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5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials {Day 4: Supplies}

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January 23, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 6 Comments

Sure, we need to plan.

We need to know our strengths and weaknesses.

We need to know our enemy.

We need supplies. But more than paper and pencils, books and crayons.

We need God. We need God’s Word. We need prayer.

He is our ultimate supplier.

Select a verse from the Bible as a foundation for your homeschool, for your family, for your marriage. Tie it into your mission statement, visions, goals.

I recommend the book Lead Your Family Like Jesus to help you work out all that. It’s really brilliant and it helped my husband join me in leading our family by setting those goals.

How can you get supplied?

pray
Bible study
Scripture memorization
sing or listen to Christian music and hymns, or even classical
read the Word
listen to the Word online, on CD, podcasts, or sermons (or have kids read aloud!)
set Bible verses to music or get some fun CDs that do that already (Seeds Family Worship, Hide Em In Your Heart, and Songs for Saplings are favorites)
watch Christian videos on Netflix or DVD (What’s in the Bible?, Veggie Tales, Nest, Friends and Heroes)
fellowship with other like-minded Christians

Mamas, make sure you’re well-supplied.

I know it’s hard to wake up early and go to bed late. I know it takes so much energy and emotion to care for our families and homeschools. If we don’t care for ourselves, we won’t be able to continue. Make sure you care for yourself spiritually too.

Be in the Word and show your kids that it’s important. Have family Bible time where you study, read, pray, and worship together. If your husband isn’t interested or available, do it anyway. Make it a part of your homeschool day. Pray, pray, pray for your husbands, yourself, your marriage, your children, your homeschool, your kids’ future spouses and babies.

You can never pray enough or too much.

Like social media is always “out there” so too should our prayers be.

Make prayer an ongoing conversation in your lives. Teach your kids by example.

Have a life of prayer.

The whole series:

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5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials {Day 3: Know Your Enemy}

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January 22, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 12 Comments

We need to plan.

We need to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses.

We need to know our enemy.

And sometimes that enemy is ourselves or our loved ones disguised as good will. And I know it’s hard. It hurts. But we need to protect our families.

I’m sure Satan loves nothing more than to steal our joy.

It’s hard not to compare. We’re terrible about looking at the haves and have nots. We even disguise as praying for people.

Don’t compare your homeschool or children to anyone else.

So what if their child is reading and yours isn’t? It’ll happen, eventually.

So what if their child is accepted into {insert whatever prestigious extracurricular or academic activity here}? Do you really want to drive/pay/deal with/stress over whatever that may cause your family?

So what if their child’s handwriting is illegible and they can’t spell or write a complete sentence? That child may be gifted in art or music or math or anything else.

Know your enemy.

Understand your insecurities for what they are. Stop placing blame on others for your feelings and issues. Love is a verb. 1 Corinthians 13 and all that jazz. You are responsible for your reactions. Don’t resort to being ugly back. Golden rule, remember? I know. It’s hard. I bite my tongue or inside my cheek all too often.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

If you have friends or family members who are naysayers or who criticize your every move, then you need to deal with that as delicately and politely as you can. It may mean fewer interactions to maintain your family health.

Surround yourself with health and happiness. Remove the ugly from your life like the cancerous tumor that it is.

If you have friends or acquaintances who steal your joy, pray for them, but avoid their company and seek healthier relationships.

Life is too short.

Quit comparing.

Live free. Laugh loud. Love bold.

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5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials {Day 2: Know Yourself}

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January 21, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 7 Comments

Sure, we need to plan.

We also need to know our strengths and weaknesses.

All the mamas and the papas and the babies have different personalities and that makes for fun-filled days with all those dynamics at work. How do you cope?

We need to know ourselves.

We need to constantly reevaluate ourselves and our purpose and homeschool.

We need to know what our recipe for success is. For ourselves personally, and for each of our children. We need to know what sets us on edge and do our best to eliminate those triggers.

Pray. Always. Unceasingly.

