Posts by admin

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Homeschool Deals

Posted by admin on Nov 23, 2015 in Black Friday, Books, Curriculum, Sale | 0 comments

Disclosure: This blog post does contain affiliate links.  

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are just around the corner are you ready?  Here are a just few that you should definitely consider.

We have really enjoyed WordUp by Compass Classroom.  Dwane Thomas is hilarious and makes learning fun for my boys and I.

Educents is offering 10% off and FREE Shipping on all orders between Black Friday and Cyber Monday when you use code GIVETHANKS at checkout. There are always great deals to be found at Educents!

Grapevine Studies is a fantastic way to encourage good bible study skills with your kids.  Its simple style of learning is fun and engaging for kids of all ages!

Brimwood Press provides a boatload of tools that you and your young historians will enjoy.  My son and I really enjoyed diving into their Western Civilization study.  The book Calendar Quest was a favorite for my son! Brimwood Press is offering 20% off their products with discount code BWPBFCM. Have fun learning about the past!

Applecore is an easy way for you to keep your child’s homeschool work organized and easily accessible.  Our Black Friday and Cyber Monday special will give you 50% off our Silver and Gold plans when you use discount code BFAC. Get organized today!

Have you found an extra special deal this season? If so please tell us about it. We would love to share in the savings with you!

This post contains affiliate links, which means we receive a small commission if you make a purchase using the above links.

Organization—It’s More About Organization Than You Think

Posted by admin on May 21, 2014 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Staying home with our children is one of the sweetest blessings of homeschooling, but it also presents an inherent challenge: lived-in homes get messy more quickly than empty ones. The family home can be quickly overtaken by the stuff of a learning lifestyle—textbooks, teacher’s manuals, art supplies, science experiments—even eating three meals a day at home makes for more messes. Although we have more time at home than the average family, the homeschooling life is a busy one with a focus on learning that often looks past the mess on the floor as we focus on accomplishing the next lesson. Fortunately, as homeschooling parents, we can approach this dilemma and its solution as an opportunity to teach a valuable life skill. Add the subject of “organizational arts” to your homeschool planner and get ready to teach your children how to bring order to their spaces. Best of all, as they accomplish their “homework,” you’ll reap the benefits of a more organized, peaceful home.

Teaching From the Right Perspective

Before we can jump into the mess with our kids and begin lessons in organization, we must first make sure we have the right perspective. There are five essential precepts we need to understand before successfully teaching our children to get organized.

1. Organization is not perfection. Organization is a structured way of keeping things so you can easily find them and use them. When your home is organized, it will function well, but it isn’t necessarily going to look like the cover of a magazine. To some degree, involving your children in the process of organization means letting go of control. If you want your children to take ownership, then you have to relinquish it. It will be worth it in the long run. If a child is going to maintain his personal space, the way things are organized has to make sense to his way of thinking, not yours.
2. Organization is a lifelong habit. Teaching your kids to be organized isn’t a one-shot lesson but rather a lifelong process— some might even say a challenge. Ideally, it begins in early childhood when the toddler learns that after playtime, all the blocks need to be picked up and thrown into the bin. It continues toward adulthood as life moves from a bedroom, to a dorm room, to an apartment, and ultimately, to a home of his or her own. All of these stages will take what they know about being organized and challenge it to move up to the next level, which takes time, practice, and patience. Realize that you will be walking beside your children as they learn these lessons in your home. They will have successes, but the challenges will continue, and your job will be to lovingly guide them toward the goals of peace and efficiency.
3. Organization is difficult for some. Children possess natural abilities; some have a knack for organizing, and some do not. Of my six children, half of them exhibit this natural talent to see a mess, sort through it, and organize their space. The other half seems clueless about the need and overwhelmed with the thought of sorting out their belongings with any semblance of order. That doesn’t mean they aren’t required to do it; it just means we work at a slower pace and approach the challenge in small incremental steps without judgment or making the child feel “less than” for not possessing this ability. Chances are these kids are gifted artists and exhibit creativity in other ways. Your job is to help them tap into their God-given creativity and apply it to the task of organizing their stuff.
4. Your attitude is contagious. Organizing can and usually should be fun. You’re going take a mess, attack it with your best problem-solving skills, and transform the mess into a functional space. It’s an exciting process that is full of possibilities. Keep the atmosphere light and hopeful. If “getting organized” is talked about as a dreaded task, your children will inherit that mood, which will only serve to make organizing more difficult.
5. Think of yourself as a consultant. Remember, your goal is to turn over control and maintenance of your child’s space to him, so you’ve got to get him to think about how he uses his space and the stuff in it. Like a good consultant, ask him questions about how he uses things, where he keeps things, and why certain areas are the way they are, in a non-accusatory way, of course. Your goal here is to observe what’s happening in the space and then ask your child questions that will help him get to the bottom of the problem. Often, the answers will reveal an underlying obstacle to organization that can be fixed with some organizing tools (bins, tubs, caddies, etc.), moving furniture around to better suit the way the space gets used, or getting rid of some belongings.

