Tag Archives: homeschooling

Preparing Our Kids for a Challenging Future, Part 2: Raising Eager Learners

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The new economy is a completely different environment from the one our parents and grandparents knew, the one that’s disappearing. It’s no longer the norm for someone to work for one company for 40 years by doing what they’re told and behaving themselves so they can be rewarded with a gold watch and a nice pension. The length of the average job has already dropped to a little over four years.

Workers are laid off on a regular basis. Entire industries become obsolete and disappear, or simply move to the other side of the world where labor is cheaper. Change is coming at us more rapidly than ever, and those who are willing to adapt to these changes by learning new skills will thrive.

To raise children who eagerly learn new skills, we need to give them the opportunity for free exploration, hands-on learning and real-life experiences where they learn to fail. This isn’t easy for us as parents, because we weren’t allowed to learn this way. We went to school, where we were told what to learn, and we had no choice in how we learned it. But we must do better by our children, because they need to be prepared differently than we were.

Free exploration is important for people of all ages, but in our society it seems that only babies are allowed the privilege. They crawl everywhere, chew on new items they discover, and absorb every experience like the little sponges they are. But before long, they’re sucked into the world of school, where their learning is “guided.” Goals are set by educators, and free exploration comes to an end.

How sad and how unnecessary! It seems like we’ve taken a step backwards when it comes to early education by taking away children’s freedom to explore and learn. Today, two-year-olds are put in preschool, but when I was a child, we were free to learn through our play until age five or six. (The public school I lived next to didn’t even offer kindergarten.) And for generations before us, children didn’t go to school until they were older. Among American pioneers of the 1800s, children went to school sporadically if at all. But they learned what they needed to know while working with their parents to set up homesteads in an unfamiliar environment. Pioneer travels were the ultimate free exploration.

Homeschooling gives children the time and opportunity to learn through free exploration, if their parents don’t force them into the public-school-method learning mode. The children of today who are free to read what interests them, explore computers, and learn about the world by visiting museums and other sites of interest will be tomorrow’s eager lifelong learners.

Hands-on learning is the primary way babies learn, and used to be the way everyone learned. But the pervasive influence of school turned us toward attending classes and reading books as the preferred way of learning. (There’s nothing wrong with reading books, but some subjects cannot be learned by merely reading about them. There’s a huge difference between reading a recipe and actually baking the cake.) And of course, since schools contain large numbers of children, hands-on learning experiences are minimized because they’re so cumbersome.

But this is another area where homeschooling shines. Homeschooled kids can learn with their hands every day. They bake, paint, build and create whenever they feel inspired. Logistics don’t allow this to happen in school. Think about it: there’s a big difference between the mess created by a couple of siblings finger-painting and 35 school kids finger-painting. So finger-painting happens at home a lot more than it does at school, and it’s usually initiated by the kids’ desire to finger-paint, not a directive on the teacher’s lesson plan.

Kids who work with their hands all the time not only learn better, but also become accustomed to being creative. If there’s anything we’re going to need to solve our formidable economic and technological problems in this world, it’s creativity!

Next: Part 3, Why Your Child Needs to Fail

Preparing Our Kids for a Challenging Future, Part 1

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Our economy is in shambles, with millions of people out of work and even more overcome by debt they can’t repay. But don’t worry; over at the White House, the president and his cabinet are working hard to find a way out of this economic mess by creating jobs somehow. However, they’re having trouble, maybe because only 20% of them ever had a job in the private sector. All they’ve got to work with is the theories they’ve learned from books and professors.

I don’t mean to pick on one group of politicians. Both political parties in this country are filled with elected officials who have made careers out of being politicians. They’ve got resumes packed with degrees and political positions. But real life work? Not so much.

The great leaders of our past had backgrounds of real-life challenges and experiences to draw from. George Washington was a self-employed surveyor who later fought in wars. Theodore Roosevelt was also a soldier, as well as a police officer, hunter and author. Abraham Lincoln grew up in poverty but became a self-taught and self-employed lawyer. Harry Truman worked as a farmer, a bank clerk, and ran a men’s store: not as exciting as being a war hero, but he understood real-life economics because he lived it.

