A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Teaching Methods

Give us ……

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So this is actually a hard post to write…how do I talk about what homeschooling looks like when we haven’t schooled all week?   It’s the subject of this week’s virtual Curriculum fair hosted by hosted by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds.   Last we we talked about our reasons to homeschool.

What does homeschooling look like?   I suppose it depends on the week.

 

Give us a household illness and homeschooling looks like three people supporting each other as we recover from the flu which has left us with no brains and little stamina.

Give us a field trip and you’ll find three people out of the house, taking pictures and making notes as we learn this history of our past, the how-to’s of how a business works, ask questions of how plants grow, experience the wonder of the world God created.

Give us a computer and we learn engineering, math, science, history, language arts, and so much more.  Give us the power of youtube and ant farms are built, history is learned, science is experienced and geography broadened. 

Give us a work book and we know we can move on page after page, writing, journaling, equating, documenting, filling in spaces, learning, growing, becoming someone more…

Give us books to read and our lives are filled with imagination, questions, wonder, knowledge and so much more.

Give us a co-op and you’ll find anger and laughter, learning and teaching, friendship and fun, stretching and growing and being more than we already are. 

Give us a messy house and you will find us cleaning, working, renovating, tidying, rearranging, selling, boxing, and decluttering.

Give us bunnies and you will find us undertaking animal management, biology, compassion, building, carpentry, gardening, growing, blogging and all things rabbity.

Give us people and friendships will be made, toleration achieved, opinions challenges, games played, feelings hurt and felt well in abundance.  Cooperating, challenging, growing, helping, healing, and fellowship deepening. 

Give us a blog and research, and joy, and friendships will blossom. 

Give us publication companies and reviews, reading, sharing of opinions and joy will abound. Frustration and learning how to be nice when something appeals not in the least. Commitments and timetables learned and mastered. 

Give us the world…. and you will be totally surprised where it takes us.  

Give it to us and we’ll fit it into our learning and our lives. 

What will YOU give us?

Do you want some help on your homeschooling journey?

Right now SchoolhouseTeachers.com is on sale.  I KNOW!   AND it’s on for a great price.  You need to use this code NEWYEAR18 for a $90/year subscription or MONTHNEWYEAR18 for the $9.95 /month subscription.   More than 350 lessons for the entire family covering all your homeschooling needs.

What do my fellow homeschool bloggers have to say about their Homeschool Method? Go visit them to find out!

Note: all posts will be live after 8 am EST on Monday, Jan. 15th.

How Our Academic Co-op Completes Our Eclectic Homeschool by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds

A Method to Our Madness by Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays

Finding Our Homeschool Method by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool

How We Homeschool by Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool

Give Us…. by Annette @ A Net in Time

A day in our Home by Sarah@DeliveringGrace

Lit-Based Education: How We Homeschool by Debra @ Footprints in the Butter

Overhauling Our Homeschool – Adjusting our “How” to fit our “Why” by Sabrina Scheerer @ Kids, Crunch, and Christ

A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler: Expectation Vs. Reality by Leah @ As We Walk Along the Road

How Charlotte Mason Transformed Our Homeschool by Brittney @ Mom’s Heart

Captain’s Log, Supplemental – Our Homeschool Days by Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break

How we get it done. by Kim @ Good Sweet Love

How to Organize Daily Curriculum with the School Cart by Jeniffer @ Thou Shall Not Whine

Learning For LIfe by Lori H @ At Home: where life happens

Eclectic Homeschooling: When It All Comes Together by Jen @ A Helping Hand Homeschool

A Typical Day? by Lizzy @ Peaches@Home

This is the Way We Do Our School, So Early in the Morning by Laura @ Four Little Penguins

A Little of This and a Little of That: Eclectic Homeschooling by Laura O @ Day by Day in Our World

Still Classically Educating After All These Years by True North Homeschool Academy

So what exactly is Life Led Homeschooling? by Dana @ Life Led Homeschool

The way we learn ~ 2018 Virtual Homeschool Fair by Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning

Our Homeschool Routine by Joelle @Homeschooling For His Glory

Homeschool Methods – 8 Tips for the Journey by Kristen @ Sunrise to Sunset

Facts vs Ideas

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I get alot of email from a variety of sources and sometimes I actually read them.

This morning I read an email from Simply Charlotte Mason. Which if you want to sign up for you can go here. I am not a Charlotte Mason teacher, but I think there is value in a variety of approaches to teaching.

Anyways, in this newsletter they were talking about Facts vs Ideas.

The author mentioned

how a living book should give our children ideas, not just facts.

The author went on to explain

Let’s take a Bible character most of us already know about in order to illustrate the difference. Let’s look at Joseph. A typical factual summary of Joseph’s life might read something like this:

Joseph, the eleventh and favored son of Jacob, was sold into slavery by his brothers and carried to Egypt. Because he accurately interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, he was appointed second in command over all the land. His good management of resources resulted in Egypt’s survival during a seven-year famine and eventually the salvation of his whole family from starvation.

But if we read Joseph’s story, told as a narrative in Genesis 37-50, we will get the facts, yes; but we can also pull from it all kinds of ideas like this:

  • Inter-family relations and sibling rivalry; how it can be enflamed by words and actions,
  • Diligence and trustworthiness in assigned responsibilities,
  • Sometimes good choices result in painful circumstances,
  • God is in control,
  • Circumstances can change in a moment,
  • People will disappoint you,
  • Forgiveness,
  • Managing resources in feast and in famine,
  • Giving glory to God before authorities; courage.

There are probably several other ideas you can think of that I didn’t list here. Do you see the difference? The facts are just something that happened to someone else. The factual account takes all the emotional and human experience aspects out of the equation. But the ideas are common human experiences and emotions that we can relate to and learn from.

I enjoy reading books to the lad that cause him to ask questions, OR that I can ask questions of him. If he asks questions I know that he is listening and that the information will come out later in play or in connections that he gets from other things that he is learning.

Ideas I find often spark further learning.

THIS is what I want to inspire in my lad… that desire to learn more.