curriculum

6 Tips for Homeschool Success as a Single Parent: You Can Do This!

February 9, 2021 by Guest Writer

Hi, everyone! I am a single working parent and a homeschool mom. That’s right! I work full-time as a registered nurse in an oncology ICU. I am also a mother to the sweetest 4th grader in the world, and I homeschool him. Last year if someone told me I was going to be a homeschool mom, I would’ve told them they had the wrong person. Well, here we are, 2021, and homeschooling is happening in my home!

During my homeschool research, I didn’t come across any articles or blogs about homeschooling as a single parent. I am sure there are many single parents who are a part of the homeschool community. However, I just didn’t find resources. Now I have been homeschooling for about 7 months, and I have to be honest—it’s going pretty well! Here are some tips that have helped me manage parent-led homeschool along with working and raising a 9-year-old.

Homeschool Checklist to Know You’re Ready

March 19, 2019 by Jenna

So you’ve been thinking about this homeschooling thing for a while now. In fact, you’ve probably been doing a lot more than thinking. You’ve prayed, done the reading, had family conversations, and set some goals. You’ve even looked at curriculum. But are you ready? How do you know if you are? This homeschool checklist will help you decide whether you’re ready to take the plunge.

Have you checked your state’s regulations for homeschooling?

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) explains which regulations apply to your state. Some states merely require parents to give notice that they intend to homeschool their children. Others may require homeschoolers to perform annual standardized testing to make sure that children are learning normally. You’ll want to know these requirements ahead of time.

Have you laid out your reasons for homeschooling?

Remember, it’s easier to commit to something when you know why you’re doing it. Consider writing out your reasons and displaying them—if nothing else, that will help you explain to a concerned friend or relative why you’re doing this.

Where will you turn for homeschool support?

Your homeschool support system can help you stay on your feet even on the hardest of days. Whether it’s just a chat with a friend or an expert to address your darkest fears, you’re going to need someone to turn to.

How much time will you devote daily to homeschooling?

Many homeschool families have their children do work between four and five hours a day. That’s both lesson time and homework. But what about you? How many hours do you have to devote to homeschooling your children? If you don’t have much time to devote to it, you may need to choose a curriculum that includes video lesson options or that can be self-taught. Or you can devise a schedule that lets you spread out your work. You could homeschool year-round or choose a six-day homeschool schedule, so you can spend less time each day on homeschooling.

What are your children interested in?

Many new homeschoolers are really excited about getting to tailor their children’s education to their interests. Now’s the time to really figure out what those interests are so you can be ready to do that.

What best describes the curriculum that you believe will work for your family?

Are you homeschooling on a tight budget? Do you have the budget but not the time to teach? Assuming you believe a strong biblical worldview is vital, should you use a curriculum built on that perspective or will a secular publisher do just as well? Do you prefer to do the teaching yourself, or would you rather use video lessons? These are all questions that will help you narrow down your curriculum choices.

How will you keep yourself organized?

It’s a challenge to manage all the stuff. If you have three kids, all in elementary grades, then they each have up to eight subjects. Each subject has two textbooks—usually a textbook and an activity book. That’s forty-eight textbooks—not counting any teacher editions, notebooks, binders, and whatever else they need. And it’s not only a question of space. What about organizing your time? The plan you have now doesn’t have to be permanent, but you need a workable schedule to at least get you started.

Have you laid out some short-term goals for your first few weeks of homeschooling?

Goals are pretty important, especially at the beginning. If you set a few easily reachable goals to start with, you can get off on the right foot and put yourself in a goal-oriented mindset for the future. Your goals don’t even have to be really serious. You could set a goal to finish one lesson a day, or to walk around the house like a duck once a day. That’s silly, but it’s good exercise too.

Use this printable checklist to work through some of the questions above.

Hopefully, you’re feeling confident and ready to get started on your homeschooling journey. Your first few years are going to be wild and crazy (plus moments that you wouldn’t trade for the world). But if at the end of it all, your children have a strong relationship with God and are using the abilities He’s given them for His glory, won’t it be worth it all?

Curriculum That Works Together

November 22, 2016 by Megan

It happened for the first time during our second week of homeschooling this fall. After finishing her English lesson, my second-grade daughter pulled out her spelling book to look at the day’s assigned worktext page. “Mom,” she yelled excitedly, “alphabetical order! I just learned this in English. It’s like I’m doing English and spelling at the same time!”

Since we use BJU Press for every subject, this scenario happens a lot. Concepts from one subject frequently appear in another. Sometimes spelling words show up on our handwriting pages. Sometimes the same phonics generalizations highlighted in our weekly spelling list also get reinforced during our reading lessons. Sometimes my daughter gets to practice the capitalization rules she learned in English while she also practices handwriting. The overlapping of these concepts in different subject areas is a good thing—a very good thing, in fact—for the following reasons.

1. Repeating concepts aids comprehension

Most of us have probably heard that “practice makes perfect.” We probably even tell our kids that, especially at times when they’re struggling with a difficult skill. Repeating a task over and over usually does help people become more proficient at it. Good educators use this same idea in their teaching or writing (a method called “spiraling”). With this approach, concepts are repeated several times in different ways and in various contexts. Each time, the child understands the concept a little better.

