Apr. 17, 2019

4 Ways to Use the Power of Routine in Your Homeschool Day

By Deana Wood
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4 Ways to Use the Power of Routine in Your Homeschool Day

Every single morning, I do the same thing. I do it almost without thinking as I am usually still half, if not fully, asleep. I go to the bathroom, change into the clothes I laid out the night before, brush my teeth, put on my makeup, and fix my hair for the day. Then I head to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee to drink while I pray and study my Bible. This has been my morning routine for years, and it just so happens it’s my favorite part of the day. There is something incredibly comfortable about routine and rhythm in life. It provides a familiarity that sets our minds and hearts at peace.

Being such a creature of routine, I always find it odd that I often forget how much routine means to my children. This is why I am caught off guard when my children fall apart on the rare Monday night that I don’t make spaghetti. For the last five years, Monday night is our family spaghetti night, generally followed by card games or a round of dominoes. For the last five years, my family has almost declared mutiny on me when I decide to use rotini pasta instead of spaghetti noodles or use alfredo sauce instead of my usual spaghetti sauce. You would think that I would learn, right?

With routine clearly being a powerful force, it seems that we should channel its power for use in our homeschool. So let’s look at a few ways that we can use the power of routine to maximize our homeschool.

1. Establish Morning/Evening Routines

Just like me, my children day need a clear signal to begin and a clear signal to end the day. Morning and evening routines give us natural bookends for our day that provide non-verbal cues and prepare our bodies for the day or for sleep. One of the things that I love so much about homeschooling is that it provides a perfect opportunity for a morning routine.

For seven years now, my family has been gathering in our common area for Couch Subjects™ first thing in the morning. It is such a wonderful way to begin the day. Bible reading, prayer, History, and Read-Alouds...I can’t think of a better start. After our Couch Subjects™, I don’t have to say a word. My kids know that is their cue to begin their schoolwork. In the evenings, we gather in the same place for evening prayer. From there, we go to bed.

When you begin a morning or evening routine, you’ll need to practice it often. Try holding a family meeting to introduce the idea of how mornings and evenings will go. Make a poster, listing the steps if needed and post it in a visible area. Then have your children do a dry run through the routine multiple times. It will seem silly to practice airbrushing your teeth, but it will probably end with plenty of giggles. The practice does wonders for making brain connections that assist in establishing the new routine. The first few weeks though, you’ll need to stay close during routine time to make sure they are completing their routine correctly. After a while, you’ll be able to just ask if they have done their routine, and eventually, the goal is to have them run through it completely independently with only the occasional refresher needed.

2. Introduce a New Habit by Attaching it to a Routine

If you need to add a new habit into your child’s routine, attach it to an already existing routine. For example, if you want your child to take out the trash every day, you can’t expect him or her to just notice when it gets full. Believe me, I have tried that, and it doesn’t work. I’ve actually tried seeing how long my kids will let it go before noticing. I highly discourage your trying this. It ended with us having a trash corner instead of a trash can!

Instead, attach the new habit to an existing routine. Have your child take the trash out after breakfast every day. Since you eat breakfast every day, it’s an already established routine. Simply remind him to grab the trash after he puts away his dishes, and before long, you will find that you don’t have to remind very much any more. Eating breakfast will give him the cue he needs to remember the trash.

You can do math drills at every stop light or silent reading every day after lunch. Put your daily medicine on your nightstand. There is no end to the applications here. Apply the power of routine.

3. Create Memories Through Routine

For the first several years of our homeschool journey, we created an interesting lunch routine. I found that by lunchtime, I had endured about as much togetherness as I could handle, and my introverted self needed a little break from the chatter. So, I decided that lunchtime would be perfect for a living room picnic. That began our daily routine of lunch and Lucy. We would spread out a blanket on the living room floor and watch an episode of our favorite TV show, I Love Lucy. We would eat and giggle and replenish ourselves for the remaining stretch of the day. We are now usually at our co-op during lunchtime, but to this day, my kids absolutely love having a living room picnic at lunchtime.

What routines can you establish to create memories? Maybe you can have tea time once a week where you pull out the fancy (or even not-so-fancy) dinnerware and have tea and pastries. I recently read a comment from a fellow Sonlight mom who uses Explode the Code. After doing their ETC work each day, she and her child make an explosion noise—so simple and yet so sweet and memorable. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated, and chances are that you are already implementing a memory-creating routine at some point in the day. That’s what homeschooling is all about!

