BJU Press Blog

Best Books for Vacation

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Is your family taking a trip this year? Whether it’s a weekend at the beach, a cross-country camping trip, or a visit with family, your kids will need some books to keep them occupied along the way. During the summer, encourage your children to read what they enjoy—for the sheer love of the story! For your next vacation, check out this list of books that they won’t be able to put down.

A King for Brass Cobweb (ages 6–7)

Filled with lush, beautiful pictures, A King for Brass Cobweb by Dawn Watkins is just right for early readers who need plenty of engaging visuals with their text. Large print, simple words, and delightful characters make this adventure perfect for reading aloud or independently.

The Mice of the Herring Bone Series (ages 6–7+)

What’s a better vacation book than a swashbuckling tale of pirate seadogs and clever mice? Mice of the Herring Bone by Tim Davis is the first book in a set of five seafaring tales that are sure to delight any child who’s ready for chapter books!

The Nick Newton Series (ages 9–12)

This lighthearted, futuristic adventure series follows the antics of an inventive boy from the country of Thauma. Nick Newton Is Not a Genius by S. E. M. Ishida is an excellent choice for kids who are into science and technology since it blends a love of STEM with a fascinating mystery. The second book in the series, Nick Newton: The Highest Bidder, is a fun, encouraging novel about friendship, persistence, and applied creativity.

Brave the Wild Trail (ages 9–12)

Is your family headed westward to cattle country or south to Florida? Milly Howard’s Brave the Wild Trail is a historical cowboy adventure set in the South, featuring the bullwhip-wielding Florida Crackers who used to drive herds through the Florida wilderness. Vicious outlaws, wild animals, and other dangers of the trail will keep your kid glued to the page.

False Coin, True Coin (young adult)

In this historical fiction novel, False Coin, True Coin by Lois Hoadley Dick, a young girl faces the perils of seventeenth-century London. As the daughter of a jailkeeper, Cissy meets the Christian hero John Bunyan when he was imprisoned for preaching Christ. She also meets a young outlaw who steals her heart. Making the right choices is not easy for Cissy, especially when peril, plague, and persecution confront her at every turn.

You can purchase these novels and lots more books for vacation from the Journeyforth website or on Amazon. Explore the available titles with your kids and have them make a summer book wishlist. Happy reading!

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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.

Field Trip Fun at the Farm

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farm field trips
Need an idea for a fun, educational field trip not far from home? Visit a local farm! It’s a great way to connect with people in your community and learn about livestock and crops with other homeschooling families. With a little effort, you should be able to find some nearby farms that will afford your children a valuable learning experience.

Starting a Farm Field Trip

First, decide what type of farm you want to visit. Are you more interested in learning about crops or animals? A good option is a mixed farm, which has both. There are subsistence farms, which are just for the farmer and his family. Then there are commercial farms, which grow crops and breed animals to sell to the public. You could also choose to tour a dairy, pig, or poultry farm.

Planning Your Farm Field Trip

The next step is finding a farm, which is now a lot easier to do thanks to the internet! Try to use as many specific search words as you can; for example, “local dairy farms near me.” In just a few minutes you will be able to find farms along with their hours, locations, and prices. Many websites also include directions and reviews.

Another great way to find a farm is to ask people who know the area well and can recommend a good one to visit. They can tell you the best way to get in touch with a farm, whether it’s via phone, Facebook, or a website.

Once you have found the ideal farm destination, contact the owners and arrange a tour. This is usually done by calling them on the phone or sending them a message through Facebook or email. Some farms require a minimum number of guests in order to book a tour, so you may want to invite some other homeschooling families to join you. Besides, it’s more fun to share an experience with friends!

