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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
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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