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Spelling Skills for the Real World

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BJU Press SpellingOne morning, my second-grade daughter was taking a heritage studies test when she complained, “Mom, this question doesn’t make sense.”

I came to look and immediately saw the problem. My husband, who writes the heritage studies tests for our daughter, had accidentally typed on instead of own so the resulting question was confusing. Once I fixed the spelling mistake, my daughter knew immediately what he was asking and was able to complete the test without much difficulty.

Poor spelling often leads to poor communication. Any mom who has received notes from very small children knows this. My five-year-old daughter often gives me invitations to pretend parties that she throws for her dolls. I usually have to ask her to confirm the details because I have no idea what words like kokes (cookies) and juse (juice) refer to.

Clear Communication

The main reason we teach our children spelling is because we want them to be clear communicators. One of the reasons I love the BJU Press spelling program is that it offers more than just a list of words to memorize every week. It uses an interactive approach to teaching so that my daughter will understand why words are spelled the way they are and will be able to apply reliable spelling patterns to words not on the weekly spelling list. This understanding enables her to apply what she’s learning to real-world written communication.

My daughter gets a lot of opportunities to practice written communication skills in spelling class because her student worktext is filled with writing activities such as writing a recipe, a letter, an invitation, or a journal entry.  My daughter has also learned how to use a dictionary and is regularly challenged to proofread short paragraphs.

Application

Even now, when my daughter sits down to write a thank-you note for a birthday gift or compose a creative story, she’s careful with her spelling and takes the time to look up how to spell words she doesn’t know. And every once in a while, she’ll point out spelling errors in the tests that my husband and I write for her. I’m proud of her—she’s a better speller than I was at her age.

If you’re interested, you can take a look at the Spelling 3 materials we’ll be using in our homeschool this coming year. I’m sure you’ll love them as much as I do.

STEM Activities and Real-World Learning

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stem activities and real world learning
Have you ever considered how no single career your child could pursue leads back to just one subject? An artist draws on knowledge gained in both math and literature classes, a historian uses skills learned in science class as well as in heritage studies classes, and an astronomer needs strong foundations in both math and science to be successful. Even as a writer, I find myself drawing on skills from all subject areas to do my job well. That’s why interdisciplinary studies—studies covering several subjects—are so important in education. And STEM in particular is a big deal for parents and teachers alike. Let’s take a closer look at the world of STEM learning and what your children get from these activities.

What Is STEM?

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. You might also hear it called STEAM, which simply adds Art (or the arts) into the mix. But STEM and STEAM aren’t all that different because design is an inherent part in every such activity. STEM activities require students to use their knowledge in each area to complete a task or to solve a problem. For example, consider this activity for building a better thermos. Designed for high school students, the exercise is similar to an insulation experiment in Science 5. To complete it, students need to know something about heat and energy, they need to use technology resources to craft their container, they need to understand principles of engineering and design to make their container practical and functional, and they need math skills to measure the components and test the container.

Why Include STEM Activities?

STEM activities are a chance for your kids to apply otherwise isolated skills to real-world situations. In other words, it’s the reason your students have been learning all those weird math formulas and science facts. It’s one thing to learn how to calculate the surface area of an object in math and to understand how different materials and sound waves interact in science. It’s quite another to apply that knowledge to designing something to amplify sound coming from a small speaker. But doing STEM activities goes beyond simply applying skills.

STEM activities also help your children to understand what they can do. As Christians, we are called to be responsible caretakers of God’s creation. How can we take hold of that responsibility? What can we do for the world? The simple act of creating something that is useful and serves a purpose can help children to understand what they are capable of doing as human beings created in God’s image. God didn’t create some people to be geniuses who solve all of the problems and the rest of us to muddle through as best we can. God has given each of us tools to accomplish His will—whether in caring for His flock or His creation. STEM activities help your children to see how—through study and a bit of hard work—they can do some pretty cool things.

Does this mean that now you have to go and find a whole bunch of STEM activities to add to your lesson plans? Not at all. Chances are, many of your science and math activities already include elements of STEM, even if they’re not labeled as STEM activities. Just take the time with each activity to let your students learn everything they need to.

Teaching Math from a Biblical Worldview in Your Homeschool 

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boy writing math equations on chalk board

If you have ever wondered whether it is necessary to teach math from a biblical worldview, you are not alone. Math seems like a neutral subject, driven by numbers, facts, and logic. But the very orderliness of math reveals a rational and orderly God. Biblical integration in math should do more than make reference to the Bible. Rather than merely trying to find math in the Bible, you want to help your students realize that God is at the foundation of all of life, including math. Teaching math or any subject from a biblical worldview means that your curriculum must start with the underlying assumption that the Bible is true and that it informs every area of life.

A Christian math curriculum assumes that mathematical and physical laws work because God created them to work. When you teach math from a Christian perspective, your student should come away with insight in how mathematical design shows God’s masterful work.

Learn about math from a biblical worldview

What is a Biblical Worldview and Why Is It Important in Education?

