We used to get asked a lot WHY we homeschooled…like all the time….twenty years ago or more. Nowadays, reasons for homeschooling are as diverse as the number of people homeschooling.
There are not just a handful of reasons any more—and many of the reasons (especially the fear-based ones) are not as prevalent as they were. (Not sure if this is all good….we need to fear some things for our kids.)
After thirty-two years of homeschooling (and being done for two years now—well, done with our own kids, but not the 170 kids in our classes and part time programs!), we have narrowed it down to one big reason—with lots of sub reasons.
Truly, TIME is the biggest reason that I would homeschool if I had it to do all over again—and is something I would like for you to at least consider in your decision to homeschool or not, go to school or stay home, continue on or end. Because TIME is big—and can never be redeemed.

Blessings to you and your family on your journey! Enjoy every moment you have!

P.S. Feel free to share this video. I don’t think it is something that people talk about a lot….but it was hugely impactful to our family!
 

I. Starting Out

A. Chose homeschooling out of fear of all of the “bad” stuff

1. Bad peers
2. Bad curriculum (secular)
3. Bad environment

B. “Pioneers”

1. We were afraid of everything (unfortunately)
2. Very Bible-driven and character-focused (fortunately)

II. Middle Years

A. As older kids entered high school

1. Moving away from fear a little and more into reality (these kids need occupations!)
2. Focused in on academics while still keeping a character-basis and a relationship style of parenting

B. Began writing curriculum and testing it with homeschooled kids

III. Ending Years

A. Relationships with adult kids and kids still in school

1. Realized more and more it was the time we have had together
2. Adult kids still needed the time

B. Watched siblings as many as ten and twelve years apart develop close relationships

IV. The NUMBER ONE Benefit of Homeschooling—Time

A. Time cannot be duplicated, redeemed, or reallocated

1. Average American mom spends 13.5 hours a week with her child; average homeschooling mom spends 77 hours

a week with her child

2. My own quick math

a. 8 hours a day x 180 days
b. Yields 1440 more hours per year that kids who are homeschooled are with their parents/siblings
c. Probably between 1500 and 2000 per year with 9 hour days, bus rides, before and after school activities, etc.

3. Any way you slice it, it is too much time to try to “make up for” on weekends or holidays or summers. The sheer number of hours is staggering.

a. At 1500 hours a year x 13 years
b. Nearly 20,000 hours

B. Time that kids are with parents

1. Who is going to shape your child during those 20,000 hours?
2. Do we want it to be teachers and peers or us?

C. Time to lean in to their strengths and weaknesses

1. Academically
2. Becoming who they will become
3. Emotional support

D. Time with siblings

1. Who are your best friends here?
2. Who matters more than anyone else here?

E. Time equals influence

1. “You will become the five people you spend your time with”
2. Kids change according to who they are with and what expectations and allowances are made
3. Time influence is the time of the people who ARE influencing your kids (you) and time that peers are NOT influencing your kids.

F. The thing we put our time into is what grows

1. Do we want the home to be the center of your child’s world or the school?
2. If our kids go to school, we SHOULD put the effort and time into that school due to the number of hours are kids spend there (don’t send them then complain about everything!)
3. Make your home the center of your family, not the school

V. Summary

A. Do I think all is lost if kids go to school?

1. No!
2. But it takes supernatural effort and work

B. Co-ops, half day programs, Friday School, private tutors, even babysitters overseeing some work can all make it happen more easily

1. Homeschooling doesn’t have to mean you do all the teaching
2. It doesn’t have to mean that you love to teach
3. It just means that you are going to do everything in your power to have as many of those 20,000 hours/ 2500 days be with you rather than away from home for their thirteen years of school.

www.characterinkblog.com
www.characterinkstore.com

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1. They use my Directed Writing Approach!

In my Directed Writing Approach, every detail of every project is laid out for your student. None of my writing projects are “writing ideas” or “writing prompts.” Every writing assignment contains step-by-step instructions with much hand-holding along the way. The student is “directed” in how to write and what to write at all times—from brainstorming to research to outlining to rough draft and finally to revising.