No wonder things are getting worse instead of better. Our leaders today are armed only with book knowledge and political experience, they’ve had little education in real life. So who’s going to get us out of this mess? Looks like it’s going to be the next generation: our kids.

And how are they being prepared for this challenge? On weekends, they’re scattered on soccer fields, some kids chasing the ball while the rest chase them, or in the case of the three-year-olds, stand and stare at the sky while their parents yell from the sidelines, “Run, Riley, run! Don’t just stand there: go after the ball!” Do you ever wonder how that’s preparing them for the future?

During the week, they’re herded into buses so they can spend each day trapped in classrooms, where they’ll get a good dose of indoctrination along with watered-down math courses and remedial reading for all but the smartest. John Taylor Gatto’s studies reveal that the American school model that’s been used for over 100 years was originally devised to create a docile workforce for the nation’s factories and large businesses (you know, the ones that are now moving overseas). Do you ever ask yourself why we’re still using such an outdated model of education?

When you see kids sitting in restaurants and at family gatherings, not speaking to or even looking at anyone because they’re texting their friends or surfing the Internet, do you ever wonder how they’re going to cope with the challenges of the future if they can’t even take their eyes off those little screens?

And when you see the pressure they’re all under to go to college (whether or not they’re college material), and the debt they’ll have to accumulate to attend, and the decreasing likelihood that the degree they may earn (only 50% graduate within six years) will help them get more than a median-wage job, do you wonder how they’re going to be able to solve the problems we’ve saddled them with when they’re stuck in the debt-slave lifestyle?

This is scary stuff. It’s bad enough we’re handing our kids’ generation a legacy of debt and economic troubles, but we’re not even equipping them to deal with the fallout. Instead, we’re sending them out into the world unprepared and financially strapped with their own personal student loan debt before they’re 25.

So what can we do?

The good news is that homeschooling is the ideal way to prepare our kids for the future. The mere act of taking them out of school (or not sending them in the first place) frees them to learn what they need to know in a way that’s efficient and personalized. It lets us provide our kids with the specific skills they’ll need to thrive in a world that’s much different from the one we grew up in. But if homeschooling parents don’t give their children the opportunity to learn those skills, their children will be no better off than the kids now in the public school system.

Simply choosing to homeschool is not enough. How we homeschool our children will make the difference between kids who are prepared to take on the challenges of the 21st century, and kids who aren’t.

Now, I don’t want to say there’s a right way and a wrong way to homeschool our children. There’s so much variety among children (and parents) that successful homeschooling always involves a unique mix of what the child needs and what the parent wants him or her to learn. But there are specific things we can do (or avoid) that will help us raise children who are prepared to tackle the problems we face in the future.

For one thing, we don’t have to replicate school in our homes. School was designed for the old reality, the one where we were preparing kids to willingly sit at a desk or on an assembly line for one company for 40 years. That’s not reality anymore, so why prepare our children for it?

Perhaps I’m preaching to the choir here, but think about it: are you replicating school at home? Do your kids sit in desks for long stretches? Do you make them raise their hands to answer a question? Don’t laugh; many parents do this, especially when they first begin homeschooling. I did it myself the first year we homeschooled; my kids sat at the kitchen table while we did bookwork for specific time periods. They were four and five then. Silly, I know, but “school” was all I knew at the time, thanks to my childhood experience. I soon figured out that there was a better way.

Maybe you don’t do school at home: good for you! But do you send your children to co-ops and other organized classes? That’s school, too, you know. In co-ops and classes, your kids are treated as a group: a herd, really. When you’re part of a herd, it’s hard to have your individual needs met and your individual questions answered. We can’t expect our kids to grow up as individuals who actively seek learning if we put them in situations where they learn to identify themselves as part of a herd, passively waiting for the teacher to tell them what to do next.

