The PASSION Blog

One of the great things I enjoy about homeschooling is when you are teaching one of your kids and they get something for the first time.

Sometimes in homeschooling you have times when the kids have just not picked up a concept or it hasn’t clicked. You try to explain it in a few different ways so they understand. When the light goes on inside them and they say I get it, it is very exciting. When they explain it back to you in their own words and show they grasped the concept, it is priceless for me.

I have had this with both of my girls this week in Maths. It is such a great feeling and something I feel priveledged to be involved with. I am thankful God has called us to homeschool our kids. It is such a blessing.

My kids asked to do a science experiment this morning for homeschool. At first I thought we would look through the science book we have, but then I remembered something I read recently.

I was reading some comedy from the American stand up comedian Steve Wright. He is very dry in his delivery and has a bald head on top with very fluffy hair on the sides…perfect for a stand up comedian!

Anyway, he talked about how cats always land on their feet no matter how they are dropped, even if they are turned upside down first. Then he mentioned that toast always land butter side down when dropped. He said he decided to strap toast to the back of his cat to see what happened.

I mentioned this to our kids jokingly as a possible science experiment. I am thankful they realised I was joking and they laughed.

Afterwards I wondered what would have happened if they had wanted to do the experiment. I also wondered which one of our poor cats would have been chosen!

The other day I shared some of the books we use for homeschooling. Today I want to share some of the CD Roms we have used.

We have used CD Roms to supplement our book work. We have found this useful to reinforce some of the lessons that the kids have learned. It also gives them a change of pace if they are getting a bit stale from the daily lessons from the books.

Some of the ones we have used from Eureka Multimedia include:

• Adding and Subtracting
• Multiplication and Division
• Multiplication Tables
• Maths Quest
• Phonics 1 for beginners
• Phonics 2 - Read and Spell
• Phonics 3 - Read and Spell
• Fun on Alphabet Farm
• World Atlas
• Creative Story Writer

These CD Roms are age graduated and can be used by several kids at a time as you can enter your name at the start and work through the exercises. When you finish it saves where they are up to and keeps a record of how they are going.

The CD Rom also has notes for teachers/parents to use and printable worksheets. They are Australian made and developed in conjunction with the Australian School Curricula guidelines.

You can purchase them from most major Australian retail outlets (ie Australia Post, Big W, K Mart and Dick Smith) and they are good value as they only cost A$10.95.

To find out more about these CDs you can visit the Nodtronics website that has a full listing with printable pages to try out.

One of the questions my wife and I are often asked is what books we use for homeschooling. People are interested to know if we use a full curriculum or other books.

While we have looked at a number of curriculums over the years, we have decided on a combination of books and CD Roms that cover the main learning outcomes that are required in Western Australia. Some of the books we use are the same ones kids use in most schools and some are sourced from other places like Wooldridges.

Here are a few of the main ones we use…

1. Signpost Maths (Pearson Education Australia) - This is fairly common in most schools. Each year it moves up to the next level and covers that main learning outcomes. They have lots of colour and pictures and our kids seems to enjoy them. There is also a cut down version called Signpost Mentals which we use in the second part of the year to reinforce the learning from the main book.

2. Grammar once a week (Pearson Education Australia) - As the name suggests it looks at all aspects of grammar. It looks at all forms of communication and teaches how to write stories, papers, letters and about nouns, verbs, adjectives and the like. It has practical activities that the kids enjoy and it makes learning grammar fun.

3. Comprehension once a week (Pearson Education Australia) - Again it is another once per week book. It looks at stories and other forms of information and asks the kids questions to make sure they are understanding and taking in what they read.

4. Text Types for primary schools (Oxford University Press) - This books looks at different types of texts and helps the kids to understand and write proceeedures, recounts, information reports, narratives and poems. I have actually learned a lot from these books as we have been teaching the kids!

5. Spelling skils and strategies (Oxford University Press) - As the name suggests it focusses on spelling. However they also touch on areas like upper and lower case, parts of speech, prefixes and suffixes, homophones, similies and antonymns.

6. Targeting WA Handwriting (Pascal Press) - This one has a number of written exercises that teach the kids to use modern cursive font which is used in Western Australia. It progresses through from printing to running writing as we used to call it in the old days! This is just to make sure the kids have good handwriting in a day where computer use is on the rise.