My Directed Writing Approach takes the best methods I have discovered in order to teach each type of writing—color-coded research for research-based projects, “Topic of Paragraph” commitment for teaching paragraph breaks, The Three P’s of Persuasion for persuasive writing, the “section-paragraph-sentence” method for longer papers, story writing mapping, Paragraph House for young writers, 1-3-1 essay outlines, my Checklist Challenge for revising, and much more. Each Directed Writing Approach “method” is tried and true after fifteen years of my writing one hundred books and over fifty thousand pages!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

2. They contain a combination of projects—those with “given material” to write from and those that are completely original (in which student finds material on his own to use as his source).

Students are taught a wide variety of outlining methods in all of my books—Key Word Outlines From Given Material, Directed Brainstorming, Persuasive Mapping, The Paragraph House Outline, Split Paper Technique, Sentence-by-Sentence (S-by-S) Outlining from original sources, Q and A Outlines, Five W’s outlines, Scene Outlines for Story Writing, Formal Outlines for research, and much more.

I teach most writing types/projects by giving the student source material to take notes from first—then having the student branch out and write that same type of writing finding his own source. It is this combination of “given material” first followed by student-found material that gives the student confidence to write that type of paper or story. This method keeps the student from becoming too dependent upon given source material while at the same time helping him learn to find source material (or create his own!) after using given passages first. It is a win-win method.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

3. The skills that are needed for each writing project are taught within that writing project.

To ask a student to write a paper using three sources and two quotations without teaching the student the skills to complete those steps is cruel! When a project is being taught in my books, the student is also taught whatever skills are needed to complete the project.

 
For example, if the student is writing a story about an animal escaping, he will be taught words and vocabulary that describe various sizes and types of animals as well as how to use onomatopoeia to describe animal sounds. If a student is told to write a persuasive paper, he will be taught the elements of persuasive writing first. If he is writing a research report in which quotes are to be cited, he will be instructed first in how to use quotations (in an earlier lesson) then in how to cite them for that particular paper. These many “how to” lessons give students the tools to write whatever they are assigned easily and with confidence.

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

4. Books are tested with over one hundred students each semester!

My books are not written by grammarians behind closed doors or even by experts who seldom work in small groups with students. (While my undergraduate degree in elementary education and my master’s work in reading specialist do help me occasionally, it is homeschooling for thirty-two years and testing my books every year {and writing and rewriting!} that give me my writing credentials.)

 
Character Ink books are written by teachers who write meaningful lessons then take them out and test drive them for two to five years with over a hundred students each semester. (My new 10 II: Four Research Reports has been tested for six years now—and took over a hundred hours to write and perfect the MLA/quotation citation methods lessons alone!)

 
Every year Character Ink has local cottage classes for homeschooled students in which small groups of students (six to ten per class) take either our complete language arts (Character Quality Language Arts) or our composition-only (Meaningful Composition) classes. As we test our books, we make notes in the margins, discuss them with our students (why was this one so hard for you when the last one was easier?), talk among the teachers, then go back and fix the books, tweak the lessons, and even drop lessons that are too confusing or uninteresting to students. You can’t possibly know if a lesson or project is a good one until you have sat across the table from eight junior high boys to watch their expressions (and/or glossed over looks in their eyes!). This is how we know our programs work!

Click on the picture above to view free samples of these books!

5. Student writing samples are provided for all original writing projects and portions of samples are provided for smaller assignments.

Our books have a little extra something that is seldom found in textbooks and certainly never found at the level of ours—student samples! Each of the original projects have a full-length student sample of that project. As a matter of fact, we use the student samples in our books to teach from—starting with Thesis Statements, Thesis Statements “Reloaded,” and other LINK sentences on to paragraph breaks, proper quotation use, scene development in stories, and much more.

 
Students understand the writing project so much better when there are models for them to look at and when they see what the expectations are for the project. Parents love our student samples because it helps them measure their student’s skills in following the instructions for each project (and gives the parent confidence to know if her student is completing the assignment correctly).

