When Does Learning Stop?

July 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I learn everyday and am excited about all of it!

School is out for the public school system in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, parents and children think that this means that learning has stopped for the summer. Learning is an on going function that happens every day!

Why waste a large chunk of time by ignoring the chances to learn something new while enjoying the experience?  Is your child interested in animals? Let them volunteer at a Veterinary office or at an animal shelter. Careful, they may come home with some new pets. We ended up with a Red Tailed Hawk and several cats.  This gave our daughter some hands on experience that encouraged her to learn more and led to her passion for her work life.

Hospitals also have programs where volunteers are needed. Reading to an elderly patient or playing with a bedridden child will improve two lives at once. If you live in a rural location quite often farmers will welcome some extra help and are proud to share their knowledge. Almost all people who work in some craft will be delighted to teach an interested child. Woodworkers, ceramic potters, cooks, even the police department has chances for young people to learn.

Quite often we make the mistake of thinking that learning only occurs within the confines of a room where books and lectures occur. Learning happens continuously. While I was writing this there was a cooking show on the television and I learned a new way to peel hard boiled  eggs. I love watching PBS because it presents different ways of doing things and exposes me to different viewpoints. When I travel I visit the historic sights and get to know the history of the areas. The various sceneries I travel through show the geological evolution of the areas. The changing environments help me to understand why some things grow better in different landscapes and what animals live in each. By exposing your children to the same type of things their knowledge will grow by leaps and bounds. Their imaginations will take flight to new horizons. They will learn and enjoy the experience!

Whether you are homeschooling or sending your child to public school, help them to experience new things. Guiding them to expand their learning experience will help them be better prepared to take their place in the grown up world. It will help them find their life work and how to make it fit with their lifestyle choices. Learning is a lifelong journey. I turned 60 earlier this year and am always excited to learn. Many long years ago my father told me that when you stop learning you start dying. Since I refuse to stop learning I will have a long and exciting life and I hope for the same result for your children!

Filed Under: Free Resources, How to Home School Tagged With: , ,

Which Statistics Really Matter

May 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When we stop to look at the “why” home school students outrank public school students in the SAT scores it causes me to evaluate the basic concept behind that test. Is the test set up to evaluate what they have learned? Is it to show how successful they will be as adults? Or is it set up to show how successful they are at taking tests and following instructions?

I have worked in the public sector for many years and been in contact with numerous people helping them to improve their lives. One of the things that I found fascinating was that many of them, who were high school graduates, could not read and fill out simple forms. They could not comprehend the simple instructions on these forms. If they can not read I shudder to think what their SAT scores would show. How did they graduate from high school without this basic skill and what barriers does this set up in their lives as adults? In most public schools children are advanced on a grade level system this increases student failure. Teachers are overwhelmed with class sizes and performance evaluations that cause them to increase the amount of students who are pushed forward into levels they are not ready for. This is a basic flaw in the public school system!

As homeschool parents one of our basic goals is to teach our children how to read and comprehend what they are reading. We encourage reading of a variety of subjects therefore enhancing those skills so that the student can learn. When they are forced to take an SAT test they are better able to comprehend the questions and have a broader understanding of many different subjects. This shows part of the reasons behind the variance in homeschool vs public school statistics and why home school students continue to outrank their counterparts.

I question the very concept of the SAT and grade levels for students. There is a great need to teach our students at their ability level. By teaching at the ability level we are allowing the student to feel a pride in accomplishing goals and knocking down barriers to learning. By encouraging them to tackle hard concepts we are showing them that life is not always easy but the rewards for succeeding are wonderful! Our homeschool children are removed from the peer pressure of the grade level standards which can be devaluing to a student. When a child is consistently shown that they do not measure up to other children then they begin to feel that it is useless to try and student failure is a conclusion to the downward spiral.

A better way to evaluate  the student and teaching environmental achievements might be to look at what happens in their adult lives. Do they go on to be doctors,scientists and business owners or do they become drug dealers and criminals? What do you think? Let’s discuss this!

Filed Under: home school vs public school statistics, Reasons for Failure Tagged With: , , ,

Combining History, Geography, & Economics in Your Homeschool

May 5, 2012 By 3 Comments

Learning is fun!

When children have difficulty making a connection with a subject it is usually caused by them not being able to find any meaning for them in what they are studying. When we take the time to connect the themes then students can begin to see how the different subjects interact.