Run a smooth(er) homeschool.

Consider learning styles for each child and how that works with your teaching style, mamas. I have to force myself out of my comfort zone to teach my children the way they best learn and that’s often difficult for me. Is it more important that I check off that box or that my child has a great learning experience?

Check out my post on learning styles.

Create a learning space for each child and a sanctuary for mama. Small spaces make this tough, but you can make or buy a privacy shield to allow children to work independently behind a barrier and that helps many focus. I often work alongside my kids and this is comforting for all.

Consider the flow and dynamics of a typical school day. How could it go more smoothly? Do the kids need an outdoor recess or vigorous indoor activity to get the wiggles out midmorning? Do you need to reinforce a rest or quiet time in the afternoons for the evenings to play out more calmly? Does the schedule need to be revamped to be more successful? I alternate days with history and science since it’s a lot of reading and notebooking.

Homemaking Helps.

What can you do to improve the ebb and flow of your home? Be proactive.

I recently subscribed to eMeals to help me with meal planning because I.am.terrible.about.meal.planning. Too many afternoons have passed me by and nothing made its way out of the freezer to thaw for dinner and we had to scramble or grab takeout or rush to the store. We like to eat and we often have a freezer and fridge full of lovely food, but I’ve been lazy lately about getting it prepared and on the table on time.

Set up a cleaning schedule or chore chart for the kids – and for you. Lots of moms use Fly Lady or zone cleaning. Find something that works for your family. Tori is my cleaner. I can just let her go and she does whatever it is above and beyond my standards. Alex and Kate are pretty cheerful about helping but Liz really doesn’t care to help. It’s not optional. Teach the kids to help early on. Servant leadership and great life skills!

Have only littles? Find a family with an older child in training to be a mama helper. This can be for pay or on a barter. This older child can help with laundry or cleaning up or watching the kids to give you a little breather.

Ask your husband what can be let go. My husband is pretty laid back but it drives him nuts to have toys all over the floor. The laundry piling up? He’d pick his clothes out of a basket forever with no complaint. He helps with cooking. He cares for the lawn and snow shoveling. He’ll vacuum or steam clean if I ask. Most everything else he overlooks. Awesome.

We need to maintain our health as best we can.

Sleep is important.

We make sure the little kids are in bed by 8 PM. Our eldest typically goes to bed by 9. Generally, they all wake up naturally between 6:30-8 in the morning. If we have a rare appointment in the morning and have to get up early, it’s grumpiness all around. Sleep and rest are important and I am happy to allow for their growing bodies to regenerate and grow and heal.

Eat well.

I get up every morning and make a hot breakfast. It took me too many years to get that this is important. I never used to eat breakfast. Even still, I often don’t get anything after the kids have swooped down. I either have a smoothie or hardboiled egg (I keep a supply of HB eggs in the fridge and I make twice as much smoothie as I need so there are leftovers of that as well). I have noticed since feeding my kids a good breakfast, their behavior is much improved and our days run more smoothly.

Exercise.

We need to stay fit to be healthy. The kids and I play the Wii, shovel snow, take hikes or walks, do Family Time Fitness or Fit2Be or yoga together. My husband frequents the gym almost every day. Liz has to take a physical training test monthly for Civil Air Patrol. I get to the gym when I can. Fresh air and exercise are great mood elevators and keep our bodies working properly.

Natural care.

We use essential oils and cod liver oil and drink lots of water to keep our immune systems healthy. We don’t use OTC or prescription meds. We also diffuse focusing oils to help our brains function at their best. We’ve limited microwave use and I would get rid of the thing altogether, but we’re not quite there yet. We use less plastic and Thieves® Household Cleaner to clean, well, everything.

The point is, we all have strengths and weaknesses. We’re all different. We have different personality traits and it’s not worth trying to overhaul that and be someone we’re not. Find something that works to help streamline your life so everyone is at peace with it.

