A Net in Time

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Homeschooling

Spiritual Education In Homeschooling

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For families that are faith based homeschoolers a question that often arises is how does one fit in a spiritual component to their homeschooling.  The question arises What is Spiritual Education?  How does one approach it?

Is it part of the homeschool day, as in, is it subject that is completed once a day just like math, science, art etc.  OR is a more generic part of the day NOT considered a subject in the curriculum.   The question then begged is, how do you as the parent teacher help your children understand the difference?

Spiritual Education in Homeschooling, two main methods

I admittedly am not sure of the answer but want to take the time to explore it.  Personally I’ve done it both ways, where it’s one or the other.   Currently I’m doing a mix of both. 

Faith in every Subject

Spiritual education can be woven into every single subject that is taught.  That’s a given in a faith-based homeschool due to the fact that as believers we understand that God is in all and through all and manifests himself throughout the entirety of the world.   He does.   So when we teach art we understand that God is the first artist and shows himself through the things he has created.  The more we understand how God put things together, the more we understand how much he cares for this world. All the details he holds in place show us his omnipotence.   But does weaving faith facts into lessons teach our children how to have a daily devotional time?  Does it teach them facts about the bible which they should understand?

I don’t think so.  It does teach them the relevancy of God to every subject and area of life, but it doesn’t actually teach them to dive deep into God’s word and to think meditatively about spiritual things.

Meditative Study

The way to really understand a subject is to take the time to read and think about what you are learning.  So as you do math you learn that 1 + 1 = 2 and then can bear that out with practical application.  To understand Shakespeare you read his works, consider the time period that he lived in, figure out what the words he used actually mean, and therefore are able to understand his works. The same goes for understanding God.  You actually need to stop, read his word, consider the history and time period, consider what you already know about him, and really think about the verses that you are reading.  What do they tell you about God, what do they tell you about people (including yourself).  It’s important to learn these skills early so they translate into continuing these skills as adult. 

Curriculum or Outside of Curriculum

The challenge I find is this.  Having a devotional time as part of your homeschooling day, means it won’t be forgotten.  Do your math, your science, have your devotions, do your English.  It’s just part of your learning time.  You know it will get done. But here’s a risk involved: your children will see this only as a subject to be completed, not a life skill to develop.

BUT if you separate out your devotional time what do you do on those really busy days when it’s hard to fit everything in?  Then you risk your devotional time being forgotten, or laid aside, in the busyness of life.  The risk you run is teaching your children that sometimes all the running around we do is more important than learning more about God and his will for our lives.   How does one counter that?  

Combination?

This is why I see combining the two methods as win-win.   Your child (as a subject) learns the books of the bible, or learns memory verses, or works through a Sunday School lesson. A regular study time that teaches without necessarily the meditative aspect of a personal devotional time. 

And then at a separate time (like at a meal or first thing in the morning) you can have a family devotional time, or take 30 minutes after (or before) you start your homeschooling day to have a personal time of reading God’s word and talking about it.  To that end, in our day, we do a couple of things.  First as I go through the book of John I talk with my lad about what I’m learning and get his insights as well. I’ll read verses to him and say “Hey, this is what I’m thinking and learning.  What are your thoughts?”  

At supper (almost every night) we are working through the book Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds.   We are doing this with our international student which gives us a lots of reasons to stop and just talk as we want him to understand what we are learning too.  We take turns reading scripture and then applying that to what we have learned.  Sometimes we are so amazed.

What Others Do:

I know from talking with other moms that they  have their own routine.  Perhaps they will start their day with 20 minutes of quiet bible reading, or a morning circle time, and as part of their bedtime routine. We each, through trial and error, find our own way.  It’s important to do so though.  God gives us life and care.  His son died for us.  It’s the very least we can do to take time to know him, our heavenly Father, just a wee bit more eh?  

Jack the Police Dog

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Today my son and I joined other members of the HOPE group to see a police dog demonstration.  We got to meet Jack and his Handler Jackie.    She is the smallest dog handler and has the largest dog in this area.  She talked with us about the work that Jack does with her, his training, his likes and dislikes and demonstrated some of his skills.

Police Dog Jack

Jack spends most of his time during general duties – going on patrol, clearing houses, looking for people, and other such normal activities for a police dog.  He has also been trained in drugs and one other thing… bombs I think.  My memory isn’t completely clear.

Came from Czechoslovakia  when one year old $10,000.  They work with European breeders because they need the pedigree of solid working dogs with good noses. 

His handler did all the training with him.  Jack works for his toy (a ball with a rope on it).   His ball is his “good job” marker.   They are trained using positive reinforcement only.  She trained Jack in London and returns there twice a month to maintain training.   

police dog and handler

Carries a gun, pepper spray and a tazer.  Tazers come with an inbuilt confetti that is marked with the number of the tazer.  So forensics can always tell which tazer was used.

