One of the most important things to do in going “back to school” is definitely incorporating chore sessions (including having trained everybody in their chores during the summer). I have been writing (and podcasting) a lot about this topic this summer, so rather than re-inventing the wheel here, I will direct you to some of those for more help.

I remember vividly the two summers before my August and September babies were born. I had double the motivation to get the chore schedules updated—a new school year and a new baby’s arrival. I made mini posters for above the washing machine, and we had “laundry lessons” for several days. I upped the look of the chore charts to try to excite the kids a little bit about the new divisions of labor. We timed the tasks to be sure they could be done in the allotted time. We instituted “room to room” for three to five minutes before each chore session to ensure that everybody’s things were up out of the way before the cleaner or assistant chef or little laundry lady started her tasks.

Those are fond memories (believe it or not). The kids were sweet. They were used to working and doing their part from a year old on (when they started putting their books in a basket in the corner of their crib and their toys in another basket). It was just another time in which we learned, grew, and accomplished together. After all, isn’t that what homeschooling is all about!?

Check out some of the links below to help you start your two or three chore sessions a day—or to get ideas for improving your existing ones!

Podcast Episode: Children and Chores
Podcast Episode: How to Get Your Kids To See Work At Home In A Positive Light
Podcast Episode: Five Homeschool Problems and Solutions
Blog Post: Delighting in the Dailies
Blog Post: Laundry, Dishes, and Trash
 

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I have probably said this a thousand times in the past twenty years of speaking to and writing for homeschooling moms: do your dailies! I learned this the hard way (by not doing my dailies!), and once I learned this TRICK (and it does work like magic, so I guess you can call it a trick!), my days were amazingly better.

Because I have spoken about it and written about it so much in the past, I won’t re-invent the wheel here. But I did want to jump in to tell you to trust this fifty-something year old, homeschooling veteran of thirty-one years. When I say that this is the first, albeit simple, answer to a homeschooling mamas problems of not getting things done or feeling overwhelmed, I know what I’m talking about! 🙂

There are two specific posts in which I teach about this—one for learning to do your dailies and one for learning to delight in them….so check them out below!

Delighting in the Dailies Part I

Delighting in the Dailies Part II

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In addition to previewing textbooks with your student, you can help your kinesthetic learner even more by helping him label portions of his book.

Try this approach:

1. Do the first few assignments with your student. As you do, point out the things that you just discussed earlier during your textbook previewing. This step will help him see how usable the previewing session was. And it will further solidify the use of the glossary, sidebars, etc., as you show him how to use them to do actual assignments.

2. During another preview/run through, use large sticky notes to label the things that you find. You may do this in step one above or as you are helping him prepare for a test or quiz. These sticky notes will become guides for him in finding information—and will give him another tool that he can use in the future to prepare. For example, you could put a yellow one at the beginning of each chapter and a pink one on the page that has definitions for that chapter, etc.

3. In addition to labels with sticky notes, consider helping him develop some sort of system of noting user-friendliness or helpfulness of the study helps that his book contains. This step is good for during his first quiz or test prep because it is at that stage that you and he will come to see that some things help a lot and other things really aren’t that helpful. Also, by walking through this with him, you will see which things help HIM the most (not just things that you think are helpful).

+++ means something is going to be really helpful—a +++ beside the Table of Contents, for instance

+ beside a word he writes in the front of his book tells him that this might be somewhat helpful—Example: +Some graphs
– No study questions at end of chapter—again, he can make a list in the front of his book (on a large sticky note), etc.

Prepare your younger student for textbooks by using user-friendly non-fiction books

Maybe you are not in the textbook stage with your kids; however, you can begin preparing them for those all important study skills that I described above and in the “textbook previewing” post with quality non-fiction books. If kids at ages five, six, eight, and ten, learn to navigate around Dorling Kindersley, Eyewitness, and Usborne books (among many others), they will be heads and shoulders above other children who have only been exposed to fictional stories (more on the benefits of fiction later!).