The geography of an area has a great deal to do with how their history developed. High mountain regions that were hard to get to were very seldom invaded by hordes of hungry people looking for food, however, if there was gold in them there hills then that changed the dynamics. If the people in the mountains were hungry then they were the ones doing the raiding, and their area was easier to defend so they could have ended up being the bosses. L agricultural. People have valued metals for the making of utensils, jewelry and weapons for a long time which makes it a great trading medium for establishing wealth. Whoever has the best trading goods amasses the most wealth and therefore can buy protection for themselves and their people.

That is a very simplified view of how History, Geography and Economics go together. There are only a few factors that figure into the whys of history.

  • Power
  • Religion
  • Economics – which goes hand and hand with power
  • Fear of being conquered
  • Food supply – which refers back to power


Let’s take a look at the American Revolution. England raised the taxes on tea (Economics) and the people didn’t like it. Their reasoning was “Why should we have to pay taxes to a country that is all the way across an ocean from us?” (Geography) England also demanded that the colonist only go to churches that England sanctioned (Religion).  So the stage was set for a revolution. The American colonist started drinking more coffee which helped out a different portion of the world and hurt England economically because they had control of the tea trade. England was the most powerful country when the revolution started, but it takes money to wage a war. When people in America quit paying tea taxes and started shipping their goods to other countries then England lost a lot of their power and America gained some. Simplified view, yes, but a good starting point for a student to begin an investigation of how the three subjects influenced each other.

Students in public school usually do not get to separate or combine the subjects in any meaningful way and therefore they just learn them well enough to get a grade. With a home school student you can help them to understand why all of the subjects go together to form intelligent understanding of each one. No  wonder home school students out test public school students on the SAT scores!

Challenge your home school students to make the connections and they will reward you with a desire to learn even more about the world and how it works. Bring the process forward to today’s world and have them investigate and discuss what is happening now.

Filed Under: home school vs public school statistics, How to Home School, Reasons for Failure Tagged With: , , , ,

Teaching Reading to Your Young Home School Child

April 20, 2012 By 1 Comment

Learning is fun and I do it everyday!

The normal first reading book presented to a child by the public school system is boring! Very few children enjoy it and this makes their learning process slow down to a crawl. The words “See Jane run. and See Jane run fast.” are not a whole lot of fun. The child will do the lesson because they are forced into it. This makes reading a chore and many children learn at this point in their lives that reading is no fun, boring, and should be avoided at all costs. This sets them on the path of only reading what the teacher tells them to and then only to avoid punishment. What a sad and destructive thing to do to a child!

Children are very intelligent individuals. They may not understand the depths that some adults will go to to confuse them, but they do understand boredom and will not tolerate it. Boredom to them is a place that they do not have the time to visit as they reach out to understand and learn about the world around them. So why do we not make learning to read fun and a place of unending discovery?

If we are homeschooling our children we may skip the boredom and dive into fun. Try making up rhymes.
See the hat.
See the bat.
See the cat.
These rhythm and you can let the child finish it by simply  printing

See the —–.

They will delight in the rhythm and laugh as they finish it with their own word. Children will start to make the connections very quickly and become increasingly involved in the game. Try this one.

See the car.
It goes far.
All the way to a —–.

Learning should be a fun and exciting experience! I was watching my littlest grandchild. She is just 18 months old and already knows where her eye,cheek,nose, ear,knee, foot and chin are. She also knows where those things are on us. We were outside playing and I showed her a wind chime that was topped off with a smiling sun face. She delighted in the noise it made and then reached up touched the sun’s smiling mouth, then touched my mouth then hers and began to laugh. She had made the connection on her own and was overjoyed with the discovery.

When I read to her I always point at the word as I say it. Some of the books she is very familiar with as she brings them to us often. She has started pointing at the words herself and as she points at them I will say them. Sometimes she points at them out of order and I never correct her but let her do as she wants. She knows these books well, and when she does that she always laughs. I am sure that she is starting to make the connection between the written word and the sound. It will be interesting to see where this leads us!

So make reading fun. Involve the child in the process and applaud them a lot. They will reward you with learning quickly and enjoying the process!

Filed Under: How to Home School, Reasons for Failure Tagged With: , , ,