Sonlight Homeschooling Blog

Sep. 15, 2011

Seven questions to ask when choosing an extra-curricular activity

By Sarita

When I was a kid, I had a few activities available to me: a Christian version of Girl Scouts, high school track, summer camp … and not much more than that.

But today, the possibilities for children can be overwhelming. Depending on where you live, you could choose anything from soccer to cross-country, equestrian team to baton twirling, taekwondo to pottery-making.

How do you even begin to choose? As you pray for guidance, talk with your spouse and children, and look into options, consider these questions:

What are my goals for this activity?
What do you hope your children/family will gain from an outside activity? Perhaps you want your children to make new friends, get exercise, learn how to work hard physically, or explore a potential talent. Whatever your goal, let that direct your selection process.
What skills will this activity teach my children?
Once you have an activity in mind, take stock of the skills it could teach your children. As I shared in my last post, different activities tend to teach different skills—from teamwork to responsibility to creativity.
What is the realistic time commitment and cost for this activity?
Now it's time to look honestly at an activity and consider the time commitment and cost it entails. Is your family ready for the cost and time the activity requires?
Can I put all (or at least more than one) of my children in this activity?
In my early years of homeschooling, I really wanted to give each of my four children the perfect opportunity to explore his or her gifts. I wanted each to pursue whatever activity his or her particular interests inspired. So I signed Amy up for ballet and Luke for baseball, put Jonelle in soccer and took Justin to karate.

It was a nice idea. But before long, I was going crazy driving all over town and accommodating four different schedules! The hectic pace made our family feel scattered and stressed. So I drastically reduced. We decided that all the kids would swim on a year-round team and play in an honors band. It was such a relief to have our schedules align, and our kids enjoyed being on larger teams together.

I know many families want to let their children do many different activities in hopes of giving them every advantage in life. But I also know that homeschooling is (often) a huge advantage in and of itself. And I know how busy homeschooling moms are. I don't like to watch a mom become exhausted from running her kids to and fro … and ultimately feel like she has to give up homeschooling because she has too much on her plate. In my particular situation, it worked beautifully (for the kids and me) for us to condense our activities. Would a similar strategy work for your family?
Do I like the coach/leader and the other families in this activity?
What is the coach like for this activity? Do you respect his or her teaching and character? As we all know, coaches can have significant influence on children.

Also, I hesitate to include this because I don't want to over-generalize or imply that you should only interact with families just like yours. But I would encourage you to consider the types of families you'd interact with in a given activity. Would you enjoy their company? Would your children benefit from spending time with them?

My kids participated in swimming and band while they were young, and then cross-country and band in the high school years. At least where we lived, the families and children involved in these activities tended to be hard-working and encouraging. They were just the types of people I wanted to influence my own children.
What do my children want to do?
Of course, I would also encourage you to involve your children in the decision. If your kids really want to try a particular activity, consider giving them a trial run. Or maybe give them a way to show you they're serious. If your daughter is begging for piano lessons, for example, you might work out an agreement that she can start lessons if she practices 10 minutes a day for the next month. Then agree that you'll re-assess after 3 months of lessons. Who knows? Maybe your children really will fall in love with music, art, dance, or whatever it is they keep asking for.
How can I help my kids explore their gifts?
Do you suspect that you have a budding artist, public speaker or dancer in your house? Perhaps a trial run of a certain activity will help you find out.

Or perhaps there are other ways to encourage these interests. From the moment he knew it was possible, Luke has loved to make films. Jonelle is a natural artist who constantly creates with her hands. When we discovered these interests, John and I helped Luke nurture his gifts without enrolling in "extra-curricular activities." We helped him purchase some start-up equipment. Whenever an art course came up within our schedule, we signed Jonelle up. The projects she created in these classes were the foundation of her art school portfolio. That portfolio provided her with both entrance to her school and a scholarship to attend.

Luke went on to study filmmaking in college, and now produces films as part of his full-time work. Jonelle went to art school and continues to use design in all areas of her life. They both developed skills that will give them a venue for expression (and income) their entire lives. Are there ways you can similarly encourage your children to pursue their interests?

Now that I shared my thoughts, I'm curious to hear yours: What questions have helped you decide what activities to pursue? Which activities does your family particularly enjoy?

