homeschool

Why History Seems Boring and How to Make It Fascinating

October 5, 2017 by Ben

It’s not unusual for children to find history boring. But that wasn’t the case with me. I’ve been a history nerd ever since my dad took me on a homeschool field trip to a World War II aircraft carrier. But I understand that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for studying the past. Does your child get bored with history?

There are plenty of reasons some children (and adults!) think history is uninteresting. Here are just two of them—and my suggestion for how to fix the problem.

• Just the (Boring) Facts

Sometimes studying history feels like the mindless memorization of unrelated dates and names. As they read historical narratives, kids may get the sense that dates pop up without warning, sometimes causing them to wonder why particular events have dates associated with them and others don’t.

And then there are the names. Certain people have some action or achievement associated with their names that we exhort our children to remember. Take the Age of Enlightenment as an example. There are so many philosophers and so many scientists—each with a discovery or book title attached to his name. Trying to keep track of it all can feel overwhelming.

• Not Relevant (to Me)

Not only do the dates and names feel overwhelming, focusing on facts makes it difficult for your child to see what all this has to do with him personally. He’s hearing about a bunch of dead people who haven’t done a thing for centuries. And when is anybody ever going to use the fact that 1,285 years ago this month Charles Martel defeated the Moors in the Battle of Tours? It just doesn’t seem to make any difference in our day-to-day lives.

Big-Picture Approach

Those are two common complaints, but what can we do to help our children see the significance and relevance of people and events from the past? We can turn “boring” history into a fascinating study by using questions to focus our children’s attention on the big picture. An important aspect of this is teaching history as a narrative in chronological order.

And here are a couple of effective questioning strategies you can use to help your children see the big picture of the historical narrative they’re reading. This involves going beyond the regular surface-level questions like “When did . . . ?” and “Who wrote . . .?” Big-picture questions enable students to synthesize historical data into an overarching view of the past.

• Before-and-After Reading Questions

These questions are most effective when given to children as preparation before they read something and as follow-up afterwards. Before children wade into material chronicling a series of bureaucratic changes, scientific advancements, or philosophic treatises, they need to know what they’re looking for. Guiding questions like the ones below from World Studies (page 152) can help. Having a purpose in their reading will lead children to see the bigger picture.

• Critical Thinking Questions

A second type of big-picture question can also help your children refocus on the important ideas after reading through the details, like this one from Heritage Studies 4 (page 171).

Such questions generalize history, making it more relevant. They help your children move from superficially recalling details to thinking critically because they have to synthesize the details in order to create a generalization. All those pesky details are important, but if children don’t develop critical thinking skills, they won’t see the significance.

By understanding chronological order and generalizations of historical events, students can make appropriate analogies to things that are happening today. While no past event is a perfect match for a current event, there’s often significant overlap. The differences mean we cannot use the past to predict the future, but we can use the past to give us moral clarity about the present. A student with a biblical worldview and an understanding of historical context will be better able to navigate the complexities of current events. Ultimately, those connections to worldview and the present will make history interesting to your child.

Use effective questions in history so your children will learn to value history as they see its connection to the present.

Building Long-Term Math Mastery

September 28, 2017 by Jenna

$BJU Press Math$
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, “Why does one plus one equal two?” Most people who find themselves faced with this math question will probably say something along the lines of “it just does.” But if you thought about it, you could probably come up with a more articulate answer. For example, if you have one marker, then buy another one, and count how many markers you have, you will have two. That’s why one plus one equals two.

What did I have to do in order to answer the question? For most adults, connecting number problems to familiar objects is automatic. That’s because, as children, we learned number sense by working with objects that we could count and move around. You know that manipulatives are key to developing math comprehension. But are there other keys to math comprehension that are essential for long-term mastery?

Yes. Our Math 2 student worktext constantly asks your child questions about the processes he used and how he found his answer.

Students must learn to think about and explain the processes and formulas they use in order for math to have any lasting purpose for them.

For example, in high school, I was at the top of my class in math, but not because I had any idea of what all those numbers meant. It was simply because I could put numbers in the right places in a formula. In fact, I always loved the quadratic equation, and I still remember x equals negative b plus or minus the square root of b-squared minus 4ac all over 2a. But when I got to geometric proofs, I was hopelessly lost. My high school math textbooks never reminded me that the formulas and numbers I loved playing with actually meant something. It was like putting together a puzzle with edge pieces but no middle.

A child’s ability to solve equations doesn’t mean he gets it.

So how do you ensure that your child will be able to make sense of math as he moves into more and more complex ideas?

Ask him to explain his process. What would the equation he’s solving look like in real life?
Ask him for observations about the concepts he’s learning. Does he see any new patterns? Do other math concepts apply to the new one? Does the new math concept apply to old ones?
Incorporate common objects as manipulatives. As he begins learning about area and surface area, can he find the surface area of a tissue box? How would that information be useful to the person designing the box or putting it together?