 
Our student writing samples are provided in all types of projects—expository essays, biographical reports, research reports, short stories, twice-told tales, persuasive essays, and more. Your student will know from the beginning what each project involves as the book takes him through a sample to see what great project he will be doing! Student samples are invaluable!

Need further evidence? Go to our blog and print off two weeks of free Meaningful Composition samples at each level (or several pages of the downloadable books). Try before you buy! You will be amazed at how quickly your students become accomplished writers—and how pain-free teaching writing really can be! 🙂

*Write On downloadable and print books (Write On, Mowli; Write On, Peter Pan; Write On, Beauty and Beast); Meaningful Composition; Character Quality Language Arts; and other downloadable e-books.

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By now, most of our local Character Ink friends have heard the news : We are starting a half-day homeschool in our home in six weeks (mid August 2018!). If you haven’t heard, you can see our original announcement here.)

So far, it has been such a joy to see the “exact clients” that we had in mind for our endeavor! They say the exact words that we felt would describe someone who wants this special service:

1) They love homeschooling—the lifestyle, the time with their kids, the home-centered approach to life that homeschooling offers, the relationships that are built through being with your kids way more waking hours than you are not (and knowing what is going on in their hearts through frequent interaction).

2) They value education—This can be said of most homeschoolers, but we are finding many parents who value education but felt that with their time constraints, work, and other commitments, they couldn’t give as much to their kids’ education as they feel is needed.

3) They are willing/able to spend a little extra on their kids’ education—They have the means for their kids to go to private school, but they want more control over their kids’ education—and they don’t want their kids to be gone 35 to 40 hours a week and don’t want to lose the home-centered approach to life that they have been enjoying through homeschooling.

4) They want the one-room schoolhouse feel that they offer at home–small teacher-student ratio that allows the teacher to know where his students are at all times in every subject.

5) They would like for someone else to keep track of everything academic—the teaching, the curriculum, the records, the grades, and yes, even the prodding some days!

We wanted to give some updates as Ray’s half-day homeschool takes shape with each enrollee. For example, we have found that high schoolers may or may not want to come every morning. Some of them don’t want the long drive. Others have jobs, etc. So Ray is altering the schedule for high schoolers who want to come longer some days and not at all other days.

While we have taught between 150 and 250 kids each semester for the past ten years in our four Cottage Class locations and have begun teaching dozens of kids online, this is new territory for us—being in charge of a student’s complete academic program and getting it all done by noon each day! 😊 (As Ray keeps saying with each plan, each book, each discussion—“Down memory lane again!” So many memories from our thirty-two years of teaching our seven kids at home! That has been so heart-warming.)

So we are tweaking, discussing things with our enrolling parents, and seeing what fits for each family. It is quite the journey—but a very exciting and rewarding one for sure!

This post is to give you some updates and let you see our registration information more fully. If you are near Fort Wayne, Indiana, and this concept appeals to you, Ray would love to chat with you and answer questions and explain our program more fully. Call him at 260-450-7063 or email him at characterink@gmail.com to set up a phone consult.

Check out the full registration document by clicking HERE!

In a nutshell…..

Character Ink Half-Day Homeschool will offer the following:

1) Responsible for teaching, assigning, overseeing, grading, and record keeping for ALL academic subjects for

2nd-12th grade students.

2) Teaching will be small group classes, block teaching, daily class meetings, one-on-one tutoring, and independent

studies all in our home at 11120 Aboite Center Road Fort Wayne and at First Assembly of God Church (on Mondays).

3) 180 days of instruction (and record keeping and accountability) (e-learning will be utilized for inclement weather)

4) Daily lesson plans, checksheets, and accountability (that Ray checks–not you!)

5) Curriculum found and laid out for each subject

6) Math, language arts, and reading taught by/planned by specialists in these areas. All academic areas will

be covered in various sessions, blocks, and independent learning.