Blessings to you and yours,
Sarita

Tagged extracurricular | Leave a comment

Sep. 13, 2011

A Learning Home

By Robert

Our "wall of maps"

No, homes don't learn, but creating what I call a "learning home" can help you and your children appreciate and make the most of your homeschooling journey.

A learning home cultivates an environment that encourages and stimulates education, intellectual curiosity, and wonder about the world. Here are some tips for helping you create a learning home.

Always let your children ask questions. Kids are expected to inquire about all kinds of things and, as parents, we can help guide the resulting discussions. Even if we don't have the answers all the time (and we won't!), we can learn with our children as they inquire. If we are interested in learning, and demonstrate to our kids that we are, we can help pass on our love for learning to them.

Roman thinker Cicero said, "A room without books is like a body without a soul." Books are a key component of any learning home. But books in a learning home need not be confined to just one area or room. Spread books throughout your house and you'll often find that your children will become more interested in grabbing a book off a shelf even "after school."

A learning home also tends to have lots of stuff on the walls. No, I don't mean peanut butter and jelly stains, though that can happen! I'm referring to items such as maps, timelines, and posters. In my house we have a wall of maps that includes a map of the world, the United States, Colorado, Israel, and Narnia (as a C.S. Lewis fan I had to include this one!). Knowing geography helps cultivate cultural literacy, understanding about how to read maps, and can bring history to life as children begin to grasp where historical events actually took place.

Extending the learning home concept to your backyard is helpful, too. If you don't have a backyard you can apply these ideas by going to a park or any place you can think of where your kids can observe and explore nature. If you do have a backyard, you and your children will be amazed by how much of interest you might find in it. From ant colonies to types of trees to various birds to spider webs, your own backyard can serve as a helpful annex to your learning home, especially when it comes to science studies.

A home computer connected to the internet offers a number of opportunities to follow up on questions and discussions that come up in a learning home. YouTube, for instance, provides a variety of videos on all sorts of educational topics. Are your kids interested in bugs? Chances are that YouTube will have some fascinating videos on the topic. The fine arts? Go online and learn about great artists, paintings, composers, sculptures, architecture, etc. (Try to locate your computer in an open area where everyone can see what's going on. This is an internet safety tip, but it will also encourage your children to take an interest in learning activities that you are exploring online together.)

Keep in mind that a learning home is not a museum. It's expected that things will get messy sometimes. Books will get left in various places, piles of knowledge may form here and there, dirt will get tracked in and out of the house, and, yes, every now and then peanut butter and jelly will end up on the walls. What is far more important is that a learning home will help your children become lifelong learners who are intellectually curious about everything God's world has to offer.

Do you have any learning home tips? We'd love to hear them!

Tagged books, learning, learning home, maps, nature | 1 Comment

Sep. 12, 2011

Free Homeschool Samples

By Luke

Blizzard has improved their free trial of World of Warcraft. You can play as long as you want up to level 20 for free, no credit card required.

Impressed, I quickly got to thinking about how Sonlight could do something similar. After all, when Blizzard was offering only a 14-day trial, you could get the first three weeks of Sonlight's Instructor's Guides for free (a full week more than Blizzard). Now that they let you play for free, could I do the same?

Yes and no.

I can't physically push books over the network, which is a bummer. But then I realized that such an analogy is flawed.

Blizzard's content is the game files, just like Sonlight's content is in the Instructor's Guides. Blizzard's services involve connecting those files to their servers and keeping you up and running in their virtual world. Sonlight's services involve connecting those Guides to your books--which you can get from us at a fantastic price with an unmatched guarantee--and helping you keep up and running on your homeschool journey. Blizzard can't give you a computer or provide you with internet for the trial and they removed some key elements of game play until you pay to play. I can't give you books until you buy them.

However, Sonlight allows you to play with the first three weeks of your school year's instructional material for free for as long as you want, no credit card required.

Get your 3-week Sonlight sample, and take as long as you like looking it over to decide if you want to enjoy Sonlight for your school year. If you have any questions about a specific Sonlight program, please chat with a Sonlight Advisor or swing by the new Sonlight Forums.

