BJU Press Blog

Successful Learning

You want your children to succeed in their education. We do too. We offer practical tips for teaching your children math, science, writing, and more! These tips can be applied to any homeschool curriculum. There are also highlights of our new textbooks with examples of how our curriculum trains your children to have success in their learning.

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Showing Dad Love

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homemade Father's Day card with gift coupons

Father’s Day is approaching, and with it comes an opportunity for your children to honor their dad. Honoring fathers is a command that every child of every age (even those who are grown up enough to have children of their own) should take seriously every day, and Father’s Day is a good day to remind your children of that responsibility. It’s also a good day to encourage your children to show their dad how much they love him.

Tokens of love don’t have to be expensive. When I was a child, I had very little earning power, so when family birthdays and holidays rolled around, I usually had to be creative. My parents got a lot of homemade gifts over the years—cards, potholders, wreaths, homemade books, and more. I used to feel bad that I couldn’t give them more expensive presents, but now that I’m a mom myself, I don’t feel that way anymore. Homemade gifts are the best gifts.

Here are a few ways your children can show love to their dad this Father’s Day.

1. An “I Like You” Book

Sandol Stoddard Warburg wrote a book titled I Like You. In the book, the narrator presents numerous reasons for liking a particular friend, reasons such as:

I like you because
You know where I’m ticklish
And you don’t tickle me there
except
Just a little tiny bit
sometimes1

This Father’s Day, encourage your children to put together a book of reasons why they like their dad. Be sure they illustrate it!

2. Coupons

Another low-cost way your children could show Dad their appreciation is by serving him. Even small children can help him with home-related chores (for example, picking up sticks in the yard) or perform some other special service (such as giving him a shoulder rub after a long day at work). Print out this coupon template, and have your children fill in several and present them to him for Father’s Day.

3. Recordings

Toddlers and preschoolers might not be able to create a Father’s Day card or any other gift, but they can still encourage Dad. Technology has made it easy to make audio and video recordings. So why not record your small children singing a simple song, reciting a Bible verse, or just saying, “I love you, Daddy!”?

What are some other ways your children have shown love to their dad on Father’s Day?

1. Sandol Warburg, I Like You (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), 10.

Benefits of Reading Aloud to Your Children

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WP-JourneyForth-Books-3-2015

As I look back over my childhood, I’m thankful that many children’s books play an important role in my memories.

I can get quite nostalgic thinking about curling up next to Mom on the couch—back when my feet couldn’t reach the floor—and hearing her read aloud. She was (and still is) a great actress, and the books came alive in my mind over and over again.

Some of my favorite books are still easily available: Blueberries for Sal, The Snowy Day, The Story about Ping, Caps for Sale, Harry the Dirty Dog, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel . . . and the list could go on.

What made those books so special? I think their beauty lies in their simplicity. And attaining simplicity is more difficult than it might seem!

What do I mean by this? I mean that a book for children must intrigue the child by hooking him into a situation to which he can relate. It may or may not be something he has actually experienced, but it should be something he can imagine happening to him.

What if my mom and I were picking blueberries and I saw a bear?

What if I woke up one morning and saw that the street outside was covered with beautiful, clean snow?

What if I were a little duck that got distracted and wandered away from the group . . . and then the boat left me?

Or it may be something completely outside his experience—but if he can enjoy the humor or sense the suspense, he will love it and want to hear it over and over.

Where did all those caps go while that man was sleeping?

What if the family doesn’t figure out that the dirty dog at their doorstep is actually their Harry?

What if Mike and Mary Anne can’t dig that basement in just one day?

Learning to love those read-alouds as a youngster contributed to my ongoing love of reading throughout life. As I grew older, I developed a similar love for The Borrowers, for My Friend Flicka, for Misty of Chincoteague. . . . Again, the list could go on and on!

I encourage you to take some time out of your busy homeschooling schedule to read aloud to your children. Books that tell intriguing stories but also promote character traits that you’d like to encourage can have lifelong effects. And they don’t have to be just the “old” classics either! Include some new(er) classics in your repertoire—such as these titles:

My kids have all grown past the age where they’re interested in those early read-aloud stories. But that’s OK. One of these days when the grandkids come along, they’ll be hearing about Harry and Ping and Mike and Mary Anne . . . and cap-stealing monkeys!

• • • • •

Steve serves as director of content development for BJU Press. He and his wife are the parents of five adult children. They homeschooled for over ten years.

