_ “It is obvious that many homeschooling families are nothing more than reformed public educational systems. A system faulty at the very core of its philosophy does not need reformation, it needs dismissal. The educational system in America doesn’t need a new teacher, it needs a new birth.” _ —Michael & Debi Pearl

_ “There is more to education than academics. Don’t our children need to learn how to cook, clean, sew, grocery shop, care for others, plan a household budget, pay bills, work on the car, make home repairs, garden, mow the lawn, teach, and so on?” _ —Valerie Bendt

What is the purpose of Education? What is the goal?

We are programmed to think that if our children do not do well in school, make good grades, and seek a college education, that they are destined to a life of struggle and failure. There are many inherint mind sets of the world. If your child cannot learn thus and thus by such and such age, they are slow, they are behind. Expectations, labels, discouragement, low self esteem, rebellion, bad attitude…

Public school was a downward spiral for us and our children did not attend your “typical” public school. They attended a very small, one classroom for every grade K-8, charter school. I had already tried to homeschool TWICE, everyone who knew me knew that I had miserably failed, and came close to going nutty at the same time. Seriously. WHY would I ever even consider homeschooling again?

The Spirit of the Lord is so gentle and so merciful. WHY? I ventured to wonder, does learning have to be so STRESSFUL, why can’t learning actually be FUN??? WHY does he HAVE to know his time tables by memory in 4th grade or be called ‘slow’, which they directly relate to ‘dumb’? So what if he was the only one in the class who couldn’t remember them? He’s not them, he’s HIM! (If you read the section labeled “Learning Disabilities” you will find a more detailed explanation of the issues that brought me back to homeschooling the third time, which was the charm for me.)

Why does it matter when you are a man whether you learned them when you were 9 or 15? Does it really matter? He can have a productive, successful life regardless of what age he learned his time tables or learned to read or write his name legibly. But having a successful, productive life with a low self esteem and lack of confidence will be more difficult. I refused to medicate him into a zombie so he could sit there and so called “concentrate”. I absolutely REFUSED. Medication is no solution, you are making matters worse by not teaching them how to deal with themselves as they are. Our kids need to, HAVE TO realize how desperately they need the Lord in their life. We all have our weaknesses, we all have things we need to focus on, work on, enhance.

I decided to sit down and write for myself a list of what it was exactly that I, as a mother, would wish for my children’s lives. Little did I know that in the next months, I would look at this list many times in an attempt to de-program my mind from the American Public Education mentality. I wrote this list, copied it and pasted it in the cover of my Daily Planner.

GOALS

If I could name all the things I would want my kids to take into adulthood, what would they be? That they read at age 5, memorized their time tables when they were in 3rd grade? That they could write a report by 5th with proper spelling & grammar? That they were able to take the FCAT and pass it when the school board deemed they should? That they could sit still in class and not disrupt, themselves or anyone else? A college degree? I have to say that none of these things would make the list. It would look quite different.

  1. SERVE THE LORD (number ONE on the list). Be responsible for their actions, hard workers, have morals, integrity, honesty, faithfulness, capable, learn to improvise and make the best of their situation
  2. Have the heart to provide for their family, be good fathers & husband, be a loving mother & wife
  3. Be charitable and kind, learn how to forgive, concern themselves with the needs and feelings of others

_ “And thou shall teach them diligently unto they 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. And thou shalt bind them upon thine head, and they shall be as frontlets before thing eyes. And thou shall write them upon the posts of things house, and on thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6). _

YOU ARE TRAINING THEM FOR LIFE, NOT A STANDARDIZED TEST!

Where do I start?

On your knees, plan your curriculum ON YOUR KNEES! Start by asking for the Lord’s guidance. IF you and your husband are on the same page, you have decided to homeschool, or if you are homeschooling and you feel like you’re going nutty, get on your knees and ask the Lord to take all your preconceived ideas about education OUT… just have a little revival. Get your head cleared, give the stress to Jesus, the worry and the anxiety. Get a hold of some strength and some joy, repent, worship, and rejoice…

PUT ON A NEW MIND CONCERNING EDUCATION! They are YOUR kids, what do you want for them? Every nationality and people teach their children the things that they want them to learn. God destroyed entire nations including women and children for this powerful reason! Children believe what they are taught. Even if they change their minds, those old ways are indoctrinated in them. It’s like when you go into a computer program and you change settings, if something happens and you loose your information, the computer reverts back to those origonal settings. So do we. So start on your knees!

