We all want to raise children who love learning—and if they love homeschooling, too, well, that’s even better. I wanted my kids to love learning and homeschooling so much twenty-five years ago that I wouldn’t teach a child to read unless he could learn within a few weeks with no tears. (Otherwise, we put it on the back burner for a couple more months.) I was serious about this love for learning stuff!

However, in an effort to be sure our kids enjoy homeschooling, we often run into something that makes it hard for us parents to enjoy it—and something that actually handicaps our children in the future. This concept is one of indulgent homeschooling vs fun homeschooling.

Just like our children “don’t like” this or “don’t want” that or “have to have” this or “can’t be happy without” this–and thus, are often not happy with the “normal” things of life–so it is with our children in homeschooling.

Before I come off sounding like an ogre, I want to assure you that we had a fun homeschool. If you were to ask our children (seven of them ages seventeen through thirty-three) if our homeschool was fun, you would hear answers like the following:

“Oh yeah! Dad used to use these huge red pressboard bricks to teach Bible stories. We would build the temple, Zacchaeus’ tree, and even Jesus’ boat!”

“Fun? How many kids do you know who got to sleep at the top of the jungle gym at Science Central overnight—WITH their parents!”

“I can’t imagine more fun than having your mom read to you for two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. School was definitely fun at our house!”

“It was a blast! When Mom and Dad got us new books and other fun things from the homeschool convention, they would wake us up at midnight when they got home and show us everything and start reading them to us!”

However, one reason that our children found homeschooling fun was because everything didn’t always have to be fun. Just like an indulgent child can’t be happy unless she gets to have a friend overnight, order pizza, and buy new make up to do make-overs often, a homeschooled child will not think school is fun if he has to have fun all the time. I call this the fun factor in homeschooling.

So, strange as it may seem, my first suggestion to making school fun and helping your kids love learning and love homeschooling is to not try to make everything fun.

Our kids knew fun times were coming. They knew that Mom and Dad loved learning and loved homeschooling and would make things fun at times. They knew that we had something fun up our sleeves to pull out any time.

But they also knew that school was their occupation–and it was often just plain hard work sometimes. And it needed to be done. Day in and day out. Just like Dad went to his job and worked his tail off–so Mom and the kids do the same at home.

Our mantra was “daytime is for learning and working and evenings are for fun and family.” (Obviously, we did fun things during the day too—see partial list above….but they knew that they couldn’t just do anything they wanted during the day. They needed to be learning, working, growing. It was their occupation. (And yes, we did have play time for youngers; breaks; etc.!)

We didn’t need to have bells and whistles all the time because they began to love normal (just like their parents did—hint hint–modeling!). They always knew the expectations, and they knew that every day they had to get up and follow a routine for learning, growing, becoming, and maturing.

They learned the joy of following a loose (block) school schedule, setting goals and meeting them, completing tasks, and of gaining knowledge.

They knew that there were many things we do just because they are the right things to do. Every subject, every day doesn’t have to be fun. Chores don’t always have to be games and contests–or rewarded (though sometimes they were!).

Independent lists were there to keep them on track. They were their to-do lists every day.

Chores were a part of our day because chores make a home run smoothly—and give us more time in the evenings for fun family activities.

We taught our children a contentment in homeschooling–in our way of life—that made the fun even more fun, the special even more special, and the extraordinary even more extraordinary.

The Fun Factor in Homeschooling–the fun begins when the normal is good too.

The post The Fun Factor in Homeschooling appeared first on Character Ink.

Now on to Junior High and High School!

The concept behind the Independent Work List is that it helps a student become, well, independent. In that way, the chart/list/planner should grow with the child—more independence/less neediness.

More responsibility/less spoon feeding from Mom.

These will be in no true order–just some things that I want to re-emphasize from the younger ages as well as things that pertain only to olders.

1. Consider the document or chart that works best for your age child now.

Most kids in junior high and high school no longer want cutsie charts. Once you decide you want a genuine paper document, then you have to decide how you want it filled in:

a.  As he goes, he lists what he does each day, sort of a daily school journal.

b. You write in a planner each week for him for the following week (page
number, number of pages, lesson number, etc.).

c. You have a standard daily Independent Work List that you create in your
scheduling program or Excel—that you can customize when something
changes, etc. You print this off, put it on a clip board, and have him highlight
or mark off as he does things each day.

2. Consider if you are going to make his Independent Work List for him completely or if
you will have his input.

We liked to choose our high schoolers’ materials, schedules, lists, etc., with them, so that they have some input in the process–and to help model for them/teach them how to organize, prioritize, etc.

3. Still use some of the elements from the earlier suggestions (for younger kids) that are
universal, such as:

a. School is your child’s occupation. It is what he should be about during the
day.

b. Put the daily tasks in sections according to time of day or importance–and also in order according to when they should be done.

c. Have a system that works for you every day. Have his list on a clip board that he carries with him/keeps in his school area. Have him highlight as he does things. Have him leave it on your desk when he is done, etc.

d. Develop a “no exceptions” approach to daily independent work. A student doesn’t go to basketball, girls group, youth group, etc., until his daily independent work list is done.