Five Great Goodbye Gifts for Your Class

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crayons in a yellow bucket with colored pencils, candy, and balls

Endings are almost always bittersweet. As you wave goodbye to each precious life that sat in your classroom this year, you may feel a mix of elation and sadness. Before they go, give each child something that shows your care and appreciation. It doesn’t need to be dramatic, expensive, or even super-creative. A tiny, simple gift can have a huge impact on a little one’s heart.

1. Buckets of Fun

For younger students, stuff a small plastic bucket with some treats and treasures that they can enjoy over the summer. Items such as pencils and erasers, crayons, and sidewalk chalk invite students to keep writing, drawing, and expressing themselves during the summer months. Lollipops, sticks of gum, fruit snacks, or nut-free chocolates appeal to every child’s sweet tooth. To encourage math skills, drop in a few pennies as well. Top the bucket handle with a ribbon. Then, write a note to the student expressing your appreciation and telling him or her to check with a parent before using the items in the bucket.

2. Game Time

Give your elementary students a reason to step away from video games, tablets, and computers this summer. Pick up inexpensive card games or board games for them, or purchase sets of small tennis-style rackets and balls. Inject a little extra fun and encourage outdoor play by offering each student a water gun as an end-of-year gift. Many of these items are inexpensive and available at your local dollar store.

3. A Thankful Heart

To thank the parents who have volunteered in your classroom or lent their brainpower to help with homework, have each student draw a picture or write a few sentences about the many ways that parents help children. Scan those pictures and messages, copy them, and assemble them into simple memory books that the children can take home to Mom and Dad.

4. Write Back at You!

If you want to stay in touch with your students, give each one a beautiful postcard, already stamped and addressed to you. Tell your students that if they write on that postcard and send it to you over the summer, you’ll send them a letter. The idea of getting their own mail should spur at least a few of them to exercise their postcard-writing skills.

5. The Reading Cycle

Summer reading shouldn’t be a chore─it should be an adventure. Pick up some pre-loved fiction books from your favorite used book shop and hand them out to your students. Keep the books high on fun and short on the page count. At the end of each book, tape a brand-new bookmark, along with a note that says, “For your next reading adventure.”

Use your imagination as you think about end-of-year gifts for your students. Whether it’s slapping a “You’re a Smart Cookie” label on a pack of mini OREO® Cookies or handing out pocket-size bottles of scented hand sanitizer, your students will love the gesture. Children can never have too many people to care about them. Let your students know that you will stand behind them, cheering them on through the summer and beyond.

OREO is a registered trademark of Mondelēz International group.

What end of the year gifts do you give your students?

• • • • •

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.

Greenhouse Experiment Results

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When Ginger Ericson needed an example of a controlled experiment for her upcoming seventh-grade Life Science Distance Learning course, my coworker Stephen and I decided to test internet claims that microwaved water causes death or deformation in plants.

Now the plant experiment is complete, and it was a lot of fun. In retrospect, I would love to redo it using the things our team learned. However, the process of learning continues, and there’s plenty of room for us to revisit this project, and perhaps some of you can try it at home.

The Experiment

3 groups of 15 pots from the microwave water plant experiment

After the first signs of seed germination appeared, Krista and Ashley recorded our observations and measurements for four weeks. Our data outlined below involves twelve of the original fifteen pots.

When comparing plants, age is important, especially when dealing with plants that grow as rapidly as ours did. It really means very little to compare a plant that has been growing for six days to one that has been growing for only three days and then announce that the first plant is larger. The four Microwave Group pots germinated a few days later than the others, so the groups could not just be compared to each other on a given date. Instead, all the data presented shows the average height, leaf number, and flower number of each group by day after germination, which we defined as the first day a plant was recorded in the pot.

The average heights of the three groups were similar, but the Microwave Group plants were slightly behind the plants in the other groups.

chart of average plant height by days after germination for BJU Press plant experiment

The average numbers of leaves in the three groups were also similar, with the Stovetop Group being slightly behind the other two.

chart data measuring average number of leaves by days after germination for BJU Press plant experiment

It’s difficult to measure the average number of flowers. We took our measurements two to three times each week, and it is very possible that some flowers may have bloomed, been pollinated, and then died between two measurements. However, the data indicates that the Microwave Group plants began to flower before the others, had fewer flowers, and began to taper off before the other two groups. The Stovetop Group plants had also begun to taper off by the end of the experiment but had as many flowers as the plants in the Control Group. The number of flowers in the Control Group seemed to still be increasing.

