For Presidents' Day, you probably want to expose your homeschoolers to the holiday in some fashion so they know it's more than merely a time for retailers to put appliances on sale! Discover Presidents' Day reads that the whole family will love!
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I am a huge fan of reading just for fun. In fact, I believe that recreational reading should be our first exposure to reading.
I also firmly believe that children should not have to formally respond to everything they read. However, in the homeschool setting, it’s nice to occasionally have our children interact what they are reading through writing, conversation, or a project.
A reading response is simply put, a personal reaction to a text. In reality, we do this every time we read.
A reading response is basically the process of interacting with the text on some level.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of forcing a reading response to every single book or chapter, and I strongly caution against that. However, starting in the later elementary years, a written response to one book per quarter can be appropriate. So how can we teach our children to respond to what they read?
Charlotte Mason believed that one of the best ways to respond to reading is through narration.
Narration is re-telling or summarizing a story orally or in written form.
You’ll probably notice that your Sonlight Instructor’s Guide prompts you to have your child narrate often by way of the discussion questions. Narration is one of the best, most gentle ways a child can respond to a book.
Have your child give a book review at the dinner table to your family. Have them give a short summary of the storyline, without giving away the ending. Then, have them share what they loved about the book. Maybe they had a favorite character that reminded them of their crazy fun cousin. Finally, have them rate the book and possibly recommend it to a family member.
I recommend starting out with oral narration and transitioning to the occasional written narration somewhere around fourth grade. If your child has an aversion to writing, however, postpone written narration until they are comfortable putting pen to paper.
Organic book recommendations are the best! Take this idea a step further by asking your child to write a letter to a friend, recommending a particular book. If you are part of a co-op, you just need a little wall space and some post-it notes to make a book recommendation station. Have your child simply write, “I recommend Charlotte’s Web to Carly because it’s a book about a lot of farm animals, and Carly loves farm animals.”
Book suggestions are an exciting way to cooperatively interact with literature. Children generally love them because they are akin to getting mail.
Once children are older, they can publish their reviews on Goodreads.
Of course, don’t forget about the book un-recommendation. We all know that we will at some point, come across a lemon, and when we find a lemon, we want to warn others! Be sure your child knows that it’s okay to dislike a book too!
Art is always an appropriate response to literature. Who doesn’t want to draw a picture after reading a fantastic book?
Have your child draw a scene from the story or paint a picture of the main character. You may be surprised at how many small details your child picked up on in the reading. You may even take it further by creating a diorama of a scene from the book.
Have you ever been reading along in a book and your precious child keeps interrupting you because they are reminded of a time in their own life? Believe it or not, your child is responding to the reading! They are connecting with the text on a personal level.
Now, I definitely understand how constant interruption is bad for comprehension, so you’ll probably want to set up some ground rules, but remember that this is a great thing! It should be encouraged. You may save time at the end of the day’s reading to discuss connections that your child made with the text. You may have them draw a picture to show what they were reminded of during the story.
Don’t worry...if your child isn’t making connections just yet, you can help them along by modeling. One day, when you are reading, stop and say, “You know, this reminds me of a time when…” And don’t forget to occasionally allow your child to interrupt you to share a personal connection. You may not be able to do it every time, but those connections should be encouraged!
Is your child a little techy? If so, they can put their skills to good use writing book review blog posts or making book review videos for YouTube. Setting up a website or a YouTube channel is fairly easy, and while it should be well-monitored by a parent, can be a great tool for responding to literature and learning new skills.
However you decide to do it, encouraging your children to respond to what they are reading in some way is a great tool to get them truly interacting with the text. I would encourage you to find ways for your child to respond to literature that isn’t too laborious for them. Consider their natural bent.
Finally, always model what you want to see in your children. Did you love a book you just finished? Share with your family. Build a family culture around reading and responding to great literature.
Switch to a curriculum that is based on responding to great books. It's simple, low-prep, and enjoyable!
Being a parent is a monumental task all on its own. When you add in being the primary teacher, it’s no surprise that sometimes you feel your life needs a little bit more breathing room.
What is one tool that homeschooling moms could use with great benefit for their family of multiple children?
It's sibling delegation.
What might sibling delegation look like in your homeschool? Here are some ideas for letting your children work together to learn and to reduce your workload:
There's an old principle which claims you only understand a concept well when you are able to teach it to someone else.
When an older sibling tutors a younger sibling, it's an excellent chance for the older child to review. Having to break down a concept or skill in digestible steps for a younger brother or sister is wonderful critical thinking practice, too.
