BJU Press Blog

Guest Writer

Beat the Heat Summer Activities for Kids

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summer activities for kids
Summer is a time to get outside and enjoy the warm weather and sunshine. But what about those days when it’s just too hot or illness forces you to stay indoors? Here are some awesome indoor and outdoor summer activities for kids that help you beat the heat.

Mentos Geyser

This one is perfect for the backyard! All you need is a bottle of Diet Coke and some Mentos (at least half a pack). You can also use a geyser tube, which improves the effect, but it’s optional. Best of all, you are actually teaching about chemical reactions with this explosive activity! Find all the instructions for this experiment right here. And, if the kids get all messy in the explosion, you can have fun hosing everyone off.

Frozen Paint Cubes

Use an old ice tray to freeze diluted watercolors, and then let your kids have fun painting with the ice cubes as they melt! This summer activity is also great for the backyard. All you need is the ice tray and watercolors, and a large roll of craft paper to spread over the grass or patio.

Bikes and Bubbles

Maybe your kids are reluctant riders, but they won’t be any more with this summer activity! Purchase a bubble blower or use your own bubble-blowing expertise to create a haze of bubbles across a quiet neighborhood street or bike path. Your kids will enjoy riding through the bubbles over and over! For even more fun, angle a sprinkler across the path so your kids can ride their bikes through it and stay cool.

Indoor Scavenger Hunt

Design a scavenger hunt that will keep your kids busy all morning—or at least for an hour. You can use objects readily available in your home, or plant certain items for the kids to find. Create a scavenger hunt list, maybe with creative clues for them to decipher. This idea is very flexible, and setup can be adapted to fit the time and energy you have.

Indoor Laser Maze

Do you have a hallway in your home? Use painter’s tape and string or yarn to create a laser maze zigzagging across the length of it! Your kids will have fun trying to get through the maze without touching or pulling down the string “lasers.” The best part is that you can tweak the design over and over to make it more challenging and keep their interest.

Paper Plate Skating

Got hardwood or vinyl floors? Use dryer sheets or paper plates as “skates,” and let the kids skate around on them. Add interest with a little music in the background and an obstacle course to skate around. Or turn off the lights and mark out a path with glow sticks!

With a little imagination and these cool summer activities, you can beat the heat anytime!

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and the mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

4 Ways to Complete Hymn Studies

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Hymn Studies

Have you ever thought about the origins of the hymns you sing? In addition to being songs of devotion and worship, hymns are works of literature. You can study their mechanics, structure, and artistic form just like you’d study any other poem. When doing hymn studies, you often will gain a deep blessing by the end of the hymn study. Explore four important ways that you and your kids can dive into the origins and design of familiar hymns.

Hymn Studies for the Writer’s Backstory

We don’t know the story behind every hymn, but thanks to the internet and other resources, you can usually find some facts about the writer and the events surrounding the hymn text’s creation. The stories of John Newton, Fanny Crosby, William Cowper, Frances Ridley Havergal, Charles Wesley, and others reveal the writers not as paragons of biblical virtue, but as real people whose struggles and tragedies drew them closer to God. You’ll find yourself inspired and encouraged by their stories, and no doubt your children will be fascinated as well! As you plan your hymn study schedule, consider including the stories and texts of more recent hymn writers, not just those from the Golden Age of Hymns.

The Historical Context

Context is important, whether you’re studying the Bible itself or other forms of literature and art. As you move through your hymn studies, explain to your children how people spoke during the time when the hymn was written. Perhaps they used more formal language, or pronounced certain words differently than we do today. Occasionally, with older hymns, you may encounter a word with a totally different modern meaning, and your hymn study can cover both definitions. Ask your children how and why they think that definition or pronunciation may have changed over time.

The Artistic Value

Depending on the age of your kids, you can keep this part simple or take a more literary approach. For younger kids, ask them to identify rhyming words at the ends of hymn lines. Your middle graders can point out the rhyme scheme, such as abab or abba; older kids can identify the hymn’s poetic structure (such as iambic vs. trochaic) and count the metric feet.

Ask your children to point out instances of alliteration or internal rhyme, and suggest that they circle words in the hymn that seem especially beautiful or poignant to them.