When I finally submitted my will to the Lord’s and marched myself down there and withdrew my son emotions were running high. He was struggling, I was struggling and we needed a time of stress release. When I got up off my knees ideas started entering my mind. I had been reading and praying and considering for several weeks before this day, mind you. I strongly recommend the Pearl’s writings, which you will find for sale in the Bookstore section of this web-site. She has a really neat audio full of homeschooling ideas. The best FREE resource there available is the library. Check out books on Unschooling, Unit Studies, and whatever else looks interesting.

Start with a subject that your child finds interesting, which is what I did with my son our very first study, and go to the library and check out every interesting book on your subject. I got a three prong folder for his work and we began reading and learning together. You don’t have to do this for 6 or 7 hours, don’t worry. They’ll get more in a couple hours with your undivided attention than they will in 8 hours at school. My son has an interest in the military so our first study was about the military. We read, we made a timeline of different battles, we learned about Francis Scott Key, we made a sort of family tree of the military branches and levels. My son made his own weapon out of household items, which was a sling shot made out of poster board, staples, and rubber bands among a few things. I picked up workbooks at Sam’s Club and tore out pages that were on our subject, we watched the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, used the DVR to record shows on our topics, he did some photography, some art, some math, some reading, some history, some science and hardly even knew it. We were un-stressed, unpressured.

The Lord dealt with me regarding the other kids, who were still in school at that time, and once they were home for summer I knew they wouldn’t go back. We enjoyed that summer, we had just moved in to a new home and were doing some renovations. My kids hammered concrete, dug trenches for the plumbing, handed tools to the plumber and watched him, watched the masons lay the blocks for a room addition, helped hang new drywall and sand it, helped paint, helped us lay ceramic tile and grout it… took down, repaired and replaced fences, renovated a barn, and more that summer. And they were learning the entire time!

When fall came we kicked off our “school” year with a trip to our local History museum’s Civil War Reenactment. We read about the Civil War. Walked through the old houses, watched them spin cotton, looked at their old tools. I picked several subjects that we would study during the year, we picked one to start with and went to the library.

I had gone to the library on a day they were having a book sale and I picked up this book that was all about reading to your children. I think I paid $1.00 for this book and it was just the Lord that I got it. I really regret passing it along to another mother who was struggling with her son in school, encouraging her to consider her “education” mentality. I have tried to remember the name or the author but haven’t been able to as of yet. It was about Listening Comprehension. The author points out how our children are used to seeing everything, the TV, movies, video games, etc.. and there is a part of their brain that just lies dormant in a matter of speaking. I had also gone to a Dyslexic information seminar and learned a lot of those same things. When I was a kid I loved to read. I would pick out a book and begin reading and get so involved in the plot, with the characters.. I envisioned them, I imagined them in my mind’s eye, how they looked, their surroundings, you know what I mean? That mental picture.. well the kids these days do not have that same mental image in their minds. They never have to imagine that person or scene, they just look at it on the TV or the movie so that when they read and need to use that mental vision, it is difficult. The writer of this book explained the importance of this part of your brain being stimulated for learning. That mental vision part. Like more people learn to read by remembering the shape of the words, not necessarily the sound of the letters. So they see CAT picture a cat in their mind’s eye. They don’t have to sound out each letter very many times before they remember the shape of that word and envision a cat. I hope this makes sense…

The major importance of reading to your children is that it stirs up this part of their brain. By copying a portion of a well written book, they are learning proper grammer, spelling, and punctuation. Daily I read a chapter of a book on our unit study subject to them and copied a page and gave them, circling a paragraph for them to copy and put in the handwriting section of their unit study folder. After copying several months, I dictate some paragraphs to them, then compared their paragraph to the book’s to see if they misspelled or forgot to punctuate anywhere. The Listening Comprehension quickly became on of their favorite parts of the day. At first it was difficult for them to follow along and I had to make them sit there and really listen. You know you can “hear” and not listen! People do it in church all the time! That’s why Jesus said, “he who hath EARS let him HEAR.”

I had them take turns reading. We wrote, we made timelines, we went on nature walks, the kids did some photography, some sketching. I went back to basics in math that they were struggling with such a place value and did it inside out and backwards until they had it. Math facts, counting by 5’s, 2’s, 3’s, 10’s. Counting money, making change. We played games, there are so many fun educational games out there. I got a good daily devotional and we started every day off with devotions, bible time and prayer. Then our Listening Comprehension, this is still how we start the days. You need a good planner, it will be a challenge to try to remember to write down the many things your kids do everyday, I still struggle with that. Every single day the kids learn and do things, EVERY day not just “school” days. It’s hard to get it all down… Just yesterday one of my son’s won the battle against this tree he’s been trying to cut down for months! We now live in south Florida, which was bombarded with hurricanes a few years back. There’s these ugly trees growing in the pasture that got halfway blown down and grew crooked. The base of this tree was probably 10 feet wide and there were a million branches sprouting everywhere. The horses won’t eat the thing and it’s just ugly. So our son Joshua decided he would cut this tree down. It has taken literally hours and a couple chains but yesterday he won!