Determining Details

To ensure a smoother field trip, you may want to discuss a few things with your group. First, consider traveling arrangements. Are you all going to drive together or just meet there? Second, think about time frames. How long would families like to stay? Depending on the type of farm, expect your visit to last between one and two hours. Third, don’t forget about post-trip plans. Does everyone want to go home or do something else, such as go to a park? On our last visit, one of the homeschooling moms invited the group to her house for lunch and playtime afterward.

Following Up

The ride home is a wonderful opportunity to ask your children what they learned at the farm. Here are just a few questions my daughters and I discussed after our last farm trip:

  • What was your favorite thing about the farm?
  • What is something new you discovered on the tour?
  • What did you learn about God on our trip?

Your Turn

Find a nearby farm, round up your family and friends, and enjoy a unique learning adventure!

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Jennifer is a pastor’s wife and mom of two young girls and loves homeschooling them. During her own twelve years of being homeschooled, Jennifer developed a passion for reading and writing. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and relishes writing during her free time.

Using Family History to Spark Interest

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Mapping out family history
History can be fascinating. Narratives about battles, discoveries, tensions, and alliances inspire many children to embrace learning. But I was never one of those children. Unless it was an area of history I wanted to know about—ancient Egypt, medieval Britain, or Edo period Japan—I wasn’t interested. Many children need to feel connected to the stories of history in order to embrace it. Your children may not be as picky about history as I was, but you’re probably familiar with the struggle to get them invested in it. One way to inspire interest is to make a personal connection to historical events. And what could be more personal than their own family history?

The Power of Stories

In college, I took a storytelling class. One of the things my teacher impressed on us was the power of family stories. In fact, she encouraged us to start a journal to record stories our parents had already told us plus any new stories they told. It’s often easier for children to remember the stories we tell than the dates in their history textbooks. You may not think of significant events from your lifetime as being part of history, but for your children, they are.

Many of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard about the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. You’ve probably shared those memories with your children on the anniversary of the attacks. Similarly, your parents or grandparents may remember the assassination of President Kennedy or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Our lives are full of these stories—moments that become significant for the next generation. Taking the time to share these accounts from your family history gives your children a personal connection to historical events. And, if your parents or grandparents can share their stories themselves, it gives your children an opportunity to build stronger relationships with them and create lifelong memories.

Researching Family History

Family stories can create connections that reach back to the twentieth century, but what about earlier? Researching family lineages is a recent trend that you might find useful in encouraging historical interest. Everybody hopes to find that they’re the descendant of a king or famous person. Though records are available publicly, online databases such as Ancestry.com make researching much easier. The system automatically makes connections to public records and existing family trees. The system will require a subscription fee, but you may not have to do all the work yourself. Many find that distant cousins have started the research already.

Going back generation by generation can ignite your children’s curiosity about history. What would your children want to know if they learned their fifth great grandfather was a Confederate prisoner of war during the Civil War? Would they see the colonies differently if they knew that their tenth great grandfather was among the first to settle in Germantown, Pennsylvania? You may not be related to someone famous, but even an unknown Confederate soldier can inspire learning.

You might also get a chance to look at scans of historical documents—such as census forms and marriage indexes. These records are primary sources, which are vital for the successful study of history. They’re not the Constitution, but they still show your children what their ancestors did, where they lived, and much more. Everything that you uncover is another glimpse into history and how our country has changed.

It’s impossible to learn about where we came from without also learning how history affected our ancestors. So if you’re struggling to inspire your children’s interest in history, remind them that the events they’re learning about in their history textbooks changed the lives of their ancestors.

Homeschool Freedom and How Far We’ve Come

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homeschool freedom
Families in the United States haven’t always had homeschool freedom like we do today. Countless parents have had to take a stand for what they believed was best for their children in order for us to reach where we are now. Advocating for the rights of parents to direct the education of their children is the mission of the Home School Legal Defense Association. Mike Smith, homeschool dad, attorney, and cofounder of HSLDA, shares the following story from the early days of the struggle for homeschool freedom.