 
These outstanding non-fiction books have literally hundreds of topics that interest kids, but they are so colorful and alluring, you do not feel like you are “teaching” at all. Additionally, they have many aspects that your child’s future textbooks will also have: glossaries, Tables of Contents, sidebars, graphs, pictures, inserts, definitions, bold font, italics, etc. Reading these to and with your children when they are younger will provide a natural step into textbooks later on.

Note: We teach our students (in our home, our cottage classes, and in our language arts books) a simple memory device for remembering fiction and non-fiction:

 
Fiction = fake (both begin with f)
Non-fiction = not fake (both begin with nf)

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Homeschool benefits are many! One of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is the opportunity to teach our children HOW to learn. Every time we walk them through a learning task or skill, we are teaching them how to learn. Every time we show them how to find or organize information, we are teaching them how to learn. Every time we make a discovery with them, we are teaching them how to learn.” 

With a new school year upon us, I want to rerun some information about developing study skills in our children, specifically, how to help our kids get accustomed to new textbooks.

Try these specific strategies for previewing textbooks with your student to help him or her get the most out of his or her texts this year:

1. Graphs and charts—Remind your student that charts and graphs usually restate (in another form) what is indicated in the text. He can use these for quick overviews, as well as for reviewing before tests.

2. Enumerations—If his text uses a lot of enumeration, it could be that this subject has a significant number of lists to be learned. Point him to these lists and show him that often what is listed in the margins or sidebars is also expounded upon within the text.

3. Section headings—The more headings a book contains, the easier it is to learn from. The student is constantly reminded, by the headings and subheadings, of what the section is about. Show him how helpful these headings can be as he uses the book during his reading and for test preparation.

4. Pictorial aids—Maps are always in included in history textbooks. If his textbook contains a large assortment of maps, show him how they can help him see the big picture. Maps usually show where something that is discussed in the text occurred.

5. Glossary—Books that contain glossaries give the student an easy way to find definitions that may be more obscure within the text. Teach him to use this for quick finds, but encourage him to use the text itself for most studying since students who learn vocabulary in context retain it better.

6. Tables of Contents—The Table of Contents can be used somewhat like an index to find where information is in a particular chapter. It is especially good for getting a big picture about a whole chapter.

7. Prefaces, introductions, and summaries—If a text has any of these three, some of the work is already done for the student. Show him how advantageous these are for quick previewing of a chapter.

8. Footnotes—If a student is in a class that requires research papers, footnotes can be a real plus. We teach our research paper students to use lengthy works’ footnotes to find other credible sources that they might use in their papers.

9. Appendixes—Appendixes are the “extra credit” of the book. I always like to thin of myself as a prized pupil, so I tend to gravitate to these right at first, since they’re usually for those who want additional information—and I always want to know more! Tell your students that sometimes the appendixes aren’t even used in the actual course, but they are good for learning more, for research-based reports, and for cementing what is found in the text.

10. Indexes—If a book doesn’t have an index, I say send it back and get a new one! Show your student how quickly he can find information with the index. The more specific the index, the better it is for the student.

11. Bibliography—The bibliography gives lists of books, articles, and documents relating to the subjects in the textbook. Like footnotes, we direct our research paper students to these.

12. Pronunciation guides—These guides give the phonetic markings to aid in reading unfamiliar words. Many texts do not have these guides, but they are helpful in a class where a student will be giving presentations so he can pronounce unknown words correctly.

Any signaling or sign posting that a book contains is that much more opportunity for the visual learner, especially, to learn and retain. If you have an auditory learner, you might have to record his vital info on audio. Don’t look at this time as “filler” or “wasted time” but rather look at it as helping your student learn how to learn!

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I have been doing some podcast episodes about efficiency in the kitchen and freezer cooking. I wanted to have this as part of our back-to-school 2015 series, but I knew that auditory presentations would work better.

There are many things in the summer that you can do to set your kitchen up so that you can work more efficiently during the school year thus giving you more time for homeschooling, school activities, and heart training.

In this post I would like to share some links to those things to help you be able to go back and listen to podcast episodes and find the new posts (and old!) containing this information.

1) Podcast Episode: Five Tips to Be More Efficient in Your Kitchen

In this podcast episode, I get my five tops tips for efficiency in the kitchen including using the crockpot (even for all kinds of meats, such as ground beef and shredded chicken), having ten meals that you always have ingredients on hand for, making combination meals whenever possible, and putting something – even if it is just a casserole or two – in the freezer each week.

2) Podcast Episode: Ten Questions to Ask Yourself Before Beginning Freezer Cooking

In this podcast episode, I present you with ten questions to ask yourself before you begin freezer cooking. These questions will help you determine what kind freezer cook you are and which methods, types of dishes, containers, and more will help you the most. If you have questions about state in which to freeze something, freezing entire casseroles versus just parts of meals, and what to put your freezer entrées in, this episode will help you.

3) Podcast Episode: Learning About Cycle Cooking for the Freezer 

In this podcast episode, I explain how I do cycle cooking with various types of meat. If you truly want to be efficient in putting things in your freezer, this episode is for you. I describe the four types of cycles that I have: shredded chicken, crumbled brown beef, chicken breast and fish fillet, and shaped (roasts, swiss and smothered steaks, meatloaves, etc.). Then I give ideas under each cycle type so that you can see what you are already cooking and how you can start putting those in to freezer meals.

4) Blog Post: Ten Freezer Meals That I Don’t Like to Be Without 

This old blog post will at least get you thinking about some freezer meals that are important to growing families. These are some of my very favorites both for serving my family as well as for giving to others in need, using potlucks, and serving at parties, etc.

5) Blog Posts: Using Mixes

I have been a mix user for twenty-four years – ever since I got the book Make a Mix Cookery. We all know how convenient store-bought cake mixes, Bisquick, bread mixes, brownie mixes, and seasoning blend are. Making homemade mixes allows the efficient cook to enjoy the ease of using mixes while controlling the ingredients. I have a few mixes and seasoning blends at the blog now, but please check back often as I’m adding my healthy cake mix, Healthy BakeQuick mix, and more.

6) Blog Posts: Ten Ways to Help Your Family Work Fast 

I have been working on a series of posts about helping your family learn to work fast. Check back with that series frequently because many of the tips that are there, such as kitchen blitzes, horizontal surface cleaning, and more will help you become more efficient in the kitchen as well.

I hope these links will help you in your quest to become more efficient in the kitchen this summer. For me personally, in my thirty-one years of homeschooling, each time I added an efficient method or tip, it improved another area of our family, homeschool, and life.

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When I first began home schooling thirty years ago, I had just graduated with an elementary education degree. I had a one-year-old son, and we began home schooling my younger sister. Of course, coming right out of teacher’s college, I began doing things just like I would have done in my classroom. I soon discovered that all of the classroom things were not necessary – that those things were needed for mass education but not necessarily for one-on-one tutoring (or even small group instruction).

Even after discovering this, however, I still had this urge to be a “teacher.” That is, I was always drawn to materials that were teacher-intensive. I love teaching! And I still do. But by the time I had my third child in school, with a preschooler, toddler, and baby, I was teaching eight and ten hours a day. Something had to change.

It was then that I discovered many independent curriculum items for my children. We had already been using Geo Safari, a computerized laptop type of game that taught and quizzed the children on geography, history, art, and much more. I began using a lot of other less teacher-intensive items. I developed independent work lists for each child based on each one’s age and level. These independent work lists had checklists for each day that the children could do without my input, such as the aforementioned Geo Safari, Calculadders math drill sheets, Mathsafari, educational coloring books, and much more.

I was using unit studies at that time, which we absolutely loved. I knew that in getting away from so much teacher intensive material, I did not want to leave unit studies behind. There were other subject areas, however, in which I could drop some of the more teacher intensive things. And so I did, and I had more time for other things. I wasn’t teaching as long each day. And my children were learning independent skills, study habits, and thinking processes that they might not have learned had I continued to “teach” everything.