The students (and some of the moms) asked good questions that ranged from size of Jack (75-90 lbs), to ammunition needed (carry two clips with 14 bullets), to items they need to carry.  The fun of trying to keep with a dog who can clear a 10 foot fence.   Jack is currently the largest dog in the London, St. Thomas, St. Mary’s and Stratford area.   He is a black German Shepherd.  

He has had 6 apprehensions in his life.  An apprehension is when a dog bites a suspect to hold them.   They are trained to bite and hold rather than to bite and reposition.  This training minimizes damage to the suspect. 

She helped us understand why a police dog can clear a house quicker than a person can.  Having a powerful nose lets them know if a person is hiding in a room even if a door is shut and locked.   Means the officer doesn’t have to wait for a key to gain entrance nor do they have to search every cubby, closet or even the ceiling. 

His handler was pleased to show us some of Jack’s skills.  He SO loves his ball and watched it eagerly be tossed away and did everything he was supposed to before he finally was able to keep it.  He ran through his exercise twice showing off different skills I only caught the first part on camera. 

His handler ended up being called back to duty, but before she headed off, we were shown a secret from the police car.  She has a button on her suit that can remotely open the back door of the vehicle.  Jack is trained to burst out in full protection mode.   Unfortunately Jack got the protection sleeve off his handler before I got the camera out and snapping a pic.  

emergency releaseWe learned that Jack lives with his person 24/7.  At night he has an outdoor kennel that keeps him comfortable.  The police vehicle is equipped with Jack in mind, with a temperature controlled environment and everything.

It was a great demonstration and I’m glad we went. 

Unschool without unschooling

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The other day I had a conversation with a fellow homeschooler.  She wanted to talk to me because I’ve been schooling a while and she is fairly new.   She’s been confused by a few things and just needed to talk. Over the course of our conversation we got on the topic of unschooling and what did I as a Christian think about it?  

unschool without unschooling

Defining Unschoooling.

It’s always hard you know?   To answer a question when understanding between two people might not be clear.  How I defined unschooling is this: Letting a child choose what they want to learn about without using any curriculum.   A child learns at their own pace without anyone actually teaching the child, just providing the resources for a child to teach themselves. 

After we were on the same page I told her that as a Christian I didn’t believe in unschooling as a method of learning, but that said I believed that we could use the idea of unschooling in our daily lives.  Raised eyebrows at this statement so I went on to explain myself.

For instance, your curriculum calls for you to study about sharks but your child has a love of alpacas… so study alpacas.  You don’t need to study sharks.   Or you are supposed to look into the history of the civil war, but your child has become fascinated by the Metis rebellion…study the Metis rebellion.   You don’t have to do what the curriculum asks you to do.   You don’t.  

The world won’t stop.  The curriculum company won’t call you on your choices.  Your child won’t forget how to learn.  Other homeschool moms (or dads) won’t yell at you and if they do.. WHY?  Nothing horrible will happen.  You don’t need to worry about gaps in education, what you need to worry about it instilling a love of learning.

Questions to ask:

You need to ask: Is your child learning and growing?  Are they enjoying their studies?  Are they retaining the information that alpacas take care of their young, they are mammals, with a backbone who are a domesticated vicuna from South America?  Do they know that sharks are fish, and fish are animals.. just like alpacas are?  Have they learned the history can be told from different points of view?   That both sides have a story to tell?   Do they know that learning your history helps you understand what is happening today?

It doesn’t matter what you use to teach,.  You need talk to your children, see their delights and curiousities.  Nurture that.  Working with your child’s interests isn’t foregoing what is good and right in educating your children.  You can use what they love in order to help them learn, to intentionally train them up.  Isn’t that what we are about?

Record Keeping Worries

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Did you know that I have a boy in grade 8?   I KNOW… it’s been an amazing journey that we’ve been on for the past 8-9 years, learning and growing together.  As he gets closer to grade nine (gasp) I start to wonder about keeping grades and records and have to admit.. I haven’t a clue.  Beyond making tests and marking them, just how does one keep grades?

How does one mark a project?  How does one judge if a student has passed a keyboarding class?  I don’t know! 

I’ve been doing some research (not much at this point to be honest) I still don’t know much.. so why am I even writing this post eh?  To share my lack of knowledge?

Well not really.

Record keeping worries, text over open books

Reassurance

I just want to talk to moms (or dads) out there who are in the same boat that I am in.   My goal is to ease hearts as mine have been.

I was talking to the highschool guidance counsellor two weeks ago and asked her how they handle it when a student comes in when records haven’t been kept well.  “Oh, we just figure it out”.  To my quizzical look, she continued “We had a student come into grade 10 just this past week, no records for anything up til this point.   We talked with her, figured out where she was at and we have the ability to just plug the details in.   We can adjust as we see how she does at grade level as well”.