4. Use Routine to Drive the Day

I am naturally a routine-oriented person. In fact, my husband has to force me to be spontaneous. So without really thinking much about it, I have implemented a routine for my kids throughout the day. They basically know what is expected of them next without me really saying much at all. This is because our routine drives us forward through our day. One thing naturally leads to another. I’ve even found that my children establish their own micro-routines that fit within our family routine. My oldest starts his work with reading, then he goes to language arts and then to math. My daughter does the opposite. She starts with math and likes to finish up with her reading time. Each of my children are different, but they all have their own personal routines that drive them through the day.

Think about your day, and consider the most logical flow for your family. It will almost definitely be at least somewhat different from mine, but here is our daily flow:

Morning Time/Couch Subjects→Independent Work→Break Time→Read-Aloud & Morning Snack→Independent Work→Lunchtime→Break Time→History & Science→Daily Work Check and Clean Up

You do not have to assign times to these sections of your day. Simply establish a logical flow that helps drive your children to the next part of the day. This natural flow will help your child get their work completed and feel comfortable through the predictable routine you have established for the family.

Routine is truly a powerful tool for homeschool moms. You probably don’t even realize how much you already use routine in your day. I would encourage you, however, to make sure that you are utilizing it to its fullest potential. The Bible says in Luke 16:10a, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.” Let’s teach our children to be faithful in the little things with the help of routines.

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Apr. 12, 2019

When You Are Disappointed: Homeschool Visions vs. Reality

By Rachel Guerrero
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When You Are Disappointed: Homeschool Visions vs. Reality

You had a picture in your mind of what your homeschool day would look like. After eating a nutritious breakfast, your children would dutifully go to their books. The older children would work independently while you did phonics activities with the preschooler and your toddler played happily with the ocean-themed sensory box that you had prepared the evening before.

Mid-morning, everyone would come together for History / Bible / Literature time. Your oldest asks insightful questions as you finish each book. All children listen attentively and display clear signs that they have taken their learning to heart. Afterwards, the youngest play on their own while you check in with the older children's independent schoolwork. You give a spelling test and check math worksheets. While their answers aren't perfect, most scores are above 90% and show diligence.

Your oldest daughter entertains the younger children by leading a hands-on science experiment that was scheduled in her Instructor's Guide while you make lunch.

Then you eat a lunch where each person cleans their plate, and as nearly always happens, you're done with all official school tasks for the day by noon, leaving both you and the children free to spend the afternoon in creative pursuits, skill building, and the keeping of the home and yard.

Then Real-Life Homeschooling Begins

That's what you imagined homeschool would look like? Right?

  • All of your kids would progress smoothly from one level to the next without going backward and forward.
  • They would want to learn.
  • They would listen attentively as you read stories.
  • They would usually try their best.
  • Sibling relationships would generally flourish.

But now you're homeschooling for real, and your four year old still can't identify her shapes after months of trying every activity you know. Or your fourteen year old asks you for help with a chemistry problem, but doesn't have the patience to wait while you try to figure out the answer, and stomps away, saying, "Never mind, it'll be faster if I figure it out myself." Or one child decides to take the easy way out with his math test and is found copying answers out of the answer key instead of solving the problems; problems that you know he knows how to solve!

Or you find yourself re-reading the scheduled Bible passage because all of the children looked blankly at you when you asked them comprehension questions. Another child ends up distracting herself from her tasks so much that she still has books not read and worksheets not done at bedtime, every single night. Your oldest complains that you never give her enough time for reading even though she averages an entire book a day. Your second child writes her name, very neatly, on her notebook, only it is spelled entirely backwards and every letter is upside down—and she can't tell the difference. The baby rips a page out of a school book when the six year old grabs it out of her hands. The eight year old made the six year old cry by taunting her about how she won't get any birthday presents. The birthday is six months away.

Your Homeschool Isn’t What You Imagined

Your homeschool probably doesn't look like the idyllic homeschool you once dreamed it would be. If you allow yourself to become disheartened by this, you might start to lose faith in your ability to educate your own children.

When they don't learn along the "normal" time frame, and when there are behavioral problems that interrupt everybody's day, you might start to think that someone else might be better cut out for the role of teacher.

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Talk to Sonlight Advisors if you need outside help.

Identify What’s Causing the Disappointment

Sometimes, when you feel disappointed by your homeschool,  there are actual problems that do need to be addressed:

  • The curriculum you’ve chosen really isn’t working for a particular child.
  • The schedule you’ve picked doesn’t fit your current lifestyle.
  • You’ve taken on too many outside activities and everyone in the family is getting stressed out.

Take the time to stop and consider, looking back at your homeschool experience so far. Decide whether the frustration you’re experiencing is due to consistent negative patterns that need to change. In that case, identify the underlying problems and seek solutions.

If your frustration is simply because your homeschool doesn’t look quite the way it did in your daydreams, you may need to accept that your expectations were unrealistic.

Shift Your Focus from the Disappointment

Instead of expecting perfection of yourself as a homeschool mom or of your children, expect moments of wonder and of light. Look for those!

Because even in the midst of some of the most imperfect of homeschool days, there are glimpses of the beauty that homeschool brings. And those glimpses—and our gratitude for them—are what keep us persisting when a child suddenly forgets how to add after having been able to do it for over a year. In fact, perhaps those exact moments of getting to come alongside and help our kids when they are really struggling to learn a concept...maybe those are actually among the greatest gifts that homeschooling offers.

That we, who know our own families the best, get to be right there to help them when a skill that comes easily to others doesn't make sense to them. That we get to be the first responders when they learn about the consequences of being lazy in learning. Perhaps, when we shift our perspective, we might even appreciate the gifts contained in the imperfections that ingrain themselves into our homeschool day.

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Apr. 10, 2019

Bigger Than Goals: Why You Need a Homeschool Mission Statement

By Heather Mills Schwarzen
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Bigger Than Goals: Why You Need a Homeschool Mission Statement

"Our Sonlight books get so much use! Elijah loves to look at the illustration-rich books during his free time. So grateful for Sonlight's amazing book choices that make learning so fun for our children!"

Tracy M. of Germantown, MD

What if I told you that there was a customized road map available for your unique homeschool? A tool that would help you quickly and painlessly evaluate curriculum options on the fly? A guide that would help you prioritize extracurriculars, choose field trips, and even decide whether or not to join the amazing new co-op your church just started?

It exists. And— ready for this?— it’s free. All of this and more is the territory of a well-crafted homeschool mission statement.

A Mission Versus Goals

A homeschool mission statement is not a set of annual goals or a checklist of skills to master. It's much, much more. Think of it as the why behind the how of your goals.

A mission statement is the purpose of your homeschool—the broad, long-term vision that you are trying to coax into reality. It applies to everyone in the family, too. While goals are individual and unique to each of your students, your mission statement is universal.

Setting goals is an important part of homeschooling. But your mission statement predominates even your goals. It tells you where a goal fits in the big scheme of things and how it should be pursued.

Your mission statement reminds you that

  • signing up your 12 year-old for the traveling weekend Math Olympics team conflicts with your dedication to worship as a family every Sunday
  • that the open-and-go science workbooks your friend is raving about runs afoul of your desire to offer hands-on learning

Finding Freedom in Limited Choices

The biggest bonus of a homeschool mission statement is the freedom offered in an automatic limiting of options. From curriculum and field trips to online classes, we are bombarded with myriad opportunities for a rich educational environment.  If you’ve ever found yourself lost in a maze of incredible distractions at a homeschool conference, you know how hard it is to sort the excitement of the new from the truth of what’s needed. A homeschool mission statement blows away the chaff and keeps you focused on where you’re headed… which helps you decide how to get there!

Bigger Than Goals: Why You Need a Homeschool Mission Statement

Writing Down the Mission Statement

Charting your course towards a homeschool mission statement is actually a fairly simple process:

  • Determine why you’re on this path at all. Is it because you have a child you feel is best served learning at home? You feel that a uniquely Christ-centered education can best be offered within the structure of a family? Your husband’s work schedule is such that if your kids were in school, they would never see Dad? Whatever your reasoning, recognizing it is the first step in stating your purpose.
  • Picture what fruit you’d ultimately like homeschooling to bear in your lives. Ask yourself what you’d like your family to look like in twenty years, and use that to state your long-term guiding principles.
  • Think about your teaching style and methods. Are you dedicated to living books? Prefer to have kids study independently? Mention that. It will help you say no to enticing options in the moment and save you time, energy, and money.

When you’ve finished, write it all up in a few quick sentences. Keep coming back to your mission statement over the course of several weeks (with your spouse, preferably) to refine it into something that you feel reflects who you are, what you are working towards, and how you think it best to get there.

Putting Your Mission Statement To Use

The rubber meets the road when you begin to put your homeschool mission statement into action. Spring is a great season to give yours a test run! As curriculum sales swirl, sign-ups for fall activities begin popping up, and you feel the weariness of the year settling on you, refer to your newly crafted mission statement.

Someone who wrote that teaching their children to love Jesus and their neighbors was a priority would wrestle less with choosing baseball over a mission trip to serve the homeless. Someone who’s a decidedly experience-based unschooler could more easily walk away from a structured classroom co-op.

Revisit your mission statement annually to make sure that you’re still on the path you intended to follow—or to refine the vision as you journey along. Apply your personalized homeschooling guide to make your job easier and to thrive as you go!

Choose a curriculum that matches your homeschool mission statement.
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Apr. 8, 2019

7 Keys for an Extraordinary Education at Home

By Veronica Soto
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7 Keys for an Extraordinary Education at Home

Parents choose to homeschool precisely because they want their children to excel and to make a place for themselves in the world. But many parents copy what the public school is doing, buying desks and a stack of workbooks.

This method works very well for some children. But there’s so much more to education than what can be taught in workbooks or by sitting at a desk! You can set your child up for an extraordinary education by going beyond the classroom and applying these seven keys.

1. Don’t Tie Yourself to a Desk

Children usually learn better through movement. Touch and exploration are vital to some children. Other children remember concepts better if they see them in action.

2. Add Art

Finger paint spelling words, write math on the sidewalk in chalk, and draw pictures of the stories from history! Art reveals a new dimension in learning.

3. Get into the Community

Learning can happen anywhere.

  • Let your child practice math by adding up the grocery tab as you are shop.
  • Browse through library stacks for an afternoon.
  • Seeing art in person at a museum has more impact than leafing through paintings in a book.
  • Gardening with a neighbor teaches more about how plants grow than doing a worksheet on plants.
  • A visit to the zoo floods the five senses with an experience of zoology.
  • Local experts can teach your children to crochet or to play piano.
  • Elderly neighbors love sharing stories about their lives—informal history lessons!

4. Allow Free Time

Don’t feel pressured to fill every moment of your children's days with structured learning. Children need down time to process what they’ve learned. During the time they aren’t actively learning, their brains sort and store information they learned earlier.

Allow your kids to get bored. Studies show that being bored stimulates creativity and problem-solving skills. Children will use their imaginations more and usually find their own ways to fill in that time.

Instead of filling their time with activities and projects, try filling up some boxes to inspire creative play—a box of art materials or tinkering supplies.

5. Have Family Storytime

Study after study shows the benefits of the written word when it’s not sealed up in boring textbooks or dry texts. When a story is interesting, all kinds of new brain connections are formed, and children will incorporate new concepts often without realizing it. Set aside time for them to read about things that interest them, in addition to their regular assigned reading.

But also take the time to read to your child. Sonlight will guide your children through hundreds of quality books that will almost effortlessly nurture their intellect. But don’t be afraid to branch beyond the curriculum and add books on any topic your family finds fascinating.

6. Play, Play, Play

Schools underestimate the value of play. Play isn’t just something children do when they have nothing better to do and they just run around wasting time. Children are not designed to sit still and do workbooks all day. Play is when children learn at their very best.

  • Play increases fine and gross motor skills that will be used later for writing and for sports.
  • It engages the portions of the brain required for STEM learning.
  • Play encourages creativity.
  • Play promises a life-long love of exercise, improves a child’s health and immune system, and improves sleep.

As often as possible, let children play outdoors or at least in an indoor activity center so they can get exercise.

7. Follow Your Child’s Lead

If your child isn't into history this week, but is on a science kick, you’ll find science is very easy to teach, but history isn't. By following your child’s lead, you can teach more information with less effort.

You can incorporate other subjects into the ones your child loves. For example, if their current fascination is trains, you can have them multiply train parts, read stories about trains, write a research paper on types of trains, learn about the history of trains, and more.

Of course, most parents won’t want to completely forget about the other subjects, but you’ll find that if you pay attention to what your child wants to know, they usually have a better attitude about learning about what you do want them to study.

When you homeschool with these seven principles, you might find that part of your day will look like traditional schools. That's okay! One of the great things about homeschooling is that you are free to follow exactly what the school does, but you don’t have to. You are also free to choose an extraordinary education for your children when you homeschool.

Choose an extraordinary curriculum for an extraordinary education.
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Apr. 5, 2019

How to Use Copywork and Dictation to Teach Language Arts

By Deana Wood
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How to Use Copywork and Dictation to Teach Language Arts

"Sonlight's LA program has boosted my girls' reading, spelling, and writing."

Erin H. of Franklin, TN

Copywork and dictation practices have been around for ages. We can even see examples of its importance in the Bible when men dedicated their lives to the cause of transcribing the Bible, word for word, so that more and more people could read and hear it.

I can remember learning about the Bible scribes. One person would stand in front of many scribes and read aloud from one copy of the Scriptures while many scribes would sit and carefully write out the words, being attentive to even the tiniest details. Oh, what a special job they had to further the gospel. Can you imagine? Being saturated in the Scriptures on a daily basis must have impacted every facet of their being.

Copywork and dictation are still alive and well even today. Many homeschoolers use it as a tool to teach grammar and composition. It only makes sense that, like the Bible scribes, being exposed to expertly written words can certainly impact a child’s communication skills. However, it can be tricky if you aren’t sure exactly how to teach from copywork passages.

There’s no need to fear. I am here to help, and I felt the exact same way when we started with Sonlight several years ago. Thankfully, my Instructor’s Guides have held my hand over the years and taught me how to pull out important information from great passages of literature. I’ve also learned some helpful tricks on my own to help make copywork and dictation a routine part of our homeschool routine.

1. Choose a Passage

If you are a Sonlighter, you’re in luck! Kick back and relax because Sonlight takes care of this step for you. If not, you’ll need to choose a meaty passage from whatever book you are currently reading. You might choose the passage because it includes a certain grammar skill, or you may choose an inspiring passage and then examine it. You’ll want to make sure that this passage is, as Charlotte Mason might say, “free of twaddle” and models excellent composition skills.

You’ll want to choose a passage that is of an appropriate length for your child. In the early years, it may only be a sentence or two. In the later elementary years, you’ll want to increase up to a paragraph. In the middle school years, you can include a little more than a paragraph if your child can handle it. The only caution here is to make sure you don’t exhaust your child. That is not the purpose of copywork and dictation, so be sure to choose a passage that is challenging but not out of reach for your child’s level.

2. Read & Discuss the Passage

First read the passage to your child. Then let the child read the passage to you. Discuss the meaning of the passage with your child. You may even think about where you heard it in the read aloud and consider the context.

3. Examine the Passage for Content, Usage and Vocabulary

Give your child a highlighter and have them highlight any places where they may struggle with the word choice, vocabulary, or usage. They may ask questions such as

  • Why did the author use that word?
  • Why did the author write it that way?
  • What does that word mean?

Help your child find the answers to their questions. Look up words in the dictionary, and discuss why the author may have chosen the word may instead of the word can.

For a child who just can’t seem to find something to highlight, you may say, “I would like for you to highlight three words in the passage that you think others may not understand.”

4. Examine the Passage for Grammar & Spelling

Take your child on a grammar and mechanics walk through the passage, noting the punctuation, capitalization, and any interesting grammatical structures.

Then choose just one skill to hone in on. In the early years, it might be periods or capital letters. In the later years, you may decide to focus on clauses and parts of speech. Once you have determined the focus skill, point it out to your child and talk about it extensively. Discuss what it means, why the author chose it, and how it fits in the sentence. Don’t worry! If you’re a Sonlighter, your Instructor’s Guide will help you!

Again, a highlighter can be a valuable tool to help. My son recently had a lesson on primary and secondary support, so we used different colors of highlighters to show the primary and secondary support sentences in the copywork passage. It was an effective exercise as he was then able to see the lack of support sentences in his own writing.

5. Identify and Discuss Literary Elements

You’ll want to then point out any literary elements. There are several different types of literary elements, but these are some of the more common examples:

  • Allusion
  • Diction
  • Euphemism.
  • Foreshadowing
  • Imagery
  • Metaphor/Simile
  • Personification

You might choose a specific color highlighter to use to identify literary elements in copywork. Discuss the literary element, and talk about other places you’ve seen it appear in literature. You may also model a response to the passage by saying, “I love the author’s use of foreshadowing here. It really clues me in to what may happen and gives me an opportunity to make a prediction about what will happen to the character.”