7) Grading sheets every 9 weeks for all high school subjects and major subjects for 2nd-8th grades

Approximately 11/1, 1/15, 3/15, and 5/30)

8) Thorough, safe, and fun environment to learn

Check out the two weekly schedules for youngers (2nd-7th graders) and for high schoolers (8th-12th graders) below!

And thanks, once again, for your continued support of Character Ink blog, store, Cottage Classes, publications, downloadable products, online classes, parenting/homeschooling helps, and more! We appreciate you!

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Heading towards retirement and with a job change in his immediate future, Ray is leaning towards fulfilling a long-time request of us by homeschooling families: Starting a “school” in our home (as an extension of your homeschool) that takes 3.5 hours a day to do all academic teaching and instruction.

Please read on if you….

~Want your kids home with the family flexibility of homeschooling but are overwhelmed with all of the daily teaching, record keeping, grading, and prodding (smile…)

~Love the flexibility and freedom for afternoon homeschool activities but need to do other things (i.e. toddlers and preschoolers, work, caring for aging parents, home business, etc.) during the mornings

~Wish you could have all of the benefits of homeschooling without being the “bad guy” to make your students complete all of their work each day

~Desire to have someone who has homeschooled for 32 years and has taught/overseen subjects for over 2,000 students do the academics of homeschooling for you

~Want to have your students led, taught, and kept accountable by a wise, godly man who has already done this successfully with his own seven children

Character Ink Half-Day Homeschool Will Offer the Following:

1. Small group classes, block teaching, daily class meetings, one-on-one tutoring, and independent studies all in our home four mornings a week (Tuesday-Friday 8:30-12:00)
2. Responsible for teaching, assigning, overseeing, grading, and record keeping for ALL academic subjects for 2nd-12th grade students 
3. 180 days of instruction (and record keeping and accountability) (e-learning will be utilized for inclement weather)
4. Daily lesson plans, checksheets, and accountability (that Mr. Ray checks–not you!)
5. Curriculum found and laid out for each subject (in the form of daily checksheets)
6. Math, language arts, and reading  taught by/planned by specialists in these areas (All academics will be covered in various tutoring sessions, block teaching, independent learning, etc.)
7. Grading sheets every 9 weeks for all high school subjects and major subjects for 2nd-8th grades
8. Thorough, safe, and fun environment to learn

Schedule

Academic Year

Tentatively 2nd week of August through the end of May with Christmas and spring breaks (will work around already-scheduled trips for families enrolling)

Monday

-Junior High through High Schoolers take up to two classes at First Assembly in FW from CI teachers as part of Half Day tuition and book fees (See example at end for what this could look like.)

-More than two classes at First Assembly will be billed separately

-Elementary students may take middle school speech and science at First Assembly or will work at home on Mondays (See complete Character Ink Cottage Class Schedule.)

Tuesday-Friday

-8:30-12:00 at Reishes’ home in SW Fort Wayne

Monthly

Student 1-1 review meetings with Ray 12:00-12:30 (alternating students)

Parents’ Responsibilities

1) Have students in class daily on time (Tuesday-Friday mornings)

2) Provide time in afternoon or evening for older students to complete a subject or two if needed

3) Read daily with elementary students (in addition to their daily reading lessons here)

4) Provide a final transcript for your student from your own private school (We will help with this.)

5) Send morning snack and drink with your student (lunch time will not be included in the schedule since we will release at noon).

6) Pay monthly tuition the first week of each month.

7) Pay for curriculum (consumables, book rentals, and lab fees) up to $400 per year per student upon enrollment.

SAMPLE Breakdowns With Monday or Tuesday Cottage Classes

Elementary– Home on Mondays; all academics taught in blocks, daily meetings, and independent study on Tuesday through Friday mornings

Middle School– Middle school speech and Junior High Science at First Assembly on Mondays and followed up each day; remaining academics taught in blocks, daily meetings, and independent study on Tuesday through Friday mornings (See newest Monday class schedule here!)

