or name all those groups of people who chose wickedness and their consequences. We play these kinds of games while eating a meal together or while driving. If one of my children is lacking courage, I may say, “Remember David!” or “Do you think Daniel was scared?” and then we talk about what they did to find courage. Our children act out the gospel stories over and over again because they love to pretend they are the great heroes they have studied. If we are stuck in a situation we don’t want to be in, we may talk about the children of Israel being slaves in Egypt. If we have a lot of food to prepare for winter, we might discuss Noah. If we don’t understand why something is happening to us, we may share the story of Joseph. 

Memorization and other Resources 

We believe that young children have a great ability to memorize. We capitalize on that ability by filling their minds with the things we would have them know: stories, songs, verses of scriptures, inspiring poetry, hymns. By the age of 3 or 4, my children know many of the hymns of our faith and the stories of the scriptures well enough to share them with others. If there is any doubt that this is possible, observe children who are being brought up as part of mainstream America. They will know the characters and songs from all the Disney movies, PBS shows, and Saturday morning cartoons. We choose to not allow our children’s minds to be cluttered with these things that are not of substance, and instead, to fill them with a foundation of truth. 

In our study of great men and women, we focus on those who believed in God and who lived their lives in accordance with His will. When we are studying a time period we will first study those who were noble and virtuous and then study the people who chose to live selfish, cruel, or evil lives. In this way, we have set the standard that is expected from people and use it to compare and contrast behavior to. Another way to include God in our daily life is to use the abundant media resources that exist today. We have hymns and scriptures on CD and our children love to listen to them while we drive, during cleaning time, or while they are drawing. It is not uncommon for our 6-year-old to listen for four or more hours each day. She recently finished a book of scripture on CD that is over 26 hours long, in about seven days. She would wake up early in the morning and have the CD player going before I was even out of bed! 

Our Favorite Books 

We love books at our home and have chosen books that teach principles of truth, are illustrated with artwork that appeals to our love of nature and beauty, or help us learn new skills. We believe that many children’s books today are written for children who have short attention spans and are attracted to glitzy, nonsensical stories because they have not been exposed to excellent literature. We spend many hours a day reading together and are grateful for the lessons the characters teach. 

Some of our children’s favorite books are: The Quiltmaker’s Gift, Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte’s Web, Welcome with Love, The Chronicles of Narnia, Pollyanna, My Great-Grandmother’s Gourd, Billy and Blaze books, Busy Bees, All of a Kind Family, The Bulletproof George Washington, Elizabeti’s Doll, Natalie Kinsey-Warnock books, Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, Little Men, The Hiding Place, All the Places to Love, and Thornton Burgess books. One of our daughters loves books so much, she begs me to read her a sentence in between each bite I take. One of our favorite family activities is book night. On Friday nights, we will often pop popcorn, spread blankets and pillows all over the family room and “Papa” (my wonderful husband) reads to us for several hours till everyone is asleep or his voice is gone. There is nothing as splendid as curling up together as a family and reading of great adventures and triumphs! 

Family Rhythms 

We have been working on developing solid family rhythms for years, and still have a lot of work to do. We have some areas we are doing well in which have allowed God to be present in our home more than He previously was. In the past we read scriptures as a family, at night, right before bed. This time was frequently shut out by other activities and we would miss out on this precious time together. Now we have family devotional together in the morning at 7 am. We join together with singing a hymn, reading our scriptures aloud, reciting our family’s standards, and reading a small section of a variety of stories that focus on different values. Then we kneel in prayer together to thank our Heavenly Father for our many blessings, to discuss our activities for the day, and to ask for specific help for others and ourselves. At night time we again meet together to read scriptures and kneel in prayer. Some nights we have not been wise in our use of time and we do not have time to read scriptures. On those nights, we still have prayer and feel peace that we have joined in reading holy writ earlier in the day.

(... to be continued next month)

Meet the Author Born and raised in the open spaces of southwestern Wyoming, Tracy Ward has always been a writer, and is now finding a little time to put her talent to paper -- between home educating her children, violin and cello lessons, teaching gymnastics, political forums, assisting at home births, fulfilling church callings and furthering her education. In her spare time she is an avid reader, goes camping and hiking, and is enthralled with learning Hebrew and about Jewish culture. Tracy's life has been blessed and magnified by her best friend and husband, Richard, and together they have charted the blueprint for their heaven on earth. She currently resides in Idaho with her amazing guy, three adorable children, and an assortment of outside creatures, including laying hens, cats and kittens, a beautiful golden lab, and several squirrels.

Math and Vegetables: How to Love Both

Math has been a trial to many a homeschool mother.  It’s supposed to be so good for you, and as important to future success as vegetables are to health.  But many kids dislike it, and it often becomes a battle.  If this is where you are (as I was), here are some things to think about.

As a mother of picky toddlers I came across a healthy-kids program that urged parents to make their kids’ veggies more “a-peeling,” and I took this to heart.  Preparing and serving vegetables with a little creativity – letting the kids sprinkle on different toppings, for example – can make the difference between “Blah” and “Yeah!”  Similarly, instead of just handing your child a page of boring math problems, applying a little creative energy to the situation can vastly improve your child’s math experience.  One day, have your child work the problems with unusual counters like cars or marbles.  Another day, write problems on cards, tape them around the house, and let your child race against the clock.  Get away from the written-problem format altogether as you play games that exercise math skills.

If your child only sees peas and carrots on his plate day after day, however, no matter how creatively they are served, he will start to resent them.  This is where you introduce baby corn, cherry tomatoes, sautéed fresh green beans, and sweet potato french fries.  Math is a field (or vegetable garden) that is broad, deep, and beautiful.  Introduce your child to the fascinating concepts that have entertained human minds for millennia: number theory, logic, probability, geometry, and simple calculus concepts.  Look for patterns in polygonal numbers.  Play around with Pascal’s triangle.  Test your brain power with some famous puzzles, and learn about the famous folks who worked on them.  There is math all around us, from the seeds in a sunflower, to ocean waves, to the night sky.  None of these things take more than basic math skills, at least at the beginner level, and having a glimpse into where you can go with math adds meaning and purpose to learning the fundamentals.

The introduction to What is Calculus About, by W.W. Sawyer, states: “In mathematics a certain surprising thing happens again and again.  A person poses a simple question, a question so simple that it seems no useful result can come from answering it.  And yet it turns out that the answer opens the door to all kinds of interesting developments, and gives great power to the person who understands it.”  Playing around with simple, non-traditional math topics can give your child non-traditional insight into mathematics.  Introducing your child to amazing concepts in a no-pressure way will improve their chance of viewing math as the fascinating art and science that it is.

 

About the author:

Jennifer Georgia has homeschooled her four children since birth; the two oldest are now pursuing degrees in the field of science.  A list of favorite math resources is available on her blog at georgiatimes.blogspot.com.  Jennifer will be sharing many more math tips at the 2010 LDSEHE Home Education Conference in Buena Vista, Virginia on May 27-28.  For more information, please visit www.ldsehe.org.