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3 Ways to Grow in the New Year

December 29, 2016 by Meredith

How do you prepare for the new year? Whether you celebrate the first day of the year with a party or treat it like any other day, now is a good time to think about the challenges (and blessings) of the past year and to set goals for the brand-new year.

But we can’t make assumptions about changing for the better without some prior preparation (Proverbs 21:31). Make the choice now to grow. A large part of growing is making an evaluation and setting a goal to change. God delights when we actively pursue changes that develop Christlikeness because it honors Him and reflects His grace to others. Take inspiration from the following practical ways to grow in the year ahead.

(Image use) WP 01/2017

Grow as a Mother

Bring on the New Year’s Resolutions! Find a tip for making each of your goals attainable.

5 New Year’s Resolutions Moms Will Want to Keep can deepen the relationship between you and your spouse as well as with your children. Which one will you focus on?

Grow as a Teacher

10 Tips for Your Homeschool Year offers ideas for refocusing after the holiday season. Choose one of these tips to apply to your homeschooling.

How Do You Plan Your Homeschool Year? Sometimes schedule changes take place in the middle of a school year. Be inspired with these resources.

Grow as a Homemaker

Use meal planning ideas from $5 Dinners on Pinterest! There are tons of yummy recipes to choose from, including meals for those in your family who have dietary restrictions and food allergies.

Household Management Forms can help guide you on the path from chaos to order. Download these printables that include cleaning lists, daily chore charts, and meal planning worksheets to get started.

How to Embrace (and Love) a Cleaning Routine keeps things simple by setting aside different days of the week for specific tasks. Learn how to develop a cleaning routine that works for you and your family!

Whatever goals the Lord lays on your heart for this new year, create your plan for growth so that it is laid out one simple step after another. Then share your plan as well as your goals with someone else. This action might be the hardest of all, but we all need motivation and encouragement along the way in this journey. Here’s to a blessed year of seeing God’s grace and strength at work in you!

Filed Under: Simplified Homeschool Tagged With: goals, growth, mom, new year, teacher, tips

How Long Should a Homeschool Day Last?

September 27, 2016 by BJU Press Writer

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Have you ever heard the question: “How long should a homeschool day last”? Maybe you’ve even asked yourself this question. You can relax because there’s really no right or wrong answer. But if you’re concerned, here are some things to consider about the length of your school day:

  • What criteria are you using to evaluate your school day to determine why it’s taking so long? Choose a schedule that works for your family—not one set by other families’ clocks.
  • Do your children learn better by studying the lesson and then doing all the homework immediately with concepts still fresh in their minds? Or is it better when they have a more regimented routine with “subject hours” in which to learn their lessons and then use the remaining time for homework? Remember that you are always in charge of the schedule (even when using Distance Learning). How you organize the day may vary depending on what works best for you and your children.
  • Are your children goofing off or really struggling? Evaluating their activities during lesson time by noting any distractions or excuses to get up from the lesson could key you in on how well your child is learning.
  • How involved are you with your children’s progress? It’s important to make sure they comprehend and properly apply the information they learn.
  • How are you balancing extracurricular activities in your regular day? Do music lessons or sports overlap with academic lessons, pushing them back and extending your day? Have your other children bring independent work to complete, or watch Distance Learning video lessons in the car.
  • How many breaks do you take during the school day? How long do you take for lunch? Making a meal every day takes time (for you and your children); try getting ahead with food preparation. If your kids are older, they can serve themselves with something like DIY Lunch Stations.
  • Are your children studying every subject daily? Keep in mind that each subject is a minimum of a full semester of study. So in order to stay on schedule, they may need to study a subject only two or three days a week rather than daily.
  • Do you have your children estimate the time they think it will take to accomplish a task? Both average and special-needs students often benefit from a physical timer to help them stay focused and to learn to complete tasks within certain time limits. If you give your child the responsibility of choosing the time limit and finishing within the allotted time, it can help him develop analytical estimation and scheduling skills.
  • Are you able to prepare ahead for material that will be covered? Being prepared is a major part in keeping you and your children on the track to academic success and regular routine.

Find these tips helpful? Sign up for our homeschool email to receive more.

Filed Under: Simplified Homeschool Tagged With: homeschool, length of day, schedule, tips

5 Field Trip Tips for Fun and Learning

September 15, 2016 by Megan

Ask any child what he or she remembers most about the school year, and the answer will probably not include desks, worktext pages, or textbooks. I know my own memories as a homeschooled child don’t involve a lot of those things. Instead, I remember the extraordinary days—the day we took off school in the middle of an Illinois winter to go ice skating after watching the 1998 Winter Olympics™, the day we spent at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the day we spent at a wildlife reserve learning about animals native to the Midwest prairie lands. In other words, I remember the field trips.

5 Field Trip Tips

Field trips are an important part of any homeschooling experience. Children of any age can benefit from the opportunity to see and experience new things. But before you start filling up your homeschool calendar with field trips, consider these tips

1. Choose a destination that fits the maturity level of your children.

For young children, consider visiting places where they can see something happen (like candy-making) or touch something (like a fire truck or a baby lamb)—someplace they don’t have to be particularly still or quiet. Although older children might greatly benefit from a trip to a history or art museum, young children would likely find such an outing tedious.

Also, be aware that many planetariums, museums, and botanical gardens may confront your child with nonbiblical worldviews such as evolution, materialism, or liberalism. Before you go, be prepared to help your children think biblically about these issues, but remind them to be gracious and polite to the staff and other visitors who hold these views.