Look through the thought bubbles in Math 2 student worktext for more ideas of questions to ask your child.

When math has meaning, it also has purpose. If you can create a strong connection between your child and the meanings of the numbers and formulas, you might also connect him to a future career.

Scope & Sequence: A Homeschool Game Plan

September 19, 2017 by Ben

As a homeschool dad, I wonder about taking children who can’t read and preparing them for college. It seems like such a huge climb. How do we take five-year-olds and prepare them for what the Lord has planned without overwhelming them? To help with the process, I like to think about board games.

I’ve always enjoyed playing board games. I remember whiling away the summer hours with Monopoly and Risk. As an adult, I’ve come to enjoy playing Settlers of Catan. So I want to introduce my children to board games. But finding a game that engages everyone is challenging for two reasons.

1. It Can’t Be Too Hard

2. It Can’t Be Too Easy

If the game concepts are too complicated for my children to understand, they get frustrated and don’t want to play. But if the game concepts are too easy, they learn them quickly but soon lose interest because the game no longer challenges them. The best games are simple for everyone to begin playing. However, the best games have enough depth to them to accommodate the complex thinking of mature players. That’s why games like checkers have such longevity. They’re simple to learn, but as children grow they can use increasingly complex strategies.

Preparing children for what God has planned works in a similar way. If children are given concepts that are too intricate or abstract, they get frustrated and want to quit. If the material is too easy, the child gets bored and loses interest in learning. The best learning is carefully planned to be challenging without being frustrating.

Scope & Sequence

Curriculum publishers typically have a teaching plan called a “scope and sequence.” These documents are like maps that show a path through content that moves children step by step from awareness of material to mastery of the material.

If there were a scope and sequence for checkers, it would start with basic moves. For the child who has developed an understanding of how to move the pieces, the scope and sequence would include basic tricks for capturing pieces. Later, older players describe and model the broad strategies for winning the game. Finally, the child would have the opportunity to create his own strategy for winning. Then he can refine that strategy through playing with increasingly challenging opponents.

When it comes to homeschooling our children, we want a plan that keeps them engrossed in learning. The best plans increase the complexity of the materials in coordination with the child’s maturation.

Applied to History

I’ve enjoyed watching my daughter develop in her love for history. So teaching her in the evenings after work has been a special time for us. The BJU Press Heritage Studies curriculum does a terrific job of challenging her without being frustrating.

As she enters third grade, I’m excited to teach from the Constitutional Convention up to the Civil War. So much happened in that time period involving executive actions, legislative compromises, and judicial review—in other words, some complicated stuff.

But we’ve been preparing since first grade. Here’s how my daughter’s been getting ready, through the curriculum, to tackle the formative aspects of our nation’s history that we’ll cover in third grade.

First Grade Heritage Studies

In an introductory way, we covered local leaders, national leaders, rights, and voting.

Second Grade Heritage Studies

We returned to local, state, and national leaders, but we added more detail. The president, Congress, and judges were given more specific definitions. We learned that the Constitution guarantees our rights and our responsibilities to get involved in elections by voting.

To make this learning more concrete, we also role-played an election and wrote a “law” for our house.

Third Grade Heritage Studies

We’ll review the interplay of local, state, and national leaders. But now, we’ll add detail about how the legislative, executive, and judicial branches work together. This time, it’s within the context of the Constitutional Convention and the first presidency. So we can see how presidents administer policies through their cabinets and how Congress has two groups.

At this point, my daughter is ready for the drama of this early period. She’s ready to understand Hamilton and Jefferson’s fight over the national bank and ready to explore the legislative compromises that lead to the Civil War. She’s prepared to learn this material because we followed a plan. As in the game of checkers, the basic concepts were easy. Each step made the next one easier. It wasn’t simple, but the increasing challenge of the material has made it fun.

Take a look at the Scope & Sequence BJU Press offers, a game plan carefully designed to help your child be a winner.

6 Ways to Combat the Blank Page

August 29, 2017 by Jenna

Your homeschool year is about to get underway again, and with it, exciting new writing assignments. Whether your writer looks forward to learning more about writing or tries to stay as far away from it as he can, there’s one aspect of writing that he will most likely struggle with.

The blank page.

Looking at the whiteness of a computer document or the empty lines of a notebook page can be overwhelming, as if the blank page asks “Where do you even start?” How do you teach your writer to overcome his blank pages? Here are some tips for encouraging elementary and secondary students to conquer one of the most daunting phases of a writing assignment.

