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I was recently asked what my “educational expectations” would be with a five year old. Now, this fall marks our thirtieth year of homeschooling. Through the years, we have ebbed and flowed with the trends of homeschooling just like all other long-term homeschoolers. However, there are some things that have always stayed the same for us:

(1) Teach obedience before starting school

(2) Put relationships above academics

(3) Put God first, then marriage, then children, then others

Read More!→

One way that we like to help parents determine whether a child’s behavior is of a serious nature or whether it is simply childishness that needs training, rewards, more training, follow-through, and consequences to solve it is by using the benchmark of the 4D’s.

If you have been to our Raising Kids With Character parenting seminar, you have probably heard us describe the importance of determining which behavior a child is having. This is because the behaviors that we call the 4D’s are heart-oriented and more life-affecting than those that are simply childishness such as irresponsibility, laziness, or messiness.

That is, we take the four D’s behavior more seriously and attack it with more intentionality than we would childish behavior that we can train and teach from area

It will help you to be able to discern between the two types of behaviors if you recognize and memorize the 4D’s…  Read More→

Donna Reish, author of character quality language arts and meaningful composition, answers a couple of readers questions about kindergarten. In this podcast episode, she specifically talks about what types of behaviors parents should expect from a four to six year-old child before starting formal academics and the six most important things to focus on first, including obedience, morning routines, chore times, and informal learning. She describes the optimum learning environment and gives insight as to what to look for in readiness to learn to read.

Join Donna as she describes some of the best years of parenting.  Listen HERE!

Many years ago we were able to go to many homeschooling seminars including the Christian Homeschooling Workshop by Greg Harris. I mentioned before on this blog that we came home from his seminars (basic and advanced) ready to tackle one thing at a  time out of that amazing binder of material.

One of the things that he taught us were the amazing benefits of using delight directed studies. He said that if we would focus some of our studies on things that our children love, things they were delighted in, things they were interested in, they would learn so much more easily and learning would be more fun.

I was all about waiting for readiness in my children so that they would love school. I was all about building a love for learning in our children. And delight directed studies lined up beautifully with those goals.  Read More→

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The post This Week’s Character Ink! Newsletter {July 9, 2015} appeared first on Character Ink.

Many years ago we were able to go to many homeschooling seminars including the Christian Homeschooling Workshop by Greg Harris. I mentioned before on this blog that we came home from his seminars (basic and advanced) ready to tackle one thing at a  time out of that amazing binder of material.

One of the things that he taught us were the amazing benefits of using delight directed studies. He said that if we would focus some of our studies on things that our children love, things they were delighted in, things they were interested in, they would learn so much more easily and learning would be more fun.

I was all about waiting for readiness in my children so that they would love school. I was all about building a love for learning in our children. And delight directed studies lined up beautifully with those goals.

We came home and began looking for opportunities for our children to study things that they were delighted in. Immediately, this meant learning math through baseball, football, and basketball cards with our little seven-year-old. It meant a lot of time in the kitchen with our four-year-old. And it meant reading for hours and hours every day – at least a little bit each day about government and the presidents for our seven-year-old future history major and teacher.

From there, our delight directed studies have been vast:

1. Getting a barnful of chickens and gathering eggs
2. Unsuccessful dog training
3. Learning angles and degrees on the basketball court drive-way
4. Learning shapes from Legos and “large red bricks” (cardboard)
5. Math games out of playing cards
6. Dice games
7. Statistics with sports cards
8. Milking a goat
9. Community learning through a lengthy, weekly citizens academy program
10. Creating track events with measurements and make-shift equipment
11. Making up new sports games for PE continually
12. Going to government and creation seminars
13. Investing in more highlighters and large poster boards than any one family should ever need for our young mapmaker
14. World War II videos, games, and miniatures
15. Angles taught/learned through quilting
16. Math in baking and cooking
17. Dad and daughter sign language classes
18. American Girls dolls, books, and do-it-yourself accessories
19. Overnight at the zoo, science museum, and fort
20. More pioneer villages and re-enactments than any one parent should attend

Delight-directed studies are everywhere–they are where ever our children are. Whatever they love to learn is their delight–and our opportunity for more learning, more love for learning, and more fun in our homeschools!