A New Beginning

Shortly after I came to work full time at the Home School Legal Defense Association in 1987, I arrived at the office on a Monday morning, and a phone call was directed to me from a mom who we will refer to as S. B. She related the following:

S. B.’s family, consisting of mom, dad, and three children (two girls and a boy), who had moved from a metropolitan area of Wisconsin to a small Dutch town in Iowa. They were all excited because they were going to have chickens, a horse, and a garden.

When school started, S. B. enrolled her three children in the public schools. Within the first several weeks, Chris, the oldest of the three children and the boy, expressed an extreme dislike for school, and it was a chore to make him go.

Labeled

S. B. thought by volunteering to help in his classroom, she could make it more palatable. Much to her surprise, Chris had been labeled as special needs based on some testing done by the school before school started. He was in middle school and had never been diagnosed as having any learning problems. This had resulted in Chris being treated very cruelly by some of his classmates. Since he didn’t have any friends to start out with in school, he became very despondent from all the negativity surrounding school. Because he was not able to establish any friends, he felt all alone while trying to get through the day feeling the critical glares and hearing the sharp, piercing barbs of some of the students.

S. B. couldn’t get any sympathy or support from the school. “He’ll get over it,” they said. Well, he wasn’t getting over it, and to make matters worse, the principal told S. B. that they couldn’t have her coming to school with Chris anymore as it was disruptive to the class and appeared to be giving special treatment.

No Other Option?

Things did not get better, however, and S. B. had to physically take Chris to the school each day and walk him up to the school door to make sure he would go to school. Chris was doing poorly, and his morose temperament was not improving. To try to relieve the pain, she tried keeping him home, but she would get a call from the school telling her that Chris was truant, and he needed to be in school now!

Time went by and they reached the month of November—there was no improvement.  S. B. had considered other options, like moving, but that wasn’t possible, and there were no other schools in the area, including no private school options, and she had not heard of homeschooling.

On a Friday night, after the family had gone out to eat, the previously happy-go-lucky Chris (before he moved to Iowa and entered school) tried to commit suicide.  Fortunately, they were able to get him to the emergency room in time to save his life. S. B. knew then that Chris could not return to school on Monday, but she didn’t know where to turn.

A Possible Solution

She went to church on Sunday and shared a prayer request in her adult Sunday school class about her problem.  After church, a lady who was in the Bible study pulled S. B. aside and told her she had a possible solution to her problem, but she would need to talk to her later by phone because of the complicated nature of the solution.  This lady was a homeschooler.

At this time in the history of Iowa homeschooling, homeschooling was illegal and aggressively prosecuted by school districts throughout the state, unless mom was an Iowa-certified teacher and equivalent instruction was being offered. So, homeschoolers tried to exist underground, which was not always possible. HSLDA had numerous court cases in Iowa during this time period up until the law was changed by the legislature in 1991.

S. B. had that conversation that afternoon when she heard the term homeschooling for the first time.  She knew that this was the only hope she had to save her child.  But as her new homeschooling friend informed her, when Chris doesn’t show up for school Monday, she will get a call from the school wanting to know where he is. And if she tells them he’s not coming back to school and will be a homeschool student, she will immediately be threatened with criminal prosecution and maybe removal of Chris from her custody.

Hope for Homeschoolers

Her new friend then informed her of our organization and what we do, suggesting she call us the first thing Monday morning, which she did. We would normally require an application to be filled out before we could represent S. B. as her attorney, but we obviously made an exception.

Knowing it would get scary for S. B. with threats and with a court hearing almost certain, I wanted S. B. to demonstrate some conviction for the long haul. So, I told her she had been accepted as a member, but she had to do one thing for me. I told her she would have to call the principal and tell him or her that Chris was not coming back to school and that he would be homeschooled. She fearfully agreed. I told her to call me back as soon as she hung up with the school so we could start doing our thing.

