This week the 4 Moms are talking about Scriptures and/or stories we rely on for comfort/encouragement as a homeschooling family.  I saw this subject on our collective spreadsheet months ago and again a few weeks ago when I added it to the list of upcoming topics.  Nonetheless, right now I’m saying, “Huh?  What are we talking about?  Whose idea was this?”

One Bible verse that I think of very often is Proverbs 14:23:

In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty

Although we all want to do things “the right way,” it’s generally not necessary to know and practice the very best method so long as we are working steadily toward a goal.  God will bless our honest imperfect efforts to serve Him.  We can take great comfort in this!  This applies in homeschooling as well as other areas of life.

Another passage that helps us keep our focus is known as the schema in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

⁴Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

⁵And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

⁶And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

⁷And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

⁸And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

⁹And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

This defines our goal and our method.  If we are teaching them to evaluate everything they think, do and believe from a Biblical worldview – and giving them the tools to do so –  we are succeeding.

I don’t know if this qualifies or not, but I also have a little anecdote I often share with nervous new homeschoolers who wonder if they should be worried when their children are “behind.”

Deanna was an early talker with a huge vocabulary and an amazing memory.  At 12 months, she knew and used 150 words.  If you doubt me, I can provide the list from her baby book.  She didn’t start putting them together until the thoroughly typical age of 18 months, but by then she had a very nice vocabulary to work with and rapidly became thoroughly conversant.

I thought she was brilliant, and she was.  However, it slipped my attention that while she was accomplishing milestones with great fanfare and expertise, she was still doing them very much on schedule.

Because she was brilliant, we started working on reading early.  I made a set of flashcards, and she learned all the sounds of the letters in 20 quick sessions over the course of 10 days – before she was 20 months old.  She was going to read before she was 3.  I was sure of it!

But when we moved on to putting the sounds together, she just didn’t get it. She wasn’t ready.

I put the reading supplies away for about 6 months to work on other things, and then we tried again.  Still no progress.

We repeated this process many times over the following years.  I didn’t try very long or hard each time; I knew there was no concrete rule that a child must read by age 5, and I didn’t want to push too hard.  We had other ways to learn.  I spent a lot of time reading aloud to Deanna and her sisters.  Her vocabulary and communication skills grew.  Her memory was stunning.  She was highly intelligent, but just couldn’t put the sounds together to read.  The point:

She wasn’t ready until she was ready.

The ability to read is closely tied to certain developmental milestones, and she had to reach them before she could really make progress.  At 6, it finally clicked.  She went from zero to Tolkien in 6 months, and has been a voracious reader ever since.

Sure, the right program and a lot of time and effort on both our parts might have provided the crutch we needed to get her over that hurdle ahead of time, but she was able to cross it with ease when she was ready.  I have heard it said about potty training that you can start early and be finished by 24 months, or you can wait til the baby is 2 and do it in a few days.  Our experience with reading has been much the same.

There.  Are you comforted and/or encouraged?

The other moms are offering encouragement too:

• Smockity Frocks
• Common Room
• Raising Olives

Upcoming topics for 4 Moms:

• February 9 - note to self: check the schedule. Oh, er…hello!

Recent topics:

• January 12 – 4 Moms: snacks and appetizers for a crowd {linky}
  
• January 7 - 4 Moms: Teaching grammar
  
• December 15 - 4 Moms: Gift shopping for a crowd
• December 8 - 4 Moms’ favorite holiday recipes {linky}

About 4 Moms, including a complete list of all past topics

Welcome back to the 4 Moms weekly posts.  You can welcome me back, too, because I’ve been gone for a few weeks.  I had a lovely break from blogging over the holidays, but sadly I won’t remember a bit of it since I DIDN’T BLOG ANY OF IT.  Ironic, no?

At least I’m blogging about our recent rodential invader, so we’ll remember that story in years to come, but that’s not why you’re here today.  You’re here to learn how I teach my children grammar.  Because I am a homeschooler, and obviously I teach my children grammar, right?

Wrong.  Maybe you already picked up on that when I began a sentence with a conjunction.  I don’t teach grammar.

We are relaxed homeschoolers, so I love it when real life results in lessons learned relatively painlessly.  Texts may be better at covering all the bases in an orderly fashion, but is that approach really intrinsically superior?  Will my children be stunted in “the real world” if they don’t learn all their Important Facts & Concepts at the institutionally determined appropriate age and time?  Will they miss out on job opportunities because I forgot to teach them to diagram sentences?  Will they be less able to glorify God and enjoy Him forever?

Psst…those were rhetorical questions. The answers are “no,” “no,” and “no.”

If I’ve done my job properly, they will have the ability to crack a book (or open up google) and learn to diagram sentences should the need arise.  The same goes for conjugating German verbs, identifying the bones of the human hand, and memorizing the names of the early Chinese emperors.  While they are learning, I also want to teach them to learn. I don’t want to simply pour facts into open minds.  I want active minds that are constantly learning, growing, inquiring, and thinking critically.

I’m not saying these things are unimportant, or that none of my children have or will learn them, but they are incidental to the ultimate goal of Christian education.