The post Homeschool Benefit #7: The Chance to Use Delight-Directed Studies appeared first on Character Ink.

While I am not so naïve to believe that our children cannot hear or see “bad” things if they are homeschooled—after all we are seldom with them every moment of every day, and there are potential “bad” things in our homes via television, internet, etc. However, protecting our children from hearing and seeing things that we do not want them to hear or see is a huge benefit of homeschooling.

I can remember when our oldest was a few years old and we got our first “television” (to watch movies on with a vhs player….yeah….many years ago!). We got Joshua this animated movie (that we still love and sing the theme song to even now thirty years later!) called “Seabert, the Seal.” It was a cute cartoon about a seal who saved animals from poachers. However, there was a period of time when Joshua got “grounded” from Seabert. It was when Joshua started saying two “s-words” that Seabert often said….

STUPID and SHUT UP.

We called them “slang words”—though not too many years later our children would begin calling them (and continue to do so today, twenty-something years later) SLIME WORDS. Somehow they didn’t understand what slang words meant and they thought we were telling them that they shouldn’t use slime words…so forever in our family a word that is not a “cuss” word is called the dreaded (and punishable!) slime word.

Anyway, the problem wasn’t that Seabert said them. After all, we would never let our child watch anything ever if we boycotted movies with any slime words. The problem was that Joshua began saying them. So Seabert went on the shelf until Joshua quit saying those two slime words.

So how do we take advantage of this homeschool benefit? Especially in this technological age? I have a few ideas—but I raised my kids in an age where we could simply put a television on a rolling cart and leave it permanently (and only)  hooked up to a vhs. A few times a week we pulled it out of the closet and watched something all together. No computers. No iPods. No smart phones. Not even “television” as we know it.

And it was blissful. And we not only could take advantage of the not hearing and seeing so many things benefit—but we cashed in on that amazing homeschool benefit known as TIME. So while I might not be the one to come to in order to get ideas on protecting our kids from hearing and seeing “bad” things, I can’t close without a few tips! 🙂

1. The first way to protect our kids from hearing and seeing things that they shouldn’t is putting guards on things. This can come in many forms—only having one main computer for kids under eighteen and having it in the main area of the house; putting blocks on any computers any where (laptops and desktops alike), etc. This also includes televisions—using blocking products so that things do not come through. (I would add that if we had, had television and computers, our kids under a certain age would not have been able to just go turn them on and use them. It would be just like the refrigerator—the decision to watch something or eat something any time a child wants is not really theirs to make.)

2. Secondly, and I know this is one that many would disagree with, but we do not let our kids under eighteen or so have the internet on devices of their own—smart phones, tablets, etc. It isn’t worth the risk to us. They can use mine when they need to, but to have the internet at a ten year old’s finger tips seems unwise to me. We are giving them (forcing them really) to make decisions about things (do I look at this; do I write this, etc.) that children are not equipped to make.

3. Lastly, we can protect our children from hearing, seeing, and experiencing negative things by not allowing them to be with people that we do not fully trust and know to be growing, godly people. This includes hanging out with non-Christian friends unsupervised and going to neighbors’ homes and other people’s homes in which the adults are not growing Christians that we know to not be involved in ungodly activity. I have been surprised by people’s response to this—sort of the whole “they have to be light in the school” argument turned to “light in the neighborhood.” But there are many other ways to be light without subjecting our children to other people’s sinful habits and sometimes downright dangers. This has shocked me because to me it is a no-brainer….

So there you have another homeschool benefit. Protection. It is a potential benefit if we want to take advantage of it in keeping our children away from sin, things that are too mature for them, and people who might influence them negatively.

The post Homeschool Benefit #6: Parents Have More Control Over What Children Hear and See appeared first on Character Ink.

Thirty-one years ago with a one-year-old toddler in tow, my husband and I
began homeschooling my younger sister who was in eighth grade at the time.
It was definitely homeschooling out of necessity due to some problems that
she was having at school with bullying and meanness because of her
moderately mentally handicapped condition. I did not know much about
homeschooling. I did read Dr. Raymond Moore’s books,  and I knew that they
coincided perfectly with the teaching in my elementary education degree and
my master’s work in reading education (in terms of how children learn).
However, to say that I knew what I was getting myself into would be a great
overstatement!

So basically I did whatever Dr. Raymond Moore suggested, whatever we learned
about in any books we read, whatever we learned at the Gregg Harris
homeschooling workshop, and, eventually, what we were taught at homeschool
conventions and parenting seminars. Our curriculum writer at the time, Dr.
Raymond Moore (“Growing Kids God’s Way”) recommended reading aloud quite
frequently even during Lisa’s  eighth-grade year. Likewise, Mr. Harris said
the same thing in The Christian Homeschooling Workshops. So we came home and
did just they said to do!

My first two children, Joshua now thirty-two and Kayla following three years
after,  were auditory sponges. They made reading aloud such a joy, that we
quite literally spent three to five hours every single day five or six days
a week reading aloud. We broke up our reading throughout the day and
evening, and we even called it by various names,  like subject reading in
the morning. This is what we called what people now call unit studies.
Joshua liked to call it subject reading because it made him feel like he was
really doing school at a young age! In the afternoon, we had storytime.
Various times of the day we had Bible and character time. And of course
bedtime stories and more. Some days we would have a “read all day” day in
which we would make sack lunches and not leave the sofa for five or six
solid hours. Other days we had such silly times as
“matching-green-sweat-suits-read-aloud” time! (Don’t laugh at me….that
really makes me smile!)

I had read Jim Trelease’s *”Read Aloud Handbook,”  plus had learned about read
aloud benefits from the aforementioned seminars and books, but I couldn’t
begin to anticipate the huge impact those early years of reading aloud would
have on those children and on our future children. We grew to love reading
aloud so much that quite literally, I have read aloud at least a couple of
hours every day for my first twenty-five years of parenting!

What about those benefits? Well, all of my children were eager to learn to
read. They had such warm feelings of being read to that they could not wait
to learn to read themselves. They have all become strong readers. They all
love learning as a result of that early reading. For my dyslexic children
and my late readers, reading aloud became invaluable. It built up their
background of experience and their listening comprehension dramatically.
Then when each one did learn to read, he or she brought that background of
experience and auditory comprehension with them into their reading
experiences, and they had amazing comprehension immediately upon learning to
“read” (decode words).

Educational benefits aside, reading aloud has given me the warmest, fondest
memories than a mother could ever ask for. There’s a place in my heart, a
little corner of my heart, called the read aloud corner. It is warm. It is
filled with good memories. Of snuggling with mama on the couch. Of rocking
with mommy with books in her big chair. Of squeezing four,  five, or six of
us in mommy and daddy’s bed with a stack of books two feet tall. Isn’t it
amazing to think of the benefits that homeschooling makes available to us?

*affiliate link 🙂

The post Homeschool Benefit #5: Reading Aloud Together appeared first on Character Ink.

I already mentioned in an earlier homeschool benefit post about being able
to be with our children all the time. I will always cherish the eighteen
years that I have had with each of my children all day long… well sixteen
years until they started working day jobs and going to college, etc. I will
never regret that I spent those years with my children.

Likewise, I will be eternally grateful for the time that my children had
together. It isn’t always easy to have your kids together twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week. Trust me, I know–for twenty-nine years. However,
my children as adults between the ages of nearly seventeen and thirty-two
now have strong bonds with each other –in large part due to the fact that
they were together all the time.

One of the things that we tried hard not to do in terms of our children’s
relationships with each was to continually rescue them from each other. That
is, always attempting to separate them and always intervening and working
things out for them. They will come out much stronger in relationships with
other people as well as in relationships with each other if we don’t try to
thwart the very nature of homeschooling–that our kids are together. When we
do this, we are not taking advantage of the full benefit of this benefit!

