Mimi Rothschild, Home School Advocate – The Homeschooling News Café

-by Mimi Rothschild

Should your students learn handwriting? There are those who say that there is no longer any point to learning to write beautifully. Our children, like the others of their generation, will be using computers, texting and emailing, not penning handwritten letters. Even note-taking in college classrooms is being replaced by quick typing into electronic devices. By the time our children reach college or the work world, being able to write legibly may be a quaint old-fashioned skill.

Let’s consider, though, all the old-fashioned skills which are actually very highly valued in our modern world. Can you bake a pie? Repair things around the house? Play a musical instrument? Make your own clothes? All these old-fashioned skills are admired by modern people who can’t do them.

If your students resist handwriting on the grounds that they’ll never use it, try learning calligraphy instead. While calligraphy can be an advanced art form, it can also be a simple way to cultivate beautiful handwriting. Use online lessons or a simple chart from a library book, and have students copy the simple forms of chancery or italic script until they’re pleased with their results.

Once the basic forms are comfortable, move on to art projects. Here are some practical uses for calligraphy:

• Labels for kitchen, schoolroom, or crafts cupboard.
• Shopping lists, chore charts, or memory verses.
• Classroom posters – maybe a history timeline or the periodic table of the elements.
• Holiday cards or stationery.
• Bookmarks and bookcovers.

As your students work, tell them about the way monks in the Middle Ages copied out the Bible so it would not be lost or forgotten. Share the excitement of Gutenberg when he printed his first Bible in the 1400s. Discuss how advances in technology have made the Bible available to so many, and made it possible for so many to read the Bible – even online!

Your students may or may not become skilled calligraphers. But it’s a sure way to improve their handwriting!

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

Whether you’re brand new to home schooling, or you’re a veteran, you know how much work goes into each day. Between schoolwork, housework, and balancing the role of wife, mother and educator, it can be downright exhausting at times. So why not teach your children to be workers along with you? It will be a tremendous help to you, while also preparing them to be productive adults.

So how do you approach this task? Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Start them early. Even toddlers can be taught to put away their toys, and the tasks can increase in difficulty with age. The point is instilling in a child early on the importance of tidying up after themselves and helping their parents and siblings will prove to be an invaluable skill later on in life.

Keep the tasks age appropriate. It’s ok to challenge a child to learn something new, but if you make his chores too many or too difficult, nobody benefits. Assigning each child one or two daily duties, such as making his or her bed or setting the dinner table, will teach them responsibility but won’t overwhelm them.

Communicate clearly. Some children can be told something just once, and they’re off and running. Others need to be reminded consistently before they finally understand what’s expected of them. Explain to your child, on their level, what it is you want them to do (in some cases even demonstrating for them) so that there is no confusion and the jobs get done correctly.

Hold them to high standards. It is unreasonable to expect a 7 year old to scrub a house until it’s spotless. But it is perfectly alright to expect him to be able to make his bed neatly. Training your child not only to do a job, but to do it well, will give him a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Reward them. The truth of the matter is the term “work” is most often associated with getting paid. You don’t necessarily have to give your child money for completing their chores or helping you with housework, but letting them have an ice cream after dinner for a job well done can go a long way. And never underestimate the power of simply telling a child what a good job they’ve done. Often a word of praise or encouragement is a far greater reward than money could ever be.

Find a system that works well with your family. Every family is different, as is every child. If your children prefer doing their assigned chores every day of every week of every year, great! Perhaps that order and consistency makes yours a happy and peaceful home. But you may find that rotating the duties every week or so among everyone might work better for your family, and will also help all of your children to become more well rounded. You ultimately have to determine what works best for your family, come up with a plan and implement it.

However you choose to introduce work into the family dynamic, it is almost certain that you and your children will be blessed by doing so.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

It is certain that at least once since making the decision to educate your children at home, you have been admonished by someone who does not agree with the concept of home schooling. Likely it has happened more than once. And the truth is, it will probably happen plenty more times before your children graduate. So how do you deal with those who are anti-home school?

In my experience, there are certain arguments that come up more frequently than others. Chances are you’ve heard them already, or if not you soon will. Here are a few suggestions on ways to combat the nay-sayers and stand up for your decision to home school.