The whole series:

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5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials {Day 1: Planning}

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January 20, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 6 Comments

5 Days of Homeschooling Essentials.

Sure, we need to plan.

We need to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses.

We need to know our enemy.

We need supplies. But more than paper and pencils, books and crayons.

And sometimes we need to know when to let go.

Planning. I am SO great at planning. Not so much at implementing.

In a way, I’m an unschooler at heart. I love the idea of schedules, but I really like to just gather lots of papers and books and resources along a theme – weekly, monthly, semesterly (Is that a word? Well, it is now!).

But for all homeschoolers – beginners and veterans and everyone in between – we need planning and evaluation at the start, midpoint, and end of each year.

In addition to all the homeschool planning we do (and that’s the easy part, I think), we need to plan out our spiritual goals for our children. It’s much simpler to plan out curriculum, complete with projects and field trips, than it is to plan out heart training.

Do you know when there will be a snow day or sick day or day-where-the-hot-water-heater-bursts-and-leaks-all-over-the-cellar? Do you know when you will have to stray from the lesson plan to teach about bullies because a child at church made fun of her or begin preliminaries for The Talk because your child heard something disturbing on Christian radio news?

Of course we can’t plan for those events. But we can be prepared.

Mamas, we need to be proactive and plan ahead for surprises and the inevitable. Our babies are growing up, underneath our very noses, despite our efforts to shelter.

They are not our own. We cannot control them. Give them to God and pray.

What is the purpose for your homeschool? What do you purpose to accomplish in your children before they reach adulthood?

Set goals with your endpoint in mind. Math and reading and this science experiment and that art project are all secondary to heart training.

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ~Mark 8:36

Almost all curriculum comes with a schedule and a plan and now common-core alignment. God has a plan for each of His children. Does your homeschool align with Him?

Plan for their character development. In which direction do you want your children guided? What regrets do you want your kids not to have?

I recently conversed with some moms about how our parents taught (or didn’t teach) about sex and the lack of biblical education in this area was saddening to me.

I know I want my kids to be the ones who step up proudly to say that they were taught well from Scripture and biblical principles. I want to protect their worldview and show them Jesus in all we learn in our homeschool.

It’s all about planning. What’s your scope and sequence?

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Back to School Unit Study

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September 30, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

Usually, back to school themes have to do with apples, fall, leaves, getting to know new friends, and many other traditional topics.

We homeschool, and it’s just now changing to cooler temps. We often do not back to school, celebrating the freedom of staying home.

For our Back to School theme, we let our library story time do our activity for us.

Convenient and I didn’t have to think or clean up anything! Bonus.

Our new storybook lady this year is pretty awesome. That makes all the difference in the world! And she loves kids. She spends so much time on the lessons and provides great experiential learning every Wednesday for about an hour.

My girls are the oldest kids there and they usually help clean up the crafts. Without being asked. Love them.

They like front row seating.

The books for this session were fun. Great illustrations and animals!

I’d never heard of some of these book selections. They’re just great! Always fun to meet new book friends.

These are some of our absolute favorites. Oh, the giggles when she read them.

The storytime activity for the kids was to make little books of their very own.

The kids were provided little booklets with colored cardstock covers and white pages inside. Pictures from magazines were already cut out and the kids could choose them to glue into their books to make collages.

Tori made a butterfly book. She wrote a title on her cover.

Tori also drew butterflies in addition to pasting pictures.

Kate made a book of her favorite animals. Kate wrote the names of all her favorite animals under their pictures.

Alex made a transportation book. He really, really loved this activity.

And we all got cool bookmarks!

