Do you or your children ever find yourselves completely lacking motivation to work on school assignments or feeling so discouraged by all that needs to be done that you don’t even know where to begin? It certainly happens in our family, and I know we’re not alone in the experience. One of my favorite solutions to the problem of struggling to get school work accomplished is one I originally used for tackling neglected housework. I set a timer.
Focused Work for 20 Minutes
How long you set your timer doesn’t really matter, but our family always goes for twenty minutes of uninterrupted work. It never ceases to amaze me how much can be accomplished in that amount of time. It’s long enough to make significant progress on something, but short enough to not be overwhelming.
Feeling apathetic about school or simply don’t like what the Instructor's Guide is telling you to do? Anyone can manage to devote just twenty minutes of their attention to a task.
Got a little behind and are drowning in a list of boxes to check? Twenty minutes won’t get you caught up, but it will definitely get you started in the right direction.
The key is simply to not allow yourself to be distracted by anything else during that time. Instead, put all your attention toward school while the timer is ticking.
Choosing the Task for the Countdown
How do you or your child decide what to focus on during your twenty (or ten or thirty) minutes? The answer depends on the greatest need. Here are a few possibilities I've chosen:
Opt for the biggest job because it’s the most overwhelming.
Choose the thing I like least to remove the dread of having it waiting to be done.
Do a few quick tasks for the satisfaction of accomplishing multiple things.
At times it will be best to let your children choose the task so they’ll have more motivation to work hard during the allotted time. In other situations, you, having a better grasp of the big picture, will want to pull rank and make the call yourself. Choose whatever seems best for the situation, but know there isn’t a wrong option because the end result will be completed work whichever route you take.
When the Timer Goes Off
Twenty minutes of focused work has happened, and you hear the timer ding. Now what? Our response varies, depending on the circumstances of the day.
The sense of accomplishment that comes with productivity increases our motivation and we immediately set the timer for another twenty minutes of work.
We set the timer for a five or ten minute break of exercise, relaxation, or unrelated tasks, then do another twenty minutes of school work.
Something else becomes a higher priority, so we set school aside with assurance the day wasn’t a total academic waste.
The next time you sense the school day slipping away possibly before it’s even started, go set a timer and see what you and your children can accomplish in just twenty minutes.
As winter (mostly) loosens its grip, and the spring colors and spring weather emerge, it is the perfect time to celebrate being a homeschooler! You can still enjoy spring while getting schoolwork done!
While public school children have to take snow days, homeschoolers can school through most of the cold and the ice and celebrate with sun days, when the weather turns nice.
An observational approach is terrific for nature study, but doesn’t quite do the trick when it comes to anatomy, does it? It can be challenging to adequately teach about muscles and bones, when all the moving parts all hidden away inside our bodies. We simply can’t see under our skin!
But exciting hands-on activities—like building this set of faux muscles and bones—are an effective way to transform the study of anatomy into something students can actually see and touch.
In addition to the wide array of science and health books included in Science F: Health, Medicine and Human Anatomy, there are also a plethora of hands-on activities, scheduled at regular intervals throughout the year. Linda Allison’s Blood and Guts: A Working Guide to Your Own Insides is particularly full of terrific project ideas (and, yes, animal organ dissection tips, too!) This simple science demonstration adapted from the book shows how skeletal muscles work in pairs.
Create a Model Arm to See Muscles at Work
On an average day, you might not give your elbows more than a passing thought, but have you ever tried to
write a letter,
brush your teeth, or
eat a meal
without bending your elbows at all? You quickly realize how important they are! Of course, even an elbow joint wouldn’t do you much good, if you didn’t also have bones, muscles, and tendons working together to help the elbow bend.
Are you ready to see how these all work together? Let’s build a model of the human arm, using a few items you might even have around the house already.
Materials Needed
Poster board
Ruler
Marker
Scissor
Masking tape
Straight pin
Large paperclip
Long balloons
Optional: Crayon or paint
Instructions
You may choose to color the poster board a bone-like shade, as we did, or you may opt to leave it white.
