Weekend Edition~Jubilee Schooling

Jubilee Schooling, is a term you may see floating around, some times it is also called Sabbath Schooling.

What it usually refers to is, schooling for so many weeks in a block, and then taking so much time off.

Mostly it's schooling in a 6 week block, and then taking 1 week (the 7th week) off.

During that 6 week block, parents choose many ways of implementing how many days a week they will school. From 3 days a week to 6 days a week. Depending on how the family wants to do it. Then takes the 7th week completely off. But, it could also be 7 weeks on and 1 week off, or 5 weeks on and 1 week off, 5 weeks on and 2 weeks off. What ever works for their family!

For my family, we school 4 to 5 days a week. For 6 weeks and take a week off. Sometimes that week though turns into a few weeks! haha I like to do school though really for 4 days a week in our home, then 1 day a week community service in the morning (read field service) and a field trip in the afternoon. But, we are still honing this in our own home. And then 1 week off.

Some families. use this method and school year around. Others still use this method and school 8 to 9 months a year.

We are kind of year around homeschoolers, but do take off a lot of weeks in the summer, and any time we really need to the rest of the year.

Remember this is YOUR homeschool, and in the majority of states, it's up to you how many hours, and how many days, and how you execute such, completely! Completely in your power. You do not have to recreate institutionalized schooling in any manner what so ever when you homeschool. Find what works for your family, the rhythm and method that works the best in your home, and what is perfect for your family, regardless of what others and especially institutionalized schools do.

Weekend Edition~Why I would especially choose to homeschool a special needs child

This post is not to judge any one who feels they need the public school system to help them with their special needs child. But, rather just the reasons I would still choose to homeschool.

Firstly, children with special needs, will need more one on one time and personal attention then the average child. And the average child needs a lot of personal attention and one on one time as well! And a public school situation is not conducive to the amount a average child and especially a special needs child needs. It's not any teachers fault, there is just not the funds that would be able to allow that amount of teacher to student ratio or time and attention. It's just the numbers can not add up to it.

Secondly, and this is just as true for children with or with out special needs, no one will love and care about a child's education and welfare as much as their parents. No one. It's just a law of truth through out mankind's history. We can see that even in Solomon's wisdom in who he determined was the real mother of the child judicial case... a real mother has transcending love like no other! And yes, I do include adoptive parents in this.. I do believe the primary care giver, of care, love and daily needs of a child is the "real" parent, weather that is biological or adoption.

Thirdly, secular education is based on humanism and paganism. This can be confusing for a child with out special needs. ALL the more so confusing for a child with learning disabilities. Ask any parent of a child who does not have special needs all the educational deprogramming they have to do each night, on what their children were educated on in paganism? And how hard the deprogramming is. And then think about how much harder that is for a child who has learning disabilities.

I remember when one of my older nephews came home from Preschool and declared he had met Santa Clause, we tried and tried to explain to him that Santa was not real, he was a made up fairy tale. Well, nothing we said could convince him that Santa was not real... after all he had met him, and spoke with him, sat on his lap at school! We were the ones who were crazy for not believing in the person he met in real life!!! We seriously could not convince him otherwise. He did not have learning disabilities, I seriously do not know how we could help a special needs child in this same situation. Well, Christmas came and went, and Santa did not visit our home. And that just made my nephew very angry! He said the next time he met Santa he was going to kick him, because he had promised to come and he didn't. It took years to get him to understand that Santa really did not exist. And that is just one thing. The whole secular education is based on many many pagan and humanistic theories-evolution which skews every thing else they teach from science to historic time lines, to proper language, etc etc. And just the entire secular curricula is all centered on paganism and humanism.

And those are just the basic facts across the board with public school education. A few other reasons that come up often with special needs children are things like. Being passed on so that the school has a good passing rate, even when the child has not been educated to the degree they should for passing. Not teaching real life skills that a special needs child needs to be able to get a job after graduating. I know of a local school district that had so many special needs graduates with out real job skills, that the parents actually banded together to come up with their own business that their special needs adult children could now work for. As the schools had left them completely unhirable by the general public. Others report that the funding is not funneled correctly to the special needs children, and there is BIG funding involved. Which this high funding in and of itself lends to many public schools abusing their power and lying to families about the parents qualifications to educate their own child, so as to keep the child in their school for the funding! And then the numerous reports of child abuse to special needs children as well. Then there is the safety of a special needs child from the other students as well. Schools do not protect special needs children from abuse by other students at school.

