Contents
Back to the Real Basics
High School: A Great Time to Homeschool
By Jeanne Dennis
Show Me the Money: Teaching Teens Sound Money Management
By B. L. Wiedenbeck
Sites for Homeschoolers:
More to come!
by Jeanne Dennis
Ancient legend credits the halcyon, a bird related to the kingfisher, with calming the sea's waves during the winter solstice while it nested and incubated its eggs. The word is also defined as calm, peaceful, happy, golden, prosperous, or affluent (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary).
If you have offspring bickering with one another, toddlers interrupting your school day, or older children demonstrating reluctance to complete their assigned work, you may be laughing right now (if you aren't crying) at the paragraph you just read. It may be hard to imagine that your homeschool could ever be described as halcyon, but I think it can.
Incubation
Think of bird development and compare it with child development. You are still incubating your "eggs" and/or caring for the hatchlings in your nest. Your children are not yet ready to go out into the world. The littlest ones are still in the incubation stage, and the older ones are just learning to fly. Until they're ready, you stand as a barrier between them and the turbulent world outside. You are the halcyon that calms the waves.
Not convinced? I don't blame you. I remember days when my daughter frustrated me so much that I didn't calm any waves; I created tsunamis. Then I threatened to quit homeschooling. Many other times I felt inadequate to perform the task and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Then there were the golden days when I couldn't imagine a better way to spend my life. Thankfully, the rewarding days far outweighed the frustrating ones.
His Eye is On the Halcyon, Too
If the tide seems to be rising on you, you aren't alone. God's sees every sparrow that falls, so He's watching over you and your children, too. Take some time together now to listen for His voice. Read one of the Psalms together and then spend a few minutes in quiet reflection. Rock the little ones while the older ones spend a few minutes thinking about, discussing, drawing, or writing about what you just read. Or take a walk together. Let the little ones guide you. Pay attention to what excites them and thank God for the wonders He has created for you to discover. If you don't have little ones, go on a scavenger hunt. Search for the new and exciting in the ordinary sights and sounds that you experience every day.
When the cacophony of troubles seems overwhelming, remember to tune your senses to God's blessings, creativity, and might. Then observe how calm, peaceful, golden, and prosperous—how halcyon—your homeschooling becomes.
© 2004 Jeanne Gowen Dennis
Jeanne Gowen Dennis is a veteran homeschooler and the author of :
Homeschooling High School: Planning Ahead for College Admission
and Running Barefoot on Holy Ground: Childlike Intimacy with God.
Halcyon Homeschooling
Wisdom or Knowledge?
by Ruth O’Neil
Solomon was one of the richest men who ever lived, but his greatest treasure was the wisdom God gave him. We have all marveled at his Proverbs and the stories in the Bible that illustrate Solomon’s wisdom. For example, consider the story about the two women who fought over a baby, both saying he was theirs. Today, a simple DNA test would have solved the issue, but Solomon’s God-given wisdom helped him go beyond knowledge to an understanding of the human heart. He knew the true mother would protect her child, even if it meant giving him up.
I used to think that wisdom was a wealth of knowledge; how much a person knew determined how much wisdom he had. But I was wrong. We can give people all the knowledge in the world, but unless they use that knowledge, it won’t become wisdom. Unfortunately, most wisdom comes from the mistakes we make.
For example, my daughter came to me one day and told me that she had a crush on a boy at church. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me, because this was her first crush and she wasn’t old enough to date. I knew the feelings would pass. However, I knew from my own experience of being a young teenage girl that this was something she needed to keep to herself, and I told her so. I gave her the knowledge of the wisdom that I had.
Disregarding my advice, she told two of her friends, who also happened to be two of the biggest mouths in the whole church. They told her secret to anyone who would listen, including the boy himself. My daughter was upset that her friends had betrayed her confidence. Her feelings were hurt. Through sad experience, she gained the wisdom of the advice I had given her.
