BJU Press Blog

language arts

June Is Reading Month!

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BJU Press JourneyForth book covers

Enjoying a good book while sitting in a deck chair on my patio is one of my favorite summertime activities. The relaxing sounds and smells of nature combined with the warm sun make it easy to be carried away by the pages.

June is reading month here at BJU Press and to celebrate I’d like to highlight some of my favorite blog posts about reading.

Tips for Teaching Reading

Fun Reading Activities

Exciting Book Reviews

Need some extra reading material? JourneyForth is offering 25% off the entire lineup throughout June 2016. From children’s novels to adult Bible studies, there’s something for the entire family. Happy reading!

 

Remembrance in Action: A Memorial Day Project

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American flag

Memorial Day blends sadness with gratitude as we remember those who died in the service of our country. Unlike Veterans’ Day, which honors the soldiers who served and returned, Memorial Day recognizes those who gave up their lives fighting for freedom. Keeping Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day straight is difficult for kids, but doing activities and writing about the day will help them understand its meaning.

Step 1. Adopt a Soldier

About a week before Memorial Day, choose a soldier to remember. Perhaps there is someone in your family who gave his or her life while serving in the armed forces, or perhaps you know of a family friend or a neighbor who lost a loved one in war. If possible, choose someone whose grave is in your area, so that you and your children can visit briefly as part of your Memorial Day project.

Step 2. Do Some Research

Once you have chosen a soldier to remember, it’s time to do some research about him or her. The individual’s birth date, date of death, hometown, place of service, and other details are all helpful pieces of information that you can find out online or from the soldier’s family members. Learning a little bit about the soldier will make him more real to your children and deepen the meaning of his sacrifice. While they research, kids can take notes using this graphic organizer.

Step 3. Write About It

Younger children can write a few sentences about what they have learned, in the form of a short narrative or a timeline. Visual learners may enjoy drawing some illustrations to go with the written part. Older kids can turn their research into an essay about Memorial Day or the price of freedom; or they could design a timeline with information and illustrations to celebrate the soldier’s life. Posting photos of the project on Facebook, gifting the illustrations to the soldier’s living relatives, or reading the essay aloud to a group of fellow homeschoolers are just a few ways that your children can share their projects.

Step 4. Make a Stars and Stripes Wreath

To adorn your soldier’s grave on Memorial Day, you and your kids can make a red, white, and blue wreath reminiscent of the American flag. You’ll need the following supplies:

  • Red, white, and blue bandanas from a dollar store or thrift shop
  • A wreath form from a craft store
  • Twist ties
  • White felt
  • A hot-glue gun

Wrap blue bandanas around the left side of the wreath, securing them with twist ties and leaving the ends free. Once you have done about half of the wreath, wrap the remaining portion in alternating red and white bandanas. Cut a couple dozen five-pointed stars from the white felt and hot-glue them onto the blue bandanas.

Step 5. Decorate a Soldier’s Grave

On Memorial Day, take the kids to visit their soldier’s grave. Check with the cemetery to make sure it’s okay for you to leave the wreath at the grave to honor the soldier’s memory.

What other activities have you done to teach your kids the importance of Memorial Day? Share them with me in a comment.

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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.

Q&A: Is a dedicated reading book necessary?

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If your family is like mine, you probably have books all over the house. Novels pile up as they get handed down from generation to generation and as children receive them as gifts. As a result, you might be wondering why you should buy your children a separate reading textbook that includes different reading selections (also called a basal reader) when you already have plenty of books around for them to read.

At BJU Press we strongly believe in the value of basal readers and publish one for nearly every grade. The rationale behind this can be summed up in three big ideas.

BasilReader_blog

1. A wide range of content exposes your child to many different genres.

We have a lot of storybooks at our house but not much nonfiction or poetry that would appeal to a younger audience. Basal readers ensure that children are being exposed to a variety of genres, including poetry, short stories, plays, letters, and more. Introducing these literary genres is important because every child has different interests. At the same time, basal readers also develop your child’s appreciation for many types of literature. It would be a shame for a child to dislike reading just because she dislikes the particular books available to her.

Keep in mind that a basal reader doesn’t replace novels entirely. By exposing your child to different genres, it provides a great opportunity to find out what he likes to read so you can buy more of those kinds of books.

2. Stories are selected to teach specific skills.

Reading in school should be fun and interesting, but that’s not the only objective. Children need to learn the foundational comprehension skills that they’ll need for the future. Stories and questions in the BJU Press basal readers are chosen intentionally because they illustrate literary concepts that are important for children to learn. Reading and Literature kits include both before and after reading questions that relate specifically to the story to ensure your child is comprehending what he’s reading, and isn’t just saying words out loud.

3. Stories are age and developmentally appropriate.

Ensuring that reading material is age and developmentally appropriate is an important part of keeping children challenged but not frustrated. There can be a lot of guesswork involved in trying to pick out stories for your child to read. You don’t want the vocabulary to be too hard, but at the same time if it’s too easy, your child won’t develop as he reads it. Basal readers include stories from a range of difficulties that are sequenced from less difficult to more difficult to ensure success for every reader.

