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Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

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Gregg and Sono Harris have been longtime faithful homeschoolers here in the NorthWest for many years, and they and their children have been influential leaders for the cause of Christ throughout the world. Please keep husband Gregg and children Josh, Joel, Alex, Brett, Sarah, Isaac, and James in your prayers as they face this recent loss of Sono.

Thanks to Randy Alcorn for this eulogy of the life of Sono Sato Harris and testimony to God’s faithful kindness in her life.

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The Constitution Will Not Save

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The 4th July is guaranteed to incite emotion. A variety of emotion.

In the face of all these impending feelings, I am grateful to Shepherd Press for the following newsletter.

Shepherd Press
Newsletter 96
July 1, 2010

The 4th of July is a combination many things – cookouts, fireworks, concerts, memorials to fallen heroes and to the birth of a nation. Fireworks and explosions will mark celebrations all across America. We can and should be thankful for the many blessings that God has bestowed upon the United States for the last 234 years. However, it is more important to remember why our country and indeed all countries exist. Our country exists by the sustaining power of Jesus Christ, to the end that God, his Father, will bring salvation to all those whom he has called. America does not exist for her own heritage, nor does she survive by her own will. America exists and continues to survive because it pleases God for her to do so. We owe our collective breath as Americans to the purposes and pleasures of God. We will not survive one minute longer or shorter than what God sees as fitting. This may rankle the notions of the politically correct, but it is true nonetheless. (Act 17:24-28; Col. 1:15-20; Romans 13)

In 1 Timothy 2:1-4, Paul shows us how to pray for our nation. We are to pray that our leaders will lead in such a way that we, the people of God, may be about the business of bringing honor to the name of Jesus Christ. Paul sent these words to Timothy while living under the tyrannical and decadent rule of the Caesars. Paul was not telling Timothy to lead a populist revolt against unjust leaders. Instead, Paul urged prayers of thanksgiving and intercession be made for them. Why? Because he wanted God’s people to be about God’s work. God’s work was not about saving the Roman empire, any more than God’s work today is about saving the United States. Paul was a faithful and good Roman citizen who used that citizenship for God’s purposes, just as American Christians should today. But Paul’s focus was on his heavenly citizenship and adding others to the heavenly nation. America has eerily mimicked aspects of the Roman culture of Timothy’s day. As in the Roman world, spiritualism is on the rise. Sexual perversion has become normal and legal. Paganism is gaining ground.

Preaching the Constitution will not turn aside these pagan tides. Preaching the Gospel will. The United States Constitution is a wonderful and brilliant document. But as John Adams said 200 years ago, our constitution is only useful if the people whom it governs are a people who are first governed by God.
On this Independence Day, don’t get caught up in the fear that each political party has of the other party. Teach your children why America really exists as a nation. In this moment of history, those of us who live in the United States have the mandate to declare the glory and message of Jesus Christ to a fallen and lost world. It is time for the Gospel.

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Engineering for Youngsters??

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What we homeschoolers have been incorporating for years throughout our educating is now being brought into public schools! We have long believed that engineering is a foundational skill and should be taught young and often.

So it is interesting to see, in this article by The New York Times, that this concept is now being brought into the lower grades of some public schools and is being reinforced, outside of the homeschooling community, as being an important component to education.

Break out your construction sets or send your homeschoolers outside to engineer today!!

Full article here.

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Pervasive, Persuasive, Pernicious

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At the risk of encouraging a snobby and condemning response I think this short clip on the commercialization of children is worth pondering and serves as a timely reminder as we head into summer, a time which many families use for rest, restoration, and recreation before hitting homeschool again in the fall.

How much time do/will your children devote to absorbing what is ultimately a covetous, and idolatrous attitude of consumerism? Although admittedly none of us want our children to develop the health risks that this film implied are linked to consumerism, it seems to me that this trailer brings up a higher danger at stake: an attitude of cruise ship living rather than wartime field survival.

Our gospel community group is currently working through a series on the sovereignty of God in suffering, the content of which goes against all that consumerism promises. Consumerism preaches that it is all about you, what you want, and how to get others to worship you, but the call of Scripture speaks of higher things, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death,” and “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake.”