Elementary Writing Assignments

1. Take dictation.

A young writer often has more to overcome than just the blank page itself. He may get hung up on vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and even handwriting. You can bypass much of his hesitation by having him explain what he wants to write about and writing his explanation down for him. From there, he can revise what you wrote until it matches the assignment’s requirements.

2. Add a visual goal.

In English 2, the textbook explains how to write a paragraph by laying out the various parts of a paragraph and underlining those parts in different colors—green for the topic sentence, orange for details, and red for the ending. By highlighting blank lines in these colors and having your young writer write in the missing parts, you can give him visual cues and goals to work toward. The different colors break up the blankness into manageable pieces.

3. Use writing prompts.

One of the simplest ways to overcome the blank page is to never let it be completely blank. You can give your writer a prompt to put at the top of his page. The prompt you give can be the first sentence of a story, a topic sentence for a paragraph, or even a question for him to answer. This works the same way as the “Apply and Write” sections in BJU Press elementary English textbooks.

Secondary Writing Assignments

1. Fill in the outline.

Papers for secondary writers often involve writing outlines. Your writer can skip the blank page entirely simply by expanding directly from his outline. Even a simple outline will give him something to work with. Directions for creating outlines may be found in Chapter 13 of Writing and Grammar 10.

2. Keep the thesis at the top.

Almost every secondary paper will involve a thesis of some kind—a thesis gives the writer’s point of view for the paper. Even a simple paragraph essay is often based on one. Instructions for crafting a thesis statement may also be found in Chapter 13 of Writing and Grammar 10. Once your writer has decided on a thesis, have him write it at the top of each page. Keeping it there will help him focus on his purpose as well as eliminate the blank page.

3. Take a walk.

Sometimes, if your writer really gets stuck, getting him away from the accusing stare of the blank page can be the perfect cure. Once his legs fall into the regular rhythm of walking, his mind will be free to come up with the words that will best begin his writing project—provided that he remembers them long enough to write them down.

Other times, overcoming the blank page is a simple matter of putting down words—any words. The words your writer chooses may be changed many times in the drafting process, and that’s OK. Their real function is to get him over that first hurdle so he can write the rest of the paper. The page only stays blank as long as there are no words on it.

The Pressure of Preschool

August 15, 2017 by Guest Writer

“My son can already write his name!” says a proud mother. “My daughter is not quite four, and she has just learned to read!” says another. One mom shrinks back into her seat, wondering if she’s doing something wrong. Should her son or daughter be reading at age three or four? Should her two-year-old be learning to form the shapes of letters?

For decades, parents have felt the pressure to hurry their preschoolers’ learning. They don’t want their children to be left behind. For homeschool parents, the pressure is even greater. They may feel that the world is looking at them more critically, ready to point out any perceived underachievement. If you’re feeling the pressure to teach your child more aggressively or to start kindergarten early, consider these important factors.

Rates of Development

Babies learn to crawl, walk, and talk at different rates; there is no ideal timetable. It’s the same for preschoolers and kindergarteners. Some will learn to read quickly; others will catch on to math concepts; and others may simply be interested in movement and play. Trying to force a child to mature more quickly can lead to behavioral issues and a dislike of learning.

Freedom to Grow

Kids need time to invent, explore, and create. They need space to run, jump, and climb, especially during the formative preschool and kindergarten years. Giving them the freedom to experiment, discover, and move through their world builds their confidence and their ability to solve problems—things that will prove valuable when they begin their homeschool years.

Perceptions of Potential

If you stress reading too early, you might become frustrated and discouraged; you may even think that your child doesn’t have the potential to be a great reader. That’s not necessarily the case; he may simply be operating on his own schedule. Instead of frustrating yourself and your child, wait until the time is right to begin a more organized style of homeschooling.

Statistical Proof

A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that delaying kindergarten for a year had remarkable benefits for children. Kids who were seven when they started formal instruction were measurably more attentive and less hyperactive at age eleven than kids who began kindergarten at the “normal” age of five or six. The kids who started kindergarten a year later had more time to learn self-control and mental focus before beginning their school career.

Preparation for Kindergarten

You can introduce your child to text and numbers in many age-appropriate ways. There are numbers on calendars, clocks, mile markers, your house, and store receipts. Words are everywhere—on cereal boxes, toys, storefronts, street signs, letters, and clothes.

When you read storybooks together, ask your little ones to show you the pictures and point to text. You are developing your child’s “print awareness” which is a prerequisite to phonics instruction. Where are the characters? What are they doing in the picture? What will happen next? It’s a fun way to engage with your children and start teaching them about story components and progression without getting too academic.

Maybe your little ones would enjoy dictating stories or letters for you to write down and read aloud. These activities emphasize the relationship of thought to oral and written language. And if those little bodies start to get wiggly, maybe it’s time to switch to another kind of education—learning through play.

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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.