4. Have blanks on the chart to add in any work from outside classes, music lessons, Bible quizzing, etc.

5. Put things that are not dailies where ever they go. This was always a little bit difficult for me.

a. Do twice weeklies go on Tuesday and Thursday (but Thursday is our lesson and
errand day…)?

b. Do three times weeklies always go M-W-F, even though Wednesday is our “cottage class day” and extras do not get done on that day?

c. This might take a while to get in the groove, but it is worth it to tweak things and make it work.

6. For junior high kids, consider that you might need smaller chunks (maybe two math
sessions at 30 minutes a day, etc.).

Again, you know your student and your family situation, so do whatever works best for you.

7. Consider if you want this Independent Work List to be his total chart/list for all aspects of his day at older ages:

a. Do you want to put his devotions, music practice, and outside work on there
too?

b. Do you want it to contain meetings/tutoring sessions with you?

c. Do you want it to also be his chore list?

8. There are some definite advantages to a junior high or high schooler having his day right in front of him in one spread sheet. However, this can also get overwhelming to some kids.

9. If you are using a “time” planner in which the time slots for each subject are written in, you might want to include times in which he meets with you, does chores, does lab with a sister, etc., so that he can see the big picture for how time fits together.

10. Consider switching to a start time/finish time approach and having him total up his time spent on school if he is having a lot of trouble with time management.

Seeing how much time actually got spent on important things and how much time got wasted can be invaluable in teaching older kids independence.

I hope that these posts have been a help to you. I can’t tell you how worth it, it is to implement independent lists!

LINKS

For a downloadable product with a dozen charts to use with various ages, check the store here!

Video: Independent Work Lists

Audio: Independent Work Lists

Audio: Using Your Planner to Get More Done

Audio: Overcoming Parenting Obstacles

Video: Using Consequence Pies

The post Independent Work Lists for Junior High and High School appeared first on Character Ink.

This week’s Wondering Wednesday answers readers’ questions about how to implement Independent Work Lists for children, especially junior high and high school by using daily check lists. (See the podcast episodes that introduces the concepts of Daily Duties and talks about using charts and lists, work order, teaching independence, and more in last week’s Wondering Wednesday podcast episode here.)

“In this video, Donna Reish, author of fifty+ curriculum books and co-author of Raising Kids With Character parenting seminar and blog, explains to parents how to use charts, checklists, and lesson plans to implement Daily Duties (daily independent lists for school) in your homeschool. Donna uses sheets from her download, Daily Duties: Independent Check Lists for Students, to explain the various ways to divide and implement Daily Duties, such as by time blocks, by subject areas, by order of importance, and by days. She also includes teaching on how to take a child from fully dependent on a chart (or you!) to independent as he grows up. You do not need to have the Daily Duties e-book to benefit from this teaching!”

So there you have it…our first Wondering Wednesday video. Let me know what you think!

Love and hope,
Donna

Subscribe to us on YouTube!

Click here or on the picture below to get this download 🙂

LINKS

The Simplified Planner
Age Appropriate Chore Posters
Consequence Pies e-book
Podcast: How Do I Turn My Day from Chaos to Control? From Rowdy to Routine?
Podcast: Foundations for Becoming an Efficiency Expert in Your Home
Five Homeschooling Problems and Solutions
Ten Ways to Stay Close During Intense Training Times

Save

The post Video: Using Check Lists for Student’s Independent Work appeared first on Character Ink.

The first day was a bust. The first week was less glamorous, productive, and family-unifying than you envisioned it. So what is the natural reaction to that?

The natural reaction is to doubt. Doubt that God called you to this. Doubt that you can do it—regardless of the calling. Doubt that you are the best teacher for your children. Wowsie, even doubt that you are a good parent at all!

But how does God want us to react to less than perfect beginnings? Knowing the character of God—merciful, wisdom, loving, kind, instructive—we can know that there are probably two reactions that God would have us ponder:

1) “Not doubt in the darkness what God told us in the light.”

2) Fix problems and move on!

First of all, God didn’t lead you to homeschool just to leave you hanging. Just to leave you unequipped. Just to leave you feeling defeated.

He called you to this because this is the best thing for your family. Right now. With you as the homeschooling parent. With your kids at home with you. Period.

It is similar to marriage. When we have bad days, weeks, or even months, we don’t automatically say that we are not called to be married to this person. We don’t automatically doubt that we can do this.

We look at it for what it is: a stumbling block. Areas to work on. But we don’t throw in the towel. And we don’t even usually doubt that we are supposed to stay married.