You don’t have a teaching degree. How can you possibly teach your child? Well, let’s take a look at the numbers. Yes, the teacher in a traditional classroom has a degree in education. She also has the task of teaching 30 students of differing skill levels several different concepts in multiple subjects. I, as a home educator, have the pleasure of spending one on one time with my child to teach him to read and do math, allowing him as much time as he needs to learn and understand it. Which do you think is more effective from a learning stand-point?

Home schooling is illegal. A common misconception, and completely false. In fact, home education is legal in every single state in the U.S. This argument can be quickly and easily extinguished.

Your child will never learn to socialize. Just because a child does not sit in a traditional classroom every day does not mean she doesn’t interact with her peers in other ways. Activities such as ballet lessons, sports, church and home school groups allow for plenty of socialization. And the things my child will learn in those settings are much more desirable than what they might pick up attending public school for 7-8 hours a day.

Your child will fall behind and not be on the same level as his peers. Many states mandate annual testing to ensure that children who are educated at home are achieving the same academic milestones as those in traditional school settings. Additionally, most of the curriculum used to home school is far superior to that used in public school, which actually places the quality of education of a home schooler at a much higher than his peers will receive from a traditional education.

Your child will never be able to get into college. On the contrary, many colleges today have begun seeking out and recruiting children who have been home schooled, citing that they are better prepared and more conscientious. This also makes scholarships more likely.

Whether brand new to the world of home schooling, or a seasoned pro, you’ve certainly been met with one or all of these negative statements. It’s a shame that as parents we are made to defend our decision to take our own child’s education to a higher level and ensure that they are raised the way we see fit, with integrity and Godly principles. But the sad truth is we do. And although you will likely find your own way of explaining to others the reasons why educating your children at home is the right decision for your family, hopefully I’ve provided you with some ammunition to start.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

Is it better to memorize information, or to have lots of hands-on learning so the information is fully understood?

The answer is a definite “It depends.”

Human brains were designed by God to understand fully. We’re not as good at memorizing things as we are at learning them – that is, at getting complete understanding so that it stays in our minds in our own words. Memorizing things is a harder task for the human brain than learning things.

We have more control over information we’ve learned through full understanding than we do over information we’ve learned by rote. You can prove this to yourself – quick! What’s the eighteenth letter of the alphabet? You probably had to start at A and count your way through till you got to the eighteenth letter. That’s because you memorized the alphabet by rote. You don’t have this problem with information you’ve learned thoroughly, be it the geography of your state or the systems of the human body.

We’re also more likely to “forget” things we’ve memorized – that is, to be unable to call them to mind – when we’re stressed. For example, during a test or a really difficult task, it can be hard to bring memorized facts to mind.

So most of the time we’re better off learning fully than learning by rote.

However, there are times when memorization is a better tool.

First, there are things we need to learn that can’t be understood fully because they are arbitrary. That is, there isn’t any good reason for November to have 30 days and December to have 31. It’s just the way it is. We want our children to know the number of days in each month, so they’ll just have to memorize it. That’s true for the alphabet, too.

There are also things we want to have command of quickly. The multiplication tables, for example, are not arbitrary. We could calculate the product of two numbers every time we needed to know that information if we wanted to. But it’s faster to memorize the multiplication tables once than it is to calculate them over and over.

Finally, there are things we want to be able to remember exactly, not in our own words. Scripture, for example, is worth memorizing. When we memorize the Word of God, we can call on it during times of worry, fear, or temptation. In fact, God commanded us to memorize his words: “…these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Deuteronomy gives us a great starting point for how we can memorize information, or teach things to our children by rote: repetition. While kids often remember things they’ve learned fully from one hands-on lesson, they rarely can memorize a Bible verse or a set of math facts in one try. Usually, you need to set aside fifteen minutes or so every day for drill until the lesson is memorized.

What’s the best method for memorizing information? The simple answer is this: whatever your students will do, and pay attention to, for those fifteen minutes a day. Flashcards, drills, games like Concentration, singing songs with the information or the Bible verse in them – all of these approaches will work, if your students can pay attention.

The “pay attention” part is essential, though. A famous experiment found that people who used a telephone dozens of times each day couldn’t accurately draw the dial of the telephone with the numbers in the right places. Your students may not be old enough to have seen a telephone dial, but they probably can’t accurately draw the keypad of a modern phone, either. Neither can you, most likely. After all, you don’t have the intention of memorizing the placement of those numbers and letters when you look at it.