6. Copy the Passage

At this point, the original copy is usually pretty marked up, so I like to give my child a fresh copy of the passage. Then, I stress my expectations. For copywork, the focus is attention to detail, so I make sure that they know that I will be looking for penmanship, correct spacing, and correct use of punctuation and spelling. Basically, I will expect a neat, perfect copy of the passage. I remind them to take their time and really think about each little piece of the passage.

This is the point where you will need to make a decision for your child. Some children can write the entire passage daily. This is a great thing and should be encouraged. Some will not, and that is alright too. However, your child does need daily exposure to the passage. So even if you do not require them to copy the entire passage each day, they will need to do something with it every day.

For those who are not up for daily copywork, you may break up the copywork assignment, having them copy one sentence per day. Or you may break up the examination of the passage over the course of a week. You might examine the passage for content and vocabulary on Monday, the grammar and spelling on Tuesday, and literary elements on Wednesday. You may even choose to simply read over the passage daily. It is most certainly up to you how you require your child to interact with the passage, but again, daily exposure is your goal.

7. Self-Correction

Once your child has copied the passage, have them correct their work against the original. Let them know that they will have to correct any mistakes they made, and of course, you will correct the final draft of the copywork. This is a very useful step in copywork, because they are looking at their work from a different perspective, and that will provide another layer of understanding.

8. Dictation

On the last day of the week, sit down with your child and dictate the passage as they write or type it. Stress the importance of correct spelling and grammar. Read the passage carefully, making sure to read the punctuation. Ideally, you want to only repeat once.

If you like, before dictation day, you may consider letting your child read the passage to you while you write down the dictation. This helps them to also learn to read fluently, and they usually get a real kick out of trading places with the teacher!

When finished, have your child check and correct his work. If you want to take it to an even higher level, you may give him a quiz and have him pick out and label the literary elements present in the passage and define the vocabulary. Keep in mind, however, that is not necessary.

The idea behind copywork and dictation is that repeated exposure to expert composition will in turn, teach your child to compose with expertise. The practice of copywork and dictation is similar to an internship. Your child is an apprentice to the great writers of yesterday and today. Why would you not utilize the expertise at your fingertips?

If this list overwhelms you, don’t worry. This is not a weekly requirement. Sometimes, I do a great job at examining copywork, and some weeks, I literally hand the passage to my kids and say, “Copy this.” I usually aim for a close examination of the passage every other week. Also your Sonlight Instructor’s Guide will be so very valuable in this process. Trust the notes you find there, and let them be your guide. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to copywork.

I think that when we consider the Bible scribes, we can see how important their work was. It must have felt tedious at the time, but they made the very first copies of the Scriptures with their own hands. What an honor! While I certainly can’t promise that every copywork passage will be as live-giving and life-changing as the Scriptures, I can say with confidence that spending time with expert literature will, without a doubt, influence your child’s writing positively. It will give them the tools they need to one day be able to effectively communicate their thoughts in the written word as well. That is the goal of every language arts curriculum, and that is well worth the time and effort.

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Apr. 3, 2019

3 Outside-the-box Learning Activities When You Need a Day of Fun

By Bethany Weathersby
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3 Outside-the-box Learning Activities When You Need a Day of Fun

Although learning is fun and Sonlight is a wonderfully delightful way to homeschool, there are times when you or your kids get in a rut. On those days when motivation is waning or bad attitudes are cropping up, a small change of pace can make a huge positive impact. Here are three outside-the-box learning activities our family has used over the years to spice up our homeschool day with a bit of fun. Surprise your kids with one of these activities this week!

1. Dollar Words

For Spelling, Vocabulary, and Math

Virtually No Prep

The rule for creating dollar words is that each letter in the alphabet is assigned an increasing monetary value, with the letter A worth $.01 and Z worth $.26.

The goal is to come up with as many words as you can that are worth exactly $1.00. I write all the letters and their corresponding values at the top of a whiteboard, and then we all write dollar words in the space below.

If your family likes a healthy dose of competition, have a contest to see who can come up with the most dollar words in a certain amount of time. Or just leave things low-key with nothing but curiosity satisfied as you see how many dollar words your kids can think of.

Dollar Words
Dollar Words

2. Gallon House

For Math and Life Skills

Virtually No Prep

If someone is struggling to keep liquid measurements straight, drawing a gallon house can be really helpful. The house itself is shaped like a G for gallon, with a roof added to the top. The four windows, each in the shape of a Q, symbolize quarts. The quart windows have two people in them, each one a P that represents pints. Each pint person has two eyes shaped like a C for cups. Now you have a visual representation of liquid measurements!