I have two of my own experiences with this. In the seventh grade I had a major, 12 hour, back surgery. I was in a body cast for a year. When I went back to public school, I was pushed down the stairs and the rods in my back were broken. I reported this to the school principal who refused to handle the situation, because he said, I could of been confused on who I seen push me down the stairs. And since I could of been confused, he could punish the wrong child. So as that, he refused to do anything at all about it. I was NOT confused in the least! I was very adamant about who pushed me down the stairs and didn't waiver in any of my reports about who it was! I know to this day who it was. In fact, after facebook came around (almost 30 years later!) one of the girls who was part of that situation actually contacted me and apologized for it. But, that had absolutely nothing to do with the school ever protecting me at all. Later in high school, a special needs child, physically attacked me during lunch. Again nothing was done, because he had special needs, and apparently could not control his self to not physically attack other people. Who knows how many of his fellow special needs students he also attacked.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, from my congregation asked me to help her home educate her daughter. A special needs child. Who was getting sexually harassed at school. Again the school refused to help, saying it was normal. Children should be allowed to make sexual choices on their own, and they would not get involved. These kind of situations I have heard, time and again and again. So much so, as my friend was relating her story to me, I would finish what had probably happened next, and she was in shock I knew... yes, I knew because I had heard her same story, from other mothers that many times! Then the school, her daughter was in, went so far as, when my friend pulled her child from the school, they gave the sexual predators my friends home phone number and home address so the predators could contact them outside of school now! This was of course in the name of helping my friends child have social interactions outside of the home! Again this is of course not all teachers, and not all schools, but reports have been made for decades on all of these situations.

Below is a REAL worksheet that was sent home as homework to a son of one of my friends. I am in complete awe of what is being taught on this worksheet. And awe meaning, completely shocked at the sickening education this worksheet is teaching. This was for speech therapy. Which many special needs children are in. Again do not take this as a judgement against speech therapy, only as this is what could be included, and what was included for my friends son!

I would also like to close this post by saying, if you are considering homeschooling your special needs child, but are concerned about how. HSLDA.org provides help, advice, and guidance for such.

HSLDA Special Needs help

A little anecdotal from me, so far I do not think I have ever met a parent of a special needs child that has regretted choosing to home educate their child. Across the board, mothers have told me of how their children were failing and falling through the cracks at schools, and they brought them home and they flourished, some to levels of not even being considered special needs any more. Of course there are many special needs out there, that will not be over come with home education. But, time and again I have heard especially from families with ADD/ADHD, reading comprehension disabilities etc say after they brought the child home for education, the problems nearly or did disappear.

Edited to add a news paper article from the Washington Post, recently published about the public school education policies for special needs children.

Washington Post Article

The above post describes a court case about special needs education. The bottom line to me, shows exactly why public school doesn't work for special needs children. They do not have the time, staff, nor specialty to individually help those with special needs progress to the best of their ability. And are happy with mediocrity. When we home educate we can hone in on our child's needs, and specialize the curricula and learning to fit that specific child.

Weekend Edition~Home Schooling From Scratch

Another homeschooling book I came across at my local library. Home Schooling From Scratch, by Mary Potter Kenyon.

Overall I found this book pretty good. I wouldn't consider it a essential homeschooling book to have to read. But, I do consider it a nice over all read, relaxed, conversational style writing, as if she is having a conversation with the reader rather then talking at the reader, simple language, fast and short read as the entire book including resource pages is only a little over 100 pages. Actual reading pages are less then 100 pages. This book was also published in the late 90's so some of the references and information will be a bit dated, but truth be told a LOT of what she mentioned is still used and well regarded by homeschoolers nearly 2 decades later today!