Here are some tips for choosing curriculum that is varied in nature as far as teacher intensiveness is concerned:

1) First of all,  consider what your individual children need. This should always be the primary benchmark in choosing curriculum. If you have a young mathematician, he might do fine with a more independent math program. Maybe your middle school writer can work through a writing/composition  text on her own. You know your own children. Consider which subject areas will simply not work out at all if the materials were too independent for each child.

2) Once you have determined which subject areas each child absolutely needs your help in or needs a more teacher intensive approach, then look at which subjects you simply have a good time teaching your children. For us, while we did use individual Bible materials, reading and studying the Bible together was something that I never wanted to give up. Likewise, as I mentioned earlier, our unit study times and our read aloud times were precious to me. For over twenty years, I read to my children two to four hours a day. So, even in trying to reduce my teaching time, I knew what times a day and what subjects together we loved the most. Those things did not change.

3) Next, look at what is available for independent work for children in different subject areas. Consider materials that you have used in the past that your student enjoyed. For example, if you have used some Alpha Omega life packs, and your student enjoyed those, check out the listings for those and see which subject areas might work for your student. Consider what online courses or local co-op courses might be available. Additionally, check out materials that have the teacher on a CD or a DVD. This has been a lifesaver for us in math. I could give my students entire math over to the CD program since it checked and graded the assignments for my student. (This program is Teaching Textbooks.)

4) Even if you do use unit studies, consider how this could even be made less teacher intensive. For example, grouping children together and then using the bus stop approach in which younger children only stay for a portion of the lessons is a way to make teacher time more productive. Also consider what assignments can be given to your students outside of unit studies. Many unit study programs have this built into them. That is, they will have you assign your student independent projects, writing assignments, books to read, and so forth. In this way, I was still able to use unit studies while giving independent assignments from what we were studying whenever possible.

5) Use independent materials for those “extras.” I used math drills, computer programs to practice states and capitals and other memory work, educational coloring books, craft kits, independent penmanship programs, and more to help my students become more independent in those extras.

By using a variety of materials, we are able to hone in on our children’s strengths and their learning styles. We are able to choose materials that suit each child’s strong areas while using more teacher intensive materials for areas in which the student needs the teacher more. We are able to add variety to the school day, so the student doesn’t have to do the same type of material in every subject. And we are able to set up our school day to be more enjoyable for Mom and the students.

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I hope your summer is going well so far! Summer is the perfect time to get ready for the next school year, so we are starting a series called Getting Ready for School 2015 in which we will run some oldies (the tried and true tips from thirty-plus years of homeschooling) as well as some fresh, new advice to make this school year great!

One of the best skills that you can acquire as a homeschooling parent is to become a problem-solver! See a problem—and meet it.

Ray and I worked hard throughout our thirty years of homeschooling in an effort to solve problems—and there were many of them with that many years of homeschooling seven children! We didn’t tackle all of our problems at once. We didn’t throw up our hands and say that we couldn’t solve them all, so let’s just forget it.

We picked the most troublesome problem in any given week and made a plan of attack. Then we stuck to our guns until that problem was solved—and didn’t try to solve a bunch of others at the same time. When that problem was solved, we were ready to solve another one. (Read more about this approach here).

Yes, it was slow going sometimes. Oftentimes, it would take more than one week to solve the problem at hand—and we couldn’t dig into another one right away. However, any sort of ongoing problem solving (even at the rate of one every other week or one a month) is far better than no problem solving at all!

So what are some ideas/changes that might make this school year a better one for you:

1. Get more efficient in the kitchen (whether that is freezer cooking, using more convenience foods, creating mixes, or simply delegating—I’ve got some ideas for you!)

2. Use independent work lists for kids!

3. Create chore sessions and do them every single day

4. Dedicate yourself to dailies—to becoming disciplined in the things that need done every single day instead of always trying to do the grandiose

5. Use shortcut teaching methods

6. Teach children how to learn so that they will become more independent

And much more! See you in a day or two!  🙂

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