Hymn Studies for the Spiritual Benefit

One of the most rewarding parts of studying hymns is unwrapping the spiritual truths they contain. Your hymn study takes you through the process of appreciating the writer, the historical context, and the literary value, but ultimately the greatest blessing comes from the revelation of God’s timeless truth. To close your hymn study, have your kids each write down one special biblical truth they learned from exploring the hymn.

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Rebecca is a work-at-home freelance writer, novelist, wife, and mom of two bright-eyed little ones. She credits her success in writing and her love of books to her own mom, who homeschooled three kids from pre-K through high school.

Labs That Get the Right Results

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get the right results from your labs
What do I smell? What was that noise? Why is the water so cold? Can we build a tall, tall tower? My toddler is full of questions about her world. You probably remember those days. So many questions! When we think about all these questions, science naturally comes to mind. But science is not about knowing the right answers. It’s about finding ways to answer the right questions. Children are naturally curious. One of the reasons you might homeschool is to focus attention on what your children find interesting. What better way to get hands-on experience answering questions than with labs?

It may be tempting to let your kids read about lab experiments. You may think that watching a video will teach them the answers just as well. But there are three main benefits to doing the labs.

1. We learn better by doing.

To learn any new skill, you have to try it yourself. Lab exercises in science class are not just teaching your children answers for a test. Labs are about building new skills. When I was a biology student, I didn’t particularly enjoy dissections. Why do I need to cut open a preserved animal to learn where all its parts are? I remember sitting in Human Anatomy and Physiology lab in college. We were dissecting cats. On this day we were trying to find blood vessels. I was stuck on one site where a branching vessel should be. It just wasn’t there. I finally sought help. My professor cut a little further down and found the branch. He was so excited that he called over every student in the lab to see it. I was learning how to think about three dimensional objects, or spatial reasoning. But I was also learning that not every specimen follows the rules. Imagine how useful that experience would be to a future surgeon. Spatial reasoning is also critical for engineers, athletes, artists, and more.

2. With labs, we learn to ask the right questions.

During my dissection, I was asking “Why isn’t the branch point where it’s supposed to be?” If I had asked, “Where is it?” I would likely have kept looking until I found it. When doing a lab exercise, your child may get stuck. Encourage her to ask a different question. Over time, and with experience, she will get better at asking the right questions. Questions are the inspiration of science. You can’t have a hypothesis without first having a question. If it’s a good one, it will motivate the pursuit of answers. When you use a lab manual, encourage your child to ask at least one question beyond the manual. Then see if you can find an answer together. A child pursuing his own question will retain more knowledge.

3. We learn to think critically about results of our labs.

The goal of a lab exercise should not merely be getting to the answer. If that were the goal, watching a video would be just as useful. It’s about the process leading up to the result. I recently saw an article on social media about a handwashing experiment. The headline said it was “just in time for flu season.” But the cover photo of several slices of moldy bread made me cringe. We can all agree that handwashing is important. The experiment seemed to support that idea. So why did I cringe? The headline implied that the experiment showed how to prevent the spread of the flu. But the flu is caused by a virus. In fact, most of what makes us sick is viral or bacterial. But a virus and bacteria won’t grow on bread. The experiment actually had nothing to do with the flu or any illness.

What does the experiment tell us? It tells us that there are organisms, including bacteria and mold spores, on our hands and other surfaces. And washing our hands is the best way to get rid of these. Though the headline and cover photo were misleading, mold was still an effective, even stunning and disgusting, way to get that point across. A lab exercise like this one gives students the opportunity to recognize limitations. With the right guided discussion about what an experiment actually reveals, those limitations can be a hidden strength. They teach valuable thinking skills that just watching a video may not be able to teach.

Getting started at home

Laboratory experiences don’t have to be expensive. Many chemicals needed for experiments are already in your home. For example, you probably already have containers of baking soda, vinegar, table salt, and hydrogen peroxide. It’s possible to extract DNA from a strawberry using dish soap, a coffee filter, and rubbing alcohol. An experiment like this is ripe for questions and critical thinking. Can I extract DNA from a different fruit? What about table salt? My cheek cells? Why do I get different amounts of DNA out of different fruits or the cheek cells? What if my DNA extraction from cheek cells is no more productive than the table salt? What might have gone wrong? Can I try a different technique to improve my results?