High School– Science (biology, chemistry, or physics) and Spanish at First Assembly on Mondays and followed up each day; remaining academics taught in blocks, daily meetings, and independent study on Tuesday through Friday mornings

If this interests you, please call ASAP to discuss as we are looking for immediate feedback–fall school will be here soon!

Sincerely,

Ray Reish

Character Ink

260-450-7063

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I am so excited about my preposition book! (Yes, I get super excited about grammar!)

And I’m doubly excited that you (our subscribers!) get to see it and use it—for FREE! (Scroll down below to subscribe and get it free until June 15th!)

Aboard, about, above. along, among, around….

Whether your kids sing them, recite them, chant them, rap them, or write them…prepositions are important.

I learned them in chant-like form when I was in school. However, I never knew WHY I needed to learn them.

My downloadable product will teach kids prepositions—in a way that focuses on the WHY, that is, what prepositions really do!

AND with the fun story line of the beloved Beauty and the Beast characters.

Our kids (and we!) need to learn prepositions for a few important reasons:

(1) They are the beginning of prepositional phrases

(2) Prepositional phrases can be mentally eliminated from a sentence in order to get to the bare bones of the sentence…since the sentence’s main subject and main verb are not usually found in prepositional phrases, This concept is imperative for subject-verb agreement solutions.

(3) Prepositional phrases are good to use as openers—especially lengthy ones—as they vary sentence structure and rhythm.

I’m all about songs, jingles, rhymes, recitation, and mnemonics for learning parts of speech (and really anything). (My books are full of them—FANBOYS for coordinating conjunctions; Be, a Helper, Link Verbs song; Preposition Check Sentences; Subordinate Clause Opener rhyme; and much more!)

However, when prepositions are learned in songs or recitations, the real reasons for prepositions are overlooked. (Not to mention that they learn about thirty of the over two hundred prepositions….not enough memorized preps to adequately recognize them in sentences and use them for sentence openers!)

That is, students can chant a long list of words, but they do not know how to use them.

(In addition to this book, you can learn more about teaching prepositions in these blog posts, “Why Learn (or Teach!) Prepositions” and “Teaching Prepositions.”)

Enter my Beauty and the Beast Preposition Practice! I use tricks. I use check sentences. I even use toys—a character from the book/movie AND a large castle—to teach prepositions (and practice them).

If you are not subscribed and would like this FREE book download, subscribe here!

Students can use either the black and white “toys” or the colored ones (a large castle and six beloved characters from Beauty and the Beast). Consider how much faster it will be for your kids to learn prepositions with these learning tools:

Beast ran _______________ the castle.

1. aboard – Beast ran aboard the castle.
2. about – Beast ran about the castle.
3. above – Beast ran above the castle.
4. across – Beast ran across the castle.
5. across from – Beast ran across from the castle.
6. behind the castle – Beast ran behind the castle.
7. below the castle – Beast ran below the castle.
8. beneath the castle – Beast ran beneath the castle.
9. beside the castle – Beast ran beside the castle.
10. by the castle – Beast ran by the castle.

But all of the methods within this Beauty and the Beast Preposition Practice have one thing in common: they focus on the PURPOSE of the preposition—to show spatial relationships or time.

This 100+ page downloadable book has eighteen lessons (with student assignments) introducing prepositions in a systematic order: initial letter, with the castle and characters, as opposites, as synonyms, as compound words, with time, and more.

This book also has a jam-packed Appendix section:

Appendix A: Colored and Black and White Beauty and the Beast Pictures to Use for
Student’s Preposition Practice

Appendix B: Think Fast Quiz Preposition Practice for Beginning and
Intermediate Students

Appendix C: Think Fast Quiz Preposition Practice for Advanced Students

Appendix D: Complete Preposition Lists in Categories and in Total (over ten pages of preposition lists!)

When you use this packet, your students will learn prepositions by the boatload—but they will also learn them for their purpose—and have fun as they do!

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I’m excited to announce a new downloadable product that is super user-friendly and effective!  And…..it’s based on the story of Beauty and the Beast, so it’s super fun too!

I’ll give you the details of the product in a little bit, but I want to let you know how you can get your hands on this resource first.