So, when your students need to memorize information, be sure they approach it with the intention of learning it by heart. Then build time for concentrated practice into the day every day until it’s completely learned.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

When you go to cut your Christmas tree, send the kids around to gather up a good sack of pine cones as well. Use them for some fun, hands-on lessons.

Make a pine cone bird feeder.  This is a satisfyingly messy project. Before you begin, do some research with your students to determine what kind of foods your local birds will most enjoy.

•    Tie strings around the stem ends of your pine cones. Put peanut butter into a pie tin or plate, and use hands or safe knives to spread it all over the pine cones. Hang the cones in a safe place.

•    Into another dish, pour bird seed, oatmeal, corn meal, dried fruits, and any other foods your research suggests your feathered friends would enjoy. For a very special artistic element to the project, put these items into different dishes and line them up on a table where your young artists can reach them.

•    Now take the peanut butter-covered pine cones and roll them in the birdseed and other bird foods. With care, you can create patterns of different colors and textures.

•    Hang the pine cone bird feeders on the trees outside, preferably where you can see them from an inside window. Take pictures of the birds that come to visit and learn their names, or count and graph them for a math lesson.

Make fire fancies. Have a chemistry lesson in and make a great holiday gift at the same time. The basic idea is to soak pine cones in water into which you have mixed some salt. Point out that mixing salt into water creates a solution. Put the pine cones in first thing in the morning and take them out at the end of the day. Set them to dry overnight, and you’re finished. A basket of these makes a sweet Christmas present. The fun comes when you put these pine cones into a fire — each type of salt will produce different colored flames. Here are some salts to try out:

•    sodium chloride (table salt)
•    sodium borate (borax)
•    magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts)
•    potassium chloride (salt substitute)

Make pine cone firestarters.
•    Put a block of paraffin (from the grocery or craft store) into a clean coffee can. Put the coffee can into a big pot of water.
•    Stir in old broken crayons for color.
•     Dip the pine cones into the wax. Tie a string around each cone to hold it while dipping. You will find that you need to dip each cone several times to get a good thick coat of wax.
•    You can also mix the salts listed above with sawdust and dredge the newly-waxed pine cones in the mixture, for firestarters that also make colors.
•    Hang the firestarters overnight to dry.

As you dip the pine cones, you can discuss forms of matter, since you melting a solid into a liquid and allowing it to solidify again, and then burning it to create a gas. This is also a good time to talk about fire safety.

-by Mimi Rothschild

When an adult meets a child, it is very likely that the first question asked will be, “What grade are you in?”

For our homeschool students, the answer might be, “I’m in first grade reading, fourth grade math, and everything else is second grade” or “I get to go at my own pace, and we don’t worry about what grade I’m  in.” Sometimes the real answer might even be, “It depends on the day – my mom teaches us all together, and sometimes the lessons are for my grade level and sometimes they’re for my sisters’ grade levels.” Is this a problem? It doesn’t have to be.

When we plan lessons, we need to consider where our children are developmentally as well as what they’ve mastered in the subject. Sometimes a precocious homeschool student could move ahead and study subjects usually considered appropriate for older students. If we choose to do this, we need to make sure that the method used for presenting the subject matter fits the student’s developmental stage, even if the topic is more advanced. The same is true when our student needs to review concepts from an earlier grade level.

When our expectations are out of sync with our child’s developmental stage, we’re asking for frustration, for ourselves and our children. So a young child can understand, learn, and enjoy algebraic thinking concepts using toy animals to manipulate, but not using an algebra workbook. An older student who needs more work on basic reading can get good practice by using magazines and other materials written at a basic level, but might be embarrassed at being asked to read a book labeled “easy reader.”

Equally, when we want our children of different ages to study a subject together, we have to be ready to adapt the lesson to the different developmental needs of the different ages. A group of children may listen to the same online lecture or piece of music together. The youngest children might color while they listen, since it is hard for them to sit still and pay attention as long as the older ones. The older students might take notes in order to help organize their thoughts and develop this useful study technique. In this way, all the students can gain what they need from the shared experience.

What if your student is advanced in some areas and not in others?  There’s a temptation to spend more time on the areas where the child has trouble, in hopes of catching up. Yet it is often true that the area in which the child excels is a source of pleasure for him. If he is forced to work extra on math in order to catch up with the reading that he loves, he may resent math and find it even harder, while losing some of his strength in reading through lack of practice.

