Football Theme

I have a dear friend, Rose, who has inspired this post.

Do you have a kiddo who absolutely loves football? Use this passion as a way into learning. You can use the football theme to teach practically anything this year in your home school. Here is what I mean.

Social Studies:

• Have your child create football trading cards that include information about important historical figures.
• On a map locate where the home stadiums are for each NFL team.
• Create a time line of the history of football.

Math:

• Convert yards into feet.
• Throw a football around the backyard, make an estimate for the distance it went, and measure it in feet and in yards.
• Calculate someone’s quarterback rating.

Science:

• Investigate gravity. How long does the ball stay in the air and how high does it have to go?
• Investigate wind resistance. Why is the ball oblong?
• Investigate properties of materials. What makes leather hard when it gets cold?
• Investigate conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. When a player is tackling another, how fast does the light person have to be going to stop the heavy person? (f=ma, e=mv²)

Writing:

• Write a series of newspaper articles on key players for each team.
• Create a series of letters that one of the players would write to family members. They should be written as if the player is actually writing.
• Write a research paper on one of the players.
• Write a fictional story about a football.

Handwriting:

• Write the NFL teams’ names in cursive.
• Write sentences about football in cursive.
• Make a football shaped book for spelling words that are inspired by football written in cursive and in sentences.
  

  

Reading:

• Read newspaper articles about the players.
• Read any available biographies on the players.
• Read football inspired stories.
• Research the rules for the NFL.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, so be creative! Have fun learning through football!

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Are Home Educated Children at a Disadvantage?

Are homeschooled kids at a disadvantage? That is an interesting question that I have been pondering a reasonably good answer to for a while, and the idea just resurfaced when I received an e-mail from the editor from Opposing Views. It has forced me to think about that idea again. This post does not cover all of the reasons that I believe that home educated children are not disadvantaged but actually at an advantage; this post is just the tip of the iceberg.

Families choose to homeschool their children for many reasons. Some want to provide a safe learning environment, or parents homeschool because they feel they can meet their children’s needs better than a public or even a private school. There are families who suppliment home education with services from public school. Other families choose to homeschool for religious reasons. Whatever the reason is, families are equipping their children for the real world through home education. They are doing it successfully, too, and there is research to back that statement.

The data cannot unequivocally prove that the positive results seen in home educated children are directly caused by their experiences in their home schools. I have to wonder, though, what else could be the cause of such positive results? Home education happens in the context of real life with people who are committed to their children. Who knows your children better than you do? The curriculum is tailored to meet a particular child’s needs. Children are offered learning opportunities that are delivered in ways that address their individual learning styles. Homeschools offer a tutoring situation. Imagine if you had a personal tutor all throughout your schooling!

Many people are concerned about the quality of the education provided in home schools. Unlike public and private schools, home schools offer flexibility so families can take advantage of learning opportunities that the children might otherwise miss out on. A family can go on field trips that offer real experiences that cannot be replicated in the classroom. Parents can also decide what their children learn, how long to study something, and what time of day works best for the children to complete assignments. If a child gets engrossed in a lesson, s/he can continue that work for as long as is necessary since there aren’t the same time constraints in the home school as in the classroom. Lesson plans can also be abandoned more easily if a child has already mastered a particular skill, if s/he is not ready for that work, or even if the lesson just is not working.

Socialization is one other thing that people bring up when I talk about home education, which I find interesting. Today many of our children spend the majority of their time with child care workers, teachers, coaches, and their peers instead of time with their families. Bullying, violence, and teen pregnancy are just a few of the issues that are causing problems for our children in public and private schools. Children’s interactions with each other are being shaped by their peers or other adults who do not necessarily share the family’s morals and values. However, the center of a home school is the family with siblings learning together and families spending exponentially more time together than children who are educated outside the home. Parents have more time to shape their children’s social experiences and have more opportunities to impart their values on their children. Homeschoolers provide all kinds of social situations for their children just not exactly the same ones that public and private school children have. Home educated children have time outside of the family while they participate in church activities, service opportunities, and co-ops.

I ask you, what are the disadvantages?

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Protect Your Home School

If you are a homeschooler who uses either Bob Jones or A Beka for your curriculum, have you been keeping an eye on what is happening in California with the UC case?  SpunkyHomeschool gives a thoughtful and thorough report of this in her article, “Another California Ruling”. What does this mean for home education? The fact that there is a debate about whether or not your homeschool curriculum will be accepted by a college or university should be enough to make you stand up and take notice.

After reading the most recent ruling, without getting into whether or not your right to educate your child can be legislated by the government, it appears that there are specific issues with the courses that were not accepted. The English course did not have students read entire texts of good literature, but instead offered only excerpts. The other problems focused mainly on crtitical and analytical thinking skills. These issues are important to note because good educational practice includes both of tehse elements.

What are you doing to address these areas of your children’s education? First, it is essential that you are keeping organized records of your children’s work. Documentation is helpful for you for assessment purposes, but it is also essential to have good records for your school district in case there are ever any concerns. With thorough documentation, you can prove that your curriculum is meeting all of the requirements.

If you find that you are not really addressing critical thinking skills, which involves expecting your child to put information together in order to solve problems and form opinions, you can build it into your program on your own. When you do that, make sure that you keep good records about it. If your curriculum only includes excerpts from good literature, make sure that you document all of the reading that your children do outside of the textbook. Use the excerpts as a jumping board, but read the piece in its entirety.

Take a look at your curriculum to find any holes. Document your work. Follow the UC case closely. Protect your home school by following good teaching practices.

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Home School Gardening Project Tips

As a homeschooler, I find that preparing materials for great work that I want to do is sometimes hard. Some things just take a lot of preparation.  One way you can limit curriculum planning for your home school is by setting up ongoing projects. There is always something to do when you have a project, and you can add a lot of learning that is fun and interactive. Projects often take on a life of their own.

One great project is a garden. Gardening incorporates layers of skills, and it is great for kinesthetic and tactile learners. Obviously it is a science project, but there is so much more that you can do with it. My family has started a garden this summer, and we are having fun with it! The kids are really excited about watering the plants and making observations. We are trying to make more detailed observations about the shape and colors that we see in the garden. Here are some tips to add learning to your gardening experience.

• Do some research together about what plants grow in different kinds of light, and allow your children some choice about what to plant in the garden.
• Lookat the seeds before you plant them. Observe the shape, color, and texture.
• Use your science journals to make observations about the garden. Remember to make careful observations about the plants.
• The scientific drawings should be accurate - down to the colors. Remember to include written observations.
• Measure the plants as they grow and chart it. Make predictions about how much each plant will grow.
• Use new vocabulary when you talk about the garden. Talk about tilling the soil and fertilizing the plants. Name the tools. Find more information about gardening vocabulary at Katina’s Little Gardeners.

Your gardening experience should be a fun family project. Enjoy!

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