Cut two 8”x11” pieces from your posterboard. These will become the radius and ulna.
Roll each of these 8”x11” sections and secure with masking tape, creating two eight-inch-long arm bones (the radius and ulna).
Return to the remainder of your poster board. Cut a section that’s 12”x11” .
Roll this section. Secure with tape to create a twelve-inch-long humerus.
Label each of the three bones. The two 8" bones are the radius and ulna. The one 12" long bone is the humerus.
Use a long straight pin to pierce a hole through the humerus, about a half-inch from the right end. Pierce a hole through the ends of the radius and ulna, too, about a half-inch from the left end.
Straighten a paperclip to create a long flexible wire. Bend a hook at the bottom end.
Place bones on the table. You’ll want the humerus on the left, the radius on the upper right, and the ulna on the bottom right, as shown. Line up the pierced holes, then thread paperclip wire through the holes to create a joint.
Make sure the wire is bent at each end, to keep the wire from pulling out.
You’ll also want to tape over the sharp ends, to keep the wire from popping the balloons.
Partially inflate two long balloons, leaving a tail at both ends. These are your bicep and tricep muscles.
Tie the right end of the bicep balloon to the radius and ulna. (You might want to tie it a little closer to the elbow joint than we originally did.)
Tie the left end of the bicep balloon to the top of the humerus.
Now using the triceps balloon, tie the right end to the right side of the elbow joint.
Bring the balloon around the back of the elbow, and tie the remaining loose end of the tricep to the top of the humerus.
You’ve created a faux, movable arm!
This activity is from Science F: Health, Medicine, and Human Anatomy for ages 10-13
What Are We Observing as the Model Moves?
Because our model is simplified, we’ve attached the faux balloon muscles directly to the cardboard bones, leaving out tendons, ligaments, nerves, joint cartilage and fluid, blood vessels. (In fact, we’ve even left out the rest of the arm muscles.) The positioning of the muscles and bones here isn’t precisely anatomically correct; your real flesh-and-blood arm is a lot more complicated. But let’s test our model, discuss the results, and see what we can observe about muscle action.
[Q] Would the model arm work properly with only one balloon muscle?
[A] No. This is because skeletal muscles—like the ones in your arms—must work together in pairs. We call these pairs the flexor and the extensor. In this model (and in your own arms) the bicep is the flexor and the tricep is the extensor.
[Q] Straighten your model arm. What happens to the tricep (extensor) muscle?
[A] Because we used the word extensor to describe the tricep in this muscle pair, you might have expected the tricep to extend. But it contracts, doesn’t it? Extensor muscles must contract in order to straighten a limb.
[Q] Bend your faux elbow joint. What happens to the bicep (flexor) muscle?
[A] It contracts! Just as extensors contract to straighten a limb, flexors contract to bend the limb (at the attached joint, of course. Otherwise, things would get weird.)
[Q] Bend your model arm back and forth several times. Observe the changes that happens to the bicep (flexor) and tricep (extensor) as you bend and straighten, bend and straighten.
[A] That’s a lot of contracting and extending, extending and contracting! Both flexor and extensor need to be able to extend and contract in order to for your elbow to bend back and forth, don’t they? Flexed biceps might get all the attention, but a perpetually contracted flexor muscle would mean a perpetually bent arm. When you need to straighten your arm, the extensor tricep contracts and pulls on your bones via tendons, and your arm stretches out. Ready to bend your arm again? The flexor bicep pulls instead, and the elbow joint bends.
[Q] Is the arm the only place we see a muscle pair act like this?
[A] No. Striated skeletal muscles—those are the long muscles which attach to your bones—work the same way. You probably sat down to read this, right? As you did, your hamstrings contracted to allow your knees to bend. When you stand up again, your quadriceps will contract and pull, your hamstrings will extend, and your legs will straighten.