You know what that did?  WOW.. it eased my heart.   To know that I don’t have to panic if I don’t have it all figured out by next September.  And honestly WHY should I panic?  Having or not having grades for grade nine is not the end of the world.  Colleges/universities aren’t going to hold it against him?

Support is Available

I also know this… there is a HUGE support community out there for homeschoolers.  On-line or in person.  

In-person, some of my options are:

  • One of the curriculum supply places will be doing a “going into highschool seminar” in a few weeks so I can take advantage of that.
  • I can go to a spring homeschooling conference and someone there will be doing a highschool workshop.  (at least there has always been one every other conference).
  • Talk to those who have gone on before
  • Talk to the library about resources they might have on hand

On-line I can

  • Research how to do it via the world wide web
  • Talk to the local homeschooling community
  • Go to forums and ask questions
  • Talk to people connected with the Homeschool Review Crew
  • Talk to individuals I’ve gotten to know in the homeschool community like Kym, Lori, and Carol.  
  • Reach out on social media.

Please do share, I really do want to know what my options are.  Even to learn HOW to grade.  My lad is good at letting me know what he does know, but that doesn’t always tell me what he remembers long term you know?  I can see how he puts his research skills together, but I can’t always judge how well he sees the bigger picture. 

Your turn

How about you? What ways can you learn about grades and record keeping for YOUR highschool student?   What have you learned works for keeping good records of your students’ activities?  Share, help me out eh?   You are part of my community!

This post has been linked with the Homeschool Review Crew Round up.  You can find it here. 

keeping records

World War 1: Pre-War Alliances

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Do you recall that we are learning about the World wars this year? Last time we learned about the assassination of ArchDuke Ferdinand. Over the past week the lad has been studying up the Pre-War alliances.

pre war alliances of world war 1

The lad read from these books.

The great war pre-war alliances
The story of the first world war for children.
The war to end all wars.
The First world war.
First World War.
Canada in World War One.
Roots of the conflict.

Maps

We discovered this map of the Pre-war alliances. We thought about creating our own small one but the lad wants to add flags to the large map that he is working on. This is his brief run down on what he wants to do.

idea for map

This is the progress he has made this week.

map progress for world war 1The lad took the time to explain what some of the countries are.

Videos:

We watched some videos, in particular these from The Great War

There are three parts, I’m not linking them all here.  🙂  but it’s a fascinating series so you really should check them out.   We found videos 2 and 3 ran together. 

Vocabulary Learned:

Nationalism: an extreme form of patriotism, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries

Militarism: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.

Imperialism: a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force.

Anti-Semitism: hostility to or prejudice against Jews.

Taking it further:

We had a science class this week.  We did electrolysis (taking the hydrogen out of water).   The lads were fascinated and found it a lot of fun.  The lad has been busy expanding his knowledge of this process since then.

I was talking with the lad today about how the war was like electrolysis.  You had countries that naturally were drawn together and yet you can change one thing and they are forced apart.   You should have seen the startlement in his eyes and his understanding deepened.  Neat way to connect dots I thought.

Research?

Normally after a week of research the lad works on a research project to further his knowledge, but this week he said all the questions he had got answered by the different books he read or by the videos we watched.  He was able to narrate why the different countries had the alliances they did.  For instance Britain made one with Belgium because Belgium was a way to protect a piece of their lad. He compared this with the Canadian sale of Alaska to the USA because the USA wanted to protect a point of entry.  People liked Russia because of it’s sheer size. And some of the other countries liked each other because of proximity or what they could gain etc.   It’s always good to listen to a lad explain his understanding.  We’ve decided we’re going to have him start writing a report of everything he is learning so we can track it better. 

Crafty Ideas from Junk

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crafty ideas from junk

Crafty Ideas from Junk is a book I pulled from my art shelves.   It’s not a large book by any means but has a number of fun crafts in it to delight your budding artist.   (or simply a child looking for some way to occupy their time) Games, robots, necklaces and plant holders are just a few of the activities waiting to be discovered.

crafty ideas from junk

Each craft/activity comes with a needed supplies list.  Some are more loose in their requirements than others, as well as instructions following. I found that some of the directions left me a bit confused as to what I was to do first or next or just how to accomplish the task at hand, but that gives the opportunity to do some problem solving, which is a great part of doing crafts isn’t it?  To have to figure some of it on your own.   Helps make the craft or game more your own.

crafty ideas from junk

One of the things I would like to do with a Co-op class sometime is to have a “make games for your siblings class”.  I look at the instructions above and think… this would be a great game to older kids to make for their siblings.   What do you think?

crafty ideas from junk

More than 25 crafts, games and activities fill the pages of this softcover tomb by Myrna Daitz.   Children will find themselves encouraged in their efforts to keep themselves busy.   I like this little book and it will rejoin the others on my shelf. Perhaps in the spring I’ll actually host a “Make a gift for your Siblings class”.  Would be fun don’t you think?

crafty ideas from junk
Crafty Ideas from Junk
Myrna Daitz
Exley Publications Ltd
48 pages, softcover,
art book, elementary, craft, art

 

Looking for Rabbit Trails

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Monday night the lad and I were talking about school starting this week.  He was completely taken aback!  WHAT????  It can’t start mom!