Sibling delegation in the homeschool is a low-stakes environment to stretch their teaching muscles and to practice learned concepts in a different context as they assume the teacher role.
Another benefit is the opportunity for relationship building. Many of us choose homeschooling because we want our children to spend more of their childhood years together. Working together to learn about a topic gives them a further chance to bond over the shared learning experience.
While playing together is an important aspect of relationship-building for children, working together and accomplishing tasks worth being proud of can be even more powerful in cementing positive relationships.
Every homeschool mom needs a brain break at times. There will be moments when the busyness of life itself has been so incessant and you’ve been needed with such intensity that you feel like you simply can’t play another round of sight word bingo. This is where building a family culture of delegation comes in handy.
In this homeschool culture, mom isn’t needed for every school activity at all times because children help each other learn. Delegation of homeschool tasks isn't a chore or a threat but a natural aspect of your homeschool.
You know your own children. For certain subjects and particular stages in maturity and in individual sibling relationships, delegation isn’t appropriate.
Sibling delegation is a helpful strategy for managing the rigors of homeschool life. It's most effective when children are paired in a thoughtful way. Consider how you could apply sibling delegation to get more done without doing it all yourself.
Teaching multiple children at different ages can sometimes feel difficult to manage. Sonlight makes it easier by dividing our curriculum into two types of subjects: Couch and Table Subjects. LEARN MORE HERE.
You are probably thinking I have lost my mind. How can anyone say that bad homeschool days are beneficial? I think my answer will surprise you! I've discovered three ways that my bad homeschool days are actually a pro instead of a con.
Hard homeschool days remind us that we don’t have it all together and we are dependent on God for wisdom and strength.
Maybe you are like me. When everything is smooth sailing, I start feeling I’ve got everything under control. I begin to pat myself on the back and think, “I’ve got this down. I’m doing a good job, I don’t need help.” Thank goodness for those bad days that bring me back down to reality and help me remember that I can’t homeschool well in my own strength.
Bad days are like warning signals that help communicate the health of our homeschool. If you are having a bad day here and there, there may not be a major source of concern. But if you are having repeated bad days, it might be time to stop and re-evaluate. If you find yourself in this position, here are some questions that might been helpful to think through.
Maybe it’s not one certain thing that continually creates strife in your day. Maybe it is multiple things.
Look at those bad days as something positive. They truly can be warning signs of something deeper going on. Investigate and come up with a plan to solve the issue.
When I'm walking through a hard time, I normally gravitate to someone who has been through the same situation—someone who has firsthand experience. It’s more comforting to talk to someone who knows where you are coming from and has sound advice.
That is why bad days make you a better encourager. When you face and overcome bad days, you then can take the role of cheerleader, spurring on others with your own life stories. You can assure them that everything is going to be okay and that they can successfully homeschool.
Find people you can encourage through their hard days. Let them see you struggle with bad days so they know they are not the only ones with bad homeschool days.
The Bible reading portion in Sonlight's History / Bible / Literature programs is one of our favorite parts of the day. I particularly appreciate how the assignments are listed at the very top of the Instructor’s Guide, a simple reminder that Bible study is the most important part of our schedule.
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You’ve decided to add a foreign language to your collection of homeschool electives and have invested in Rosetta Stone at Sonlight’s recommendation.
Where do you go from here?
How can you maximize your investment? Is there anything you can do to ensure that the hours your child spends using Rosetta Stone will translate into usable and lasting language knowledge? Does Rosetta Stone really work?
Yes, the program itself is engaging and teaches practical spoken language skills, but, like any tool, there are techniques and habits that lead to success.
We all know the effects of summer slide are real. That’s why some homeschool families, like my own, have opted for year-round schooling with short breaks at irregular times of year. After a long break from math or reading, children might need a lot of review for things they've forgotten.
The same effect happens when learning foreign languages. Only in this area, the effects of irregular study seem to be even more dramatic.
And...let’s be honest, when life gets busy, electives tend to be the first courses to fall by the wayside. If you’re finding that your child is constantly needing to review the same lesson or is not able to retain vocabulary, ensure they are using Rosetta Stone regularly each school day.
If little progress is being made, switch foreign language study to earlier in the school day. It is less necessary to spend large amounts of time on the program each day than it is to be consistent with daily exposure. Even 15 or 20 minutes on a daily basis has great effect in building confidence with using the target language.
Because it's an online program, your child can use Rosetta Stone anywhere there is access to an internet-connected device and a pair of earbuds. However, as much as possible, opt to use Rosetta Stone in a non-public location where it’s okay to speak out loud without disturbing others (or feeling awkward).