I’m also not saying that there is anything wrong with a more structured approach.  We have used Saxon math for many years.  Kaitlyn and Lydia are currently enrolled in an online interactive essay class to help develop and polish their writing skills.  We have used other textbooks and formal courses on occasion, but they are not the backbone of our curriculum.

So…how do my children learn grammar if they’re not filling in the blanks of a grammar workbook 3 days/week for 12 years?

They read, and they write.  I read what they wrote, and we talk about what they read and write.  I correct their spoken and written grammar as the opportunity arises, talking about the parts of speech and explaining the difference between objective and subjective pronouns, etc.  OK, so maybe I do teach them grammar, but I don’t know why they call me the Gramminator.

Learning happens other ways, too.  We play Mad Libs.  I have a book called Eats Shoots and Leaves that I want my older children to read.

They learn in the course of real life, the way so much other learning takes place.

The other moms are teaching grammar too.  See what they have to say:

• Smockity Frocks, who does it a lot like we do but makes it sound better.
• Common Room, who does it the way I envision myself doing it, but somehow we never quite get there.
• Raising Olives, who does a beautiful job of blending formal and informal grammar instruction.

Upcoming topics for 4 Moms:

• January 12 - Snacks and appetizers for a crowd
• January 19 - How to organize, shop for and maintain ALL THAT CLOTHING {linky}
• January 26 - Q&A
• February 2 - Scriptures and/or stories we rely on for comfort/encouragement as a homeschooling family

Recent topics:

• December 15 - 4 Moms: Gift shopping for a crowd
• December 8 - 4 Moms’ favorite holiday recipes {linky}
• December 1 - 4 Moms: preparing children to share holidays with unbelieving family
• November 24 - 4 Moms: A roundup of thankful posts from the past

About 4 Moms, including a complete list of all past topics

Welcome, friends.  I missed last week’s Q&A edition of the 4 Moms series – my favorite theme for our posts – but I’m back this week to tell you how we teach history.

You have to promise not to gasp in audible shock, but for the last several years we have had no prefabricated history curriculum.  We do often focus on a particular area or period in history, but we do it with a variety of materials rather than one text or program.

We used Sonlight in the past and loved the concept but weren’t always thrilled with the titles used.  We used Mystery of History and the kids still talk about the fun they had, but it was just a skeleton and required a lot of extra materials.

Since then, we have used the principles we learned from those 2 programs to do our own thing.  We have an extensive library in our home including a wide array of history books for both children and adults, historical fiction, philosophy (which is important for interpreting and understanding history), audio and video lectures, and much more.  These materials have taught our children far more than I ever learned from my history textbooks in the highly structured Christian homeschool program from which I graduated.

While I learned history as a list of names and dates to be memorized and then forgotten, my children really feel as if they know the people whose biographies they have read, and they are beginning to understand how people and events worked together in history as God’s plan for mankind unfolded and continues to unfold.  They have a big picture view that I never grasped when I was younger, and they tend to remember all the details that I so quickly forgot because they understand the significance of those details and they have a context in which to place them.

I believe that learning this way has many advantages over a textbook, but there is another very important element to the way our children learn history: their dad.  He was a history buff from a very young age, and has confessed to sneakily reading Schaff’s 8 volume History of the Christian Church when he should have been studying other subjects.  He was that kind of a rebel.   If you’re going to be a rebel, there are worse ways to go.  :)

He has collected these resources for our family, using them himself and demonstrating a genuine, infectious love and interest for history that has been picked up by our children.  Through his own use, he has exposed the rest of us to these materials.  He sometimes has all of us listen to a series of lectures together.  He leads and sparks many discussions on the topic, teaching the children to interpret the events of history through the lens of scripture.

A few of our favorite resources:

• Bible.  Need I even say it?  The ultimate source for accurate history and a worldview to help understand the events you learn about elsewhere.
• Childhood of Famous Americans (series for young children)
• Sower Series biographies, also for children
• Joe Morecraft’s sermons on the Protestant Reformation (many other wonderful audio lectures available on SermonAudio.com)
• History of the Reformation by D’aubigne
• The Great Christian Revolution by Otto Scott
• Historical fiction by G.A. Henty
• Vision Forum’s History of the World and other resources published by VF (check out Building a Winning Curriculum for tips on using these items)

This is just a starting point.  Thanks to Ebay, Paperback Swap (not just for paperbacks), AddAll (search every major seller at once to find the best price on the internet), Christian Book Distributors (big discounts), Amazon, and Vision Forum, we have many hundreds or even thousands of books covering a variety of times, places, people and events.

The study of history in our home has largely been voluntary, because this is one area in which we love to learn.  It is so easy to see God’s hand in the larger affairs of men and nations over the millennia, and this is an important reminder to us in how we live our everyday lives: if our God  controls kings and nations, what do we have to fear?

The other moms:

• Smockity Frocks
• Raising Olives
• Common Room

Upcoming topics:

• April 14 – Eating inexpensively on the road.  Just in time for summer!
• April 21 - Large family & church, part 2: Being still and quiet during worship
• April 28 – Q and A: leave your question here.

Recent topics: