The Homeschooling News Café

by Mimi Rothschild

What are the experiences and opportunities that really count in building Christlike character and at the same time, can serve individual personality? How can the homeschool curriculum and homeschool program provide for such experiences and opportunities?

The Christian homeschooling teacher needs not only a clear-cut purpose, but we also must know his own children very well let’s talk about how we can better understand the nature and needs of our children. Without some degree of understanding the homeschooling teacher is poorly prepared to plan opportunities for normal Christian growth, to evaluate and make use of the child’s everyday experiences in encouraging such growth and to help them to overcome the obstacles that hinder his developing Christian self.

If Christian homeschooling parents are to guide their growing children effectively, they must be prepared to think of the homeschool as a school for living. It must be more than a place where children come to listen, where the “good” children are passively quiet ones who never “do” anything. It must be thought of as a place where children can not only are help to understand Christian troops, but also may have rich experience is in living by these truths. The age old but still truthful adage reminds us that children learn to do by doing. This is as true in learning to follow Christ as it is in learning to ride a bicycle. The homeschooling parent then must not be content to merely tell her children, what is right and good to do. It must provide actual opportunities in which children can do Christian thinking and carry out Christian act’s. The homeschool then becomes a practice school in Christian living.

In working together in the homeschool group to carry out Christian purposes, children find opportunities for Christian living, for putting into practice the teachings of Christ. Forbearance, patience, forgiveness, cooperation, brotherly and yes, the sympathy, sharing, sacrificing one’s own wishes and desires for the good of others. All of these are found in their beginnings in a homeschool with the atmosphere and leadership make the development of such traits a normal experience. Their characteristic of a homeschool only when the leaders care enough to plan and prepare themselves for their work. And when they know how to work with the child’s nature and not contrary to its, when they recognize his capacities as well as his limitations. We will not talk in this series of articles only about homeschooling methods rather. We will talk about attributes in capacities which God has implanted within the child’s nature, so that he may learn and grow toward Christlike menace. We hope to help homeschooling teachers recognize and deal with some of the problems of growing children. As a result of these recent articles, it is our prayer that homeschooling teachers will be able to better evaluate their own homeschooling methods and to choose a homeschool program or homeschool curriculum which will truly help them to guide their children more effectively in their development as Christians.

By Mimi Rothschild

The longer range goal of developing in each student a Christlike character does not intend to Terri and Joe and Johnny will all be exactly alike in 10 or 15 years, anymore than they are like now. A Christlike character is not a fix to mold into which each developing personality is to be forced. Personality is precious, unique, God-given, and there are as many personality types as there are people. Fun-loving, Tommy serious Sally and realistic Ricki will certainly be individuals, alike in their Christlike character, we trust, but differing from one another as flowers, birds or trees do, under the same beautiful son.

But how does the homeschooling teacher work with purpose, if there is no single task with which to work? Teachers need to recognize as Paul did, that people differ in abilities in capacities, and gifts and in nature. Though all made love and serve Christ with equal devotion, some will do it best as teachers, some as parents some as businessmen, some in this capacity and some in that. Homeschooling parents must work with each of their students just as Jesus did, holding back impetuous Peter, inviting shy Andrew into his home., discussing meanings with cultured Nicodemus, seeking out the repentant sinner, excepting service from the hand of a weeping woman. Was Peter like John after his experience with Christ? Was Nicodemus, like Andrew? No, each board the imprint of the master, but not in lost his identity or personality. With each one Jesus used a different approach. The wise teacher will cherish Fred’s sense of humor, tarries immature idealism, rakes and realistic approach to a problem. He will not try to make Terri like Sally or Joe like break. He will seek to enrich each personality, and to provide those opportunities and experiences that will develop the best in each child. The homeschooling parent will seek to bring them all to the master for that further enrichment and fulfillment that is beyond the human teacher to provide. This series of articles will help the homeschooling teacher understand our children better, but we must always remember that there are always Divine resources and power supplementing everything we do.

Edited by Mimi Rothschild, CEO, Learning By Grace, leading provider or online CHristian education for Prek-12 homeschoolers

Parents are people, too, and at times are living under a variety of pressures. When they are physically tired and emotionally ratepayer, adults do find it hard sometimes to except and to understand the emotional outbursts of a child. Frequently they share the feeling of the mother, who was playing cowboys and Indians with her three active children. As one of the boys aimed his gun at his mother and yelled I got you. She collapse in a heap and did not get up. And it site his bystander rushed over to us, to her to see whether she was all right, opening one I & the mother replied. Sure, I always do this is the only chance I ever get to rest!