If you are a subscriber of Character Ink blog, you will automatically get it in our Freebie Friday! (How cool is that?) Yep, I’m giving you a fifty-plus-page e-book to use with your students completely free (for a limited time!).

If you are not a subscriber and/or you are reading this blog post after the freebie has ended, you can still get ahold of this product at Teachers Pay Teachers, CurrClick, or Character Ink Store!

So now for the deets….

Beauty and the Beast Checklist Challenge is a downloadable e-book that walks students (and teachers!) through the first three-fourths of Language Lady’s effective Checklist Challenge. The Checklist Challenge is a “challenging checklist” of tasks that help students go through their writing, one task at a time, and revise, edit, add to, embellish, and improve.

The Checklist Challenge has the following characteristics/benefits:

(1) Each task is given separately (i.e. not just a big master list with no explanation). The tasks are explained and samples are provided.

(2) The checklist has check boxes (one per paragraph) for each essay/report/story that you can customize to a certain project. It is clear that a paper has four paragraphs, so most of the task should be done four times— once per paragraph.

(3) The tasks are skills learned in grammar. Once a child learns how to use quotations, he should practice them immediately by putting them in his writing. The Checklist Challenge marries grammar and writing in a way that other programs do not.

(4) Coding instructions are given so that a student can be taught to code his additions and revisions for easyteacher-grading.

And so much more.

This book is chock full of learning! There is a thorough sample essay that has all of the CC revisions penned into it and coded to teach you and your student how this is done. There is an essay given for the student to use to complete the Checklist Challenge. However, there is also instruction in how to write your own Beauty and the Beast essay to complete the Checklist Challenge on (if desired). Finally, there is an extra Checklist Challenge for you to print off and use with future essays, stories, and reports.

This book will teach you how to use Language Lady’s Checklist Challenge to improve all of your writing. It will show you step-by-step how to make changes that improve your writing drastically. It is very directed—meaning that you will not have to guess what to do next or how to change something or how to improve something. You will become a pro at the Checklist Challenge (for the essay in this book as well as future essays) after you finish with this book!

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I have written seventy-five books in the past fifteen years—averaging 800 pages a book. The first forty were completely new books, and the next thirty-five have been re-writes and new books taken out of the original forty (i.e. half of the MC lessons came out of Character Quality Language Arts, for instance). But it has been a long journey nonetheless.

But it has been nothing in comparison to the difficulty, “how do I do this?” “out of my element completely” novel writing of this mere two hundred page young adult dystopian thriller that Joshua and I have written together.

In a nutshell, novel writing is hard work. Story writing is hard work. And not a natural skill by any means.

That is why I am so excited about our Twice-Told Tale lessons (called Piggyback Stories in CQLA). They make story writing pain-free (virtually) by starting out with a plot that students build off of.

They are incredibly fun for students, and they are my most Directed Writing Approach-infused lessons to date. (And all of my books are extremely Directed Writing Approach-focused!)

You can find some of these lessons in the list below….but here is a taste of a lesson I taught with one of them. Not for the faint of heart—but very doable for students. I love that!

Look for more of these lessons here:

• MC 5 II: Weeks 9 and 10—Piggy Back Tale of Country Mouse, City Mouse
• MC 6 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Piggy Back Story of Prodigal Son
• MC 7 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Piggy Back Story of The Prince and the Pauper
• MC 7 II: Weeks 2 and 3–Piggy Back Story of the Ugly Duckling
• MC 9 I: Weeks 10 and 11–Twice Told Tale Jungle Book
• MC 9 II: Weeks 11 and 12—Twice Told Tale Martin Avdeitch
• MC 9 II: Weeks 13 and 14—Twice Told Tale Gift of the Magi
• Write On, Mowgli—Level IV
• Write On, Peter Pan V (coming February 15th!)
• Write On, Belle and Beast V (in the video…coming mid February!)

Check out “Twice Told Tales” at our store below! 

(Also available at CurrClick, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Teachers Notebook!)