While we use a number of other sources like the internet and CD Rom, these are the main books we use. Each of them has the appropriate book for the year of school the kids are in and they progress through. At the start of the year we just see how many pages are in the book and divide it by the weeks of the term and then the kids work through one or two pages of the book per day.

The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6 that we should, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it”. This verse gives us great encouragement to really nurture and teach our kids the things of God. It also makes the promise that if we do, they will continue on in their faith.

Here are a few ways we are trying to train our kids in the things of God.

1. Modeling - we try our best to model the right way to follow Jesus in front of our kids so they can learn how to do it themselves.
2. Teaching - we show our kids what the Bible teaches on different subjects in a practical way so it is easy to live it out.
3. Encouragement - whenever our kids do something well we try to encourage and positively reinforce what they are doing.
4. Correction - we give them constructive criticism to correct the behaviour if they are doing something wrong.
5. Benefits - we show the benefits of living the way God wants us to live and that it makes sense to do so.
6. Love - we let our kids know how much we as parents we love them and just how much God really loves them.
7. Purpose - we show our kids that God has made them a certain way to do certain things in this life and that we should seek out God’s will for our lives.
8. Developing - we are helping our kids to develop their own faith and relationship with God. We want them to have their own personal faith and to relate to God in a way that is meaningful to them.

At the heart of this training is a desire to pass our faith on to our kids. As parents we want to be faithful to God and His Word and to prepare them to be the best they can be and to make a positive impact of the world around them.

In my last entry I mentioned we are a homeschooling family. A regular reader emailed me asked about our experience. As homeschooling is not the norm in Australia, I thought I would share a few things we have experienced. I have tried to answer most of the questions we have been asked.

If you would like to check out the article you can click here.

I am preparing another school lesson for my kids and I thought I would pass it on. Each lesson I prepare I try to pick a subject and pass on three things that will help them. This lesson is about setting a solid foundation to build a strong life on.

It is important when you are building something to build a strong foundation. Just think of the big building that Daddy works in. If that was just built on sand it would be all wobbly in the wind and might fall down. Instead the builders put lots of concrete and steal under it to make it all strong.

Our lives are like big buildings in a way. If we want to be strong and live a good life, we need to have a good solid foundation. One which will help us to stand up strong when the wind blows hard. Here are some things that will help us to build a strong foundation.

1. The Bible - As Christians we believe that the Bible is God’s words to us as humans. God intended the Bible to be a handbook for our life. He gave it to us so we could know all about Him and how we should live our lives. It tells us what to do in different situations and how to relate to each other. We need to read the Bible and study it so we can live the way God wants us to.

2. Prayer - Prayer is just talking to God. We need to remember He is our king so we should respect and honour Him, but He is also like a friend too. We don’t have to use big special words when we talk to God, just talk like you are talking to your best friend. Tell God what is going on in your life, ask Him to help you and help the people around you. Don’t forget to ask God if He has something to say to you. He might want you to do something for Him.

3. Church - Church is a great place to go to meet other people who also believe in God. You can make friends, learn more about God and you can serve God at church too. Sometimes we are not feeling to good and maybe things haven’t been working out good, we can find people at church who can help and support us. We can also help other people when things are not going good for them too.

Three questions to finish with:

• What is your favourite Bible story and why do you like it?
• What is something you prayed about in the last week and how did God help you?
• What is your favourite thing about church?

This morning did I another lesson with my kids for school. This time we touched on the area of being a leader. I thought this was timely as both of my girls are getting to point where they might be assistant leaders in children’s church in the next few years.

As usual a nice simple lesson is the key. One which spoke to me after I wrote it!

1. Leaders follow their leaders

Leaders have someone who teaches them. They watch and learn from the leaders God has put in charge of them. Samuel watched and served Eli before he was put in charge.

2. Leaders ask God how to lead the people

Moses kept asking God how and where to lead the people. He did this by praying to God and waiting for an answer. He then did what God told him to do.

3. Leaders serve the people

Jesus came to be our Saviour, but He also came to serve us. Jesus even washed peoples feet! Jesus told his followers that if they want to be first, they should aim to be a servant of all.

We then finished with some questions which they answered…

• Who are three leaders God has given you?
• How do you ask God what to do?
• What is one way you can serve your leaders at church?