You may be surprised how long your children will keep going if they are asking the right questions. Personally, I love it when my toddler is just having fun, but I know she’s learning. If you pay attention to what your child is naturally curious about, you can reap the most benefits.

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Valerie is a wife and a mother to a very busy toddler. In her free time she enjoys reading all kinds of books. She earned a BS in Biology from Bob Jones University, minoring in Mathematics, and a PhD in Molecular Genetics from Ohio State University. Valerie has 15 years of experience working in research laboratories and has coauthored 8 original research articles. She has also taught several classes and laboratories at the high school and college levels. She currently works as a data analyst and a freelance writer.

The Value of Handwriting Skills: Keep Writing

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the value of handwriting skills
With technology always available, there are many skills we might think would become obsolete. Handwriting skills among them. After all, if we can type emails with our thumbs or dictate messages on our phones, what’s the point of writing something with our hands? And if there’s no point in keeping the skill, why should we have our kids learn it?

Is handwriting still a vital skill to train? As many homeschool parents know, things aren’t always as they seem. There’s more to handwriting skills than just putting pen to paper.

Handwriting skills are linked to motor skills.

One critical reason to encourage handwriting is the motor skills it develops. Handwriting challenges the writer to integrate gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and visual motor skills. Gross motor skills are the basic, larger muscle functions we use on a daily basis. Can your child maintain maintain posture and grip a pencil? Fine motor skills make small, subtle manipulations. Is your child able to write different words on a piece of paper? Mastering these skills helps children produce clear and consistent written work. Finally, visual motor skills are what we know as hand-eye coordination. How well can your child write what he sees?

Encouraging your children to learn and master handwriting requires them to use all three skill sets to process, understand, and copy what they see. Using all three skills together enables them to comprehend and use the information they learn each day.

Handwriting has a greater impact on us and other people.

The act of writing out our thoughts and what we hear is helpful in engaging in the learning process. As your children write, they’re using those motor skills as well as their mind to process information in a new format. Studies show that writing helps memory more than just typing on a computer. If your children keep their writing skills sharp, they will retain more of what they learn and function better on a daily basis.

Writing also often has a greater impact on other people than something typed. In an age of instant communication, taking the time to craft a handwritten note can mean so much more to the person reading. Handwriting is personal. You invest time to choose words and write carefully. A text or email takes seconds to punch out. If you teach your children to write personal messages to friends and family, they learn to communicate with more depth and intentionality than typing an email or sending an instant message.

Fluency in handwriting opens artistic potential.

One more reason that handwriting is important is that the skills go beyond everyday use. True, we can create all sorts of fun and interactive designs with our digital software. But often a Scripture verse or quote can come alive to you if you write it in an artistic form like calligraphy. Part of stewarding our creativity is using it to help us focus on God and remember His truths. Have you seen people Bible journaling by pulling out verses that have touched them and writing them in a beautiful script in the margins of their Bibles? Handwritten calligraphy, more than just an elegant typed font, can help us meditate and integrate valuable truths in our lives. By encouraging your children to hone artistic skills, you’re also giving them another tool to use to meditate on Scripture and encourage others.

Even though handwriting may be less common today, its impact on the reader is no less powerful. Training your children to write well and write clearly can help them be more influential as they grow older.

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Matt recently graduated with an MA in communication studies and currently works as a freelance writer. He attributes the wild variety in his current opportunities to the exploration his parents gave him through the homeschooling experience. He enjoys theater, the gym, and choral music and will rarely say no to a cold glass of sweet tea.

Communication: The Key to Parenting

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communication is key
As homeschooling parents, we understand the importance of clear communication. If our children don’t get what we’re trying to teach them in school and life, they’ll struggle academically, socially, and spiritually. We also understand that we have more opportunities than others to develop good communication with our children. We have them home with us all day. Each day we have hundreds of opportunities to create healthy communication habits for ourselves and for them. We all have room for improvement in our communication habits, so let’s look at some tips to help us become better communicators.