Rosetta Stone uses TruAccent® technology in pronunciation activities to help your child practice accurate pronunciation and get instant feedback. In reality, though, so much of language learning is retained through vocal repetition, that I recommend making a habit of always repeating the phrases being learned after the voice reads them out, instead of only during the specific pronunciation exercises.
The more practice, the more muscle memory develops, and the more chances to develop accurate pronunciation. This will be especially crucial when learning languages that have sounds which don’t exist in English (or their own native language). I highly recommend not limiting pronunciation practice only to the sections of the lesson which are testing pronunciation, but simply developing a habit of repeating after the recorded voice each and every time.
One of the most fantastic aspects of the Rosetta Stone program is that it’s completely online—no bulky textbooks needed. However, the solely digital factor can be a problem when studying a language that has a different alphabet or writing system than the one your student already knows.
Rosetta Stone does a good job of tackling language learning from every direction:
But particularly if you have chosen a language such as Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, or another language with a writing system other than the Latin alphabet used in English, I recommend seeking additional resources for writing practice.
In my own homeschool, we use Rosetta Stone for studying Mandarin Chinese. Chinese characters are introduced and practiced in the program, but we don’t rely on this program alone to master the language. Learning to read and write effectively in Mandarin takes practice beyond what a computer program can offer; the etymology of characters and careful practice of neat calligraphy and stroke order are not part of Rosetta Stone. The best way to remember how to write Chinese characters, in my experience, is that, after they have been learned, to write them, stroke by stroke, again and again, in a variety of sentences, building muscle memory and the experience of writing.
If you find that your child’s conversational and comprehension skills are advancing more quickly than his or her writing skills in the target language, have them spend some time with paper and pencil on a regular basis, practicing putting their new language on paper and getting the hang of the way it’s written.
Sometimes our brains put the things we learn into boxes of sorts. If a child enjoys studying language with Rosetta Stone but doesn’t have any experience with the language in any other way or at any other time, the knowledge may be stuck in the mental Rosetta Stone box. As a result, they will struggle to apply vocabulary correctly in other experiences outside using the program.
Very early in language learning, ask them to keep an eye open for examples of the language in everyday life. Since our homeschool is studying Mandarin with Rosetta Stone, I ask the girls if they recognize any characters they’ve learned on restaurant menus or local signs, because we live in a region where written Chinese is commonly seen around town. We’ll watch children’s TV shows in Mandarin, read simple books, and randomly quiz each other during the day.
Teach your child to keep their eyes and ears open for opportunities to engage with the content they’ve learned. I’ve found that they tend to see what they’re looking for.
Foreign language skills, when thoroughly acquired and allowed the opportunity to remain sharp instead of growing rusty, can accompany your child throughout their life and give them opportunities in career, ministry, and relationship that they could never have experienced without such skills. Rosetta Stone, when used to its maximum potential, provides an amazing jumping-off point into the world of speaking a new language!
Choose from 24 languages and add foreign language to your homeschool lineup today.
Sonlight is all about great books—biographies, novels, non-fiction, poetry anthologies, picture books, and reference volumes. Each book is carefully chosen and has to pass Sarita's Seven-Part Test:
So you can be assured that each title in a Sonlight curriculum package is high quality, both in terms of academics and moral quality.
So it's a nearly impossible task to select the best Sonlight books.
They are all the best. Truly.
But every book in Sonlight has special qualities that make it a superlative in its own right. Here is a list of 161 unique superlatives (plus a few extra) taken from the Sonlight catalog of homeschool curriculum.
Best preschool picture book for search and find (no longer in the Preschool Package): Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
Best subversive stories told by enslaved people (no longer in the Pre-K Package): The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit
Most perennially popular Victorian stories and illustrations (no longer in the Pre-K Package): The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit
The way we all wish we could teach (no longer in HBL B): The Year of Miss Agnes
Best story of the lumber trade down the Mississippi (no longer in HBL D): Swift Rivers
Sonlight doesn't shy away from hard topics. Nor does it whitewash the shameful parts of history. Instead, it presents difficult themes through age-appropriate books—the best books. Combined with the notes in your Instructor's Guide and your own parental guidance, Sonlight books teach your child the ugliness and the beauty of our world.
A thread of redemption runs throughout Sonlight because it is a Christ-centered curriculum. So while evil is not erased from our lessons, it is always offset with the much greater force of good.
If you're ready to move to a twaddle-free curriculum based on quality literature, switch to Sonlight.