For some this trailer will invoke feelings of self-righteousness and condemnation, “That is why we never let our children watch ____.” Others may find it irritating, “Here we go again on another rant about how parents are failing again.” But in the hopes that it may serve as warning, revelation, or source of further study to some of you, I will re-post it here.

P.S. I should note that not all of the clips in this trailer are appropriate for young children. It may be what some of your children’s peers are viewing but it is not suitable for all. You’ve been forewarned.

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How Do You Schedule Homeschooling?

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Timberdoodle has often heard the question, “how do you schedule homeschooling?” and while many families do it differently we thought we would share what worked well for our family.

Our philosophy has been that the sooner a child can learn how to learn the easier homeschooling becomes. (For more on this see Why Timberdoodle Encourages Independent Learning)
So in our family growing up, as soon as we were able to read we became responsible for completing our own assignments.

Mom started each school year by figuring out how much we needed to accomplish each week in order to finish that grade level by the end of the school year. So for example: if a child had five different workbooks that year, (math, language arts, thinking skills, etc) Mom would take each workbook and divide the total pages in that book by the number of weeks we did school and that was the number of pages that we had to accomplish each week.
Example: Building Thinking Skills has 408 pages divided by 36 weeks of school equals 11.3 pages a week, which we would round up to 12 giving us a bit of slush room. After doing the math, Mom would make us a chart which we would photo copy and check off each week. (Timberdoodle has now designed free PDFs that will take the work out of it for you. Just visit Timberdoodle.com/Schedules to get your free blank schedule.)

At that point Mom bowed out of managing our homeschooling and it became our responsibility to make sure we finished each week’s assignment. If we couldn’t understand something or needed help, we would ask. But other than that Mom was hands off.

making a checklist for homeschooling
To help keep the system running smoothly we had a system of rewards and consequences in place. For our family the rule was, schoolwork must be completed by Friday evening or we missed out on Friday family movie night and were sequestered to our bedroom to keep working on the schoolwork. In case a child did not complete it all that night, all future fun activities such as playing or frivolous reading were also off limits until the child was caught up.

For a younger child the same scheduling system works well also, the only difference being that you as the parent are responsible to help them complete their list until they are old enough to be able to read the list and any instructions that may be in their workbooks.

This method is not limited to workbooks, if you have a science kit you want your child to complete you could divide up the lessons and assign the number of projects you want finished every week. Same thing goes for piano lessons, or minutes of practice etc. Simply decide how much you want done each week, draw up a check list and then turn it over to your child.

If you have group activities that you still want done together, that is not a problem. Just do it when it’s convenient for your family throughout the day. It does not need to be a part of the child’s assignments since they will not be the one primarily responsible for that activity. In our family, we wanted to read through Fallacy Detective together as a group. So we just added it to our evening reading time when we were all together anyway. Fallacy Detective was completed and we children were still responsible for the majority of our own schoolwork.

This approach takes most of the homeschooling pressure off of mom and lets mom focus on teaching the more specialized topics. Can it get much easier than that?

Precision Schedule Planning for Overachievers
In our family we never stressed over stop and start dates. If we had the flu or took a vacation, schoolwork would pick up where we left off when we returned the following week. This worked particularly well for us since we didn’t take summers off, but preferred to sprinkle the free time throughout the year anyway. My cousin however is a different story. She has four young daughters and tracks schoolwork using custom spreadsheets she designed herself! When she sat down to plan her school year she researched scheduling and holidays, then shared the information with us. (She’s amazing!)

Here are her notes for you:

Figure your Start and Finish Dates based on 36 weeks of instruction, plus the number of holidays you decide.

What might be helpful in planning your schedule:

  • Public/Private School holidays, are not counted as instructional days.
  • Most public school years end from 40-42 instructional weeks after it begins.
Instruction Days/Weeks Holidays Total School Year Start Date End Date
36 weeks (4 weeks) 40 weeks 9-5-2012 (Wednesday after labor Day) 06-12-2013
180 days (25 days) 200 days 9-5-2012 (Wednesday after labor Day) 06-12-2013

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of Holidays Observed in the U.S. (from Wikipedia)
Do feel free to add in your own, such as birthdays and family vacation days!