When we understand that it is sometimes our own frayed nerves that prompt us to dam up the flow of a children’s feelings, we are able to deal with their emotions for objectively.

The result of a child’s been taught to conceal his emotions may strike us so deeply that he not only hide his feelings from others. But, to decree loses touch with himself. This had happened, for example, when we heard a youngster he made the other day that he wasn’t sure whether he was hungry, afraid, jealous or envious. I don’t know how I feel he said. In this case being unable to identify his emotions intensify this frustration and left him unable to control the feelings he could not recognize and the underlying causes of which he could not understand. It’s things we don’t face that we cannot handle. If one has not been taught to recognize and accept his emotions for what they are, he is not in a position to control them.

As a consequence of having been taught to hide his feelings, by the time the child reaches adolescence but natural quality and flow of his emotions frequently have been overlaid with many pretenses and distortions. We cannot understand or recognize the source source of his emotions. This prevents him from becoming a mature person, for the mature person can look reality in the face. He can accept his own inner cravings and impulses and deal with them appropriately. One cannot do this if he has been taught to feel so ashamed of guilty because of his emotions that he is repressed them.

People for frayed to assert themselves or who avoid all kinds of competition may have become that way because they were severely reprimanded in childhood for showing signs of jealousy, anger or some other negative impulse. Children were praised only for controlling their emotions may feel this is the one way in which they can excel. The result may be that they become retiring and sees a certain themselves.

This important than one not carry into adulthood feelings that belong to child simply because he never was taught to recognize, except and understand those childhood feelings and thereby learn to master them. Without once being aware of it, the extreme anger he feels towards a friend who failed to show up for a lunch engagement can occur because it subconsciously reminds him of his unexpressed attitudes towards his father who deserted him in childhood. The pressure a woman feels always to please her woman friends may be traceable to unacknowledged childhood feeling that her mother didn’t want her. The adults may always be silent at a party because as a child he had unexpressed feeling that other people were not interested in what he had to say. There is a vast difference between concealing emotions and coming to terms with them. In the first instance, they come to rule the individual without his knowing it in the latter case, the person rules them and uses them wisely through facing his emotions for what they are.

Parents are people, too, and at times are living under a variety of pressures. When they are physically tired and emotionally ratepayer, adults do find it hard sometimes to except and to understand the emotional outbursts of a child. Frequently they share the feeling of the mother, who was playing cowboys and Indians with her three active children. As one of the boys aimed his gun at his mother and yelled I got you. She collapse in a heap and did not get up. And it site his bystander rushed over to us, to her to see whether she was all right, opening one I & the mother replied. Sure, I always do this is the only chance I ever get to rest!

When we understand that it is sometimes our own frayed nerves that prompt us to dam up the flow of a children’s feelings, we are able to deal with their emotions for objectively.

The result of a child’s been taught to conceal his emotions may strike us so deeply that he not only hide his feelings from others. But, to decree loses touch with himself. This had happened, for example, when we heard a youngster he made the other day that he wasn’t sure whether he was hungry, afraid, jealous or envious. I don’t know how I feel he said. In this case being unable to identify his emotions intensify this frustration and left him unable to control the feelings he could not recognize and the underlying causes of which he could not understand. It’s things we don’t face that we cannot handle. If one has not been taught to recognize and accept his emotions for what they are, he is not in a position to control them.

As a consequence of having been taught to hide his feelings, by the time the child reaches adolescence but natural quality and flow of his emotions frequently have been overlaid with many pretenses and distortions. We cannot understand or recognize the source source of his emotions. This prevents him from becoming a mature person, for the mature person can look reality in the face. He can accept his own inner cravings and impulses and deal with them appropriately. One cannot do this if he has been taught to feel so ashamed of guilty because of his emotions that he is repressed them.

People for frayed to assert themselves or who avoid all kinds of competition may have become that way because they were severely reprimanded in childhood for showing signs of jealousy, anger or some other negative impulse. Children were praised only for controlling their emotions may feel this is the one way in which they can excel. The result may be that they become retiring and sees a certain themselves.