This is not to say that we did not intervene in disputes and problems; we
did. However, we didn’t constantly try to send them apart from each other,
so we would not have the headache of them being together. Instead, we kept
them together in school; we took them to activities together; we grouped
them together in subjects whenever possible; we spent a lot of time
together; and we taught them how to work through difficulties with each
other and with other people.

The siblings-in-homeschooling relationship is one that you can get nowhere
else. Home is where a person is usually himself or herself. While the child
would not treat a friend in a certain way, he or she might be tempted to
treat a sibling in that way. Our children having been together all these
years has given them the opportunity to learn to compromise. They learned
how to put others first. They learned early on that they are going to be
together every day for many years – as my now- thirty-two year old son once
said about this subject, “I figured I better work it out and get along with
them and like them because I was pretty much stuck with them all the time. ”
He says that he decided at a young age that he would rather have fun all the
time then to always be at war with his siblings. And so he learned to work
things out.

Siblings are our children’s first friends and hopefully siblings are their
last friends. That is, hopefully, they will be friends for a lifetime.
Homeschooling affords them the opportunity to share life with these
“friends” every day all day long. I am so grateful that my kids have been
together every day for many years.

The post Homeschool Benefit #4: Siblings Get to Be Together Every Day appeared first on Character Ink.

Thirty years ago when my husband and I began homeschooling my younger sister and we had a little one-year-old toddler, all the homeschooling buzz was teaching our children the Bible and protecting them from bad teaching at school in terms of humanism. Humanism was a buzzword at that time, and those of us who were seeking homeschooling were going to keep our children from being indoctrinated by it. Here we are thirty years later, and there are many other dangerous teachings in government schools besides just the original homeschool enemy of humanism.

None of us like to think that if our children go to school they are being taught bad things. But if we look at many teachings in schools, we have to admit that much of it is not what we would be teaching our children if they were at home with us—because we wouldn’t want to teach them things that are opposite of the Bible. Sex education has taken on a whole new meaning as now curriculum is provided for schools to teach about gay marriage and to push many non-traditional (i.e. non-Biblical) family arrangements.

When we take our children to museums, I always think about all of the things that we tell them as we walk through the exhibits. How the billions of years are not true. How we do have an intelligent designer. How the creation story in the Bible is really the truth. And on and on and on. Then I think how difficult it would be if my children were in school. We would not just be looking at how to undo one day at the museum with creation materials and biblical teaching. Every year in science and even many times in history, our children would be learning that evolution is true, that the big bang is what really happened, that there is no creator. I often feel overwhelmed just trying to undo one day at the zoo or one day at a history or science museum. I can’t imagine how a parent could have the time, energy, and resources to undo ongoing teaching that contradicts the Bible that is taught in science classes year after year.

This is not a guilt trip for those who have to send their children to school by any means. It is not even a guilt trip for those who choose to send their children to school. But I would be remiss if I did not say that a major benefit of keeping our children at home with us is being able to teach them the Bible every single day.

It is not just creation, biblical marriage, life at conception, and other “science” teachings, but it is way bigger than those. Through homeschooling we have been able to, day in and day out for at least twenty-five years, teach our children the one another’s of Scripture, how to live like Jesus would live in our treatment of others, what the Bible says about character and living above reproach, how to have strong relationships by interacting in a way that is pleasing to God, how to make wise decisions, how to become an outstanding worker through applying biblical concepts, how to guard our hearts from evil and those who would lead us astray, how to live a moral life, and so much more.

If teaching our children science as it applies to the Bible were all we were able to do, that would be enough to say that this homeschool benefit is valid. But I was able to spend every day for twenty-five years reading aloud to my children from godly poetry, hymns, character training books, nature books that are biblically-based, creation science materials, the Bible, discipleship books that point us to living for Christ, and much more. My husband and I have also been able to teach our children from the Bible as we “walk in the way,” “sit in our house,” “rise up,” and “lie down to sleep.”

Being able to teach our children from our own religious beliefs is truly a major benefit of homeschooling – – let’s not let this opportunity slip by and become complacent in teaching the Bible and God’s principles every day in our home schools.