A bad day or a bad week does not mean that you are a failure. It does not mean that you cannot do this. When the first day or week of school is a disappointment, it is not a sign of failure. It is a sign that we need God’s strength and wisdom more than ever to do this daunting lifestyle known as homeschooling.

Second of all, we need to look at some of the causes of the bad day. Sometimes it is just a “series of unfortunate events” that we have no control over. However, in order to not repeat this bad day or bad week too many times, if there are things that can be fixed, we need to fix them.

Here are some things that I have learned in thirty-one years of homeschooling that can cause a bad start:

1) Trying to do it all immediately. Start slowly. Don’t try to do everything the first week. It is easier to go from full free-time summer to fall school in bits and pieces. Get that first hour down the way you like it. Then move on. Only have morning school. Only have afternoon school. Do whatever it takes to get going on the right foot.

2) Trying to keep doing too many other things. When we talk with new homeschoolers, we ask them what they are dropping from their life from the previous year in order to homeschool. They often look at us like that is crazy. What needs to be dropped? Then we tell them the hours of instruction. The long days with kids who were previously at school and now with you 24/7. Then we ask them if they had a few hours a day last year to watch soap operas and eat bon bons. And they seldom do.

The same is true of starting the school year. Many moms go into the fall school year still canning green beans and freezing corn. Still doing all of the same church and volunteer activities. Still trying to squeeze in that exercise hour that seemed so easy to get to in the summer.

Time is like money. Once it is used, it is used. You can’t snap your finger and make more of it appear. Don’t “double spend” your time or you will be deep into “time debt,” and that can only lead to frustration.

3) Not delegating enough to the kids. I know, we all want to be super mom. And other housewives whose kids are in school do their own work. (Did I really just say “their own work”? We all live in the house, so housework is everybody’s—unless that is your ONLY job, full time!)

However, we can’t do it all. It is not possible. And no matter how good it looks on paper, it will not flesh out in real life if we overbook ourselves with school and house. Check out my podcast episodes about efficiency and about children and chores. Don’t try to do it all. Plus, working at home is a big part of homeschooling—learning responsibility, habits, and skills that he or she would miss if in school all day.

4) Not building in enough flex time. Many years ago when I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t seem to get to everything I had planned every day for each child, my husband helped me go through my schedule and insert fifteen to thirty minute flex times throughout my day.

This was especially helpful since we moms can often be unrealistic about how long things will take, how few interruptions we will likely have, etc. Give yourself (and your kids!) some flex time!

5) Not being prepared. Maybe those chore charts just haven’t gotten made yet. Or maybe those independent lists are still on the computer waiting to be printed. Or maybe you are just opening some of the boxes of books. In any of these cases, maybe you need to call an Educational Video-on-Neftlix school day or two while you get things together. You can still count it towards your days while you are getting things ready to run a little more smoothly.

Whatever your reason, don’t doubt your ability. Don’t doubt God’s leading. You will be so glad some day that you persevered. So glad that you made this lifestyle choice. And you will someday get to the thirty-two year mark, and breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that you spent your life on something as valuable as homeschooling your children.

The post “Mama and the Horrible, Terrible, Not-So-Great First Day” appeared first on Character Ink.

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)

The post Getting Ready For School 2015: Help Students Label Their Books appeared first on Character Ink.

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!

The post Getting Ready For School 2015: Textbook Preview With Your Children appeared first on Character Ink.

If you have been considering using our new Meaningful Composition books, you are in luck! Since we will have so many new titles—and most of the old ones are revised—we have decided to offer a MC sale for back-to-school this year! Three years of re-writing, writing new, developing new techniques, and testing books with a hundred students each week—and now we are ready!

Here is the scoop:

We have two semesters of each level of Meaningful Composition from four through ten available in August! Each MC book will be $30 during the month of August only (regular price $35)! You can call to purchase (260-450-7063) or (260-433-4365) or you can email us at characterink@gmail.com (Store coming soon—but in the meantime, give us a call or shoot us an email!)

Wondering if MC is right for you? Check our blog frequently as we are going to be adding samples of all of the current books each week in the coming months. Two weeks of free lessons per book—means that you can “try before you buy” at all levels!

Here is what we will have available by mid-August (though most are ready now!)

MC 4 I: Sentences, Paragraphs, and More
MC 4 II: Put Those Paragraphs Together!
MC 5 I: Writing for Real!
MC 5 II: Creative and Clever
MC 6 I: Long and Strong
MC 6 II: Junior High Essays
MC 7 I: Reports and Essays Galore
MC 7 II: Completely Creative
MC 8 I: Bridging the Gap
MC 8 II: Junior High Research Reports
MC 9 I: Writing for High School
MC 9 II: High School Creative Writing
MC 10 I: Essays Only
MC 10 II: Four Research Reports
MC 12 II: The BIG Research Paper
MC Bonus Book: SAT Essay and Other Timed Writing

Want to see some samples right away?  Check them out here!

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