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.