The post Homeschool Benefit #3: Parents Can Choose Materials That Fit Their Religious Beliefs appeared first on Character Ink.

This homeschool benefit is especially important to me. When I first learned about homeschooling, I happened to be in my very last semester at Ball State University studying elementary education. I read four books by Dr. Raymond Moore as I was
graduating and finishing up my degree. (I was given these books by someone
in my church.)

I can remember making notes in my margin as I was taking class notes that
said “If this is true, why don’t we do it in school?” “This is why
homeschooling might be better.” “Wow, you can actually do this in
homeschooling!”

I was amazed! We were learning about learning in children.  As I was
studying how children learn, the differences between boys and girls, late
bloomers versus early bloomers, and even Piaget’s Theory of when levels of
development take place, I was realizing, as a 21-year-old mother of one
toddler, that with homeschooling, you could you all all of the things that I
was learning in college –but that couldn’t be done in the classroom.

Fast forward several years later when our second child was starting school.
Kayla was a curious, intelligent, creative seven-year-old dyslexic,
dysgraphic student. By this time, I had learned enough from Dr. Raymond
Moore to know that I needed to wait for her to be ready in order for her to
learn to read.

This advice was amazing! She learned to read when she was nine, and she
learned to write/spell  (though not very strong and spelling) at age twelve.
If she had been in school, she would’ve been labeled and put in a slow or
learning disabled class.

Fast forward again about ten to fifteen years later, and that same late
bloomer, dyslexic, dysgraphic student received a perfect score on the ACT
verbal portion two times, went on to write language arts curriculum for
elementary students, wrote a biographical compilation for young readers,
wrote two books for missionaries on health and nutrition that are used
around the world today, and is working on her fifth degree.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks the whole school
benefit number two is more of a benefit than our family. Of course, it
wasn’t only Kayla who benefited from learning at her own pace. We were able
to wait for readiness in all areas for all of our children – potty training,
moving to a big bed, learning to read, learning to write, learning to drive.
These have all been areas in which our children were able to learn at their
own pace rather than being pushed when they were not ready. Of course, there
are many other areas too. In a nutshell, homeschooling can be tailor-made to
each child….so many benefits, too many to count! 🙂

I get very sad when I see homeschoolers who do not take advantage of this
benefit. They are moved by peer pressure or grandparent pressure or Sunday
school pressure to turn around and pressure their children to learn when
they’re not ready. Take advantage of this homeschool benefit! And let your
children learn at their own pace.

The post Homeschool Benefit #2: Children Can Learn At Their Own Pace! appeared first on Character Ink.

After thirty-one years of homeschooling, I still see the benefits all the
time. Ray and I look at each other almost weekly and remind each other what
a blessing it has been to be able to homeschool all seven of our children
for all of these years. However, sometimes when we are in the thick of
homeschooling, it is easy to forget all of those benefits.

So here is homeschool benefit number one: parent and child get to spend
every day together. Obviously, this doesn’t always feel like a benefit. But
after spending every day for the last thirty-one years with my children, I
can tell you wholeheartedly that it truly is a benefit.

My husband likes to tell groups when we speak that you get to see your
child’s bad behavior all the time by spending every day with him or her. And
then he goes on to explain what a benefit that is because we would miss
those behaviors and those things that we want to help our children to grow
in. I’m not so sure about that aspect of it, LOL, but I am sure that it is a
blessing to be able to be with our children all the time rather than them
being away at school for seven, eight, or nine hours each day depending on
how much bus time they have, how long their school day is, and if they had
before or after school activities.

I look back at all of the memories that I have made with my children by
spending every day with them that I have for these past three decades, and I
truly cannot think of a better way to have spent a large chunk of my life.
When I get together with my grown children, we laugh and talk about all of
the fun times. We make jokes about the terrible crafts and science projects.
And we remember together with joy all of the read alouds, all of the
traditions, and all of the ways that we spent our days for all of those
years. Truly, I would say that homeschool benefit number one is spending
every day with your children.

The post Homeschool Benefit Number One: Spending Every Day Together appeared first on Character Ink.