BJU Press Blog

Reaching Out This Fall

October 4, 2018 by Guest Writer

I love fall and everything about it: the cooler temperatures (perfect hoodie weather), low humidity, brilliant colors, and a plethora of autumn recipes to try. It’s a perfect time of year to enjoy lots of outdoor activities with family such as hiking, bonfires, hayrides, corn mazes, and apple picking. It’s also a great season to establish family traditions and create lifelong memories. But as we make fall plans, let’s take some time to think about how we as homeschooling families can use some of these activities as a means of reaching out to the unsaved around us.

The Reason for Reaching Out

After all, we’re not here on this earth to just rear our children, work hard, serve in our churches, and enjoy recreational time—although all of these are good things. God left us here after He redeemed us so we may bring Him glory, and one way we can do that is by fulfilling the Great Commission in witnessing to the lost and seeking to bring them to Christ so they can be discipled and grow. And it’s much easier to witness to people when we’ve established rapport and found common ground with them. Yes, we should invite them to church, but we need to find ways to connect with them outside of church as well.

Fun Activities with Purpose

So what better way to get to know non-Christian acquaintances than by enjoying some of these fall activities with them? Ask them to join your family at a local corn maze or for a hayride. Invite them over to your house for a bonfire and s’mores. If they’re outdoor people, plan a hike together and pack a picnic lunch. You could host a pumpkin carving/decorating contest. Maybe you’ve met an unsaved family that is either unable or not quite ready to join you for these activities. A great way to still reach out is by baking them a fall treat such as pumpkin cookies or an apple pie. Consider signing your children up for a community sports league, such as soccer. This is a great way to meet families in your area; not only will you perhaps get an opportunity to witness to someone, but so will your children.

Outreach Opportunities

As the holidays come closer, the opportunities for reaching out and serving others also increase. Does your church do a soup kitchen or other mission projects during the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons? Plan to help out this year! Your children can also participate in Operation Christmas Child, a special program run by Samaritan’s Purse. Shoebox collections end on November 19, so make sure to get your box together before then. Here are some more ideas for serving others this fall.

Whatever the method, use it as an opportunity to build bridges so you can eventually bring Christ into your conversations. As homeschoolers, we have unique opportunities we can use to spread the gospel to lost families all around us. Let’s pray for God to use us this fall as we seek to bring the good news of salvation to those who may have never heard it.

• • • • •

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.

A Challenge for Your Young Writer: Homeschooling NaNoWriMo

October 2, 2018 by Jenna

Are you training up a young writer? Or do you want to switch up your writing instruction for a while? You might consider homeschooling NaNoWriMo this year. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a special opportunity for writers to join a yearly writing competition in November. Many writers struggle with finishing a story because they get stuck editing and re-editing without moving on. Participants are encouraged to leave editing behind and just write. Participating adults must write 50,000 words from November 1 to November 30 at midnight, but children may enter the Young Writer’s Program and set their own word count goals.

How can NaNoWriMo fit into your homeschool?

The BJU Press Writing & Grammar program is excellent for building writing skills and grammatical accuracy, but there’s a difference between testing that knowledge in a graded assignment and letting it loose in novel form. As your budding writer lets her imagination loose on paper, she becomes closely aware of the joys of writing. She’ll also get a sense of accomplishment from reaching her word count, whether she has a goal of 50,000 or 20,000.

But you don’t have to stress about fitting another lengthy learning activity into your homeschool schedule. Though 50,000 words in 30 days averages out to almost 2,000 words a day, as a fiction writer myself, I can tell you that it’s a lot easier to write 2,000 words in a fictional piece than in a literary essay. And since you homeschool, you can put your normal English coursework on hold for the month. Or you can even count the writing your child does towards her final grade in English!

How does NaNoWriMo work?

If you’d like your child to participate in the competition, she may sign up for an account at NaNoWriMo.org, or you may help her sign up for the Young Writer’s Program. Once you’ve set up a profile, your child can create a novel, and starting November 1, she can log how many words she writes each day on the site. If your child finishes 50,000 words by 11:59 pm on November 30, or meets another word goal, you can paste the full text of her novel on the website for a chance to win.