This important than one not carry into adulthood feelings that belong to child simply because he never was taught to recognize, except and understand those childhood feelings and thereby learn to master them. Without once being aware of it, the extreme anger he feels towards a friend who failed to show up for a lunch engagement can occur because it subconsciously reminds him of his unexpressed attitudes towards his father who deserted him in childhood. The pressure a woman feels always to please her woman friends may be traceable to unacknowledged childhood feeling that her mother didn’t want her. The adults may always be silent at a party because as a child he had unexpressed feeling that other people were not interested in what he had to say. There is a vast difference between concealing emotions and coming to terms with them. In the first instance, they come to rule the individual without his knowing it in the latter case, the person rules them and uses them wisely through facing his emotions for what they are.

by Mimi Rothschild

Look for the Flowers

We are so beset these days by storing the children engaging in vandalism, so deluged by reports of children guilty of law violations, so overcome with the evidence of their acts of cruelty and violence that we are forced to the conclusion that the extension range of juvenile depredations today were unheard of in previous generations. Communities all over the country have justifiably become aroused to the extent that noble efforts are being exerted on many fronts. In an attempt to stem the rising tide of juvenile delinquency. One member of the homeschooling co-op closed a timely and sobering question recently when she said, I have been thinking about in the about how I go about cultivating my flower bed. Leads to spring up among the flowers, but I don’t vote all my gardening hours to getting rid of the leads. I know the flowers are still there in the flower bed, in fact, regardless of how many feet I pull, I am still not going to have any clues. When blooming season calms unless I devote some attention to the flowers to. The growth of the leads must be curbed, but the flowers must be cultivated, marriage, and watered. Have we become so consumed with the task of eradicating the leads in a game the lives of our children that we have overlooked the fact there are some flowers growing day or two, and that these flowers need our attention? I wish that we could hear more about the art of cultivating the flowers.

When we observe children carefully, wiki node is abundant evidence of the fact that there is the noble intention, a high impulse, the sympathetic inclination, the human response in them. It is hard sometimes for us to describe these traits we see in our children, because we have not considered them often and seriously enough to have developed a vocabulary suitable for depicting this admirable behavior. But, oh, what a adjectives had at our disposal for describing the little tirade across the street.

Many parents and teachers are so accustomed to looking for the objectional behavior in children, even accepting it with understanding and patience when it expresses itself, that they overlook the child’s concern for an effort to help the crippled dog on the sidewalk, little Janey’s concern for the lonely old lady who lives alone in the next block and Taylor is pleased with his family provide shoes for his schoolmates who has no shoes to wear to school. Perhaps parents sometimes ignore these humanitarian tendencies in their children because they have been led to believe that the child ought to feel his love for himself and not because the type of behavior exhibits. Of course, the child was loved and excepted only by behavior or only when his behavior is acceptable does have a problem: but so does the child, whose expression of kindness and tenderness is brushed aside or ignored by grown-ups.

The British psychologist, see. W. Valentine, in the normal child and his abnormalities, related some of the experiences which children meet in having their noble impulses washed by unthinking adults. He tells the story of a child of 16 months who always wept when he was told about Tommy Greene. Putting a kitty cat in the well. He reported that Robert Southey the public was so distraught with grief at the end and the death of Billy Pringles paid that he begged his mother not to go on with the reading of the story. When we observe children closely we see a spontaneous and sympathetic response to the needs of others helping a friend in trouble, comforting the plane included several laws, wanting to relieve the suffering of an injured animal. These expressions of the child’s nobler in this are as worthy of careful and sensitive handling, as are his outbursts of anger and hate.

Encourage the child and his desire to be helpful, approve of and share his feelings of love and concern for the unfortunate. Communicate to him. The fact that these attitudes are really important ones, and that they constitute the basis for meaningful living. These are responses that adults can make in helping the flowers. He never flower beds to grow, even while remembering that there is also work to be done in curbing the lead.

em>Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.

by Mimi Rothschild

One of the most important traits of an employee is his ability to get along with others. This is what at least one employment interviewer looks for first in a potential employee. He states that the most frequent reason for discharging of workers is that they become troublemakers because they have never learned how to get along with fellow employees or their supervisors.

As we increasingly live and work in closer proximity with more and more people in our Hively specialized society, it becomes increasingly important that our children develop qualities of personality which enabled them to sustain happy and harmonious relationships with others. This is a significant aspect of maturity. In fact, it can truthfully be said that the degree of maturity, which one has achieved is measured in proportion to the extent to which he is progressed from the utter selfishness and self-centeredness of childhood toward the responsibilities of social living.

