Mimi Rothschild, Home School Advocate - The Homeschooling News Café

-by Mimi Rothschild

You love homeschooling. You love the closeness it develops in your family. You love the progress your child is making.

But sometimes homeschooling can also be stressful. One of the most trying times in many families is that moment when you clear the schoolbooks off the table, power down the computer, and put dinner on the same table where you’ve been studying all day.

That paragraph makes it sound easy, doesn’t it? You turn off the computer and the workspace is tidy. You close the books, and the dining room is a lovely haven, a place for civilized meals.

Really? Not always, at my house at least. Sometimes the computer is still surrounded with papers and pens, and maybe music is still blaring from it too. Piles of books sit on the floor and all the chairs are still gathered there.

The dining room table has a welter of books and papers, too, plus art supplies, science equipment, and maybe some insect specimens or leaves. And the chairs? Oh, yes – they’re still gathered around the computer.

Food? Maybe we got too caught up in the novel we were reading to get around to taking the chicken out of the freezer. We begin to think that pizza delivery sounds like a good plan.

How can you avoid this scenario? A few simple techniques will help.

A place for everything — and everything is more likely to be in its place.

If you have a shelf for schoolbooks, a file box or drawer for papers (and file folders to put in it) and containers for supplies and equipment, then it will be much easier to gather things up and put them away than if you keep things in piles.

Don’t forget the margin.

When you plan your schedule, include some time for cleanup. If the school day ends at 3:00, then studies should end at 3:30. Gather everything and put it all away, meanwhile reviewing and discussing the best parts of the day.

In the morning, too, have time at the beginning for setting up the study area. I like to ask my older students what they read last night and how they liked it while we get everything set up. It’s not wasted time, but time spent together practicing the habits of being prepared, cleaning up, and keeping a peaceful, gentle heart.

Have a plan. And then have a backup plan.

Plan your meals at the beginning of the week, before you do your grocery shopping. At the beginning of your busy day, you can check your plan and see what preparation is required, what can be done in free moments during the day, and how much last-minute preparation you need to plan for.

When you make that plan, have one day when you can double the recipe and freeze half. Then, when the day gets away from you a little bit – and we all have days like that – you’ll have that container of soup or pan of enchiladas to pop into the microwave.

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Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of Learning By Grace, Inc. the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.

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.

Pardon me, please.

An important aspect of learning to get along with others is learning to be considerate of others. Courtesy is not in born: he just talked courtesy does not well up from the depths of the child loving desire to see other people happy at the cost of his own convenience inconvenience. He does not just naturally like to take his turn, to wait for an older person to go ahead of him, to take the smaller cookie so that Johnny can have a larger one. This is not the way human beings are made up: they have to be taught this kind of conduct.

As the child grows older, he’s going to find himself in social situations, which will be cumbersome for him, unless through parental teaching, he has the tools with which to cope with these exigencies. The more tools with which the youngster has been provided through his early training, the better prepared. He is to handle these new social situations, which he will be things. I surrounding the boy or girl with an atmosphere of politeness in the home, I teaching him or her to say, pardon me, please, thank you, I’m sorry, parents are teaching the child valuable social skills which he will need later.

Some object that the small child should not be taught these niceties of behavior until he is old enough to understand the meaning of what he is saying. Teaching the child what to say and when to say it may not have much meaning for him in his very early years, but the child who has been taught these courtesies gradually comes to feel the meaning behind them. This is especially true if the child is exposed to the climate of politeness in the home. Having cultivated these niceties of conduct, the child is more comfortable with himself and with others.

This learning of good manners is closely related to the child’s development of social skills. When he expresses the discourtesy his consideration of others, other people warm-up to the child were madly: they like him more sincerely. This in turn causes the child to like these people more than he otherwise would. We are, as we’ve seen, concerned that the child develop self-confidence and inner emotional security. In doing that is, let’s not forget that external security is equally important. We work against the child’s developing external security. When we fail to cultivate in Hindi habits and attitudes of courtesy.

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.