Most of us carry cell phones that put calculators at our fingertips. Cash registers tell cashiers exactly how to give change. Do we even need to memorize math facts anymore?
Continue reading
As homeschoolers, we have all gone through periods where our children just don’t seem to be interested in their history lessons.
History is full of long, unusual names of people and places that are hard to pronounce and even harder to keep track of. Consider two simple examples of how history's names can be confusing:
Another barrier? History doesn't progress in an orderly, linear fashion. It’s messy, chaotic, and hard to interpret.
And finally, it can be hard for children to relate to life in far off cultures that are so different from their own.
In order for children to invest in their history lessons, they must feel some sort of connection to the topic. Here's help for presenting history in a more interesting and memorable way, one that can overcome the obstacles to retaining history details.
Don’t be afraid to ask your child what they think about what is happening or if they understand what is going on. If they aren’t able to answer or aren’t really sure, this is a great time to stop and clarify. You might need to teach them how to listen to Read-Alouds.
Names of people and places can be hard to remember. Help your child keep track of them by using nicknames. For example, my children were struggling to remember all the names of characters in a book, so we promptly nicknamed the one called Dorantes, Doritos, to make it easier to remember. From that point forward, every time they got confused about who he was, someone would call out, “He’s the Doritos guy,” and everyone would immediately recall his place in the book.
Breaking down the names of people and places can make it easier for children to follow along. It’s fairly easy to remember Stonehenge is the place with all the standing stone. It's clear that China's Forbidden City was named because of its forbidden status.
But you may need to spend 30 seconds researching the meaning Angkor Wat, a large temple complex in Cambodia—Temple City. When you know that Peru's Machu Picchu, a citadel at the top of a mountain, means Ancient Mountain, it's easier to make sense of the name.
It is a special blessing to homeschool in today’s digital age when we can find videos at the click of a button to show a walkthrough of the locations in our history lessons. Take a virtual tour of the palace on the island of Crete or the ruins of the Acropolis.
When you’ve finished covering Ancient Mesopotamia in History / Bible / Literature B, and are ready to move on to Ancient Egypt, don’t stop talking about Mesopotamia. Compare how both groups gathered food, used writing, or used rivers. When one country invades another, bring up what you remember about the invaded country. Don’t be afraid to draw those connections for your children, as well as to help them draw their own.
Maps are a great visual way to track events from history. You can track World War I and II on a map and see how borders changed or follow Alexander the Great’s campaigns. Maps help children see how geography itself contributed to wars and victories.
Timelines help children see how people connect to each other. For example, although Beethoven and Lewis and Clark never met, they both lived at the same time and were both affected by worry about Napoleon.
Children are more likely to connect to personal memories than to abstract history. If you remember your grandparents telling you about life in the early 1900s, or your uncle has stories to share about his adventures in World War II, take the time to share those family stories.
While Sonlight does provide a large variety of books, if a child is struggling on a certain topic, or wants to learn more, don’t be afraid to add extras. The more children understand, the more hooks they have to hang more information.
Even picky eaters will try new foods they helped prepare. Have a Greek feast while exploring Ancient Greece, or enjoy blueberries and milk with the Boxcar Children. Adding one new spice or making a new dish can bring history to life in a way your child can experience.
Children, especially young children, learn best through play. While workbooks and tests have their place, play is how children explore and interact with their world.
Give your child time to play and ask them to come up with their own ways to act things out.
Building and creating forge an understanding of how things work and what they looked like.
Children learn best when things are reviewed frequently. In fact, studies show children retain things better and longer if they are covered again a few times over the next months or years. So don't consider it one and done when it comes to history. Expect to circle back multiple times not only in your curriculum but also
Each time your children revisit a nugget from history, it adds another layer to their memory bank and helps preserve the information.
You will likely be surprised days, weeks, and even years down the road by how much of Sonlight History your child recalls. I have read my older children books I wasn’t sure they connected with. Years later when I have used that same book with with younger siblings, I was surprised to hear the older ones say, “Oh, that’s such a great book. It’s about….”, offering specific details I never knew they grasped!
Math seems to be the subject that gets the worst reputation. Some kids would rather have a root canal than do their math work. Why is this?
Continue reading
Grading can be a struggle as a homeschool parent!
Why is the grading system so hard to understand and accomplish, when it seems so straightforward? Are grades even necessary? In this expose of grading, you'll see the complexity of grading and an easy way to give grades in your homeschool.
There are many ways to grade, and because grading is arbitrary, they are all correct and valid. Take into consideration all these variations of grades most of us were exposed to during our school days:
In addition, there are a lot of factors teachers pick and choose from when grading or designing a rubric:
Combine this list of things to grade with the different ways to grade from the earlier list and a teacher's subjective decision making, and you see an endless array of possibilities. So one reason grading is so hard is because there are so many different ways to approach it.