  • 4 quarts in a gallon
  • 2 pints in a quart
  • 2 cups in a pint

You may want to hang your gallon house on the wall as a reference or tape it inside the cover of a math book for easy access. If your kids enjoy drawing, let them embellish their gallon houses by adding landscaping and other scenery.

Gallon House

3. Lava Suckers

For Science

Moderate Prep

Most young kids are intrigued by volcanoes and have a sweet tooth; lava suckers are a fun way to combine both. Kids grasp the concept of liquid and solid forms of lava when they make hard candy.

  • molten rock is represented by the hot lollipop mixture on the stove
  • igneous rock is represented by the hardened lollipops cooling on the counter

Homemade lollipops have just a few basic ingredients and are simple to make. Do an online search for a recipe, buy some lollipop sticks at your local department store or online, and grab whatever flavoring sounds good to you. If you want to kick things up a notch, you can use candy molds, but placing the sticks on waxed paper and pouring the candy mixture directly on them in little rounds works just fine.

Keep Learning Fun

The primary purpose of each of these activities is to inject fun into your day while reinforcing educational concepts, so be sure to talk with your kids about what they’re learning. If your kids seem extra curious, pull out a reference book for further study.

At the same time, remember that just because something is educational doesn’t mean it can’t simply be fun. Kids will learn something from all three of these activities even if you don’t spend a bunch of time talking about the concepts behind them. Sometimes the best way to learn something is to tone down the academic talk and ramp up the fun factor.

TRY LITERATURE-BASED LEARNING
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Apr. 1, 2019

Homeschool Mom, Are You Getting the Socialization You Need?

By Heather Mills Schwarzen
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Homeschool Mom, Are You Getting the Socialization You Need?

If you’ve homeschooled for more than a week, you’re well aware of the concern that children be properly socialized. Everyone from your Aunt Barbara to the mailman wants to know that your kids are spending time with their peers, getting out of the house, and otherwise having the chance to interact in outside of an academic setting.

Moms Need Socializing, Too

Even if you roll your eyes at the concern for adequate socialization as your scurry from art lessons to soccer practice to a playdate to Bible quizzing, there might be one part of the idea you’re missing. Moms need socializing, too, and not just as they usher their brood from one co-op class to another.

It’s easy to forget, as we invest our days in the character and education of our children, that we are social beings, too. And while the most introverted among us may revel in the thought of not leaving the house for a solid week, the truth is that we were created for fellowship.

Our souls crave the intimacy of friendship, and our cups were made to be filled by the kind of encouragement that only comes by being known. And how can you be known? By stepping out and being face to face with others.

But Who’s Got Time for Socialization as a Mom?

Looking at your daily schedule, it’s probably hard to imagine where you could possibly carve out time to invest in simply conversing with other women. So many other needs are vying for your limited time and attention.
Surely homeschool mom socialization is something optional that we can push to the bottom of the schedule as we do the truly important tasks of motherhood.

How important is it, really, to grab coffee on a Saturday morning with a group of friends when you can hardly manage a date night with your husband four times a year?

Actually, it’s very important. Homeschool moms live their calling day in and day out, in a way few jobs demand. They never clock out, and rarely call in backup. Even worse, they are deeply emotionally invested in the outcome of their labors—meaning every perceived failure is personal, and every hard day is a blow to the heart. And while husbands sympathize and assist in the workload when and where they can, they can never fully empathize… and that’s where friends come in.

Filling Your Cup, Mom

A small group of like-minded sojourners on the homeschooling path can bring levity to the task of homeschooling. Sharing struggles gives perspective; hearing victories brings hope. Simply knowing that you’re not alone is one of the key benefits of true socialization—and one that a homeschool mom needs desperately!

But isn’t it enough to share a coffee while waiting on your kids’ piano lessons to be over? While these little snippets of time might be enough to keep topping off the well of fellowship in your heart, from time to time you need a deeper dip. It might be an hour alone with that same piano lesson mom, or maybe a dinner with the ladies from church. Co-op friends, neighbors, anyone who sees you as more than the mom who teaches her kids are all good candidates for building the kind of friendships that enrich the life and encourage the passions of the homeschooling mom.

How do you find time to socialize? And what kind of activities do you invest in with your friends?

Sonlight Connections Facebook group

While a Facebook group can never substitute for face-to-face friends, it can provide a place of support! Join us there.

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