2. Remember that field trips are supposed to be fun.

Don’t stress your children out by threatening to give them a test after a field trip experience or loading them down with pages of questions to answer. Instead, consider making a field trip journal or simply ask your children basic questions such as “What was your favorite thing about the trip?” or “What is one thing that you learned today?”

3. Avail yourself of local and inexpensive options.

Field trips don’t have to be expensive or time consuming. When my family moved to central Illinois in the mid-1990s, we were surrounded by farmland and were hours away from big tourist attractions. Therefore, most of our field trips were local—and often free. We toured the local library, a local fast-food restaurant, and the railroad yard. We identified trees in a local arboretum and went on nature walks. Call around to local businesses to find out which ones offer tours. To keep costs low, consider coordinating a field trip day with another homeschooling family in order to get group rates.

4. If possible, use field trips to reinforce the content your child has already studied.

Hands-on experiences will help your child retain knowledge and may even provide the “spark” he or she needs to study something further. My husband often relates how his love for history grew out of visiting many American history sites during his high school years. My now second-grader benefited greatly from visiting Jamestown Settlement (the living history site, not the actual site) after studying Jamestown in the 3rd edition of Heritage Studies 1. She was fascinated with early Native American life for weeks afterwards.

5. Be over-prepared.

Spontaneous field trips may sound fun, and sometimes they do work. However, planning ahead will save you and your children from potential disappointment. I’ll never forget the day my mother and I planned to take my children to a petting zoo for the afternoon. We packed a picnic lunch and traveled almost forty-five minutes only to find out that our destination was closed for the day.

So do your homework. Know exactly where you’re going and whether you need to make reservations. Call to confirm the trip a couple of days in advance. You might want to even make a Plan B in case it rains.

Now what? Perhaps the hardest part of all: loading the kids up in the car and hitting the road. I know how hard it is to go anywhere when you’re a homeschool mom, but it will be worth it—I promise! Enjoy seeing the spark of excitement in your child’s eyes. Treasure the flood of words that will come as they recount the wonders of new discoveries. Savor the time away from the textbooks and assignments. Make some memories. But be prepared to answer the inevitable question: “When will we have another field trip?”

The Olympics is a trademark of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Filed Under: Successful Learning Tagged With: field trip, homeschool, memories, tips

June Is Reading Month!

June 2, 2016 by Justin

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

  • Help for Moms with Struggling Young Readers 
  • Benefits of Reading Aloud to Your Children 
  • Is a dedicated reading book necessary?

Fun Reading Activities

  • Summer Fun Meets Summer Reading 
  • A Mother-Daughter Reading Club 

Exciting Book Reviews

  • Pulling Together by Dawn L. Watkins 
  • The Role of a Lifetime by Claudia Barba 
  • Roses on Baker Street by Eileen Berry 

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!

 

Filed Under: Successful Learning Tagged With: activities, books, June, language arts, reading, summer, summer reading, tips

How a New Homeschooler Balances Her Day

January 14, 2016 by Megan

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about homeschooling. Even though I was homeschooled for more than six years, the idea of setting up my own homeschool is overwhelming. There’s a lot to think about and plan for. One topic that I’ve been researching lately is scheduling. One of the big benefits of homeschooling is flexibility in scheduling the school year. When you start and when you finish is completely up to you. But individual days need to be scheduled too if learning objectives are going to be met.

WP-NewHomeschoolBalance-1-2016

How much flexibility should there be in the daily schedule?

One homeschool blog that I have found particularly helpful is No Twiddle Twaddle. The author, Bethany, is a new homeschool mom, and she has blogged a bit about their first year. Her post “10 Tips for Starting to Homeschool” is a great resource for those of us who are just getting started. I love the way that she adds personal illustrations to each of her big ideas.

In this post, Bethany mentions the need to balance flexibility with structure. First, she urges her readers to take advantage of the flexibility that homeschooling offers.

I found that allowing ourselves the enjoyment of the flexibility of homeschooling helped keep our family from getting stressed out by the demands of homeschooling, and it also helps my kids stay on task when they know that working hard means extra time for play.

But she also mentions the need for structure.

It’s great to be flexible, but I quickly found out that starting lessons late in the morning meant school stretched forever into the afternoon (which is no fun when the sun is shining outside). I also found that I needed to be firm about making my kid use the bathroom and eat a decent breakfast before school. You really can’t learn anything when you are taking a gazillion breaks.

Bethany’s comments about the need for balance in every homeschool was a good reminder for me. I doubt my homeschool will lack structure—I tend to be a very task-oriented person. But I need to remember to pay attention to the needs of my students. Nurturing my children is infinitely more important than crossing off the items on the daily to-do list. I imagine that schoolwork may need to be put off some days in order to deal with heart issues. And that’s OK.

The tips in Bethany’s article gave me a lot to think about. Among other things, she talks about the need for a support structure, for organization, and for being teachable and learning from our own mistakes. If you are like me and are thinking about taking the plunge into homeschooling, I recommend that you read the rest of her excellent blog post.

Filed Under: Simplified Homeschool Tagged With: getting started homeschooling, homeschool, schedules, tips

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As parents, teachers, or former homeschool students, we are passionate about homeschooling from a biblical worldview. We hope these teaching tips, fun activities, and inspirational stories support you in teaching your children.

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