Or if you don’t want to officially participate in the competition, you can follow the rules without creating an account. Perhaps completing the word goal could mean a special dinner or a night out?

How do you prepare for homeschooling NaNoWriMo?

Some participants like to start on November 1 with a brand new novel concept with no development. But if your child wants to participate in NaNoWriMo, she doesn’t have to start from scratch. Here are a few things you can do to prepare.

Review the writing process with her. Since the goal is writing a whole novel in 30 days, she will spend most of her time drafting. She won’t be able to spend much time at all in the revising, proofreading, and publishing steps. You might consider saving her novel to go back over in the future in order to complete these steps.
Gather story prompts and share them with her. She can choose a story idea now so that she can start deciding on basic plot details.
Get a head start on planning. Since the month of November is dedicated to the drafting portion of the writing process, your child can spend the weeks leading up to it on planning. She can work on an outline or fill in a plot pyramid for the major events of her story.
Practice techniques for busting writer’s block with her. What stops her while she’s writing? Find ways to help her move past those blocks so she knows how to handle them in November.

NaNoWriMo may seem like a daunting task, but in the end, your young writer will have something a lot of other aspiring writers don’t—a start. And with writing, any start is a good start. After meeting her word goal, your young writer will have a better idea of her own writing abilities and potential. Will she decide to take the piece she’s written to the next level? Or will she yearn to complete a bigger goal?

Taking Homeschool Flexibility to the Next Level

September 27, 2018 by Sharon

When I homeschooled my two boys, we were able to take full advantage of the flexibility homeschooling offered. Creative scheduling allowed me to take into account my boys’ different personalities and adjust to the needs of our family. Our schedule didn’t always allow for the length of a typical school day. One of the boys liked to get up early in the morning and tackle his work, while the other wanted to do his work later. And neither of the boys liked having full open days with no work to do. So we adopted a schedule that suited everyone.

Six-Day Homeschool Schedule with a Twist

In the early years, daily lesson times revolved around the needs of my schedule, but as the boys got older, we didn’t have set times for any of their subjects. That way they could arrange their responsibilities within the time they had available. Most days we doubled up on at least one subject so that we could finish five days of work in four. Then our Friday would be a field trip day—whether we were going to a museum or visiting the park. We especially liked this schedule the fall because it meant we had plenty of good field trip opportunities. Any work that we weren’t able to finish through the week, we would do on Saturday. Doing that every week, we had the flexibility to take an extended break for Christmas and still finish our required school days by the end of April .

Keeping the Schedule During the Summer

During the school year, we only did subjects with 180 days of work during the school day, leaving the 90-day subjects for the summer. So, in the lower grades, we would do history and science during the summer. In the upper grades, we’d do literature. I also added in other learning activities such as math games, keyboarding, and foreign language practice as well as recreational reading time. That gave my boys a couple of hours of work each day, which kept them busy, but wasn’t overwhelming to them. With that set up, we were also able to count some of their textbook reading toward the library’s summer reading program.

In the end, our homeschool schedule was a little unusual, but it worked for us. I was able to capitalize on homeschool flexibility so that both of my boys’ learning needs were met in the best way possible.

4 Tips for Developing Phonemic Awareness

September 25, 2018 by Megan

Have you ever found yourself correcting your toddler or preschooler’s diction? “No, Abby. It’s not eye cream; it’s ice cream. Ice sounds like nice.” Then you start hissing like a snake to emphasize the /s/ sound in ice. It’s in those moments (ignoring the snickers of the adults around you) that you’re beginning to develop your child’s phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness happens when a child becomes mindful of the distinctive sounds that make up our language and can manipulate them. It’s an important skill for communication, but it’s also important as a pre-reading skill. In fact, many reading experts cite phonemic awareness as one of the best predictors of how successful a child will be in learning to read.

So how can you, as a homeschool mom, help your young child develop phonemic awareness? Here are a few ideas.