The human body is a complex and wonderful machine, isn’t it? There are hundreds of joint and muscles in our body, each one expertly designed with myriad interconnected parts.
Parents of young, gifted children frequently wonder about grade level when it comes time to start schooling—"What grade is my child?" This question seems all-important because grade level is often used to determine when to start formal schooling, what types of educational options to pursue, what curriculum to purchase, daily workload schedules, and academic expectations.
It’s very tempting to push a child ahead a grade level or two. Your precocious four- or five-year old might be reading at a first or second grade level and be doing simple mental math. This child would be bored in a traditional school, so it’s easy to assume they should be placed in first or second grade instead.
But when you homeschool with Sonlight, moving a young child up a grade or two is not necessary and often not even advisable.
Getting Started Early
I knew my oldest was gifted from birth. So it was no surprise when she started walking and talking early, knew her shapes and colors long before her second birthday, or started reading before age 3. By three-and-a-half, I couldn’t wait to jump-start the whole school process! I took her to a kindergarten screening so the school would let her in early. They insisted she was just too young and too immature to do well in kindergarten, no matter what her ability was. Try again at age five, they suggested. The local private school agreed.
Homeschooling as a Last Resort
Frustrated, I decided to try homeschooling for a year. I ordered every catalog I could get my hands on that spring. By summer, I couldn't stop reading the Sonlight catalog; I knew it was the curriculum for us!
Over and over I heard the same advice from experienced moms on various help groups.
“Start one year below your child’s grade level.”
“Don’t push things. Start off a little lower, because Sonlight is already advanced.”
“The PreK level is perfect for kindergarten. It’s more than most children get in kindergarten.”
Later, I would look back upon this advice as my first sign that grade levels are only one aspect to learning.
Still, I had a child who would be 4 in the fall but was doing first and second grade level work already at home. I decided to go with the Sonlight Kindergarten program, figuring it would be too easy and at least one level below where she “really” was. (It was called Core K at the time, but now it’s called HBL A World Cultures.)
A Temporary Fix for the Gifted 4-year-old
We dived in immediately after Box Day, not waiting for the school year to officially start. She was just shy of 4 and an eager learner. We read through dozens of great books.
But something wasn’t quite right. She sat through the books—tolerated them even—but she didn’t love them. She wasn’t engaged. I thought I must be doing something wrong.
However, at the very end of the year, I saw her light up and start truly enjoying the books. It was like a switch turned on.
I realized what I had done wrong was just working at a level too high, too early.
I repeated the entire level again with her at age 4.75 at a faster pace, and it went so much better. This was when I realized interest level doesn’t always equal grade level.
I had always planned to put my child into kindergarten at public school at the end of the year. But when fall came around again, I realized even though we hadn’t had the best year, my daughter was still advanced and would be bored in kindergarten. I realized that homeschooling was the better option.
Falling in Love and Going Beyond
That following year, I fell in love with Sonlight. Each book was so interesting and engaging, even my young son, who was 2 at that time, was enjoying some of the easier books.
When my younger son turned 4, I started him in the PreK program, even though he was showing signs of being more gifted than his sister. Truthfully, it was a bit easy, but so perfect for him in many ways:
He was asking questions about things like quarks and atoms.
He was building levers.
He wanted to know more about other countries.
He was able to go so far beyond the simple reading, writing, and math I had expected preschool to be about, and was learning about science and nature, cultures and the world—things most kindergartners know nothing about.
And he was loving every minute of it. This was when I realized we didn’t have to limit our children to grade level materials for them to thrive.
What About Grade Levels?
When I first started homeschooling, grade levels seemed so important. Getting my daughter into that kindergarten class at age 4 seemed vital. Now, 14 years later, I can’t even remember which grade level any of my children are in without stopping to count.
Sonlight doesn’t require your child to be in a single grade level at all. With Sonlight, your children progress by ability level, and what the grade levels say on the website might not line up with where your child is ability-wise.