For instance, my super creative and artistic daughter has a wonderful desk with a hutch in her bedroom, yet it was always covered with a mess of unrelated stuff, keeping her from using it to draw and create. After talking with her about what she’d like to do there, she realized that she’d need to move some things off the shelves and out of the drawers so that she could keep all of her art supplies nearby, where she wanted to use them. It also helped her to envision what she’d like to see happening in that space and ultimately gave her inspiration to keep the space free of clutter in the future.  

Tapping Into Your Child’s Motivation

Now that you understand your role and have the right perspective, it’s time to impart that to your child. Instead of organizing the whole bedroom, start with a small area, such as a dresser, a bookshelf, or the closet. Then move on to another small spot the next time. It can be overwhelming to a child when Mom says, “We’re going to clean your room today,” but it’s a bit less intimidating to hear her say, “We’re going to organize your desk this afternoon.”

Begin in this space working side by side with your child. As older children get the hang of it, you can give some directions and dart off for a few minutes, coming back to check their progress. Younger kids usually lose focus when Mom leaves the room. Work in small chunks of time with very specific areas of focus, breaking down big jobs into smaller, manageable parts. Some kids are inspired by a timer; others get stressed out by the ticking. If you can make a game of some aspect of organizing, go for it. Find what works to motivate your child and help him stay on task. Motivation is a complicated thing, and if I had the magic answer to keep your children motivated, I’d be thrilled to tell it to you. You’ll need to study each of your children. Ask the Lord for wisdom and insight into what will help each child. Observe what’s difficult for them. What’s easy? What are they asking to do? For my family, the ones who are born organized just take a bit of praise and moving around within their space to get their brains and bodies in gear. One in particular loves to rearrange furniture—if I help her move some pieces around, the rest of the room gets tidy in no time. My less organizationally blessed children need more inspiration. I’ve seen some of my children come alive when given cleaning products. Try giving them a vacuum or cleaning tool. Even a bottle of Windex and a rag has been known to get the juices flowing in some of my children. Although we are focusing on organizing, cleaning can help jump start the process and will overflow into the rest of the room. I can’t explain how it works, but it does. Some children might be motivated by the decorating process. Let them create an art project to adorn the wall or sew a pillow for the bed. Once children are motivated, the rest comes much more easily. Getting them to care about their space is part of the process of taking personal ownership and responsibility. Pray and watch and see what gets their gears going.

The Work That’s Never Done

The work of organizing calls for endurance. The daily aspect of organizing requires us to work the system we’ve created until habits forge together, creating character. It takes just a few days to get organized, but it will require daily discipline to stay that way. Give yourself and your kids lots of grace, and stick with it. Teaching your children to get organized trains them in so many areas— from stewardship of their belongings, to keeping a home, to diligence in their work, and even time management. It will be hard work—there’s no escaping that— but the benefits will bless your family now and for years to come. Organization is a lesson worth teaching and a life skill worth learning.

Questions a Wise Consultant Should Ask

• What problems do you see in your room that you’d like help solving?
• What would you like to do at this desk? Or in your closet?
• Where would be a good place to keep your board games? Socks? Blocks?
• Do you have too much of anything?
• Is there anything you need to make your space work better?
• What could we do to solve this specific problem?
• Do you still use this?
• Do you still need this?
• Is this something you really love?