This is especially true for small children. I wince when I hear about homeschool groups setting up preschool classes. A homeschool preschool class is an oxymoron! During the first few years of life, children are learning who they are. If they’re part of a herd, they’re going to think they’re sheep. Is that what you want? If you want sheep, you might as well send your children to school.

Once homeschooled kids are older (14+) and accustomed to self-motivated learning, a class here and there won’t hurt most of them. In fact, some will enjoy the classroom experience; if they’re college-bound, a few community college or co-op classes will be good preparation. But using classes and co-ops as a homeschooling method is not going to produce kids who think for themselves.

Some parents unknowingly replicate school at home by using a curriculum that requires kids to learn only from books and workbooks, with the occasional topic-related, hands-on activity for variety. This, too, is school. I realize that some kids are workbook kids who love this kind of thing. But the majority of kids don’t. Why would you use the same method for all your children unless they’re all alike? Using one method for all children is what schools do for convenience because it’s the most logistically sensible way to handle large quantities of children, but it rarely produces kids who pursue learning.

This is important because in the new economy, people who are curious and who willingly pursue learning will be the most employable, the most successful at self-employment and the most likely to help solve the formidable problems we face. Futurists tell us that our kids will likely have multiple careers because of rapid technological change. They’ll have to willingly learn new skills in order to remain in demand. And they’ll be more likely to pursue additional learning if their desire to learn has been fed, not snuffed out by school or school-like homeschooling.

Next: Part 2, Raising Eager Learners

Book List for Homeschooling a Child with Down syndrome

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As I mentioned in my recent post on homeschooling a child with Down syndrome, there were many books that helped me as I homeschooled my son with Down syndrome. Not all of them were “school” books.

There’s a certain amount of acceptance that parents of kids with disabilities must gain, and it takes a while to get there. Sitting down to work with your child makes you realize just how hard it is for him to learn things, and that can really get you down.

Some books have helped me understand that homeschooling him is a process that will go on in one form or another for his entire life. It’s not like it was with my older kids, where we worked together for a certain number of years and then sent them out into the world. This guy has a lot of hurdles in front of him, and while I try not to be negative, it was plain to me pretty early on that he would not attain anywhere near the level of education his siblings would. That was a pretty depressing realization for me, and I had to find encouragement from a multitude of sources, including books, in order to keep homeschooling him.

(Sometimes, when I got discouraged, I thought about what it would have been like for him in school, and that usually got me back on track. After all, who had time to sit patiently with him each day and work and play if not me? No teacher or aide would have had time to work with him one-on-one, which is what a distractible guy like him needed, and no teacher or aide could know him as well as I do, anyway.)

Keep in mind that while these books helped my son and me, that doesn’t mean they’ll work for all parents homeschooling kids with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities. Children differ in temperament and ability, and so do parents. There’s a wide range of abilities among children with Down syndrome, and they develop at different rates, although most do develop more slowly than your “typical” child.

In my son’s case, there are other issues. Due to central apnea during his infancy, he may have sustained minor brain damage. His doctor said we could run a lot of expensive tests to find out for certain if and where such damage occurred, but he felt that we’d be spending a whole lot of money without being able to change things. We agreed. But what our son went through makes it harder for him to learn certain things. Even his long-time speech therapist said some of his speech patterns are not typical of Down syndrome.

So he is a unique individual, and so am I, thus don’t rely on this booklist to cure what ails you and your child. On the other hand, I’ve always felt that if I learned one useful thing from a book, it was worth reading. So hopefully, you will find at least some tidbits in these books that will make them worth your time.

(Do keep in mind that the curricular-type books here are not the only things I used to homeschool my son. We also did a lot of hands-on work. But the purpose of this post is to share books we’ve found helpful.)