So, what grade level is my daughter today? Well, as an answer, I’d like to quote a passage from the book Understood Betsy.
“Why—why,” said Elizabeth Ann, “I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?”
The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. “You aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?”
If you aren't sure what levels to purchase or how to customize your package, we have homeschool consultants available to help. Click here to schedule an appointment.
I own it: ours is a family that values the arts. As such, our homeschool is one where we prioritize immersion and exposure to all forms of creative expression. Fellow homeschoolers often lament that while they find it easy to give their children a steady diet of fabulous literature (hint: every level of Sonlight!), they just don’t have the budget to pursue much in the way of the performing arts.
Guess what? We don’t either! Despite a bare bones level of spending, however, we regularly attend plays, attend concerts, and even see dance performances.
The Arts Matter
The current STEM focus of education is well deserved; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are vital to a vibrant education. But the lesser-applauded STEAM acronym sneaks in the element that ties all of those areas together—Art.
It’s through art that we develop empathy, experience compassion, and learn to communicate our own passions. In a pinch, we can find a Netflix video to experience Shakespeare or use Spotify to bring Vivaldi’s music to life. But nothing replicates the depth of a real, lived-in moment where we encounter fellow human beings engaged in the acts of creativity, skill, and art.
Finding Low-Cost Resources
We all know that a Broadway production can run in the hundreds of dollars for a single ticket. How does a homeschooling family afford to experience performing arts on one income? Here's how we find low-cost, budget-friendly ways to add performing arts into our homeschool culture.
1. Shakespeare in the Park
Nearly every community has some form of this summer stand-by. Google Shakespeare and your town’s name (or the name of the nearest mid-sized town) and see what option pop up. Call and ask if there are bargain performances on certain days of the week.
2. Youth Symphony Performances
While tickets to the professional symphony may be out of reach, most organizations host a variety of youth ensembles led by experienced conductors. Concerts by these orchestras are often $5 or less and feature the works of well-known composers as well as newer compositions.
3. Community Colleges
The Arts Department of your local community college likely hosts multiple performances each year at little to no cost. Drama, music, dance, and even opera are staged through community colleges! You get low cost performing arts all while supporting your local aspiring artists!
4. Church Events
Larger churches might have their own dance and music groups, and even smaller churches have drama teams and even lesser-known performance forms like handbells. At Christmas, free community events like presentations of Handel’s Messiah are easy to find with a little digging.
5. Library Events
Your local library may host outreach and education events for a variety of local resources, like thespian groups and musical ensembles. For example, our library has a quarterly Instrument Petting Zoo with musicians from our city’s symphony orchestra. We’ve also enjoyed several events where actors staged scenes from plays that were being performed locally at the time.
6. Local Schools
Events at your local public schools are usually open to the public. Plays, concerts by bands and orchestras, and any other performing arts offerings are usually just a few dollars per person. We were delighted to find that a local high school has one of the top strings sections in the region— and their performances at the end of each semester are under $15 for our whole family to attend!
7. Small, Local Theatres
While you probably have one or two central, well-known theatres in your town, a little digging will give you the names of a few smaller venues. Their offerings may not be as splashy—often this is where you’ll find your Children’s Theatre groups setting up shop— but they will have diverse and inexpensive performing arts options. This is, in my opinion, the best way to start a tradition of seeing The Nutcracker each year. Spring for the all-out, big deal performance once… then support a smaller ballet studio with your $5 per person on the other years!
8. Look For Special Events
Subscribe to mailing lists and keep an eye on homeschool group pages to get advance notice of upcoming free special events in your area. While some may be recurring and seasonal (like Christmas concerts) others may be one-offs that you won’t want to miss!
Support Your Community, Enrich Your Homeschool
Through our local resources, we’ve been able to meet and interact with passionate artists right here in our own community and stay afloat financially! Pursuing the performing arts as part of our homeschool culture has brought to life the subjects my children study every day and given them new outlets of creative expression.