Back to School Ideas:

Night before school party
Special breakfast
Pictures to commemorate the new year
Memory board or interview page
Gifts or treats
Look through new school materials and books together to get familiar.
Set up a work area for each child to complete assignments.
Special back to school books. It’s hard to find books celebrating homeschool.
New clothes fashion show. It could be new loungewear or pajamas!
Schultüte – traditional school cones for 1st graders in Germany. Another Schulüte DIY idea here. DIY auf Deutsch hier.
Ice cream!
Chalk drawings in the driveway or sidewalk
Fresh flowers, especially roses for new schoolers! I love the Waldorf rose ceremony.
Discuss plans, desires, and dreams for the year
Make calm jars with glitter, oil, food coloring, and water.
Make tie-dye shirts or bags.
Go hiking or do a nature scavenger hunt.
Picnic lunch
Bowling
Parties with a fun theme, even if it’s just immediate family
Movie night

Books:

Dinosaur vs. the Library by Bob Shea
The Library Dragon by Carmen Agra Deedy
Read It, Don’t Eat It! by Ian Shoenherr
Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
Homer, the Library Cat by Reeve Lindbergh
Book! Book! Book! by Deborah Bruss
Wild About Books by Judy Sierra
It’s a Little Book by Lane Smith

How do you celebrate back to school?

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Teaching a Gifted Middle Schooler

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August 17, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

When I taught public school language arts, I was also the gifted coordinator for the middle school.

I tested the children who were recommended for the gifted program and placed children in the gifted classes. I taught gifted eighth grade language arts.

Those students were my shining stars, and I still chat with several of them on Facebook today…and they’re now either in grad school or beginning their exciting lives, getting married and having babies, and some are teachers themselves!

My daughter, Elizabeth, reminds me so much of those students.

She’s in my territory now. Bwahahaha!

I was out of my comfort zone for so long teaching preschool and elementary, and now she’s twelve and learning almost at the level I used to teach when I worked in a school.

It’s a wakeup call for Liz, in a way. She doesn’t like to be told her work isn’t up to a standard.

Elizabeth has never been formally tested for IQ or gifted abilities. I don’t know if she would even test into the gifted program at a school since she doesn’t really have any experience with standardized testing, other than one required by the state we lived in three years ago. She scored exceptionally well on that one, except average in math. But that is neither here nor there. I know she has gifted tendencies. I know her abilities and potential. I saw it in many students and she compares well.

My expectations for her have shifted this school year. I now have a standard by which to judge her work, in a way. I certainly know what she’s capable of, academically. I remember the level of work my students did, and I am gradually shifting Liz more towards that level. I am changing the requirements little by little to fit. She deserves to be challenged. This is why we homeschool!

I evaluate and re-evaluate her school subjects and assignments often to make sure it’s not too much nor too little. It’s a constant worry to balance everything and make sure it’s not too challenging, yet challenging enough. She’s no longer in the grammar stage. She’s quite into the dialectic stage now, and I must constantly hold her to that higher standard.

Sometimes Liz flails about (literally and figuratively) during our weekly review conferences and “forgets” all she that memorized in the past. I have to pick the connections out of her like pulling teeth. Other times, she’s full of words and blowing me away with some of her insights.

I guess I could have worse problems than that all she wants to do is lie around and read…

She has no interest whatsoever in popular culture. I told my friend the other day that Liz was born an old woman. She’s so conservative that I might never have to worry about her wearing immodest clothing or reading, watching, or listening to something inappropriate.

We recently added a logic course and it’s challenging both Liz and me. I remember getting a C in this very class in my second semester of college. {collective gasp!} During our reading of Socrates’ Apology, Liz made this connection: “Socrates was smart. Dr. Sheldon Cooper is smart. I am smart. We should start a club for all the really smart people and no one else can join!” {Never mind that Socrates is quite dead and Sheldon is quite fictional…} It really cracked me up.

I’ve had to explain to Elizabeth that she won’t make any friends bragging about her knowledge of Shakespeare or Latin…

It’s often a challenge to me to provide appropriate yet interesting reading material for a young girl. Her lack of cultural and worldly experience make this somewhat difficult at times. Much of her being “sheltered” is by her own choice and interests, but I am glad to have a “little girl” as long as possible. She will grow up all too soon.