Because grading is arbitrary, they are all valid and correct at the same time.
So how should you assign grades as a homeschool parent? Let's dig a bit deeper.
At its heart, all grading means basically the same thing.
When students meets the teacher's standards of excellence, they are awarded an A. For each degree of substandard work completed, the score drops by one letter grade.
Any time a student meets that expectation of A-level work, whether it be on a test, in an essay, by showing up for class, or showing their interest in the lecture, they will be granted that grade. If they don’t, a lesser grade will be given.
This is true whether the teacher is a hard grader or goes easy on the students. It is true whether a teacher has high standards and an expectation of excellence, or is tired of teaching. If a teacher expects all students to do as well as they are able, they will have a hard time giving less than an A. If a teacher expects students to work hard and put forth maximum effort, they will have a hard time granting that A grade, and will choose harder tests and require more work.
Grading is not only arbitrary, it's also unnecessary in many situations.
However, in a public school setting, grades still have value. Teachers need to be able to keep track of which students are meeting standards and how far from meeting all the standards they really are.
While homeschooling parents are far better able to keep track of how well Kendra is doing in spelling, or whether Liam needs help with math, it is far harder for classroom teachers who may have over 200 students a day for only a few hours each per week.
So grades make sense in a classroom.
If my child were getting a C+ in math, that would not tell me whether the issue is careless mistakes, or not understanding long division, or just moving too fast through her math workbook. I would have to examine her work and look for patterns. The grade alone is not enough to tell me what the issue is.
However, because I am monitoring her daily, I can see exactly what the issue is, and fix it immediately. I don’t need to wait until she drops to a C to see that there’s a concern. If her writing assignments have a lot of spelling mistakes, I don’t need a rubric to tell me she needs to work on spelling more.
Grades and rubrics can help parents to find problems their children are having, especially when children are working independently, but most homeschooling parents instinctively know when a child is starting to struggle with a topic and get concerned long before a child’s grades reach a 70% average. In fact, many start worrying the minute that grade drops too far below 100%.
Here's how I handle grading in my homeschool situation with a wide variety of grade levels in many children.
I work with my students on any areas they are having problems with, and I monitor them frequently in the subjects they do independently. If I see them doing a good job and putting forth a good effort, and I am satisfied with their work, then I give an A.
If I see there is an issue, or they aren’t grasping the materials, then I take that to mean my work in that area isn’t done. I go back, reteach it, or find a different way to teach it they can understand better. If I see they aren’t working hard, I try to get to the bottom of why they aren’t putting in the effort, and listen to them. I either help them out more, find a way to incentivize them to work harder, or cut back or slow down their workload. When they have met my minimum expectations of A-level work, then I give an A.
There have been times I have had to modify my expectations, such as accepting spelling errors on handwritten works from my dyslexic children, or not taking off points for every time I see a math problem when they did the work correctly but mixed up the order of two numerals. But, for the most part, with adaptations and assistance, they are capable of meeting my expectations.
Basically, I keep working with my children until they master the work and make that coveted A score.
Because of my approach to grading, at times we have had to work at a lower level than I might otherwise expect. But it has also meant my children are far stronger in those subjects than if we had just moved on. Once they are stronger, we are able to catch up more quickly. This method of grading has helped three of my students not only get into college, but do very well once they are there.
While this approach to grading might not work for all families, it is easy to use, easy to keep track of, and easy to understand.
Most adults don’t get graded in daily life. But we are evaluated on meeting standards of excellence.
Grades really do mean what you want them to mean. If you want to set high standards and ensure your students have the tools and resources to meet them, that is an admirable goal. If you recognize that your child is struggling with learning delays and is trying their best but just can’t meet the standards and want to lower them, that is a great way to encourage your child to keep trying with their best effort.
If you are laid-back and don’t want to give grades, they really aren’t needed as long as your children are progressing.
You can download the first three weeks of Instructor's Guide from any program. Try it out!
Have you ever wondered what you're doing here on the earth? Ever wondered how our country got to the state that it's in? Ever wondered why people in other countries live differently than you do?
Well, I think the answers lie in understanding history. To put it simply ...
Studying history helps children make sense of their world and their lives.
That's why Sonlight centers on history. Our curriculum chronicles the past in order to prepare children to understand and influence their world in the future.
As they learn the story of the world (people, places, and events tied together to tell an historical story), children start to understand the wonder, tensions, and troubles in today's world. They build a framework in which to understand new information about their globe. It's like they develop an internal timeline with anchor points on it, such as the rise of the Greeks, the Chinese dynasties, the Industrial Revolution, and the era of Colonization. (And Sonlight provides a tangible timeline to help this along!)