2. Encountering concepts in multiple subjects encourages real-life application

Ultimately, we want our children to use what they’re learning in our homeschool environment in everyday life, especially in service to the Lord. We want them to be able to proofread a church bulletin, write a legible and error-free thank-you note, and research and evaluate information. When our children are exposed to the same concepts in different subject areas, they’re more likely to understand the broad application of that knowledge. No longer will capitalization rules only apply to English worksheets—as your child practices those rules in spelling, handwriting, and reading, he or she will likely get them right when writing a personal letter to a grandparent.

3. Reviewing concepts saves time

The overlap of concepts throughout a curriculum also has a big benefit for homeschool moms everywhere. It saves time. I get excited when I look at a lesson and realize that we’ve already covered a concept elsewhere. I don’t have to re-teach it. I just review it and move on, saving precious time in our homeschool day.

Watch this video to see the curriculum we’re using in our homeschool.

Introducing the New American Literature Edition

October 18, 2016 by Jenna

We’re excited to introduce the newest edition of our American Literature textbook. The secondary-level language arts team has put in a lot of work to make this the most valuable edition for you and your child, and they’ve made a lot of changes based on your recommendations. Take a look at these exciting new features!

1. The Reading Process

Incorporating the Reading Process into the textbook has been the most significant revision so far. We believe the Reading Process will help you cultivate in your child a deeper understanding of how American culture has grown and developed since its beginning. For more information about the Reading Process, see “How to Teach Your Children to Read Actively” or take a look inside American Literature to see it applied.

2. Analyze, Read, and Evaluate

These three instructional strands (or lines of thought followed throughout the reading) help to establish the reader’s purpose for reading and guide him through each selection. The “analyze” strand focuses on technical elements, the “read” strand deals with reading strategies and approaches, and the “evaluate” strand develops biblical worldviews. All the instructional strands are marked by icons in both the Teacher’s Edition and the Student Text.

3. Expanded Content

Based on requests for greater diversity and modern content, we’ve expanded the content to include selections from more recent decades. Our team has also added selections that reflect the rich cultural diversity of America, such as “Go Down, Moses,” a Negro spiritual, and pieces from the Native American oral tradition, “How the World Began” and “The Constitution of the Five Nations.” We’ve also included new chapters on contemporary poetry and prose as well as “Voices of Conflict,” a chapter featuring selections from the Civil War era.

4. New Design

This is perhaps the most important revision for both you and your children. The textbook and teacher’s edition have been redesigned in order to make the information more accessible—from smaller changes like breaking the text up visually and reorganizing information to larger changes like adding author biographies before every selection, trimming down unit introductions, and adding chapter introductions.

The third edition of American Literature will be a treasure trove of literary selections for your children. Visit the product page to take a look inside the book.

How to Teach Your Children to Read Actively

October 11, 2016 by Jenna

Children are born learning, so parents and teachers almost never work with a blank slate. We’re always building on some kind of a foundation that’s been laid down, and the most effective teaching takes place when we’re working directly with that foundation. You can’t build a house without first making sure that the foundation is ready. That’s why we begin teaching math with counting and teaching reading by connecting written words to spoken words.

We should never hand a child a work of literature written long before he was born and expect him to be able to think deeply about the time period or the moral standards of the era without first laying the foundation for those thoughts. We rely on the Reading Process to lay the right foundation before asking deeper questions. Rather than allowing your children to be passive readers unable to form opinions because they lack the proper foundation, the Reading Process encourages your children to actively use the foundation laid for them. It involves three stages.

1. Before Reading

The first step in the reading process is to equip readers with the information they need to understand their first reading—this is the foundation of their reading. Your children will have the opportunity to build background knowledge about the time period, the author’s life, and the selection itself. But most importantly, your children should understand why they’re reading what they’re reading. This may mean using the reading selection to teach a specific literary device.

For example, before discussing Aesop’s fables, you might teach a brief lesson on metaphors, perhaps connecting your lesson to other familiar concepts such as Jesus’s parables or allegory in The Pilgrim’s Progress.

2. During Reading

The “during reading” stage encourages your children to stay focused on the central lesson—whatever you’re using the selection to teach—by asking them to recall information they learned in the first stage. Here, they’re building walls and support beams on their foundation. Instead of passively reading, your children should actively apply what they’ve learned to the selection as they read. One way to encourage this would be to ask them to highlight examples of the terms they learned before reading or to note when an author’s background might have affected his writing.

To continue your lesson on metaphors in fables, you might highlight a particular metaphor in the selection and ask your child to identify what kind of literary device is being used or what the metaphor represents.

3. After Reading

This final stage—putting on the roof—in the reading process ties the concepts your children learned before reading and applied during reading together by asking them to reread and discuss what they found in the selection after reading. Rather than just learning terms and finding examples within the selection, your children should begin discussing the significance of those terms in the context of the selection. This final step in the Reading Process trains your children to form opinions and support them with information from the selection.

Going back to the example with metaphors, you could discuss with your children the purpose of using a metaphor as a literary device in a fable or how metaphors can help them talk about difficult ideas more easily.

How well your children make connections between new information and old information can mean the difference between a forced discussion about literary devices in Aesop’s fables and a deeper discussion from “The Fox and the Grapes” about what kind of “sour grapes” your children may struggle with.

Take a look at how we apply the Reading Process in the newest edition of American Literature!