Because they always exist in relation to other individuals personality problems which interfere with the establishing of harmonious human relationships cannot be corrected in isolation from other people. The fact is fact may be illustrated by comparing the individual and society to the keyboard of a piano. The value of a single key lies not in the fact that it is 156, of all blood notes, but in its infinite relation to other nodes.

The primary group is the family: therefore, satisfactory personal relationship ships here will prepare the child for harmonious relations elsewhere. It is necessary, however, the growing child to further develop social skills through contacts outside the home, particularly with those of his own age group. When a member of his peer group shouts at the child I don’t like your attitude. The child begins to understand that he is going to be accepted by his playmate. He’d better ease up on being such a brat. Personality is modified to such first-hand experiences in social interaction. In these direct relationships, aggressive and hostile tribes that are integral part of the child’s personality, must be changed: he learns how to control them because of the necessities imposed by the group. And because of the conditions under which he is accepted by others in it.

Mimi Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Learning By Grace, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online K-12 Christian homeschooling programs and homeschool Christian curriculum. For more information about how online homeschooling is revolutionizing homeschooling, please go to www.LearningByGrace.org today.

Permission is granted for the duplication of this article if it is reproduced in its entirety including this sentence.

Laughter is the best medicine. It increases our endorphins and relieves anxiety. Here is a great set of videos from Christian comedian Tim Hawkins.

Tim Hawkins - Cletus Take the Reel

My Arms Are Broken by Tim Hawkins

Laughing is a good thing. We laugh a lot at the offices of Learning By Grace, Inc. Laughing is medicinal. Laughing gives you less wrinkles. Laughing reduces cortisol, the number one biochemical in our bodies responsible for stress. Here are videos Mimi Rothschild has selected for your laughing therapy program.

Tim Hawkins - A Homeschool Family

Tim Hawkins - Prairie Home Sausage

Kids’ Rock by Tim Hawkins

Homeschool Humor
Homeschool parent survival tips for people who want to spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week with their own kids and survive. Hilarious stories from homeschoolers.

Government “Homeschool” Programs Will Change Homeschooling

This video is a homeschool mom expressing her opinion about how she belives government homeschooling will negatively impact homeschooling as a movement. I believe that she makes some excellent points that need to be strongly considered. She points out that the “freebies” are enticing and oftentimes we forget there nothing is actually free. When we take the free handouts from the government cyber schools, we are paying a higher cost than we realize. She points out that users of the K12 curriculum who recieve computers from the state are not allowed to use that computer for any religious reasons. For many Christian homeschoolers, this is the “start of a downward spiral in terms of loss of parental control.”

What do you think of government homeschooling programs?

By: Michael C. Broome

Home schooling is not only a right of each and every American, it is also a joy with blessings that many home schoolers wouldn’t trade for anything. Not just the children, but the mothers and fathers that give so much of their time to ensure their children have the best life can offer.

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrea Scully, a homeschooling mom from Arkansas. Andrea shared with me the joys that she, her husband (Adam) and her four children experience. And what started out thirteen and a half years ago, for them as an idea, soon developed into a six month trial before their oldest was scheduled to attend school.  At the end of this trial period, a mutual trust was formed thus paving the road to home schooling all their children. Where did that road end? So far, it isn’t close to ending; but the oldest is a first year student at a college of pharmacy. She just turned 18. The second oldest is a freshman in college. The youngest two are still being home schooled.

Andrea is a disciple of Jesus in her everyday life, and a home schooling Mom with an English degree. Their children were taught to not only acknowledge the presence of Jesus in their everyday lives, but to think of Him as their best friend, their inspiration and foundation.

Being someone that is expecting twins in just a few months, I had to ask, “How did you combat ‘burn-out’ and stay focused on your duel role as a mother and a teacher?”

“Jesus,” she said. Genuine. Confident. And knowing His presence in her life, her husband’s life and the lives of their four children. Jesus is not an entity they fear or hide from or eliminate from their daily educational activities, rather they embrace His role in their lives as their pillar of strength.

Andrea told me that whenever adversity turned its ugly face her direction, she always found the presence of Jesus offering an answer. Like the time she was searching in vain for a more “user friendly” grammar curriculum.  She took her kids to a dentist appointment and found a young girl diligently doing her grammar work on the floor. Andrea asked the young girl’s mother what grammar she was using, and the woman was more than willing to share what curriculum she used. The two younger Scully’s are still using this grammar to this day. 