That is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Knowledge can be given, but wisdom can’t. My daughter had the knowledge to make a wise decision, yet she chose to ignore it. Only after she was hurt, did she take the knowledge to heart, where it became wisdom. If she had chosen to act on my wise counsel in the beginning, she would not have had to learn that portion of wisdom the hard way.
Learning the hard way doesn’t stop when we’ve grown up. We have the Bible full of wisdom waiting for us to read and put to use in our lives. We have pastors preaching sermons and believers older and wiser than us in the faith giving us advice, but what do we do with all this knowledge? We may study the Bible, take notes from sermons, and nod our agreement while listening to the wisdom of others, but do we remember what we read or heard even a few short hours later? Do we take it to heart and apply it to our lives?
Think about all the knowledge you have in your head today. Is it doing any good, or is it just sitting there? Let’s take that knowledge to heart and make it wisdom. Then, like Solomon, we will have great treasure to pass on to others.
What does the Bible have to say about wisdom?
Psalm 51:6 – we need to ask God for it.
Proverbs 2:6 – the Lord gives wisdom.
Proverbs 3:13 – wisdom is a blessing.
Proverbs 11:2 – wisdom is precious.
1 Corinthians 12:8 – wisdom is a gift.
James 5:1 – we should ask for it.
Here are some other verses about wisdom. Look them up and study them.
Psalm 111:10
Proverbs 4:7
Proverbs 8:11
Proverbs 13:10
Proverbs 29:3
© Ruth O’Neil
Ruth O’Neil is a homeschooling mother of three who makes her home in Lynchburg, Virginia. She and her husband have worked with children of all ages for almost twenty years. She enjoys cooking, garedening, quilting, and mentoring.
Back to the Real Basics
by Ruth O’Neil
As a homeschooling mom, I know that I am teaching my kids more than reading, writing and arithmetic. There are the little day to day issues that I don’t even thing of, at least I didn’t think of them until people began commenting on the knowledge my children have that others may not. It is not that they are necessarily smarter than other kids; they just know more about how to live and take care of themselves.
We had a family dinner at my mother-in-law’s house one Sunday afternoon. After we ate, we were all sitting around the living room chatting about housework. My brother-in-law’s nineteen-year-old girlfriend was sitting with us. She made the comment that she never had to do any housework, and she didn’t even know how to vacuum. My three-year-old son piped in with, “I’ll show you!” I was shocked at the girl’s revelation. I never thought vacuuming was a particularly difficult task. You plug it in, and then you push and pull.
Then my oldest daughter went to a lock-in with our church youth group. At four o’clock in the morning, they went on a scavenger hunt at a local department store. One of the things on their list was “the most expensive grocery item.” My daughter not only knew it was meat; she knew which kind and exactly where to find it. Her leader had an “argument” with her right there in the store. This leader considered himself a connoisseur of grocery shopping, but since the kids were supposed to be doing all the scavenging, he let her win the argument. He wanted her to lead the way only to prove her wrong. She led her team to victory.
This leader was so proud of her shopping abilities that he made a big deal of it when he saw me Sunday morning at church. I pointed out that since I homeschool my kids, they go with me everywhere I go, even to the grocery store. Although I prefer shopping by myself, I would be denying my kids the experience of learning the basic skills of learning to shop sensibly if I shopped alone.
Another time when I was babysitting for a whole weekend, I thought it would be fun for the kids to make their own pizzas for dinner one night. My kids were the only ones who were in the least bit interested. The other children had never been allowed in the kitchen with their moms. (One family’s idea of dinner was fast food.) Most kids today are not taught cooking, an activity which in my house is mandatory. At our house cooking is a fun job everyone looks forward to. The kids actually fight over whose turn it is to help.
Homeschooling is more than simply teaching kids to get good grades and do well in their studies. It is also about helping our children learn to take care of themselves. It’s a back-to-basics curriculum, teaching the basic skills of life.
© Ruth O'Neil
© 2008 Jeanne Gowen Dennis. U.S. and Worldwide rights reserved.