Gifted Characteristics:

Gifted students are often perfectionist and idealistic.
Gifted students may experience heightened sensitivity to their own expectations and those of others.
Gifted students are asynchronous.
Some gifted students are “mappers” (sequential learners), while others are “leapers” (spatial learners).
Gifted students may be so far ahead of their chronological age mates that they know half the curriculum before the school year begins!
Gifted children are problem solvers.
Gifted students often think abstractly and with such complexity that they may need help with concrete study and test-taking skills.
Gifted students who do well in school may define success as getting an “A” and failure as any grade less than an “A”.

Creative Thinking

Independent thinker

Exhibits original thinking in oral and written expression

Comes up with several solutions to a given problem

Possesses a sense of humor

Creates and invents

Challenged by creative tasks

Improvises often

Does not mind being different from the crowd

General Intellectual Ability

Formulates abstractions

Processes information in complex ways

Observant

Excited about new ideas

Enjoys hypothesizing

Learns rapidly

Uses a large vocabulary

Inquisitive

Self-starter

Specific Academic Ability

Good memorization ability

Advanced comprehension

Acquires basic skill knowledge quickly

Widely read in special interest area

High academic success in special interest area

Pursues special interest with enthusiasm and vigor

Leadership

Assumes responsibility

High expectations for self and others

Fluent, concise self expression

Foresees consequences and implications of decisions

Good judgment in decision making

Likes structure

Well-liked by peers

Self-confident

Organized

Psychomotor

Challenged by difficult athletic activities

Exhibits precision in movement

Enjoys participation in various athletic opportunities

Excels in motor skills

Well coordinated

Good manipulative skills

High energy level

Visual/ Performing Arts

Outstanding in sense of spatial relationships

Unusual ability in expressing self, feeling, moods, etc., through dance, drama, music, etc.

Good motor coordination

Exhibits creative expression

Desire for producing “own product” (not content with mere copying)

Observant

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Homeschool Space in Utah, Part 3

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August 14, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 9 Comments

Welcome to our tour of Our Homeschool Learning Spaces…we did a little bit of updating from last year.

Our front room on the main level is my office. I have two overflowing bookcases. I love my desk setup! I have everything I need within reach.

We are so blessed to have a basement! We use it for our main learning space. I know we probably won’t have this luxury when we PCS in a year or so.

I keep many books on this bookshelf that we’re not currently using, but we will use again for another round of history, science, Bible, or art. The green cube holds scrap paper for crafts. I also have magazines {Nat Geo Kids, Ranger Rick, Zoobooks} in the files on the floor beside the art boxes.

I found these matching desks used and the girls’ bedroom furniture is the same design and company. I love shopping at thrift stores, yard sales, or online at ksl.com. I have buckets of school supplies on a lazy Susan on the table in the corner. Teacher books are on shelves in that table too. And new stuff is stacked on the floor ready to begin in a couple weeks – after our Yellowstone trip!

I found this amazing table and (don’t they match?) 4 sturdy chairs…at TWO DIFFERENT YARD SALES ON THE SAME DAY. Score! The girls use that cube unit from Target for workboxes. I jot down our themes each week on the pictures for each subject. Our clean new empty Tapestry of Grace Year 3 notebooks are propped on the floor for now.

We do lots of lessons in front of our All About Reading board and our We Choose Virtues board is above that.

Our messy book nook with easel and magnets. We can never have enough books!

This is the wall where Alex does his preschool magic. We keep our Montessori mats for all the kids in that basket and toys in the bins. Our calendar is on the cellar door. I found this awesome school desk at Savers and he LOVES it!

That cube unit is from Target. All About Reading posters and a U.S. map from the $1 spot with a fun U.S. magnet game. and trucks. Always trucks!

Here’s Liz’s setup in our sewing/craft room. Also a cube unit from Target. {yeah, I love em!} She has one cubby for each school subject {history, foreign language, Bible, math, science, and ELA} and a thrifted basket for art. Notebooking binders are propped in between.

See what curriculum we’re using this year.