Well.. oops lad, it is.

MAN!  (typical kid eh?)  but it was quickly followed with “OH RIGHT!   We’re studying what I want to, aren’t we?”

Anyways, we got on with making the beds and generally just chatting along about math and latin and language arts (still need to find an appropriate spelling/grammar rules program for him)

Our conversation continued about how I might have him make a salt dough map for his world war studies… his response.. Mom..could we just use clay instead?  It’s EASIER to work with, I can build layers and colour it and everything.  He took his time to explain the pros and cons for each method and what he was envisioning. 

AND THEN OH MY… He got into how we could use toothpicks and make little flags and make the hills and cliffs and make mountains.  And then colour coding the allies and axis power and using playdough to map out trenches.  It was amazing listening to him and all his plans.

Rabbit looking, text looking for rabbit trails

We then went on to talk about how to divide up his workload… One week we’ll watch videos and read books (and work on math/language arts etc), the next week we will be looking for rabbit trails and answering points of inquiry and tucking into science and art aspects.  Our discussion continued about how if he discovers lots of items that spark his curiousity we can just dive right into them.   His eyes just lit up!

THIS, this is what I have been working for all this time!  A lad who knows what he wants to learn, is able to articulate it well, and define what he likes about another medium (in this point clay) over another.  I am so hoping it all goes smoothly.    That my lad finds much to tweak his interest, that we have a blast following rabbit trails and learn much together.

If tonight’s talk is any indication….. IT WILL BE!

So how do you get there?

How does one build to that type of study and articulation without doing a formal study?

Frankly my lad is not always the easiest kid to school.  Shocker eh?

He does math quite frankly backwards (at least to my thinking).   He gets the answer, he sorts it out and it works for him but honestly, half the time I don’t understand how he gets from point A to answer Z.  We’ve utilized all sorts of math programs that work well for a short span and then they simply stop working.  The exception to the rule has been NatureGlo.  Math combined with science, history, geography and more… It suits him to a “T”.  LOVES IT.  BUT he made a comment to me last week.  I want to keep doing NatureGlo but can we also do a math that teaches me stuff that I have to answer math questions not connect a variety of dots?   SURE!  So yeah.. another thing I need to solidify.   It’s been a struggle getting to this point though.

Why do I bring up math?

Because it’s been part of the journey in learning to voice opinions and not just say “I don’t like this program” to being specific.  What don’t you like?  What is the struggle?  Too hard?  Too easy?   Something setting you off?  We learned fairly quickly that anything gimmicky WILL NOT LAST.   It is fun for a while but then it gets irritating with my lad and he can’t look past it.  He had to discuss it well with me about what did and did not work.   We actually took a break from math for a while and you know what happened?  He started to watch youtube videos.  This lad knows stuff I haven’t a clue on.  🙂

From math, then what?

Using our discussions in math we branched out to… here’s some curriculum… what topic do you want to start with?   Pulleys?  Animals?   Human body?  We found one study or interest often led into another subject. 

We started reading history encyclopedias… written by different people from different perspectives.. I tell you IT WAS FASCINATING!!!!

Learning how one aspect of history tied into another.  How an economic downturn could affect the nations around a struggling area (for good or ill) We often declared that isn’t the neat how THAT connects with THAT point in history.  Do you see how God used this event over here to turn the hearts of THAT person?   Let’s see how this person colours their history lessons .. see if we can discover their focus.  Do you see how they talk about this country bossing that country around and then they go over here and boss this country around and then… Until finally they find someone/some country who is strong enough and brave enough who says STOP, go no further?  Do you see the family connections there and the movement of land and economic growth there?  How it influences how people think?  Following connections happens everywhere… and talking about them as we go, helps articulation happen and dots to form about how everything connects.

EVERYTHING has a connection of some sort.

And this year…

This year we will follow rabbit trails all centered about the world wars, Canada’s involvement, and if we have time… the other wars.  🙂  Dad doesn’t think we’ll get through it all… (you think he knows us too well????)  I’m kinda hoping one of those rabbit trails will lead to a discovery of music the lad didn’t already know about, or even a love of European foods or a love of physical fitness! 

What sort of connections will you form with your students this year?

Think anything interesting will pop out for you?  Follow the rabbit trails eh?