Chapter 1) Tells her own story of how she learned about homeschooling and why her family chose to homeschool.

Chapter 2) Speaks about different styles of homeschooling. This part I found the most dated. There has been much more research into homeschooling since this book was printed, and so I feel there are more current studies done on what constitutes a complete education and some things she felt left holes in education many today do not agree do. As well as many more styles and kinds of homeschooling has formed as well. But, over all I was surprised she mentioned some of my favorite authors in this chapter-Ruth Beechick, John Holt, Gatto! And she mostly spoke well of them, and I enjoyed the quotes she used from them.

Chapter 3) Goes into budgeting cost of homeschooling and how most people truly can afford it, if they follow free and inexpensive resources. Which she goes into many options of being able to cost effectively find these resources and use them.

Chapter 4) Explains more ways of homeschooling for low cost or no cost at all-begging, and borrowing and apprenticeship. I, Heather, personally was able to get a huge chalk board for my classroom by simply asking on a local Freecycle group, I was also able to get one of our desk that way.

Chapter 5) Digs into where to look for support. Most of the advice in this chapter is very good. The computer support group advice is VERY outdated however. haha If you are old enough to remember the internet in the mid 90's, it was pretty current advice for the time! My own notes to you, there is TONS of internet support groups now. AOL has not been around for years, people went from those chatrooms and emails to more discussion boards and yahoo type groups, and from discussion boards and email lists (like yahoogroups), to facebook. Most the old homeschool discussion boards are pretty dead today (there's a few out there, but they are very slow and inactive). Facebook has more then you can shake a stick at! haha

Chapter 6) Speaks of inexpensive learning activities, broken down into subjects, and then ends with holistic approaches to learning.

Chapter 7) Goes into details about how to organize your home, so that educating the children is easier.

Chapter 8) Explains how cottage businesses can not only bring in income for the family, but helps teach children real life skills, as well as your routine school subjects-language arts, math, etc. I like her ending thought to this chapter, is that as a business owner you would want to continue to do research regularly on small businesses and particularly the kind you have, so that you can continue to have a money making business, and in this, this teaches your children that people continue to learn way past when they receive a diploma.

Chapter 9) Gives many ideas on how to save money on food and clothing, and other material things, in order to funnel more of your money into other things you would rather have-weather it be for homeschooling, or just in general like vacations and such. Some really nice basic ideas.

Chapter 10) List of many homeschool and money saving resources.

Weekend Edition~Math foundations

John Holt, has a lot of great ideas on how to help children conceptualize math and what it means. Just parroting numbers is meaningless to children, and by 4th or 5th grade math is confusing because the numbers are meaningless and they don't know how to transfer the numbers on the paper to what they mean in the real world, real life.

So instead of just teaching my children to count, we teach counting by actually counting items, so they can see what numbers actually mean. In so doing we have bought a lot of fun counting things. Although please do not think you have to buy anything to teach a child to count, you can count rocks, cheerios, flowers, beads, beans, macaroni, etc. However, the counting bears and counting animals are just so cute! We bought them as toys for our children and they love them. I make up a ton of games with them too. And they just love playing with them.

Another sister suggested this book Bears! Bears! Bears! in a homeschool group, and I bought it, because my son loves playing with our counting bears. And he is loving playing the games in this book! I highly recommend it! Lots of fun games to play. In my opinion this is exactly what John Holt was talking about when helping children see what numbers mean. And it's a lot of fun too.

Weekend Edition~Pen Pals

This week I want to discuss pen pals, and their value.

Every one worries about teaching children proper grammar. But, really studies show that work books for the most part are not retained when it comes to this. But, usage, and reading GOOD literature with proper grammar does. And I would dare to add, I am sure using it in writing would even more instill it. In REAL life writing, not just workbooks.