Take a look at the reading selections included in our BJU Press Reading and Literature books.

How to Plan for a Writing Project

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It’s that time again. You’re probably starting to do some homeschool planning for next year. The browser history on your phone might be full of pages from your favorite homeschool websites. You might even have notes either typed or handwritten comparing and contrasting the textbooks you might switch to. But deciding what curriculum to use is only one piece of the planning process for next year. There’s also planning the day-to-day schedule, extra activities, chores, household details . . .  You understand.

Planning a writing project may not be quite as involved as planning for the next homeschool year, but in both situations the results are affected by how well we prepare. Just as you use a homeschool planner to organize your day, your child can use graphic organizers to plan his writing project. Let’s take a look at some planning tips and graphic organizers that can help your child succeed with his writing projects.

Planning, the first step in the five-step writing process, helps make writing the first draft easier by creating a clear framework for the entire project. The writer (your child) is able to see the flow of thought he wants to communicate. A good way to start planning is by having him answer these questions.

  • What topic are you writing about?
  • Why are you writing?
  • Whom are you writing for?
  • How are you going to format your writing?

As he answers these questions, have him take time to brainstorm (and possibly research) ideas and information related to his topic. A practical way to group these details together and decide the order to arrange them in is with a graphic organizer. Some graphic organizers work better with different writing projects.

Plot Pyramid

A word web is one type of graphic organizer. It can be used to organize details about a topic, an event, or even a character in a story. After listing out details, your child can number them in the order in which he wants to write about them.

Creating a senses chart is another way your child can plan out a writing project. Just like it sounds, this chart relates to the five senses and is great for helping your child write a description. Have him draw five columns on a blank piece of paper and answer the following questions:

  • How does it look?
  • How does it sound?
  • How does it taste?
  • How does it smell?
  • How does it feel?

Have your child list sensory words in each column to describe the object. This list of words should include terms that help the reader mentally see, hear, taste, smell, or feel what is being read. (Sometimes only a few senses can be used to describe an object.)

A plot pyramid is a graphic organizer that establishes the beginning, middle, and end of a story. (Its counterpart for planning nonfiction writing would be a time-order chart.) Visually showing the arc that takes place in a creative story is important to help children see that the problem (usually a conflict between characters) and the solution are the transition points of their whole story.

You and I both know that taking time to plan brings benefits in multiple areas of life. Teaching your child to be a good, clear communicator for the glory of God begins with the planning stage.

Find more graphic organizers and writing resources in the BJU Press elementary English curriculum.

Why Do You Homeschool? Making Time for Journaling

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We’re now on the fourth post in our series titled “Why Do You Homeschool?” We’ve been talking with Deborah, a mom who homeschooled four children, about some of the advantages of homeschooling.

Deborah mentioned what a blessing it was that homeschooling allowed her family time to journal regularly, so I asked her to tell us more about that. Here’s what she said:

Why do you homeschool? Part 3

“Journaling is such a wonderful tool if used properly. It teaches a number of skills that are needed in any child’s education—from handwriting, spelling, and punctuation to thoughtful creative skills.

“Because we were fairly structured in our homeschooling, journaling was simply part of our ‘school day’ once a week.

“This all got started because of the journal entry section in the BJU Press spelling curriculum. The purpose was to have the child use some of the spelling words in the suggested topic. These entries were never graded, but I would always answer their journals briefly, using any words that they might have misspelled. It was never meant to critique their writing or thought processes.

“The journal entry does not have to be more than a couple of sentences sometimes. I required at least five sentences from my kids while in school. If the suggested topic (in the spelling text) did not seem to fit, I chose the question/topic. On occasion the kids would suggest something to write about. Some topics were simply fun ones; others were more serious in nature. Because it was accepted simply as part of the lesson and was not a long assignment, there was never an argument from any of them when it came time to write.

“The kids loved reading journals from years past. Often it generated laughter and discussion of family trips, events, and situations. It gave great opportunity to talk about God’s active presence in our lives individually and as a family. Many truths were fleshed out over time as the family bonded.

“Of course, the most vivid memory for them is sharing favorite times with their dad—our hikes and camping trips, his jokes and all the fun times he brought to our home. Often we talked about the topic, and the older kids would share something their youngest sibling did not remember about her dad. It brought healing to our broken hearts and cemented precious memories.

“Today my kids are better than I am when it comes to journaling because they were taught from the get-go how important it is to put your thoughts into writing and to do so clearly. They learned that discipline early on. I can’t emphasize enough how life-changing this practice can be if nurtured. The memories chronicled, the joys and heartaches revealed, and the lessons from the Lord written down to revisit years later are all invaluable.”

Has homeschooling made a blessing like this possible for your family? Let us know in the comments below!

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