Shortly thereafter, S. B. called back. She had spoken directly with the principal. I couldn’t wait to hear what happened. S. B. said, “Well, I spoke with the principal, and I told him that Chris was not coming back to school and that I was going to homeschool him.”  Then there was this hesitation, and I asked her what he said. With a slightly trembling voice, she said, “He said that I would homeschool over his dead body.”

“Okay, what did you say, or did you just hang up?”

S. B. said, “I don’t know why I said this, it just came out. I told him that I hoped he had his life insurance up to date, and then hung up.”

In It for the Long Haul

I knew then we had a mommy bear that would do whatever it took to protect her cub. To make a longer story short, we were able to get the county prosecutor to leave the family alone because we found out that Chris was labeled special needs/learning disabled because he scored below the fortieth percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. This was the policy throughout the state of Iowa. Special needs students’ scores were not counted in the roll up of tests results for nationwide comparison of how public-school students did on standardized test scores. So, Iowa had figured how to be at the top of the nation at the expense of kids that never should have been labeled.

We were going to bring this up in court if they persisted in prosecuting S. B. for truancy.  They left the family alone, Chris was homeschooled through high school and ended up going to the mission field.

The good news is that homeschooling is not as scary today and is legal in every state in some form.  Without moms like S. B. willing to face prosecution/persecution to homeschool, we would not have the homeschool freedom we have today.

Because of the efforts of Mike Smith and the rest of HSLDA, families have far more homeschool freedom than they once did. But HSLDA is still working hard to spread awareness of the homeschool option. They keep track of state requirements for homeschooling, and they keep lists of local homeschool organizations available for those looking to join their local homeschool community. Visit the Home School Legal Defense Association to see how they can serve you on your homeschool journey!

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Mike Smith is a homeschool dad, husband, and cofounder (with Mike Farris) of the Home School Legal Defense Association. He graduated from law school in 1972 and began homeschooling his children in 1981. In 1983, he helped start the HSLDA in order to defend homeschool freedom in California in the courts and before the legislature. Today, his children are homeschool graduates, he is the president of the HSLDA, and he serves as the HSLDA lawyer for California, Nevada, and Puerto Rico.

Scripture for Your Homeschool Journey

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Homeschool scripture
I’m about to finish up my third year of homeschooling. Our homeschooling journey so far has been filled with many fun, joy-filled days along with a lot of really hard, frustrating days.  But that’s not really surprising; life is like that. We all have days of blessing mixed with days of trial. But regardless of whether you are in the middle of a dark trial right now or enjoying a time of blessing, God wants to teach you something. Here are some Scriptures to meditate on wherever you are in your homeschool journey.

Scripture for being mindful of the blessings

Honestly, some days my calling as a homeschool mom doesn’t feel like a blessing. Some days it feels more like a burden. I’m overwhelmed. Discouraged. Stressed. On those days, I need to read Scripture that reminds me of the great blessing and privilege it is to raise and teach my children.

Psalm 127:3

Children are an heritage of the Lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

Psalm 128:1–4

Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.  Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.  Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.

Being a mom is a wonderful gift! These little seedlings in my home require a lot of time and care now, but someday, with the Lord’s help, they will be self-sustaining, fruit-bearing trees. I am continually amazed that I have the privilege to be a part of that growth process.

Trusting the Lord to do what you cannot

When I, as a homeschool mom, feel anxious and stressed, it is often because I am trying to control everything around me. I’m living in constant fear of failing because I’m forgetting something really important—that the one responsible for outcomes is God, not me. My only responsibilities are to trust the Lord and be faithful to what He has called me to do.

Proverbs 3:5–6

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

Philippians 1:6

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

As homeschool moms, we have a calling—a calling to be our kids’ mom and our kids’ teacher. Most days, this calling feels like more than I can handle. But I am often reminded of 2 Corinthians 12:9: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. I have always found God’s grace to be sufficient for whatever day I’m having. And I know that God’s grace will be sufficient for your day too.