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We would love to come to your area with our Homeschooling With Character parenting seminar. This seminar is flexible to meet the needs of homeschool groups everywhere. Here are some details for you:

1. The seminar can be sponsored by a church, Sunday school, small group, community, homeschool group, support group, field trip group, state homeschool organization, etc. It is for any group of homeschoolers who want to learn about character-focused parenting from birth to tweens—with a special emphasis on the homeschooling lifestyle. (See our tween and teen workshop list here.)

Note: We also offer our Raising Kids With Character seminar, which has many of the same sessions but does not focus on homeschooling families only. It addresses Christian parenting regardless of schooling scenarios. Many homeschooling groups sponsor that seminar so that they can invite their non-homeschooling friends as well. (Another option is to offer the Raising Kids With Character seminar but Friday during the day (or Thursday evening) have us present homeschooling workshops only (such as writing or managing your homeschool day or any of our sixty-plus homeschooling workshops.)

2. It is flexible. We can accommodate most schedules, including a shorter seminar (Friday night and Saturday morning) or a longer one (Friday night and all day Saturday) or even an extended one if Moms would like to do some efficiency, organizing, or “baby/toddler” things or other homeschooling topics during the day on Friday (my personal favorite because in this arrangement I get to talk to more moms!).

3. It is inexpensive. This is our ministry. Our book sales and cottage classes are for-profit, but these seminars are our “mission field.” We don’t need to make money—we just need to be able to pay our expenses and sell some of our products on tables. Easy peasy. That means that parents will not have to pay a lot to attend (though we do recommend charging something so parents commit to it).

4. The registrations can be set up in multiple ways: (1) Your group can handle the registrations and pay our expenses with your “per person” charge; (2) We can handle the registrations fully on our end; (3) Your group can handle the registrations but scholarship your people and have your group pay our expenses.

5. We are always asked about a minimum number of attendees. We love to speak to hundreds at homeschool conventions, and we would love to get our parenting messages out there to hundreds as well. However, we can usually hold a seminar for as few as thirty attendees.

Click below to see lists of topics that we speak on at our seminars, and contact us here to set one up!

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If you’re subscribed to the newsletter or blog, you’ve already been receiving our Freebie Fridays…here’s a peek at what’s coming 🙂  Not signed up?  You can subscribe here!

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I have loved teaching writing and language arts to nearly a hundred students a year for the past fifteen years (started out with eight students!). Through that process, as well as through writing fifty thousand pages of curricula, books, blog posts, and more over the past fifteen years, I have learned so much about teaching writing—and also about the expectations and goals that we have for students at various levels. Sometimes these expectations are extreme, but sometimes they are not adequate. In this series, I hope to give you an *encouraging* writing tip for each grade level. Keep in mind that I am talking here about the act of writing/creating/composing, not the act of penmanship (or even spelling). Here we go…

Kindergarten:

Teach “writing” informally through reading aloud, listening to audios together, and building the child’s background of experience.

At this level, the child may not be able to “pen” words or sentences (my kids certainly couldn’t), but writing is about creating and creativity and thinking first and foremost. The penning will come later—and its success will be based on the level of creativity and thinking that a child has developed.

Every time you read aloud to a child, you are building his creativity. Every time you listen to an audio together, you are teaching him to “make pictures in his head” (my six year old’s words fifteen years ago!). Every time you discuss things, go to the zoo, visit a re-enactment, or watch the creatures at the aquarium, you are building his background of experience.

These books, pictures in his mind, and experiences will all be brought together—first in his learning to read (his reading comprehension following “word calling”) and then in his learning to write. When I was in college, these were called “background of experiences.” Regardless of what they are called, some things never change: a student thinks and learns based in large part on those.

Taking his experiences one step further through discussion seals his learning and thinking. Use the same good questioning techniques with experiences as you would with building reading and listening comprehension: ask why, ask what makes him think this or that, ask what that is similar to or different from, ask what might happen next or what might have happened before.

Writing is not only taught with paper and pen (or computer). Don’t underestimate the non-writing “writing lessons”!

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