As children develop this internal timeline, they have places to hang new knowledge.
And so the new information means something to them because they have places to hang it. The new knowledge is more than unconnected tidbits of information.
Of course, children who learn history the Sonlight way also get to learn it in an enjoyable way that they actually remember. And so they really get to reap the benefits of learning history. They truly understand how the world's peoples and places came to their present state.
But that's not all.
Understanding the flow of history helps children understand the meaning of their own lives. They learn where they are in the story of the world.
For us as Christians, we know that we are living in the time between Christ's first coming and His return. When we understand that, it helps us make sense of what we're doing here. As I've written before:
The incarnate Christ returned to heaven, and we are His representatives on earth now. He has given us the Holy Spirit to work through us and guide us as we labor to bring God's Kingdom to earth. We are part of God's big plan; we have a role to play, a purpose for living, and a call to serve. We can partner with God, or not. He will work His plan out, with or without us. May we and our children be people who help God's Kingdom advance.
And the story is moving forward! Though we don't know the exact timeline, we do know we are moving to an end point where Christ returns and ultimately redeems His people. He will establish His kingdom in full and we will live forever in perfect communion with Him in the new heaven and new earth. How can this not affect how we live today?
So that's why Sonlight centers on history instead of social studies, unit studies, or any number of other ways to organize your study of the world. It helps our students understand the world and their place in it. This is intentional, and we have seen that it truly works.
If you're new to Sonlight Instructor's Guides, the scheduling can look a bit random. But it is all very intentional to help children soak up their learning.
I generally choose a key narrative text as the schedule driver. For example, we use A Child's History of the World by V. M. Hillyer for a child's first tour of world history. It is a non-fiction history book, but it is not a textbook. Instead, the author tells a compelling overview of the history of the world by picking out key narratives told chronologically. He might spend a chapter in Europe, and then transition to the next chapter with "meanwhile in India ..." Then he'll describe what life looked like in India at the time and give the story of a specific ruler or event that exemplifies that era in Indian history. The whole book moves chronologically.
That narrative text forms the backbone of a History / Bible / Literature (HBL) program. Then as you move through that text, we supplement your learning with all sorts of treats. Most HBLs use at least one stellar photo-driven text, such as an Usborne book. So when Hillyer talks about ancient African civilizations for example, the Instructor's Guide will jump you to the section in your Usborne book that highlights those same civilizations. You and your kids will see illustrations of what you're learning and gain additional knowledge from the bulleted highlights. This reinforces and expands what you learned in the primary text.
Then we enrich things even more by adding biographies and historical fiction that help bring that time period to life. This is often a family's favorite part of Sonlight. Since you've read the other history texts, and since you're building your own timeline as you go, you and your kids have context for what you read. That means you will pick up on all sorts of historical significance as you move through these can't-put-it-down stories.
The early grades also include many Readers and Read-Alouds that are just great books and may or may not tie in with the history you're learning. When kids are just learning to read, we focus on helping them practice that skill and get hooked on great stories. The Read-Alouds provide all sorts of cultural literacy and family bonding moments as you enjoy great stories together (such as a perpetual favorite, Charlotte's Web).
Starting in Intro to American History, 1 of 2 (HBL D), most of the Readers and Read-Alouds do link thematically with the time period. This connection opens up a new level of richness in your learning.
Going through a year with Sonlight is like watching a rich tapestry unfold.
You follow a single thread with your spine, and then get to watch that understanding deepen and come to life in several different ways.
And the best part? The tapestry is already sewn for you! All you have to do is pick up your Instructor's Guide which
This is the way I loved learning with my kids as they grew. And this is the way that thousands of families around the world fuel a love of learning in their kids today. It is an honor to share that joy with you!
See a Sonlight Instructor's Guide for yourself. Download a sample of the first three weeks here.
Sonlight is full of great books, but among all the genres included in the History / Bible / Literature packages, the missionary biographies are probably the most cherished and life-impacting.
Yes, kids are learning geography, history, and vocabulary as they read or have these biographies read aloud to them. But even more precious, their faith in God's power and firm conviction of God's grace are bolstered by these real-life stories of missionaries.
Some of these children grow up to be missionaries themselves, thanks to those tiny seeds first planted in their hearts through a missionary story.
This collection of 12 books centers in Asia, including Burma (now called Myanmar), China, India, the Middle East, and the Philippines.
This biography is one of many in the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series by Janet and Geoff Benge.