The first year I used the reading books from Christian Light to let the kids read to me a story out of daily. This year I decided to add their Reading Light Unit to that, which basically asks them about what they read. I did a placement test in the Christian Light Math and started them out on the level they needed to be on. I didn’t stress out about what they were “supposed” to be on. We kept on with our Unit Study subjects to fill in all the gaps.

This year we dropped the Reading Lightunits, I’ve got one son working on the Christian Light Math (the memory learner) but the two that have difficulty memorizing concepts, I have working on something called Developmental Math, by George Saad. It works well for them. We are still unit studying, doing Listening Comprehension activities and also a Critical Thinking exercise daily. I’m having them do the copying to reinforce proper spelling, grammar and punctuation although they are getting a lot better with that because they are all reading quite a bit now. At least a chapter of their books daily. They have begun to love to read and to actually be excited when I come home with BOOKS!! What a miracle! The kids LOVE when we read from the Good and Evil comics. We usually do that on Friday’s. They make the bible stories literally come to life. Those are in the bookstore. This year I have also begun giving them allowance. Something I never did before. I felt that certain chores were expected of them, and I still do. But let’s face it, money is a big incentive! People get up early and stay up late for it everyday! My oldest son went to work and wasn’t mowing the yard anymore so we had the lawn service he went to work for come do it. It got expensive and quick! Then our pool guy just couldn’t manage to keep the pool clear, though I could do it, I just didn’t want to deal with it. I let him go and had our #2 son take over. That’s when I thought, if the kids are doing things I was paying to have done, why not pay them something? I came up with giving them a dollar for every year of their age per week and it’s worked wonderfully. It’s an incentive to them to help out more and it really does help me because when they want something for their horse or themselves… it’s their responsibility to save up and buy it, not mine.

Some of my favorite resources are:

  • Christian Book Distributors
  • Eduhelper.com, which allows you to print out work sheets on the subject and grade level that you choose
  • Christian Light Publications, Inc.
  • HomeScienceTools.com, which is not just tools per se but books, games, etc. Really good stuff.
  • CarsonDellosaChristian.com has lots of great stuff, which is where I got my daily devotion book.
  • God’s World News is a fantastic publication that gives current world events from a Christian perspective on the grade level you choose. It also comes with a quiz, which is great. Give a little prize for the one who gets the most right and they’ll listen more closely!

GREAT BOOKS are available for purchase from our Web Store. Also, I have stuff I have previously used on my unit studies for sale in the Pre-Owned Learning Materials section.

You will need a decent copier. I just copy the kids each their own page and keep the originals. This year instead of working in the inexpensive three prong folders that we did last year, I got a nice binder and put section divider tabs in for each section. They put the work in there for the current study they are working on; when we finish the study we remove the pages and put them in a three prong folder which they decorate. I like them to present their final folder in such a manner as if they had to teach a class using their folder/work as their only resource. Then when it’s time for portfolio reviews I let them each pick their favorite study to present a sample of their work.

We start each new study out with a Brainstorming page. It’s amazing how many neat ideas that they kids themselves come up with, ask them to help you “Brainstorm” your study. What types of things would they like to learn/do on the subject? The Home Science Tools site will give you lots of hands-on activities to add to your study. Pick some type of trip on topic for them to look forward to.

One of my most favorite studies so far has been the States. We checked out the book for each state by regions of the US; we learned where it was, the capital, the population, the size, the abbreviation, the flower, the symbol, special history of it, what it is famous for, etc.. I bought this little gizmo called “Interactive Around the America” that we used a lot for $20. from Collections, Etc.. That one took a while but we finished up the year with it. Did all kind of things, we learned a lot. Including mommy!

For your older children I highly recommend a book called, Senior High: A Home Designed Form+U+La, by Barbara Edtl Shelton. It is a very encouraging book to read. I didn’t follow it completely, but it gave me wonderful ideas and just liberated my mind concerning my highschool aged son’s education.

So basically, PRAY, get out of the ruts, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might! Yes, you will have difficult days, you would very likely have more of them if they were in school! Teach them to work, to clean, to pick up after themselves, the importance of serving the Lord. Not just at devotion time, when you are riding to the store, when you are making dinner, whenever and however the subject comes up, that is what the scripture says for us to do, right?!