Just Saying

First, know what you want to say. You’ve heard the old adage, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” That’s a good rule to follow! Be as clear as you can when telling your children what you expect them to do. For example, there’s a big difference between saying “finish your math” and saying “do problems 1 through 10 on page 30.”

If we don’t tell our children exactly what we expect from them, they’re likely to get confused and frustrated. Also, we can’t always assume that our children understood or even heard all of our instructions. Distractions—other children, pets, a large house, or guests—can override what you’re trying to communicate. A good way to make sure they understand is to ask them to repeat what you just told them.

Location, Location

Be mindful of where you are and what’s going on around you. Background noises in the room you’re in, or another room, can make it much harder for your children to hear and understand what you say, or vice versa. As often as possible, try to be in the same room as your children when you’re talking. Of course, that goes without saying when you’re teaching, but it’s a good practice to have all the time. It can be fun to holler down the hallway to talk, but not at the expense of clear communication.

Focus, Please

We’re surrounded by things that suck up our attention and block out the rest of the world. Buzzing phones and blaring TVs, crying children, dishwashers, washing machines—there are so many noises surrounding us at all times. Those noises can be the death of clear communication. If you want to have a meaningful conversation with your children, make sure you have their full attention. If they’re distracted while you’re talking to them, chances are, they won’t remember what you say.

On the flip side, make sure your children have your full attention when they want to talk to you. Texting, talking on the phone, scrolling through Facebook or checking email can wait when your children are trying to talk with you. They need to know you care enough to stop, look them in the eye, and listen. If you have to finish a text or an email before you can give your full attention, use a signal to let them know that you know they want to speak and that you’ll stop and listen to them as soon as you can.

Watch Your Tone

How we say something is just as important as what we say. It can be hard to teach children how to control their tones, especially if we struggle to do the same ourselves. Our tone of voice can communicate something entirely different from our words, and it certainly affects the way our children respond to us and how we respond to them. Children are excellent at picking up on attitudes and thoughts we have hidden in our tone. As impatient or frustrated as you might be with a situation or a certain kind of behavior, remember that letting that frustration into your tone will change the meaning of everything you say. A reminder to finish homework can come across as a punishment or an expression of disappointment—even if you didn’t mean either.

Remember the exhortation in Colossians 3:21. According to the Amplified Bible’s translation, it says, “Do not provoke or irritate or exasperate your children . . . so they will not lose heart and become discouraged or unmotivated [with their spirits broken.]” One unkind remark can undo hours of loving instruction. One snappy retort can erect a wall of resentment between you and your child. We must rely on the power of God to help us. Only He can master our tongues (and voices) so the law of kindness can reign in them. And when we do speak in a harsh tone of voice, we need to make it right as soon as possible. Immediately confess it to the Lord and ask your child to forgive you. Yes, it’s humbling (as I can well testify!), but if we are to maintain a right relationship with our children, it’s imperative. The best way to show our children how to control their tongue is to become masters of our own.

Communication in Body Language

If you have a teenager, you’re more than aware of how frustrating it is when your children roll their eyes or sigh at everything you say. It’s like they’re shouting “I don’t care what you say” or “you can’t tell me what to do.” In addition to our tones, what we’re saying, and our environment, we also need to be mindful of what we’re communicating through facial expressions, posture, and gestures. And we need to help our children understand what their bodies communicate, too.

How we use our bodies while we’re talking can influence our conversations in either a positive or negative way. For example, try not to cross your arms, roll your eyes, sigh, shake your head, or tap your foot during a discussion; all of these gestures can undermine healthy communication. By using positive gestures, like nodding or leaning forward, we can encourage a healthy conversation despite what either party might be feeling.

The Main Goal for Communication

Remember the purpose of communication: to glorify God by building others up with our words. God has given us the gift of language so we can encourage, motivate, and inspire others toward greater Christlikeness. He has also given us His own Word, Holy Spirit, and power to guide our communication. A wonderful scripture to pray each day is Psalm 19:14, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”

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Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves homeschooling them. During her own twelve years of being homeschooled, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.