While we can't provide theater productions or opera performances, or we can enrich your homeschool with engaging electives such as art, music, foreign language, coding, and more. See our carefully curated elective choices here.
Beginning to homeschool is rife with questions; homeschooling with multiple children even more so. While Sonlight curriculum resolves many of the problems a new homeschooler faces, it can be overwhelming to think about using a different History / Bible / Literature Package (HBL) for each child. The good news is that you don't have to! Sonlight is perfect for combining multiple children in a single program!
The trick comes with figuring out which children can work together and which level to use for them. Here is a breakdown of ways to choose the right level when combining your children and tips for doing it well.
Three Ways to Combine Children
As you might expect, there’s more than one way to combine children. Here are three of the most popular methods; feel free to put your own spin on any one of these to find what works for your family.
1. Teach to the Oldest
With this method, you pick the HBL to best suit your oldest child, making adaptations for any younger siblings or just letting them glean what they can along the way. This method usually requires you to separate children at some point or switch to a different method.
Who This Method Might Benefit: Parents who are comfortable with the concept that their younger child might not get quite as much out of a Sonlight program but can easily make it up down the road. Parents who find it easier to add in picture books or easy readers for the younger children also do well with this method.
Who Might Benefit from Another Method: Parents who would find it anxiety-producing to believe their younger child might not be getting as much out of the program. Also parents who are worried about exposing younger children to more sensitive content might prefer to wait.
2. Teach to the Middle
Some parents find this method very natural, especially if there's not a large gap in the middle of the sibling group. It involves choosing a level that's right between the two students and adjusting a little up for the older or a bit down for the younger if need be.
Who This Method Might Benefit: Parents who have two or more children close together in ability or parents who feel comfortable adjusting the program as they go.
Who Might Benefit from Another Method: Parents who would have a hard time adjusting in two different directions at once. I myself find this method particularly difficult, as I kept adding so much material for my oldest to beef it up and more material for my youngest to make sure he wasn’t being left behind, that I ended up doing more work than if I had simply chosen two separate levels.
3. Teach to the Youngest
This might be the most popular option. It involves picking a program that fits your youngest child you wish to combine, or just at the top of their comfort level, and then adding materials to challenge your older child.
Who This Method Might Benefit: Parents who find it easier to add on materials than to worry about what to drop or what to do if a child isn’t getting enough. Many parents find it easier to read a few extra books than to try to adjust the entire program.
Who Might Benefit from Another Method: Parents who don’t feel comfortable holding their oldest child back while waiting for the younger one to be ready, or having an older child who might be at the upper end or above the upper end of the grade recommendations Sonlight lays out.
Do I Have to Combine?
If the thought of combining doesn’t bring you peace, or you feel anxious about your children being in a level that might not be their perfect fit, you don't have to combine! Whether you choose to combine or whether you work through two or more programs at once, you’ll find other homeschoolers around the world using Sonlight just the way you do. Start with the method that sounds the most appealing to you.
Families who have children a year or two apart often find it easier to combine. Children three or more years apart are often more difficult to merge together. However, some families are able to combine children five or more years apart with a little creativity.
The larger the age gap, the more necessary it is to let go of the ideas of grade level for each child or the need to constantly move the oldest ahead. You might find one child needs to hover in place for a year or two while waiting for a sibling to mature.
If your older child is eager to move ahead or the younger child is resistant to starting school, you may find it is more work to keep them together than to use separate levels. Keeping them together might get harder and harder as your oldest gets into higher grades but isn’t progressing in HBL levels. However, if your children are fairly close in ability, they might merge together seamlessly.
For some parents, combining their children is worth the relief they get from combining. For others, it only adds more stress.
Planning for the Future
If you have a lot of very young children, you might not know whether they will combine well in the future. Or you might make plans now, but they grow and develop in ways you can’t predict.
You don’t have to have it all planned out right now.
