BJU Press Blog

Our First Curriculum Unboxing

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My wife and I are starting to homeschool our oldest daughter this fall. It was just like Christmas when we received the boxes of BJU Press curriculum that we’ll be using. The two of us enjoyed unboxing textbooks, Teacher’s Editions, novels, and DVDs. We’re using BJU Press Distance Learning for Science, English (new edition now available), and Bible. Megan is teaching Reading, Handwriting, Spelling, and Math while I get to teach Heritage Studies. You can see our unboxing experience on the BJU Press Homeschool YouTube™ channel.

When this video was shared on the BJU Press Facebook® page, a homeschool mom shared a very helpful tip that I want to pass on. She said, “The box that contained the DVDs also has a return shipping label. It’s a good idea to go ahead and place that return label on the box and place the box and any packing materials in a safe location. When it’s time to return your DVDs, you won’t be searching for the label or the box!”

Another homeschool family filmed their unboxing of BJU Press curriculum. Watch the girls’ reactions in this YouTube™ video.

If you recorded your unboxing of BJU Press curriculum, we’d love to see it! Share a link in the comments or post it on the BJU Press Homeschool Facebook® page.

The GEM Approach: A Biblical Approach to Objectional Elements in Literature

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Ever since we started reading picture books to our daughters, my wife and I have evaluated the content of the books we bring into our home. Now that our six-year-old is reading on her own, evaluating for objectionable elements is even more important. Below is an excerpt from Elements of Literature Teacher’s Edition. This is the philosophy we use when reviewing books for our children, and it has served me well ever since I read it as a student. I hope you find that it is helpful for your family as well.

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“Educational censorship remains one of the most controversial issues in public life, linked as it is to political censorship and freedom of the press. The basis of a truly biblical position concerning censorable elements is the following distinction. If a work of literature or other element of the curriculum treats evil in the same way that it is treated in the Scriptures, we regard it as not only acceptable but also desirable reading. If it does not treat evil in the way evil is handled in the Scriptures, its content is not good.

“Evil in the Bible appears dangerous and repulsive. Reflections of evil appear in the form of negative examples so as to create a defense against what they represent or to give hope to the fallen for forgiveness and recovery from sin.

“We may draw the following three criteria from the Scriptures for judging literary and other works with respect to their content.

Gratuitousness

“Is the representation of evil purposeful or is it present for its own sake? We know that ‘all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works’ (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Nothing in the Scriptures is superfluous or irrelevant to this high spiritual purpose.

Explicitness

“Is the representation of evil, if purposeful, present in an acceptable degree? Or is it more conspicuous or vivid than the purpose warrants? No one with a high view of Scripture would charge it with inappropriateness or excessiveness in its representation of evil. The presentation of evil in the Bible is realistic enough to convince us of its threat as a temptation but not so realistic as to become for us a temptation.

Moral Tone

“Is evil made to appear both dangerous and repulsive? What is the attitude of the work toward it? ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil,’ says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 5:20). A good work of literature does not glorify human weakness or encourage tolerance of sin. It allows evil to appear in a controlled way in order to develop in the reader or hearer a resistance against it. In literature, ‘vice,’ wrote Samuel Johnson, ‘must always disgust.’ Its purpose is to initiate the reader through ‘mock encounters’ with evil so that evil cannot later deceive him—so that he will be better able to maintain a pure life in a fallen world.

“These three criteria are complementary. None is alone sufficient to justify the censorable in a work of literature or another element of the curriculum. Together they work powerfully, because they work biblically, to preserve moral purity while providing for a developing moral understanding and judgment.”

Editor’s note: Excerpted from Elements of Literature Teacher’s Edition  (p. viii), published by BJU Press. 

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OVER

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“. . . who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” Romans 9:5

Here we see the simple declaration that Christ is over all. However, we may feel at times that He is neither engaged nor in charge─we must take His word on faith. Were He to suspend His rule for a moment, the Universe would completely disintegrate. Its existence is abiding proof to us of His uninterrupted oversight. We need only to look around us to be reminded that no matter what comes into our lives, He has it covered.

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“There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:10). At the crucifixion “there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). Paul wrote of the Israelites, “Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen” (Romans 9:5). “But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we” (Hebrews 3:6). “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers” (1 Peter 3:12). Jesus said, “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2:26–27).

GOLDEN THOUGHT: The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous.

[Excerpt adapted from Wonderful Words by Stewart Custer (July 20 reading).]

Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy

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As parents, you want your children to succeed in every area of their lives, and as home educators, you especially want them to succeed in their education. A good way to visualize your goals for your children’s education is through Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Dr. Benjamin Bloom described what he believed to be the best processes for learning. Though he identified three different domains of learning, we are all most familiar with the cognitive domain, which has to do with knowledge. Understanding his process can help you to fulfill the greater purpose of education—education isn’t just about learning facts and figures. It’s a process that continuously encourages children to grow and think critically. Bloom’s Taxonomy verbalizes the process so that we can aim for a clearer goal in education—being able to master concepts so that we can create new concepts.

 

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Since the best way to learn something is to see it applied, here is Bloom’s process for the cognitive domain applied to learning nouns. (To keep it simple, we’ll focus on the rule that says nouns are words that refer to persons, places, or things.)

Level One: Knowledge/Remembering

The first level focuses on facts and recall. It has nothing to do with what the rule means, implies, or suggests, it only focuses on knowing what the rule says. Our rule is “Nouns are words that refer to persons, places, or things.”

Level Two: Comprehension/Understanding

Comprehension is one step beyond simple recall. It demonstrates that you not only know what the rule is word for word, but you also know what those words mean and you can put the rule into your own words to express the same concept. To understand the “noun as a person, place, or thing” rule, you have to know what a person is, what a place is, and so on. Putting the rule into my own words, I might say that people’s names, specific or general locations, and objects are all referred to with nouns.

Level Three: Application/Applying

Level three begins the step where textbook practices and exercises come in. Here we take our rule and look at something it applies to. That means taking a sample sentence and finding and labeling all the nouns, based on our rule.

For example, “Amy (person) wanted to move back to Scotland (place), but her aunt (person) didn’t have enough money (thing) for the move (thing).”

Level Four: Analysis/Analyzing

Analysis involves grouping information into parts. It’s a question-and-answer process that might reveal more about our rule. When I put the rule into my own words, I changed things to objects because I felt that objects better indicates the tangible nature of things. But in the example sentence above, I’ve identified the second move as a noun, not a verb. Why is it a noun and not a verb? When we’re analyzing, we need to recognize that some words may be nouns that refer to persons, places, or things even if they’re normally used as a different part of speech. While we’re thinking about it, we may notice that we can classify the second move as a noun, but not the first one.

Levels Five and Six: Evaluation/Evaluating and Synthesis/Creating

Originally, Bloom’s fifth level was synthesis, and his sixth was evaluation. But a group of Bloom’s former students revised his original process in the 1990s. Under the revised version, evaluating became the fifth level, and creating became the sixth.

Evaluating involves forming conclusions based on new and prior knowledge and being able to support those conclusions with that knowledge. Here we should be able to look at what we discovered in our analysis step and explain why we came to the conclusion that we did. In the example sentence above, we know that move usually indicates an action, like when we first used it, but the second time it’s used in a tangible, countable sense, not as an action.

This step marks the end of most forms of practice exercises in many textbooks. But we need to go on to the last level in order to demonstrate true knowledge of a concept.

The final level in the revised model is creating. Creating requires using all prior knowledge in order to form a new idea. It goes beyond reading a new sentence and identifying parts of speech. Creation demonstrating a mastery of nouns would require putting together a new sentence using nouns intentionally and naturally. For example, in the following sentence, I’ve created a situation to use words that would often act as verbs (love and traveling) as nouns in order to show what we discovered about things.

“Amy decided that her love of traveling was more important to her than her love of Scotland.”

Bloom’s process relies on a widening foundation of knowledge, and BJU Press homeschool curriculum references the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, especially in math and vocabulary. Check out our math curriculum or vocabulary curriculum to see how we do it!

Developing a Passion for Reading

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Developing a passion for Reading

We all want our children not only to learn to read but also to love reading. Of course, it can be discouraging to have a reluctant reader in your home. And too often boys develop a distaste for reading, but any child is susceptible to this apathy. Veteran homeschool mom Cynda Moore has written a clever blog post titled “How to Build a Reluctant Reader.” In the style of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Cynda offers advice for achieving the opposite of what we want for our children. Her post shows how easy it is for us to cultivate an interest in reading for our children. She starts off the post with this advice.

Although we realize it is not always possible, the best way to build a reluctant reader is to avoid reading to your child. Not only should you avoid funny and meaningful chapter books read aloud to your whole family, but you should also avoid reading little things you may not even connect to literacy. For instance, don’t read his birthday card from Grandma or the highway signs as you are traveling.

My wife and I are so thankful for the eager reader we have in our house. Our second-grade daughter has an almost insatiable appetite for reading. Give her a stack of books, and she will be content for hours. It was natural for us to do these simple everyday activities Cynda mentions with our eldest child, but our challenge is repeating those same activities with our younger children. Cynda’s blog post was helpful to me in identifying what fostered a love for reading in our first child so that my wife and I can help our other daughters find a passion for reading. Read the rest of Cynda’s blog post on the HomeWorks by Precept blog.