1- What more fun way to teach Grammar then a fun pen pal. I will warn though, that I never suggest my child revise her letters more then once or twice. What I usually do at this point, is help her come up with a list of topics she wants to talk about in the letter, and we write down all the ideas, and topics. Then I give her the list, and let her design the letter how she would like. After that I read it. If I can read and understand it, it's good! If I have trouble reading it, or understanding it, I show her what I am having problems with. (mainly for my daughter it is spacing between words so it's not all one word for a whole page! lol I know if I can't make heads or tails of it, either could her pal!). But, if it's good enough I can read it and understand it, I may give her a few pointers, like well you should capitalize the first letter in a new sentence, But, I do NOT tell her she has to re-write it, I just remind her for the next letter to maybe keep that in mind. With time this will all work it self out!

2- It can involve art. Girls especially love to decorate their letters! lol

3- It could teach geography as you look at and maybe even study a little bit about where their pen pal lives.

4- Social studies, as they learn about the culture of their pen pal.

5- Friendship! They could make a friend they have for a life time! Real life lessons!

6- Stamp collecting, we even have her pen pals send us back the used stamps so we can use them for our stamp collection. Which the book Home Sweet Home School goes into great detail about ALL the things you can learn from Stamp Collecting, which I may just make my own post on that as well! But, let's just say it's a LOT, and very fun learning experience all on it's own as well!

Weekend Edition~Excellent Child Development Article

I know I cover this often in my blog. But, also I know I hear many parents expecting things from young children that are usually not with in their developmental age range.

I wanted to share this article on my blog. It is a excellent article from the Awake magazine, on what to expect of children at different ages and why to expect them to behave how they do at each age. I found it to be extremely helpful in understanding my children and how and why they behave at each age. I particularly valued the Biblical point of view of the articles as well.

October 2011 Awake!

I hope you find it as beneficial as I have!

Weekend Edition~Homeschool dad's documentary

This is one homeschool father's documentary on homeschooling. I thought it was worth sharing!

Homeschool documentary video

Weekend Edition~Ruth Beechick's A Biblical Home Education

There are doctrinal beliefs I completely disagree with in this book and of Ruth's. But, over all I do appreciate her child developmental education and understanding quite a bit. And the way she views using the Bible in education.

Chapter 1) She goes into doctrine you should teach your child through homeschooling. I read a few lines and for sure didn't agree with her beliefs, so I kind of skipped those parts. The parts I did read more of and appreciated was the reasoning for using the Bible as the core book in home education. And I must say she had many good points on why the Bible is the best book to use for educating children. Along with she had many ideas on how to teach grammar, and things like poems, and metaphors etc etc using the Bible. While I disagreed on some of her ages for learning these things. As we have JW.org and many childrens books that teach very deep and basic Bible knowledge much younger then what she suggested. I appreciated her thinking on the benefits of using the Bible to teach language arts. And I will be using some of her suggestions, especially about learning poetry from the Bible. I also didn't of course agree with her view of the King James Bible... but again that is just something that I kind of scrolled through and passed over to read the more important parts. So all in all it is a good chapter, skip over what doesn't apply in our lives as Witnesses, and use or read more intently the parts that do apply.

Again the parts that do apply is how the Bible can be used to teach language arts, and how really important Bible knowledge is in the world today to even be considered educated. As so much literature that is well read today even if not Biblical, often uses words and phrases that originated from the Bible. Such as the "Writing is on the Wall"... people use that phrase all the time and it's a Biblical reference. Having a good foundation in understanding that reference helps a person understand the phrase when used outside the Bible. Things like that was very good to be reaffirmed and like a confirmation to yes.. actually a lack of Bible knowledge would make a person seem very uneducated when they are surrounded, really all the time, with Biblical terms in secular situations.

Chapter 2) She speaks about how secular history will be based off the theory of evolution which really throws all other history it teaches off the correct time line, and how Biblical history will be based on creation with the correct historic time line! And so secular history textbooks, based on evolution and paganism, will often be teaching incorrect history! Then she tells you the three parts of history you can teach straight from the Bible. Like with chapter 1, there is of course a few beliefs that I disagree on, but I just skimmed over those parts, and paid more attention to the parts that applied.