Christian Homes and Special Kids by Sherry Bushnell and Diane Ryckman
This book is a great resource and encouragement for all parents homeschooling their child with special needs, and I’m not just saying that because there’s a chapter about our family in the book. It’s just a book written by parents who want to share their experiences and their favorite resources. ISBN-10 09744332-0-9
Available at http://www.nathhan.com

Helps for Special Education Teachers by Eileen Shaum
I bought this book from Rod and Staff, one of my favorite sources for homeschooling books. It helped me establish a well-rounded foundation for my work with Josh. It helps you set goals and gives you activities for reaching those goals.
Available at http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/item/19031

Rod and Staff’s Preschool Series of Workbooks
We bought and worked through the entire series twice, that’s how much we liked these workbooks. Lots of cut-and-paste educational activities. Pages are nicely illustrated (farm animals, not licensed characters!) without being too busy and cluttered as many workbooks are. I used this series with dd17 when she was little and wanted to do school with the big kids, so that’s how I knew about them when dsds15 reached that developmental level. I can’t say enough about these workbooks!
Available at http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com/item/10020
NOTE: You can usually find Rod and Staff products at homeschool conference vendor halls. I highly recommend their products for all children.

Teaching Reading to Children With Down Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Topics in Down Syndrome) by Patricia Logan Oelwein
Excellent resource! This book offers complete instructions for building a reading program for your child. By the way, I have been to two of Ms. Oelwein’s seminars and learned so much. If you get the chance to attend one, go! You won’t be sorry.

Teaching Math to People With Down Syndrome and Other Hands-On Learners: Basic Survival Skills (Topics in Down Syndrome) Book 1 by DeAnna Horstmeier, Ph.D.
Personally I didn’t find this book as useful as Patricia Oelwein’s book, but your mileage may vary. I do like the fact that this book is intended for people of all ages with Down syndrome, not just children. I attended Dr. Horstmeier’s seminar and enjoyed her stories about her adult son with Down syndrome.

Communication Skills in Children With Down Syndrome: A Guide for Parents (Topics in Down Syndrome) by Libby Kumin, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Filled with ideas for encouraging proper speech development in your child.

When Slow Is Fast Enough: Educating the Delayed Preschool Child by Dr. Joan Goodman
An eye-opening book that helped me understand exactly what early intervention is all about.

Teacher Created Resources

My son is a workbook guy: he gets great joy from finishing a page and getting a star on it. We have had success with some of TCR’s math workbooks. I love how they have several workbook pages for each step in the learning process. I photocopied the pages over and over and over until he got the concepts (it can take a long time).

You can buy TCR books online, but I recommend going to a teacher store and flipping through them yourself to see which might work for you and your child. If that’s not convenient, you can download many of their titles as eBooks at: http://www.teachercreated.com

Here are two of their books that we really used a lot:

Take It To Your Seat Learning Centers published by Evan-Moor
These pre-made manipulative activity books called “Take It To Your Seat” are really good–clever learning projects all ready to be cut out, laminated and used regularly. Two we enjoyed: Take It to Your Seat Math Centers, Grades K-1 and Take It to Your Seat Phonics Centers, Grades K-1.

Buki Books
We love Buki Books! They’re educational but so much fun that kids don’t mind. There are dot-to-dot books up to 1-150 (painless way to learn number sequencing), Calc-U-Color books (color by number where you have to figure out the number first using addition or subtraction), maze books and more. They have several age levels for each type of book. Once again, I found these in teacher stores, but you can also find them online, like this particular favorite of my son’s: Mosaic Hidden Pictures. In teacher stores, they’re often found on freestanding kiosks. They’re very colorful and hard to miss!

Betty Lukens Felt Activity books (BettyLukens.com) Great for teaching Bible stories to kinesthetic learners. At 15 my son still liked looking at these books and arranging the felt pieces on them. I think the fact that they’re realistic-looking and not babyish helps.

50 Bible Paper Pop-Ups: 3-D Visuals for Hands-On Learning Fun by Robin S. Parimore and Lynne Marie Davis
We worked our way through this book for a year. Requires cutting skills. I combined each project with the appropriate Bible story.

The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling by Barbara Frank
My book has a chapter in it on homeschooling your child with special needs.

The Dance Goes On by Roberta Bandy
The true story of how the birth of a child with special needs grew the faith of a young couple. We knew the Bandy family for years; their story is so encouraging!