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Everyone has some type of worldview, but Christians are to hold a biblical worldview, which means that every decision and action should be shaped by the Truth that was from the beginning—Jesus Christ. The question to consider is not whether you have a worldview, but rather, is your worldview true? If Christians don’t use discernment, we can allow popular worldviews to confuse us. BJU Press is committed to upholding a biblical worldview in education. We also want to help you, as a homeschool parent or educator, understand different worldviews so you can help shape a biblical worldview in your children and make informed decisions about the curriculum you use.

Learn about worldviews

In-Depth Worldview Education

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worldview education globes
Some Christian educators watch with concern as students finish a “Christian worldview education.” They observe that sometimes these students are too quick to label ideas such as feminism and Marxism in order to dismiss them without engaging with understanding.

This can be a real problem. If students fail to understand ideas that they don’t agree with, they won’t be able to communicate thoughtfully about false worldviews. But what can we do to help them think biblically about distorted worldviews?

The problem is not with worldview education but with how worldview is taught. Worldview education must go beyond rote memorization of charts with categories. Instead, students must be taught to analyze from the correct biblical perspective (i.e., through the lens of  Creation, Fall, and Redemption). Only then will they be able to evaluate precisely how false worldviews twist God’s good design.

One way to represent Creation, Fall, Redemption is to illustrate it with the terms structure (God’s creational norms) and direction (bending God’s norms in a fallen direction or bending fallen direction back towards God’s creational design). In other words, children must understand how creational norms and sinful direction work in the formation of wrong ideas.

Creational Norms

We teach our children in order to impart wisdom to them, but where can wisdom be found? It begins when our children fear the Lord by submitting to His wisdom rather than embracing evil (Prov. 9:10). God reveals His wisdom in Scripture, but Scripture also directs us to observe God’s wise design in creation (Ps. 19:1; Prov. 8:22–31).God created His world to work in a certain way—according to His blueprint of wisdom.  So paying attention to how God created the world to work in the beginning reveals principles for living according to His wise design in the present. These principles can be called “creational norms” because they were present at creation.

There are creational norms for marriage (Matt. 19:4–8), economics (Exod. 20:9; 2 Thess. 3:11–12), science (Gen. 8:22), and every other facet of life (Isa. 28:24–29). In some areas, we have direct comment from God’s Word. Others come through careful observation of creation.

Sinful Direction

Of course, each of us is corrupted by the Fall. We inevitably bend God’s creational norms in a way that suits our sinful ways. Some people push against the norms a little and some push a lot. In every case, sinners think of their vision of bent norms as correct and natural. While false worldviews can’t completely ignore creational norms, they bend those norms to fit their vision for individuals and society. The creational norms are still present but in a twisted state.

Redemptive Direction

The challenge for believers is discerning between what part of the sinner’s vision is creational and what part is sinful direction. Christians have an obligation to identify creational norms. Of course, we’re going to engage with many ideas that push these norms in a bad direction. Some of these bad directions have been codified into law and large institutions.

When we encounter these norms, bent in a sinful direction, we should seek to live faithfully in light of redemption by pushing back in a redemptive direction, that is, back toward their creational state.worldview education direction vs. structure

The Case of Marriage

Creational Norm

A discussion of creational norms and sinful direction is difficult to understand without an example. So let’s examine marriage as an illustration of how these principles work out. God created marriage when He made humans male and female. He even gave us a direct word on what marriage should look like in Genesis 2:23–24. This passage outlines the creational norm for marriage.

Fallen Direction

Very quickly after the fall, people started bending marriage in various sinful directions. Polygamy and serial divorce were and continue to be serious examples of bending marriage in a sinful direction.

worldview education bad direction vs. structureRedemptive Direction

When God graciously gave his people the law, He pressed them towards the creational norm. We might have predicted that He would ban divorce, but He didn’t. He regulated it very strictly (Deuteronomy 24:1–5). God put in place legal protections for women being divorced by their husbands.

God still hates divorce; Jesus made that clear. But He understood that the people were evil and were going to divorce, so He established laws that protected a woman when a husband decides to divorce.

Reformation

When the Lord graciously gave Israel laws, He modeled a reformational approach to creational norms that has been twisted by the Fall. In a civil setting, He moved His people towards His creational norms without legally requiring something they would not do. To be clear, God calls us to take radical action against personal sin. But in the civil setting, His laws guided His people like children to make reasonable steps toward the norm.

Reformation requires nuance and understanding of the creational norms and the false worldview. Only then can we discern a corrective step that doesn’t create the chaos that comes with radical measures.

Effective Worldview Education

When we teach our children science, history, math, and literature, we want them to develop skills in finding creational norms. As our children grow, they need to learn to understand and evaluate false worldviews that twist creational norms. Finally, our children need to begin learning to create steps to reform within their context.

This kind of worldview education produces children who do more than dismiss. It enables them to create reformation steps in their generation. To help you equip your children to do just that, BJU Press provides in-depth treatment of these concepts in our Biblical Worldview textbook.