Chapter 3) She says that we need to make sure the any science we teach matches the Bible. Again there were discrepancies in beliefs so I skimmed those parts and only paid attention to the parts that applied to us. And she again shows how secular textbooks would be based on evolution and paganism and how that kind of science is constantly changing since it is false and can easily be disproved. But, the Bible and it's science never changes, and how true research always eventually catches up to the Bible. I also appreciated her take on how science and history are taught from a evolutionist view teaches that humans evolved more and more intelligent instead of the truth about how humans were created intelligent from God in the beginning! And how correct history can prove the intelligence of early man.

She also brought out how a homeschooled child taught about creation would also be learning about evolution in a way to PROVE creation is true. But, a public school student is ONLY taught evolution which in and of itself only teaching one side is a incomplete education. All I could think of is how well equipped we are from the Faithful and Discreet slave to teach about both, the Creation Brochure, the Creation or Evolution book, the new video series on scientist and doctors who have concluded that we were created, etc etc. Wonderful education!

She also names the four main parts of science that would be good to go over the education of of your children (so pretty much you have a lot of years to cover these parts), and 8 things total that you may want to make sure you touch on. She also brings out there is no human way to cover every thing, and not at home or in a school. So the word cover would not be correct, but expose, may be a better word for what she was trying to convey.

By this chapter, I have decided I need to purchase this book. I checked it out from the library, as the parts I could read on Amazon, I could tell did have a lot of disagreeable doctrine so I wasn't sure it would be a book I would really want. And while it is true her and I do not agree on the actual Biblical beliefs, I do appreciate her insight on how the Bible is the ultimate text book for education, and the ideas in which to use it for educating children.

Chapter 4) This chapter explains that world views should match the Bible's views. While her political education and thinking (about America specifically) we would not agree with as witnesses. Her bottom line of teaching only the Bible's view IS completely correct. I also would not use the books she suggested to teach Bible World Views with. However, from reading this chapter, I can tell you we have plenty of literature at our fingertips to cover this completely. A few I would use are-

Awakes
YPA books
Mankinds Search for God
Year books
Evolution or Creation books
And our new science video series on JW broadcasting

and of course the Bible.

She also suggest using the Bible to study government. I think that is brilliant. Again I would not compare it to American government in the way she did. But, just a straight on Bible study of Biblical government is amazing.

In this chapter she also warns of the dangers of many colleges. She brought out much like our broadcast, that many professors even so called "christian" professors, teach from pagan and humanistic view points, and defend this way of teaching by saying they are teaching from this view point to open the students minds! In so doing she said, that the stats show that 85% leave their families religion during college due to such influence! The brothers themselves have warned us of this in our monthly broadcast!

So while, I skipped and skimmed over her political view points, and her book suggestions. I have to say I whole hardheartedly agree with her negative assessment to the curricula in public schools and colleges that children are getting and why they are dangerous.

Chapter 5) Explains Critical Thinking basically. And explains why it can not be taught as a separate subject and transferred into real Critical Thinking. She gives examples and ways that you can teach or encourage Critical Thinking in every day life and how much Critical Thinking just comes from life experience.

Chapter 6) Is about reading skills, and why some are important and others are not. And different ways of teaching reading. As well as why writing may not always be as needed as schools use it. Very informative. And I agree with most of it!

Chapter 7) Study Skills. While I do not use all of these tips, and probably won't. Many of them I do currently use, they are for sure worth reading through. I do not know how much of it I would dedicate to secular learning, in a tradition homeschooling situation. But, great ideas for studying our literature, which for me I choose to also count as our schooling.

Chapter 8) Writing Skills. Again there's a few things I probably won't do. But, by and large very good tips on teaching writing. Especially what NOT to do. Like using artificial school styles of teaching writing, with workbooks and such. Very very good information.

Chapter 9) Grammar After Writing. This is a EXCELLENT chapter. Agree so much with it. Pretty much says relax, and don't waste money on a bunch of grammar curricula especially workbooks. I really love her explanation of how children truly learn to write and use proper. The real focus of this chapter is how not to burn children out. Awesome.

