Homeschool Family Tips

This is a collection of tips taken from back issues of my quarterly homeschool ezine that have been sent out over the last few years. It is handy to have them all in one place for you to refer to or get a few ideas for family and sibling relationships.

Family Relationship Quick Tips
Relationships are hard work. They take lots of time, energy and patience to get to a place of mutual respect and understanding. In our homes where we are together 24/7 we have the wonderful opportunity of being sandpaper to one another. As siblings brush up against one another their hearts are exposed. It takes a wise patient mom to mentor her children through these situations.

I used to watch my children with despair when they had a tiff for the 3rd or 4th time in a day, but as I have grown in the Lord, I see them rather as a time to disciple one or more child.

TV?
There is always an ongoing debate about whether TV has any part to play in families who want to have active, healthy Christian Kids. In our home we have chosen to use television selectively for educational purposes, sport and a weekly movie night.

Movie night in our home means making an easy meal like subs or pizza, bowls of popcorn and piling onto the couches to watch our favourite movies. Because so many of the popular family movies do not exhibit the values that we want to teach our children we have been careful to select older movies with more balanced morals. Here are our favourite movie night movies that we recommend but please take your own family’s sensitivities into consideration.

Amazing Grace, DVD
Sheffey, DVD
My Friend Flicka, DVD
Facing the Giants, DVD
Because of Winn-Dixie, DVD
Anne of Green Gables, DVD
The Adventures of Ociee Nash, DVD
Everyone's Hero, DVD

The great outdoors
We are enjoying our holidays. Our first week was spent away form home. I have put up some photos of our informal nature study at my season nature study page.

Nature study does not have to be a burden, it is simply enjoying nature. Families can do lots of this informally and for those children who do not like to draw, a camera is an option. These photos they can then scrapbook instead of journal. If you are new to nature study be sure to read my easy start up article called Nature Study the easy way

As the weather warms in the Northern Hemisphere make the most of long days in God’s bountiful creation. Do the nature walks and studies that put your children in touch with creation. Perhaps you have a big yard job you would like to tackle? What a wonderful way to build a team as you and your family work at this job.

The age old picnic…there is something to be said for the simplest picnic. We try to eat one meal away from home a week. Sometimes we head for the forest, other times for botanical gardens but most recently we picnicked alongside our local dam. If you are fortunate to live on a farm, then you have a daily opportunity on your door step.

Charlotte Mason was also an advocate for a mom taking her children, particularly those who have children under 7, out each day for a meal in the open and some casual nature study. She says: “I venture to suggest what not is practicable in any household, but what's seems to me absolutely best for children...a journey of twenty minutes and a luncheon in a basket will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers: and if one day why not many and even every suitable day?”

Often if we do not plan to take this time outdoors, a week will go by and the opportunity will be lost. Children love the freedom and space to run as well as the snacky type lunches or dinners that ultimately end up in a picnic basket. Discipline yourselves to make time for this valuable age old tradition.

I have spoken about Nature Study before in my ezine’s and have a few pages dedicated to it on my website. Nature study, like any other aspect of homeschooling is a choice whether we want to include it or not in our children’s curriculum. Homeschooling our children, when it is life and relationship based, lends itself to a natural type of nature study as our children delight in the plants and animals they see.

Yet there is another type of nature study which moms need to choose to do. Packing a nature study bag, heading off for a good spot or a location related to what you are currently studying opens up a wealth of learning experiences.

Sometimes we just go to walk and will casually discuss what we find, other times we go with an objective to journal, draw and classify. All of these times in the outdoors, is time well spent.

Excercise
Just after Christmas I decided that a new habit I need to acquire is a more serious exercise regime. But I also get bored easily so I wanted something that could happen in different places, without too much cost and could include my children as far as possible. My dear husband reminded me that I have a very fancy mountain bike that he bought for me a year ago just sitting in the back room.

My oldest children have been mountain biking for two years with my husband and they offered to take me on a ride with them. So we have been heading out a few times each week into our mountains and enjoying the exercise and nature around us, except for the time we rode into the Alpha male Chacma baboon….but that is another whole story.

What can you do as a family for fitness?

Here is a frugal family fun idea…we have annual membership cards to 3 places in Cape Town. We belong to the Botanical Society which gives us free admission to botanical gardens all over the country. We love going to these gardens where the children can romp and play and then settle for a picnic and a bit of nature study.

We also belong to our aquarium. This is an educational outing that the children never tire off. We sometimes time our visit with feeding time so they can watch the Great White Sharks and seals being fed.

Lastly we belong to our National Parks. We use this card regularly as my husband takes the children mountain biking in the forests that are regulated by our National Parks Board.

Look into some annual memberships in your area, you save money and you have a great time outdoors.

Afternoon hours
Afternoon hours should be full of play for younger children, crafts and handwork (sewing or woodwork) for older children, nature study, listening to music, interacting with siblings, baking, board games and the list goes one. Ideas to occupy afternoon hours become endless as your children have done their chores well and quickly and completed formal learning disciplines.

About 2 years ago I typed up a list of productive activities for my children to fill their afternoon hours. On the odd occasion that one of them will come to me and say they have nothing to do, this list is immediately available - full of enticing fun ideas to fill their time. Our list is available in PDF form by clicking on this link. Hopefully it will inspire you to make one specific to your family for your children’s afternoon hours.

We are nearing the end of our 3 week school holiday. Time away from “schoolish” activities have caused an initial bout of complaining: “What can I do, Mom?”. But it has given our children time to spend long uninterrupted days playing and creating things of their own. Our older son has been teaching our 4 year old how to build airplanes with Lego. Our oldest daughter has added a host of new paper horses to her paper horse collection and our 7 year old daughter has become fascinated with scrap booking!