In our own lives, we know and accept that there are some things we’re better at and enjoy more. We don’t expect ourselves to be equally good at everything. Yet we often do expect this of our kids. Instead, let your student use her strengths to shore up her weaknesses. For example, if she loves science and struggles with writing, let her write lab reports about experiments, or keep a nature observation journal. If music is his pleasure and history is a chore, study history through music.

We can also recognize that our children may need more support for some subjects than others. That’s one of the advantages of homeschooling: that we can let our children work at the pace they need.  Christ gave His apostles what they were ready for, and didn’t insist that they learn and understand everything at once. This is a good example for us as eduators.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

-by Mimi Rothschild

When we think of homeschooling’s benefits, we usually think of the opportunity to provide a first-class education at much less than the cost of a typical private school, the chance each child has to work at his or her own pace and in the best way for that particular child, or the blessings of learning in a nurturing Christian environment.

There are benefits for the parents as well. We have a closer family life, the ability to be sure of what our children are learning, and the pleasure of spending more time with our precious children as they grow.

There’s another benefit for parents, though, one we often overlook when we count our blessings as homeschoolers.

Have you thought about your own education? It’s true, refreshing our knowledge of the things we learned in school – or occasionally the things we should have learned in school and didn’t – is one of the great benefits we homeschool parents gain from our children’s schooling.

Some of the things we now have the opportunity to learn, such as web design, the history of Christian music or forensic science, may never have been available to us when we were students. Now we can take pleasure in learning these things as adults.

For no cost of time or money above the investment we’re already making in our children’s education, we can polish up our algebra, learn about world history with our more mature understanding, and perhaps finally get complete comprehension of how to multiply fractions.

Our children get to see our own excitement in learning, and to have our example of diligent study and an enthusiastic teachable spirit. Our friends and spouses get a more interesting and informed conversational partner. And we get the satisfaction of being better educated individuals.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

Maybe you’re one of the blessed ones and all of your children pay perfect attention and are thrilled to participate in all their subjects.  But if you’re like most, you have at least one student that makes completing math problems or writing a paragraph like pulling teeth.  So what can you do to inspire that reluctant learner?  There are lots of simple things you can do.  Here are a few to get you started:

~Be Passionate.  Don’t just read.  Use funny voices, or act it out.  Don’t simply explain how to do long division, but turn it into a math game.  Let your passion for what you are doing, teaching, pass through whatever you are teaching.  Students tend to get excited about what their instructor is excited about.

~Be Vulnerable.  If there are certain things that you also struggled with when you were a student, be honest.  Share that with your children.  Sometimes it can be inspirational to them just to know that they are not alone.  It also helps to see that you overcame your barriers.

~Make It Real.  Tell real-life stories and give actual scenarios within your lessons whenever possible, to make boring material come alive.  Acting out stories and conducting science experiments bring to life the lessons on the page.  Children tend to get bored and become less cooperative when they don’t understand something, so putting things into perspective and making it real to them can make the world of difference.

~Encourage, encourage, encourage.  And when you’re done, encourage some more.  There isn’t anyone on this earth that doesn’t feel uplifted and inspired when they’re told they’re doing a great job.  Children are no exception.  Maybe your stubborn learner struggles with math, but they excel at science.  When they get an answer right or do well on their practice work, make a big deal!  Remind them frequently how intelligent and talented they are, and you will surely see a difference in their overall attitude.

~Change Things Up.  Although it’s important to have structure and order to your homeschool day, sometimes just making some minor changes to surprise your students can help get them back on track with learning.  Instead of doing English in the morning, start off with the subject you usually reserve for the end of the day.  The change can be refreshing for everyone.

~Don’t Forget to Pray!  I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this, but just in case….remember to incorporate your desire for cooperation and good attitudes from your students into your devotional (and let them hear it).  Suggest that your reluctant learner also ask the Lord for help during the day to stay focused and encouraged.  And remind them daily of what the Bible says they are capable of:

Luke 1:37
For with God nothing will be impossible.
Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Every student is different, and inevitably some will struggle more than others.  But if you work at being creative and finding new ways to bring learning alive for them, the difference will surely be evident and remarkable.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.