What free trials/samples have you found impressive recently?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Tagged Instructor's Guides, samples | 7 Comments

Sep. 9, 2011

Do You Use the Sonlight Forums?

By Luke

The Sonlight Forums are an excellent place to get suggestions, advice and encouragement on your homeschooling journey. Better yet, we also recently updated the Forums with a sweet new look, a more stable system, and further enhancements to your homeschool forum experience.

My question--because I'm curious: Do you use Sonlight's Forums? Or, because you hang out here on the Blog or Facebook, do you rarely step into that digital realm?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Tagged Encouragement, forums, help | 15 Comments

Sep. 8, 2011

Freedom

By Judy

I was well into teaching my second child before I truly appreciated the freedom that homeschooling provides. Sure, I knew that home education meant we could choose when to take vacation, or we were free to set our own school calendar ... but I didn't really appreciate the *academic* freedom we had. Chatting with a number of "new" homeschool moms this past month has reminded me again of that freedom.

Our oldest daughter learned to read at age 4 ... actually, she pretty much taught herself. She was whizzing away at math by the age of 5. I remember scouring curriculum catalogs and setting up our "school" space with books and workbooks and pencils and rulers and all those things that mean education is taking place. Or so I thought. My 5 year old "prodigy" hit a wall about half-way through the year. I was so excited about her sponge-like brain and how quickly she learned whatever I put in front of her, that I forgot to let her be a 5 year old!

2, 3, 4 and 5 year olds (and even 6 and 7 year olds) are wired to be kids. They need to run and explore and ask never-ending questions and cuddle and trip and fall and pick themselves up again. They are wired to learn while moving, not sitting still. When my second "student" wasn't reading by 4 or 5 (or even 6) I was worried that I was somehow failing her as her teacher or that she was just lazy. About that time a very wise lady, who was a few miles ahead of me on the homeschool journey, suggested that I close up the workbooks and put them back on the shelf. She described reading great books while sitting under a tree in the backyard, and teaching science while her children immersed their hands in dishwater and popped the bubbles. There would be many years ahead for more formal academics, she assured me.

So to the mom whose 5 year old is "acting up" at the school table while working on workbook pages of math exercises ... and to the mom whose 6 year old can't answer all the discussion questions from the Read-Aloud Study Guide ... please allow me to pass on the wisdom someone else once shared with me. As you begin your school year, let your children BE children. Look for ways to weave learning into your daily activities instead of forcing an academic schedule on your students.

For those 3-6 year olds ... focus on reading great books together under the backyard tree, snuggled together on the couch, or sprawled out on the bedroom floor. Teach them colors while finger painting on huge sheets of paper or sketching outdoors with sidewalk chalk. Learn letter sounds as you pick apples (short *a* sound) or buy eggs (short *e* sound) or eat oatmeal (long *o* sound) for breakfast. Teach simple counting and addition while setting the table (how many plates do we need?) and matching shapes and colors while folding laundry. Even those students who excel in academics at a young age are wired with the need to move, be active, and just BE kids!!

Need some more creative ways to make learning come alive for your youngest scholars? Get a copy of Dr. Ruth Beechick's "Three R's Series" and read and re-read it until it's dog-eared like mine! But spoken as one who is a little further down the homeschool path, enjoy the freedom that allows your kids to be kids even as they continue to learn.

Still on the journey ...
~Judy
Sonlight Customer Champion

Tagged academics, math, reading, science | 1 Comment

Sep. 7, 2011

I Taught Myself...

By Jill

If you have more than one child, you know that each one is very different. If you have any siblings, you will notice the same thing-each one is very much their own person. My older sister and I have been close our whole lives. I can’t remember any fights or quarrels or hard feelings along the way—but we are very different.

One thing that stands out to me is how my sister loves to take classes. She has taken knitting, computer, small business, painting, gardening, various sewing and stained glass classes in the past few years. She loves the interaction, the instruction and the fellowship.

On the other hand, I NEVER take classes. I read books, research on line, talk to people, lay in bed at night trying to figure things out—but I never take classes. It’s not that I am anti-social, on the contrary, I love people, but I just learn better when I am not confined to a class. I can remember when I was about eight years old and I received a crochet-a-hat kit for Christmas. I read it and worked through the pictures and crocheted a very lopsided hat. When people asked where I learned to crochet, I would spout, “I taught myself.”