We took our little ones training wheels off his bike as he is determined to keep up with his older siblings when they ride around the block. He has managed very well. The heart issues that have been exposed have been interesting. I noticed that there was an inability for one of my children to congratulate him on his achievement, but rather tried to turn the attention to themselves instead. We had a good chat about this.

Fruit of the Spirit
Kindness, compassion, generosity and thoughtfulness are all characters we hope to see in our children as they mature. This starts right at home. Home is the best training ground for children to learn how to practically implement 1 Corinthians 13. One of the times I look forward to most are chore times. Chores in our home range from personal chores to room chores to house chores and additional chores to larger ones like cleaning cars, grooming pets and cooking meals.

It is in these times that I can see my children’s hearts and come alongside them and train them in the way they should go. When our children’s thought lives are full of noble, upright and great ideas they will happily get along and do the more menial things in the home. Add to this a companion to do the chore alongside and the mix is perfect.

Meal time
For many years my husband worked late in the evening and as the children were small, they could not wait for him to return home before eating. Recently this situation has changed and we are able to sit and eat together as a family. I have been so thrilled to watch as the dinner time conversation turn to books that we have read or what the children have learnt. These ideas they are sharing freely with their Dad and thus incorporating him into their learning days. There are other reasons to make this event a priority :

So go on…set a pretty table tonight and enjoy a meal together, then allow it to become a daily habit. On returning from a tip to London trip in September 2007 and while sharing about my lunch at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen when cooking with my elder son, he said: “Mom, one day you won’t have to travel all the way to London for a meal like that, because I will learn to cook much better. I even have a name for my restaurant “Mama’s Kitchen”.” This brought a tear to my eye and we had a cuddle.

On my website I often refer to cooking, meal planning and teaching children life skills in the kitchen. Yes, it does help that I enjoy cooking too, but this is not a prerequisite for helping children to learn to cook and other homemaking skills. Spending time with our children, outside of academic work, is one of the reasons many parents choose a homeschool lifestyle. Spending time in the kitchen one-on-one and together with your children is a marvelous way to chat in non conflict times about heart issues and train them to cook at the same time.

What if you are not an enthusiastic cook but would like to spend time with your children teaching them the valuable life skill of cooking? Check out my Ultimate Mom’s Meal Planner

Day of small beginnings
We have been having some really wet days in our part of the world. Our schoolroom was flooded and the ceiling in one corner collapsed! We were able to save all the art work and books that was being stored in that part of the room. This incident of flooding forced a spring clean – in Winter! As I was going through the art work I found something we did almost 3 years ago. I had taken an old sheet and divided it into 4 parts with coloured chalk. Each child took one fourth and decorated it as they wanted to with fabric paint.

As I looked at it 3 years later, I can see each child’s individual bent – my child who is precise and sees the world in black and white, my child who loves animals with a passion, my child who sees the world with rose coloured glasses and my littlest one who is a perfectionist.

While living with different personalities is not always easy, and as I remember they each had a “problem” with how the other designed their fourth, we can learn to celebrate each personality and difference in our home.

Visit my art ideas pages for more ideas!

Star charts for good behaviour?
At a friends home I saw a chart on her wall that helped her children earn stars for days when her sons treated one another with love and kindness. When the star chart is full, they get a treat. I wondered to myself whether this would work and what the expectation would be of the children when grown up. Would they expect a treat each time they did the right thing? Or would they do the right thing just because it is right?

A dear friend of mine has often shared how part of her training her children was teaching them to understand the principle that “Obedience brings blessing, disobedience brings pain.” Oh, how I have felt this in my life over the years before I knew the Lord and even thereafter. Is this not the expectation that we need to teach out children? Love is obedience, kindness is obedience, gentle speech is obedience and these things will bring such rich blessing in our children’s relationships.

Hypocritical behaviour
There comes an age where our children are able to notice any hypocritical behavior in us as parents. Yelling at children, and then telling them to speak nicely to one another…showing a lack of honor to a child, then demanding they show honor to their sibling…having sloppy household habits and then expecting them to maintain their areas neatly…

Perhaps you find yourself in one of these situations or a similar one. How do you start to turn the tide? The first step is a decision to not give in to that kind of behavior any more. Yes, exercise self control and do not yell, not at your preschooler, not at your teen. Second, realize that the closer you are to the Lord, the more you will be equipped to love your children – tiny tot to adult child. Third, start to choose relationship above activity and busy-ness.

Computer games
As we are raising children who need to live the majority of their lives in a world vastly different from the one we grew up in – well for my generation certainly – we need to ensure they are equipped with the right skills to be able to work in this computer age.

Some people equate playing computer games with computer skills. These are two vastly different skills. Gaming requires very little creative effort, cognitive ability or intellectual skill. Many gamers will argue that they use logic and reason…but in my opinion neither of these is in balance with the addictive quality of the game itself. There is much research on the web about how gaming (in any form) actually stunts the brain’s growth

Computer games and other such entertainment like Wii, Nintendo, Playstation and PSP’s create an appetite in our children which will more than likely become an issue when they are in their teens. These things rob more than they give, not only to the individual but to the whole family and looking into the future, appetites are created which can become contentious issues in marriages.

I am probably preaching to the converted and you may be wondering why I am focusing on this one issue as there are many other things that can take our children’s hearts. My point simply is that when our children are exposed to things we need to be very sure we know the long term implications. Like any seed that is sown in their hearts, both good and bad fruit can grow. Therefore I encourage parents to be very sure what appetites they are developing in their children.

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