The Results

At the end of any project, lessons should be learned that can be applied to the future. This experiment was no exception. Although we were very pleased with how this turned out,  some factors that were not controlled may have affected our results. If you’d like to set up this experiment, we would recommend these adjustments:

  1. Filter the water or use distilled water. Microwaving is a very inefficient method of boiling water, so nearly a quart of every gallon is evaporated. We used spring water, so the evaporated water left a good bit of precipitated calcium carbonate. Since the water boiled on the hotplate lost relatively little to evaporation, this phenomenon occurred to a far less extent. It is possible the excess calcium carbonate might have caused the smaller size observed in the plants in the Microwave Group.
  2. Take measurements every day. We took measurements two or three times a week, and that worked well with plant height and leaf number, but it may have caused some of the unusual results for the flower number. The fact that we used a plant variety specifically bred to complete its lifecycle in less than six weeks may have exacerbated this issue.
  3. Thin the plants at the beginning of the experiment so that each pot has the same number of plants. Some of our pots had only one plant, and others had as many as three. The resulting difference in competition could significantly affect all four measurements used.

What can we conclude?

The plants in the Microwave Group didn’t all die, and they didn’t all evidence horrible deformities—two results suggested on some websites. The plant height is curious, but so is the smaller number of leaves in the Stovetop Group. In the end, the small sample size prevents us from making broad generalizations, but we can conclude that plants do not seem greatly affected by microwaved water.

Keep an eye out for this experiment in our upcoming seventh-grade Life Science Distance Learning course!

• • • • •

Elwood holds a BA in biology and an MA in English from Bob Jones University. After working with the video lesson department at BJU Press for five years, he now serves as a secondary-level science writer at BJU Press. When not working, he enjoys taking random college classes, reading, playing disc golf, and hanging out with his wife and three kids.

Two Grandmothers’ Stories

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image of a grandmother and her granddaughter planting flowers together.

My two grandmothers were both lovely, brave women with a rock-solid trust in God. And yet, they were very different from each other. I loved them equally, and I miss them both. As a writer, I can see the stamp of their influence on my work just as clearly as I see it on my life. For the unique ways they touched my childhood, I am eternally grateful.

Grandma L. was a country woman. She gave me the gift of experiences. She was the one who taught me to love flowers—their colors, their scents, and their names. Without her, perhaps I would never have known the difference between an iris and a peony, a black-eyed Susan and a bachelor’s button. She showed me where to find mushrooms sprouting up in the woods and how to climb high in the trees to pick walnuts and cherries. She took me boating at the pond, let me drive the old green pickup down the gravel road, and pushed me on the tire swing. I reveled in the stories she made up at bedtime, scary enough to send shivers down my spine. She taught me to distinguish the hoot of an owl and the song of a bullfrog. Because of her, I learned to ride a horse, pick and shell peas, shinny up the side of a silo, and thread a lure on a fishing line. I learned to love warm June evenings under a star-studded sky and Christmases in a snow-covered farmhouse filled with the aroma of fresh-cut pine. And I learned to love writing poems to the creak of her porch swing, pausing often to chew on my pencil and gaze across the road and the open field to the line of trees at the edge of the world.

Grandma B. gave me different gifts. She lived in a modest brick apartment building downtown. Every week she rode a bus to our side of the city and spent the evening with us. And every time she came, she brought me a new book. I still have a whole shelf full of those little children’s books—ragged and dog-eared now from small fingers thumbing through the pages. I still have the memory of Grandma’s voice reading those books to me. Her voice was calm and quiet, and sometimes her wonderful laughter would bubble to the surface and warm me all through. I learned to love reading. I learned to love pictures. And I learned that the combination of a compelling story and beautiful pictures could move me deeply, lodge in my very core, and become a part of who I was.

Neither of my grandmothers lived a very flashy life. Both were widowed and spent much of their later lives alone. Neither ever lived very far from the place where she was born. Neither went to college. Neither was formally a teacher, yet both taught me things I could never have learned in school. Neither had piles of wealth to pass along to her descendants. Yet each, in her own way, made me rich. Without even realizing it, they filled my writer’s toolbox with the choicest and most useful of tools. They both gave me stories—stories I am still telling. And they both gave me the great treasure of love.