Melissa Morgner is a happy wife of eighteen years to her college sweetheart and mother to six loud but lovable children ranging in age from 14 down to 4. While she likes a clean, organized house, she strives toward peace, not perfection. Her busy household puts her gifts of juggling and winging it to the test daily. She steals moments to write on her blog, HalfDozenMama.com, about the lessons she’s learning from the Lord in the routine but privileged tasks of mothering.

Copyright 2012, used with permission. All rights reserved by author. Originally appeared in the May 2012 issue of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, the family education magazine. Read the magazine free at www.TOSMagazine.com or read it on the go and download the free apps at www.TOSApps.com to read the magazine on your mobile devices.

We Are A Two Income Family, I Can’t Homeschool My Kids

Posted by admin on Feb 28, 2013 in Working Homeschool Family | 0 comments

When I was in elementary school God placed a small desire in me to homeschool my future children.  Later, I graduated from college, started working, got married, grew in my career and then became pregnant with my first son.  The plan was to take maternity leave then place my child in childcare when I returned to work and place him in school after that.  But, once I held my baby in my arms that small desire to homeschool grew.  However, there was one small problem, my husband and I both needed to work to pay the bills.  So we prayed and guess what, God gave me the opportunity to work and homeschool my child.

While I was pregnant I worked two jobs.  I was working in the IT field by day and as a bookkeeper by night and on the weekends.  I approached both companies asking for a flexible schedule that would allow me to spend more time at home with my baby and only one of the two companies agreed.  I had to leave the job where I was working in my chosen field, I.T., so that I could fulfill my bigger career goal of raising and homeschooling my child.  It was a difficult decision but it was the most important decision I have ever made.

Friends and family have been a tremendous help in my homeschool journey. While my son was still an infant I was able to bring him to work with me.  He slept most of the time so this worked out perfectly.  As he became older he slept less and less so my grandmother and my mother watched him during the day while I worked.  This was the perfect setup because my child was given the opportunity to develop a relationship with his grandparents and great grandparents. This is a relationship that he truly cherishes.

As my child has gotten older my job titles and functions have changed a bit.  Right now I am blessed to be able to work from home.  Homeschooling and working from home has not been easy for me but it is doable and I’m very thankful for this opportunity.  If you would like to work from home or at a job with a flexible schedule there are several opportunities available to you.  A few of them are as follows:

• Start a Blog

Yes, this will take a bit of work but there are several successful mommy bloggers out there.  I would recommend picking up a book or two about blogging.  You could start with Michael Hyatt’s book Platform.  I would also suggest you attend a blogging conference so that you can get to know and learn from other bloggers.  You could start by attending BEECH or Titus 2:1

Homeschooling, Where Do I Start?

Posted by admin on Feb 25, 2013 in Homeschooling Basics | 0 comments

So you are new to homeschooling and you don’t know where to start?  Well join the club!  I think most of us have been there.  Just relax and let’s get you started in the right direction so that you can choose which path is right for you and your children.

• Homeschool Laws in Your State

  Homeschool laws vary from state to state so you want to make sure you know how the laws will pertain to you and your homeschool style. Homeschool  Legal Advantage does a great job of listing the laws in an easy to read manner.  Homeschool Legal Advantage also provides a sample homeschool letter of withdrawl for you to use if necessary.

• Find a Homeschool Group That You Can Connect With

  Getting involved with a homeschool group is so important.  The homeschool families in your group will encourage you and help you along this fun but sometimes crazy adventure of homeschooling. You can check to see if your church or parents you meet at the park or library know of groups in your area.  You can also check online.  Homeschool World has a large database of homeschool organizations listed by state. Remember, if you aren’t able to find a group in your area you can always join a group online.  A few you may want to check out are:  The Homeschool Lounge , Homeschool World or Homeschool.com

• Start Reading

  Read books about homeschooling.  There are some great ones out there.  Here are a few you may want to look at:

            

• Choose Your Curriculum Or Create Your Own

  Each homeschooler is unique and there are so many different curriculum choices.  I would recommend attending a homeschool convention in your area so that you can look through the different curricula that is available to you.  Or, you can invite a fellow homeschooler over for lunch and ask that them to bring their curricula so that you can look through it.

I hope  this article has given you a starting point on homeschooling your children.  Homeschooling is a great journey that should be enjoyed by you and your family.  So just sit back, breathe and have fun!