  • Autumn (Fall) Break – about one week in October (in the week of Columbus Day) (some areas do not have this break, these areas only take Columbus Day itself off)
  • ThanksgivingHoliday – End of November (The week of Thanksgiving – 3 days before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, and the day after – the Friday before the break is considered a half-day).
  • Christmas/Holiday Break – Varies, usually starts the third Saturday in December and ends the first Monday after the New Year’s Day, unless New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday in which the first Monday is the official holiday, so school would re-open on the Tuesday after New Year’s Day, as was the case in 2012.
  • Martin Luther King Break – Students have a half-day Friday and have the Weekend, Martin Luther King day, and sometimes Tuesday off.
  • Winter Break – one week in February or March (depending on the region)
  • Easter/Spring Break – 2 weeks in March or April (usually starting on Lazarus Saturday).
  • All federal and state holidays, including religious holidays (such as Good Friday, and sometimes Jewish/Islamic holidays) – depending on school demographic.
  • Teacher’s Day off (convention) – 2 to 3 days on any day in school calendar.
  • Snow Days (in regions where it snows in winter) – usually a few days up to a full week allocated. Where these exceed the allocation, they are made up from scheduled breaks (such as mid-winter break), or made up with days at the end of the school year.
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The Knight’s Story

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Have you ever wondered how families with disabilities or deadly diseases can keep going day after day?

Did you ever wonder what if your own family found out some “bad” news, would you remain faithful to Jesus? Or maybe you could still say that you love Him with your mouth but would you really embrace Him ferociously with your heart?

God has done and is doing a great work in John Knight’s family. Here is a summary of his and his wife’s situation and Hope.

This is four minutes you won’t have wasted.

“This Was Grace” Extended Version from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

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Preparing Your Toddler for Homeschool

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1) Keep it fun!
Your goal is productive learning and that can be accomplished through many fun methods. But if your child is not easily making the transition into being required to accomplish something, don’t hesitate to bring out some motivators.

A couple of ideas we’ve used are:
A) Make a chore board of all the different tasks you would like to accomplish in a week with your child then let your child choose which one he would like to do next. Flip over the finished task card once it is done and this way you will move through all your goals for your child while still enabling him to have some options.
B) Let your toddler earn a reward for finishing the tasks. For us it worked well to have the toddler pick out 6 tasks to do, and when the tasks were finished she earned the privilege of watching some Signing Time (which is also educational).
C) Use even more immediate rewards. When the toddler we were working with had some difficulty with tracing, we brought out fish crackers and set up a story where the fish needed to get home and as she traced the line, the fish followed, when she reached the end she got to eat the fish.

2) Keep it short
Keep the structured projects short and varied. Your toddler is much more likely to stay engaged for an hour if they have 6-10 short projects in that time, rather than spending all that time tracing letters. You can set them up for longer periods of time with activities they already enjoy such as water play, coloring etc, but for the structured learning begin small.

3) Use all their senses
Don’t get tunnel vision and focus only on “workbook” type tasks, there will be plenty of years for that later. Work to incorporate all their senses as you do different activities, some activity ideas are: music (dancing, rhythm, listening, playing), art (paint, finger-paint, gluing, cutting, use wiggly eyes and draw “happy faces,” markers, pencils, bubber, etc), thinking skills (Bambino, puzzles, shape sorters, read books and talk about the what, when, where, why and how), movement (spinning, running, swinging, hammering, jumping, climbing, dancing, etc), counting (as you put toys away, objects in books, etc), etc, etc.

4) Keep it flexible
Living for a toddler is learning. New things, experiences, and skills to be learned surround them. Structure is good, but you can relax and enjoy the moment. If you don’t get to puzzles this week, don’t sweat it! If your toddler loves to paint, encourage and expand it! All of life is learning, have fun and relax!!

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