Choose the very lowest program you feel comfortable starting with and work through it as slowly as you can while you wait for the younger children to catch up. As you work through it, you’ll start to see hints that point you in the direction of future choices.
For example, if your oldest is impatient, asks for more work during the day, and seems to want to go faster, or if a younger child seems not to be interested at all or balks at doing the work, these are possible signs that those two aren’t going to combine well in the next few years.
Or, if your oldest is happy doing what’s scheduled, and your youngest is happy to listen in more often than not, that might show you that they will be fairly easy to combine.
You’re Not Locked into Your Choice for Life
When I feel myself panicking over my choices, it helps to remind myself to take a deep breath and relax. Even if this year is a total disaster, it will work out in the long run. I can adjust what I’m doing as I go and try again.
Even if it’s my child’s senior year, and they struggle with every class, it’s not over. I can simply have them redo their senior year with something else. Or I can have them go on to college after a hard year. Sonlight has a great return policy you can use as a backup plan and excellent Advisors on call to help you figure out to do next. The online support group can answer almost any question at any time of the day, and other parents,who have been where you are, are available to help.
Combining makes life easier for many families. There really is no wrong way to combine unless it’s not working for you. You can try combining in any way that feels most comfortable for your family, or choose not to combine at all. No matter the way you choose, as long as it works for your family, it will be just right.
Take a look at the Sonlight catalog. It has helps for combining children along with detailed package descriptions to help you make the best choices. And as always, if you need help, contact our Advisors.
Have you ever received a gift so special that you kept it for as long as humanly possible? What about one you loved for a shorter period of time, then no longer had use for? How about a gift you never really liked, but valued anyway because of the reasons it was given?
Do you believe that homeschooling is a gift? It is, no matter how you received it.
The Meaningful Gift of Homeschooling
Some parents choose to homeschool from the moment their oldest child starts kindergarten until their youngest graduates from high school. It’s something they’re passionate about and deeply committed to—a lifestyle they would never willingly walk away from. The time they spend working and learning alongside their children is important to them, and they’re in it for the long haul, firmly believing the advantages far outweigh any disadvantages.
The Temporary Gift of Homeschooling
There are other families who find homeschooling serves their family well for a season, but not forever. They love having children home in their early years, then confidently and successfully send them off to a brick and mortar school as they get older, or maybe bring a child home for just one year to focus on a particular aspect of academics or deal with some personal struggles. They know homeschooling won’t always be the best option for their family, but they’re grateful for the extra time it gives them with their children or the opportunity it presents for meeting a particular need.
The Obligatory Gift of Homeschooling
Finally, there are parents who find themselves homeschooling as a side effect of other things going on in their lives. Perhaps they have a sick child whose illness or treatments causes them to miss too many days at the local school. Maybe they live in a remote international location, choosing to homeschool because they don’t want to send their kids away to boarding school. Given a choice, homeschooling would never be their preference, but they accept that it’s the best option they have at the time.
The Mixed Gift of Homeschooling
Some of us may find that we don’t land squarely in any one category.
We feel strongly and positively about homeschooling, but can’t continue for reasons beyond our control.
We homeschool solely because that’s what our life dictates, but we also happen to enjoy it.
We know homeschooling is a short-term commitment for our family, but it still seems to drag on longer than we want it to.
Valuing Your Gift of Homeschooling
What matters most is not our personal perspective toward the gift of homeschooling, which will vary according to our particular circumstances, but that we simply recognize it as a gift in the first place.
It’s a gift of flexibility—the chance to have school revolve around the rest of life instead of vice versa.
It’s a gift of freedom—the option to educate our children in the way that’s best for our season of life.
It’s a gift of time—an opportunity to learn with and about our children.
Homeschooling, like every other option for educating our children, has its pros and cons, but we’re the ones who decide if we’ll focus on the blessings or the burdens. Whether we’re homeschooling because we have to or want to, as either long-term or short-term homeschoolers, may we each appreciate the gift it is for as long as it’s part of our lives.