A Simple Homeschool Thanksgiving

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If you’re one of those lucky people who are having Thanksgiving at their house this year, I’ve got some advice for you. Don’t do school that week!

I realize this isn’t an issue for you unschoolers out there. But there are others who are emotionally attached to our lesson plans, whether we’ve written them out to the tiniest detail, or just have a few goals we like to keep in mind. Ever the optimists, we think we can get plenty of school done on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving Wednesday night to get our dinner cooked in advance. That’s called dreaming.

Here’s a Thanksgiving plan for the homeschool mom that I developed after many years of running myself ragged trying to do school Thanksgiving week while planning, shopping for and cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the result of years of fine-tuning, careful consideration and a few mommy meltdowns. These days, my goal is to keep things as simple as possible.

Monday:

First thing in the morning, have the kids clean up the area(s) where you do school

Next, provide them with sheets of construction paper, markers, scissors and glue sticks, and ask them to make place cards, a centerpiece for the table and decorations for the house, featuring turkeys, Indians, pilgrims and anything else they deem Thanksgiving-ish.

This will keep them busy for a while, leaving you free to study your cookbooks and the grocery sale flyers so you can plot your menu and your plan of attack (Tip: go to the store with the most sale items you need first; if they’re out of something (if?), you can pick it up at one of the other stores).

Monday night:

Leave your husband or a sitter with the kids so you can do your grocery-shopping in peace. Going by yourself means you’ll get done faster. It’s also your best chance of coming home with everything on your list.

Tuesday:

Time to clean the house for company; be sure to get your kids involved by setting a timer for 15 minutes, then telling them anything you find of theirs that’s not in its place when the bell rings becomes yours. That should help get rid of most of the general clutter.

Take your own clutter (in my case that’s magazines, newspapers and books), throw it into a laundry basket, and hide it in the basement or laundry room. Do the same with your husband’s clutter.

Set the kids loose with dust cloths and the vacuum cleaner. Remember, the house doesn’t have to be spotless, just reasonably clean and uncluttered.

Give a little person a feather or lambs’ wool duster and let them clean as they wish.

Give someone else a spray bottle of window cleaner and a roll of paper towels, and ask them to shine the kitchen appliances and any windows they can reach.

When all the cleaning is done, sit down together and read some Thanksgiving stories. (We like Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret Pumphrey).

Tuesday night:

Assemble all the recipes you’ll need and read each (especially the turkey directions) to refresh your memory. Run out to the store for any ingredients you might have forgotten. You do not want to go to the store tomorrow.

Wednesday:

Get that turkey and stuffing going bright and early; once it’s done, remove all the meat and place it in a big aluminum roaster for reheating tomorrow. Store the turkey and stuffing separately in the refrigerator. Pitch the turkey carcass, or freeze it for making soup stock some other time.

The kids should help with the meal preparations. Kids can:

  • peel potatoes
  • cut up vegetables
  • polish silverware
  • cut loaves of bread into cubes for stuffing
  • wash dishes and utensils

In addition to the above, teenagers can:

  • assemble casseroles
  • bake pies
  • add table leaves and bring in additional chairs and tables, if necessary

Wednesday night:

Give the kids poster paper and markers, and ask them to draw the things for which they are thankful. Display posters prominently around the house. While they’re busy with that, you can finish preparing make-ahead recipes such as gelatin salads and baked desserts.

Thursday morning:

Reheat the turkey and stuffing.

Work on the rest of the meal.

Assign your husband and kids to set the table(s). The kids can set out their beautiful centerpiece and place cards.

Enjoy the day with relatives and friends.

Thursday night:

After the relatives have gone, the kids are in bed, and you and your husband have collapsed on the sofa, consider what you have to be thankful for:

You get to see your kids every day.

You get to witness their growth, the thrill of learning to read, the accomplishment of mastering new skills.

Your life isn’t run by a school schedule or a bus schedule. You’re your own boss, and you plan your day the way you want to. How many other adults have that freedom?

Thank God for making you a mom, for blessing you with the specific kids he sent.