What better place to start this list than with Adoniram Judson, America's first foreign missionary. In the face of incredible obstacles, Adoniram and his first wife Ann were the spark that spread the fire of the Gospel into Burma. Their evident love for the Burmese people is a compelling story of unswerving dedication and sacrifice.
You will be moved and inspired by this novel!
Seventeen chapters tell awe-inspiring stories of God at work in the Middle East.
All of these Iranians eventually come to Jesus Christ for His full and free salvation, becoming missionaries to their own people. It's a marvelous book.
You will be impacted dramatically by this thrilling story of William Carey, pioneer missionary to India and the "father of modern missions."
This biography shows Carey in all aspects as one who attempted great things for God, and expected and realized great things from God.
Should we obey God or man?
Brother Andrew decides, as so many men and women of faith before him, that it is worth risking his life to distribute the Word of God in places where government regulations prohibit it.
This missionary biography is more thrilling than a spy story . . . and all true!
Did you know that an unprecedented number of Muslims are becoming followers of Jesus? With this book, you get a firsthand look at the diverse, creative, unexpected, and thrilling ways God is reaching the author's Muslim neighbors with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Your children will love this amazing story of a woman who grew up in India and couldn't wait to leave. In one night, three men came to ask her to help their laboring wives. All three refused her father's help (he was a doctor), preferring to let their wives die than break religious taboos. And all three did die.
Ida Scudder realized she could make a difference, and so she went to medical school, then served in India for decades, helping the lepers, founding a teaching hospital, and serving the people.
It's a powerful story that demonstrates how one person can make a lasting difference in the lives of others.
Hudson Taylor was only 21 when he sailed from England. He had already learned he could trust God with the last coin in his pocket; he would need that faith as he set out to evangelize the Chinese.
This missionary biography is a thrilling true story of daring, danger, and dependence on God.
These thought-provoking stories tell of a culture's first encounter with God's Word.
A translator struggles to help a tribal people understand what the Bible says.
This novel is both fascinating and surprisingly funny.
Gladys Aylward was an uneducated British housemaid who went to China via Russia in the midst of the Soviet-Chinese war in the early 20th century. Her story of dedication to serve the Lord in China may make you cry!
God prepared the way for the Karen people of Burma to come to know him. When George Boardman and Adoniram Judson arrived, the Burmese were not terribly interested, but the Karen were desperately ready.
This book is an incredible story of God at work. Don't miss it!
This novel is the moving story of how God's word transformed an entire people--as well as the woman whom He had sent to translate the Scriptures for them.
This missionary biography tells the inspiring and challenging story of Mother Teresa who, for more than 40 years sought to be "the arms of Christ" to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta.
She's an unlikely hero who went against the grain of our me-first culture. Your children, and you, will be blessed by reading it.
Choose a Christ-centered curriculum that includes missionary biographies at every level.
Some children almost seem born to write neatly. From their first letters on, they write carefully and neatly, staying between the lines with enviable precision. Most children, however, need a lot more work to write neatly. Here are techniques to help those children put pencil to paper with novelty and more sensory input.
Something as simple as giving children a better tool can make a difference. Some children find writing in color more motivating; others are sensitive to the sound of pencils on paper. Try these creative ideas to improve handwriting:
Here are ways to alter the way writing feels and the amount of feedback children getting while writing. These are additional ways to make writing easier or more enticing.
This program helps to break down every step of the process into manageable bits and bite-sized assignments. While the practice may be lacking for a few children who need more help with motor memory, the shorter assignments with lots of white space and coloring can motivate young writers who need to know their assignment is almost over.
A Reason for Handwriting works great for children who want smaller daily assignments of writing just one or two words, and then longer assignments once a week where they can show off their best handwriting and share a Bible message with a friend or family member. The special coloring pages and correlating assignments work great for children who are motivated by showing off their hard work.
Getty Dubay can help to motivate children who want things to look beautiful. The somewhat fancier letters and slightly artistic design helps make finished work look just a little fancier for the budding artist or illustrator, or appreciator of beauty.
33. Hold a Coronation Celebration. At the end of a day’s handwriting book, celebrate with your child. Have them pick out the best letter, word, or sentence they wrote that day. You can use any judging criteria you want, and even give different words or letters different awards, such as straightest lines, the best use of spacing between letters or words, prettiest or most handsome presentation, fanciest, etc. Each winner gets a sticker, star, or other decoration, and your child gets lots of praise and attention for their best work.
Sensory input is important for budding writers. Once children start writing whole words or sentences, many parents drop the fun extras like writing in sand or using a chalkboard. Try adding back sensory input through use of color, presentation, texture, and feedback from the writing utensil. These tricks can make writing interesting again and motivate children to improve their penmanship.