And that pretty much sums up how I learn things. My sister, on the other hand, takes classes and that is how she learns. Sometimes she takes what she learned in class and teaches me—like how to crochet rag rugs—but mostly we just share ideas.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was contemplating a new project—how I just “teach myself” and it got me thinking about my own children. When I started homeschooling, back in 1990 there wasn’t a lot of choice when it came to homeschooling and not a lot of information available. I started out with traditional text books and began to teach my family.

A couple of years later I heard about unit studies and one year put together a full year of various unit studies so that my five children, then ages 3-14, could learn together. [This was before I heard about Sonlight.] But, what I found was that while four of my children excelled, one son just did OK. I should re-word that. One son, got distracted, did not really enjoy learning together with the family and sometimes was disruptive. He was bright and loved to learn, but he seemed to get restless and impatient.

The following year, we were back to text books and I taught that son and his older brother together. He wasn’t too happy about that either. And then it hit me… "I am slowing him down and he is getting frustrated at the pace. He wants to teach himself." It was like a light bulb went on.

It took me long enough to figure it out, but the next year I had a new plan. Taking into consideration his learning style, I gave him an assignment pad that had a week’s worth of assignments on it. He had to keep a reading log and a writing journal about what he was learning. Additionally, he had to create a project related to his history reading and had to meet with me a couple of times a week to be sure he was on track. He was in 7^th grade and I gave him independence in learning within the boundaries I set.

He flourished.

Through independent study and research, he grew by leaps and bounds. Weekly he set aside some time to teach his younger siblings science—which they all enjoyed. He didn’t want to sit in time-wasting lessons when he could learn so much better if he could teach himself.

It wasn’t until I was talking with another mom a few weeks ago that it occurred to me what his problem was---he was too much like me! I never even saw that. I never connected the dots till now—and it is nearly 2 decades later.

All this to say—if you have a child that is not doing well, or learning like you think they should, maybe it is the method you are using. Maybe they need more choices or to have some degree of flexibility and independence. If I had it to do over again and understood how this child learns, I think I would have done family reading together and then dismissed him with an assignment pad to teach himself the other subjects. I know many mothers do something similar using workboxes. It would have made it more pleasant for him, for me, and for my other children who liked a more teacher-led approach.

Which brings me back to my sister and I. We both love to learn—but I like to teach myself.

Take care,

Jill

Tagged customize, education, Learning Styles, Teaching Tips | 1 Comment

Sep. 6, 2011

Do Your Kids Have Free Time?

By Luke

My day off yesterday was fantastic. I made some serious headway on a personal project I've been kicking around. But while the holiday was the catalyst for my progress, I've spent time on this project regularly for the past couple of weeks. My momentum has been building.

This drive to be productive in my free time isn't new. Granted, I've spent my fair share of time watching movies, playing computer games and hanging out with friends--often doing one of the former with the latter <smile>.

Still, much of my free time is dedicated to creating. Many hours of my childhood were soaked up writing stories and poetry, recording music and audio dramas, shooting movies, fiddling with computer games/code, or taking apart the electronics my parents had deemed beyond repair.

I'm only "bored" when I'm too fried to do something creative, or when I find my efforts are blocked (for example: when I wanted to light a box on fire but my mom didn't think I should).

One of the great things about homeschooling is all the time it frees up for students. Since we don't have to sit at a desk for a prescribed number of hours each day, our free time need not be filled with lethargy. Instead, chunks of the day become opportunities to hone skills and produce things that help others. We don't have to be bored because we still have the emotional and mental energy we need to engage in an interest.

Paint

What do your children do with their free time? Are they frequently bored? If so, there are plenty of Electives that may spark their interest...

How about you? Are you able to find time in your busy day? Do you have the energy to pursue hobbies? If so, what are they?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

Tagged extracurricular | 7 Comments

Seven questions to ask when choosing an extra-curricular activity

A Learning Home

Free Homeschool Samples

Do You Use the Sonlight Forums?

Freedom

I Taught Myself...

Do Your Kids Have Free Time?

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