1. Read books (or poems) with a strong rhyme.

Teachers that specialize in early childhood education have good reason to love Dr. Seuss books. Just think of how many rhyming words are in the opening few pages of his book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (which many a mom has memorized). Since many of his rhyming words are not really words at all, they’re great for helping children focus on how the words sound. Other books you might want to check out include these:

Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw
I Spy A to Z: A Book of Picture Riddles or I Spy: A Book of Picture Riddles by Jean Marzollo
Huck Runs Amuck by Sean Taylor
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr.

2. Play sound games.

Here are a few games that you can play with pre-readers to help them develop phonemic awareness.

Choose a sound (such as /at/) and challenge your child to think of words that end with that sound.
Choose a sound (such as /sh/) and challenge your child to think of words that begin with that sound.
Make up silly sentences that have all the words starting with the same sound (like “Freddie Frog flipped flapjacks for Friday’s fellowship” or “Sandy Seahorse sorted six seashells.”)

3. Practice breaking words into syllables.

Sounding out words by syllables is also a good way to help children distinguish individual sounds. Encourage your kids to clap, jump, or stomp when saying each syllable so that they can get a sense of the word’s rhythm.

4. Consider a pre-kindergarten curriculum focusing on phonemic awareness.

If your child is four (or close to it), you may also want to consider using the K4 Foundations homeschool program from BJU Press to prepare your child for kindergarten. We’re using it for the first time with our four-year-old daughter, and she loves it. As a mom, I’ve been impressed with how well it holds her attention. And I love how she’s learning a lot of pre-reading skills, including phonemic awareness. You can also check out the Footsteps for Fours curriculum —my older two daughters used this program, and it’s also wonderful for developing phonemic awareness and other pre-reading skills.

How to Train Young Scientists with Science Hikes

September 20, 2018 by Guest Writer

Our family loves hiking. In fact, we think that any time except the dead of winter is the perfect time for a hike! We love the sense of freedom, of adventure, of separation from a too-busy world. And in the fall, hiking can be an even more enjoyable and educational experience.

Creation reveals its Creator, and what better way to train up young scientists than by turning your trek through the forest into a science hike? Here are five things you’ll need for a science hike with your kids.

1. Notebooks for Recording Observations on the Science Hikes

Notebooks and pencils are a must-have on any science hike. Every child, from the toddler to the teen, can take notes about what he or she sees.

For the little ones, making drawings or writing down one-word labels might be as far as they go. Older kids can draw more detailed sketches of animals or plant life and make a few observational notes. You can take breaks throughout the science hike to allow time for drawing and writing.

2. Cameras for Taking Photos

Taking photos of nature is a great way to hone budding observation skills. You may not want to hand over your smartphone to your five-year-old, but there are sturdy, kid-friendly cameras on the market that are ideal for small hands. Or maybe you have an old phone in a drawer, one that you never use and don’t really need. Why not repurpose it as a kid-friendly camera?

Plants, trees, seeds, nuts, buds, flowers, earth, wildlife, insects, and bodies of water are perfect photography subjects for young scientists. If you have been focusing on a particular science unit in homeschool, such as plant life cycles or different kinds of clouds, encourage the kids to photograph anything related to that topic.

3. Sample Collection Containers for Found Items

Kids love to find “treasures” in nature—sparkly rocks, twisted twigs, interesting flowers, dead insects, and brightly colored leaves. Bring along some resealable bags or plastic containers to hold all the samples.

When you get home, have your kids work on identifying what they’ve found. Can they match a colorful leaf to the type of tree it came from? What sort of beetle did they find? Which minerals make that sparkly rock so pretty? They can write their findings on an index card and slip it into the box or bag that contains their treasure.

4. Drinks and Snacks

As moms, we all know what happens when the kids get hungry and thirsty. It’s not a pretty picture! Keep those hunger pangs at bay by bringing along plenty of snacks and drinks for the trek, even if it’s not a long hike. If you’re carrying a baby on your back, recruit your older children to help tote the provisions.

5. A Sense of Adventure

While it’s a good idea to follow certain safety rules (no running out of sight, no straying too far off the trail, etc.), there’s also a time to let the restrictions relax and just have fun! Nature is beautiful and exciting to your children, and they’ll learn so much from simply running, climbing, scrambling, and skipping through it! Take your time, and enjoy their delight in the big world God has made.