“Andrea, one of the main complaints home schooling parents deal with is the question of socialization. Was this a struggle for any of your children?” I asked.

“That’s funny. I hear that one all of the time too,” she said. “Honestly, my children are comfortable around anyone. They do what kids do when they are around other children and aren’t afraid of talking to adults. I’m not sure if that is just them or the home schooling, but socialization has never really been a concern for any of them.”

We talked more about this issue and eventually the word “confidence” materialized. We talked about how home schoolers tend to have confidence without the swagger. Confidence without the ego. Confidence to be approached or approach another, without the fear that is generally associated with immaturity. My philosophical side emerged and tried to claim that public schools can categorically force a bully system based on age, size and grouping by grading that forces children to learn where they belong and squeeze themselves into that space, either with comfort and ease or with force and shame.

Andrea wasn’t willing to comment on the wrongs with public schools, but rather what worked for her and her children. We did agree though - society questions home schooling socialization. Home schooling parents don’t. And the kids tend to laugh at not fitting in, since as home schoolers they are taught to fit into the entire world, not merely the class of children their same age.

“Andrea, are you familiar with what is going on in California and home schooling?” I felt compelled to ask.

“I am, but only from what I’ve been able to follow on the internet,” she said.

I briefly explained some information about it, and Andrea responded by telling me a quote her Grandmother constantly repeats, “I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

We again agreed.  People don’t send their kids to church anymore; it’s no wonder why there is so much evil creeping its way into their lives. Without Jesus, we are robbing the world of hope. Christianity nurtures our youth with hope. Hope for today, tomorrow and for the entire foundation that is. Without Jesus, we are without hope. And without hope, we are without the foundation to build a sound platform.

Hanging up with Andrea, I thanked her and let her know that her story is one worthy of more than merely a blog posting. It is bigger than the papers, and stronger than one person’s account of home schooling. She politely interrupted me and told me that I wasn’t only capturing her story about home schooling, because without her husband and his support, their lives just wouldn’t be the same. I was also crowning her children’s vast accomplishments.

Truthfully, Jesus and Christianity would certainly remain a constant, but their road to enlightenment would have had a lot of different turns and speed bumps. The children might not be in the same places today, but all of them would have traveled together, with Christ as their guide. For some, perhaps this is a road less traveled. For the Scully family, it has been the best route from point A to point B, earth to God’s kingdom.

 By: Mimi Rothschild

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Mark said as he used a feather and ink to scribble down a phrase on the back of a napkin.

“What, isn’t school and education the same?” Mark’s friend, Ignorance, asked.

Mark shook his head as he looked into the mirror at his age and turned back to Ignorance, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Ignorance was confused, so he asked Mark, “God created man, and man created schools, right? So why would He create…”

Mark quickly interrupted him and said, “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

Mark continued with, “Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

“I’m not following,” Ignorance answered.

Mark said nothing.

“I said that I’m not following, Mark,” Ignorance repeated.

Again, Mark remain silent.

“What are you waiting for? Find the words, Mark!” Ignorance was going intolerant. “Find the…”

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” Mark was smiling at the face of Ignorance as he continued feathering his pen around the napkin on his desk.

“Mark, please, tell me what you are talking about, or, at very least, read me what you are writing. I can’t read it from here,” Ignorance uttered in a dejected voice.

Mark instructed Ignorance to read the words and value the experience of reading. Mark said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

“Wow, Mark, who wrote that? I mean, you are an exceptional author and deserve…”

Mark quickly interrupted him and said, “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.”

He continued, “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Ignorance told Mark that sometimes he’s not sure about people. He gets confused. He knows some people want to hear one thing, but then get mad when they hear it.

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Mark instructed Ignorance.

“Sounds like a lot of trouble,” Ignorance answered.

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” Mark said with a chuckle.

“What?” Ignorance lacked the knowledge of Mark’s imposed wisdom.

“When in doubt, tell the truth.” Mark eyed Ignorance until Ignorance understood.

“That’s a classic truth, Mark. I think your words and wisdom could be immortalized for years to come.” Ignorance almost sounded profound in his statement.

Mark turned to Ignorance and looked as though he was going to laugh, cry, or find some sort of light at the end of a tunnel. “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

“Huh, what?” Ignorance said as he remained fixed in his steadfast position. “Tell me this, then sir. What school of thought led you to all of these turns-of-phrases?”

Mark pointed to his home where he was schooled and above the front door it read, “Twain’s Manor.”