Most especially, thank Him for blessing you with the opportunity to homeschool those kids, for giving you all this time with them now. Someday they’ll be grown and gone, and you’ll have ten times as many memories as other moms, because you were there with them every day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Homeschooling Your Child with Down Syndrome

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Momto4 left this comment on my old blog:

I had my daughter in public school, she is 6 in kindergarten and has down syndrome. They haven’t a CLUE what they are doing. I was very disappointed in their lack of teaching. I will be homeschooling her and it will be interesting as I have never done such a feat. Is there anywhere one could go to help start off in kindergarten for my little girl? Is the curriculum the same? So many many questions. I do know this, anything is better than what we have now.

Since there might be other parents with this same problem, I thought I’d post my response here, where they can find it easily.

Momto4, I admire you for taking matters into your hands once you became unhappy with your daughter’s schooling experience. Pro-active parents are the best asset a child with a disability can have.

Every child with Down syndrome has unique abilities and unique needs, and that’s why I did not use a specific curriculum with my son with Ds, who is now 15. Having homeschooled three older children, I could see that my son was not at or near grade level in scholastic subjects at age 6. I decided instead to test him (using a test I rented for a very reasonable cost from HSLDA). There weren’t any surprises in the test results because I’d been working with him since he was 3 or 4, but you might find such testing very useful for you and your daughter. It will give you an idea of where to concentrate your efforts.

Anyway, after testing him, I continued working with him as I had since he was small, using my own IEP to chart the path we’d need to follow at his speed. We read many, many books, he practiced his printing every day, and we played lots of board games that stressed the different skills he needed.

For example, he had real problems grasping numbers conceptually. He could recite numbers but did not understand what they meant. We played the game “Trouble” once or twice a day and that helped him understand what “six” meant, because that’s the best number to get in that game. BTW, I frequently found the best educational games (sold in teacher stores) discounted at TJMaxx and Marshalls. For my son, educational games where he learns by using his hands instead of just sitting and listening are a real blessing.

My son is speech-delayed, like many children (especially boys) with Ds. I sat in on his sessions with the speech therapist and imitated what she did with him at home on a regular basis. We could not afford thrice-weekly sessions, which had been recommended, but at least this way he was getting daily speech practice. One of the most effective methods of working on speech sounds with him was something the therapist taught me: he’d say a word or sound and I’d reward him with a puzzle piece. So he had to make 100 sounds to get all the pieces of a 100-piece puzzle, and then we’d work on the puzzle together. (We still do this at least once a week, because he really enjoys it.)

In addition to working on his letters, number concepts and speech, we did lots of artwork, including working with crayons, paint, stampers and clay. He loved this, and it was a nice break from the “school” work. We also got him out in nature by going on bike rides (we used a third wheel attachment on my husband’s bike because our son loved to run off and we didn’t want to teach him to ride a bike on his own, thus helping him get away from us more quickly!) Visits to parks, zoos and the aquarium also widened his horizons.

One more thing we did as part of his “school” was to teach him how to work around the house. He’d seen the older kids doing their chores and wanted to be like them, so this wasn’t hard. In fact, he’s been a very eager helper. He also likes to work with his dad in his workshop. (I can still picture him at around age five or so driving nails into a piece of wood with great intensity.)

You’ve asked for specific materials that will tell you what to do with your daughter. There have been several books that helped me learn how to work with my son, and I will list them in a subsequent post. In the meantime, I’ve asked another blogger who homeschools a daughter with Ds to answer your question. You’ll find her post here.

The bottom line, Momto4, is that you are really doing something wonderful for your daughter. Homeschooling her will mean she will get much more one-on-one instruction, or “face time” as I like to call it. Not only is that much better for her, but it will help you learn more about how she learns. She’ll also be able to avoid the negative effects of school socialization, such as picking up bad habits and being bullied because of her disability. And, of course, the bottom line is that you know her better than any teacher can know her, so she’s getting a teacher who knows her well and wants the very best for her. I think your daughter is very fortunate to have you for a mom.

(If you enjoyed this article, you may also like Book List for Homeschooling a Child with Down syndrome.)