Chapter 10) Informal Beginnings. This chapter can be summed up in one word. Chillax! lol haha But, more seriously she out right says, Relax and enjoy young children. (Direct quote from this chapter). She explains why natural learning immersed in a christian family is superior learning environment for young children then schools or even workbooks an curricula at home... Just be a natural loving family with young children and research shows that this is what will actually make a larger determination of what children learn later in life, then younger is better.

Chapter 11) Curriculum Materials. She explains the history of homeschool curricula. And why the majority of it is not needed. And references a few things she would suggest. She explains further more artificial learning of many curricula on the market. Over all view point that the Bible should be your main focus/textbook, and any other books just as a servant. You choose how much or how little to use and when.

Appendix is on Crossed Dominance Problems, with exercises and ways of overcoming such problems.

While she did have a lot of her religious views in the first few chapters, that I glossed past. By and large, I learned a LOT from this book about how secular curricula can skew the facts, and actually give a really false education to our children. And in her Ruth Beechick style, I also learned even more about child development and how to teach more to a child's developmentally appropriate level, and customize their education to them specifically.

In conclusion... I really liked this book. Yes, of course many of her religious and political views do not match ours as witnesses. But, I just skipped those parts, and glossed til I found where she went back to talking more about educational facts and studies... and started reading again. And the parts I did pay attention and read, I found very enlightening with a very good ring of truth about children and how they learn. Many of the things she said also matches John Holt's observances of children as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would most certainly recommend reading it. (of course also suggest to skip over any political or religious doctrine-and pick back up when she gets to the more educational ideas).

I will admit, it was one book of Ruth's I really didn't think I would read or buy. But, it was at my local library so I picked it up and flipped through it.. and decided to give it a go. I am very very happy that I did. And actually I will be purchasing the book for future referencing of developmental stages of children. And seriously love her focus on using the Bible for education. (although I of course totally disagree that the King James Bible is the best... I am a complete New World Translation lover! ;) )

Daily Planner~11/08

Daily Planner~11/7

Weekend Edition~Inferior Education or Developmentally Correct?

Many people are not very well educated on the statics of homeschooling, or the actual developmental age appropriate stages of children. Sometimes they will have the erroneous thinking that because they knew of a homeschool child who still wasn't reading by a age that most public schools push reading, or math, or what ever subject that homeschooled children are getting a inferior education.

Please do not allow these unfounded and ignorant judgments influence your homeschooling choices. Do your own research, make your homeschooling choices based on facts. And do not forget, children are individuals, not robots. We homeschool so that we can tailor each child's education for them personally, not the masses. We do this because this is a superior way to educate children. The mass education system of institutionalized schooling does not work for the majority of children. Because each child has their own strengths and weaknesses, and learn at different times and different paces. So when we actually look at institutionalized schooling we can see, only a few children will be right at the pace that they have made up. Most will either be bored because they are ahead of the material chosen to be taught at the age/grade, or be frustrated because they are behind! Homeschooled children do not have to be boxed into these holes!

The actual studies show, that in the end homeschooled children on average rate a much better education. No matter if they learn to read early or later. In fact, most actually do better when they wait til they are developmentally ready, because they do not get frustrated by being pushed beyond what they are ready for, and give up! But, love to learn because they have been allowed to learn at their own pace that is correct for their personal needs.

So if this argument is ever presented to you, remind yourself. You are not educating the masses, you are educating your individual children. And you are doing what is perfect for them! No need to argue about it though. Your child is your responsibility and you do not owe any one, except for God, a explanation of your choices for their education. Do not let their uneducated, and often swayed by their own fear of inadequacy propagandized by the school system get under your skin. Your child, and most homeschooled children will learn to read, write, do arithmetic et al, when they are ready and will do just fine. Most will even surpass what the children in institutionalized schooling will learn. You do not need to follow any one else's learning schedule, it is not based on any real study of how children learn or thrive. Most of the government institutionalized schooling choices are based on competition with other nations. The problem is, so far all of their work to rise to the top, still has most very low on the totem pole. It's been proven time and again, pushing children to learn developmentally inappropriate tasks is ineffective at best and devastating to the child's ultimate education, self esteem, self worth and much more at worst.

Special Edition~Living History Reenactment in the Park