practical advice

Homeschool Advice: Part 5 | Keep the End Game in Mind

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

Today’s topic is part parenting, part homeschooling, and applicable to both: keeping an eye on the end game. What I mean is this: as you parent and teach, remember the job is to prepare your children to grow into adults who are willing to follow God at all costs; to stand firm on truth even in world hostile to truth and to be able to function long after you have been called home.

Parenting for the End Game

While it may sound idyllic to raise children in an environment free from difficulty, failure, and suffering, such a situation would actually be detrimental to their development. Without difficulty, children do not learn to trust God in times of trial; they do not learn to be resourceful and resilient. Free from any suffering, children cannot develop character and hope. Without failure, they never learn to get back up and keep going.

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
(Romans 5:3-5)

Failure in particular is so critical to development, I am planning an entire post dedicated to it, so stay tuned.

Keep in mind that the job of a Christian parent is to raise children who become functional, godly adults. The end game is, put simply, to work yourself out of a job by preparing your kids to become men and women who no longer need you. One way to do this is to encourage them to try difficult things.

By “encouraging them to try difficult things,” I’m not saying you should hand your four-year-old a meat cleaver and have her start hacking a hunk of beef into stew meat. But you can be appropriate for each age and stage and still think forward. Provide opportunities for your kids to challenge themselves, to strive for independence, to grow.

Practically speaking, let your two-year-old attempt to dress herself even if she decides to wear purple polka-dot tights with a bright orange and yellow striped tank dress and fairy wings. It may not be what you would choose for a trip to the library, but at least she’s learning a necessary skill.

Encourage your five-year-old to pour his own breakfast cereal. Enlist all ages to help with household chores, even if they don’t do a stellar job. Praise the effort anyway.

Establish nutrition boundaries and have your six-and-ups pack their own lunches for school or homeschool tutorials or field trips. Have them fold and put away their own clothes as soon as dexterity allows (even if it isn’t perfect), and once they’re tall enough to reach the laundry controls, teach them to do their own laundry.

Start laying the ground work now so they will know how to function if you end up sick – or worse. Such skills will not harm them now and can only help them in the future even if they are somehow spared any future difficulties.

Teaching for the End Game

While all the above advice could arguably be incorporated into school as “life skills,” it is primarily geared toward parenting. For the homeschooler, teaching for the end game is just as important. This means teaching with an eye to preparing them for the next step God calls them to – whether it is college, career, marriage, or something else.

As you plan your homeschool, there are two facts you should keep in mind:

1. You Do Not Know God’s Individual Call for Each Child

For your part as a homeschooler, do your best to leave all available doors open. Teach with the goal of preparing them so college is an option for them, regardless of whether or not they take it. Not all children should go on to college, but you certainly don’t want to be guilty of closing that avenue for them before they even have a chance to decide.

      One practical way to do this is by establishing a homeschool environment with structure and routine. While your homeschool cannot – and should not – look and feel exactly like a public or private school, it is wise to set up structures easily adaptable into those environments, just in case. You literally never know what the future holds, so keep the possibility of future public- or private-school attendance in mind when setting goals and planning curriculum.

      Phrased simply, teach your kids as though you might not be there tomorrow, because you never really know.

      2. You do not know how long God will call you to homeschool.

      Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” James 4:13–15 (ESV).

      We live in a broken world, and because of that, terrible tragedies happen. Twice during my kids’ lifetimes, I contracted meningitis. By the grace of God, neither case was bacterial. Though both cases involved hospitalization and left residual health issues in their wake, I was able to continue being both mom and teacher.

      However.

      Both times made me realize how fleeting life really is. Had one or the other been a bacterial infection, there’s a solid chance I would not be writing these words today. It’s a good reminder that none of us ever know the date our lives will be required of us.

      Morbidity aside, there are other reasons your homeschool may be more temporary than you planned. It’s wise not to assume you will always homeschool and so lay a suitable foundation for your children to build on regardless of what tomorrow holds.

      Always hold your plans loosely, submitting them to the Lord who is the Master Planner. His plans are far better than ours, and we must submit to them even if we don’t understand – even if it means He calls your kids to another schooling environment.

      So in all your teaching, planning, and preparation, do the best you can to make sure your kiddos know how to learn no matter what their circumstances. This way, whether the future holds public school, private school, college, or career, or whatever – they will be ready.

      Homeschool Advice Part 4 | Practical Prioritizing

      ~ Heather Davis ~ 3 Comments

      Now that I’ve emphasized the importance of prioritizing school, I thought it best to offer some practical advice on how to do this. Once you’ve reminded yourself that you are the parent and the teacher, it’s time to implement the actual “doing school” part. I promise this one will be much shorter. 🙂

      Basic Prioritizing

      When my kids were young, we kept roughly the same school schedule as our county’s public school. However, there were discrepancies. For example, we might not take President’s Day off even when our public school neighbors did, but we might take another day off for, say, a family visit while public school was in session.

      Yet this proved problematic. If my kids knew their neighborhood friends were out of school while they were still in class, I soon learned they would rush through their subjects without really attending to them in order to get to play time. One way I stopped this was to establish school hours. I would tell them no one was allowed to go out and play between the hours of 8:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. or so (the hours differed year by year, and I made sure to build in enough time for them to complete their subjects fully, even in high school).

      We faced another complication in our early school years. The city we live in is split between two counties. So while our county might start school at the same time we did, the other county (at the time) started a couple of weeks later. Thus, our friends from the other district often invited us to the pool after we’d started school.

      Because I didn’t want school to be a burden, I tried to balance the way I handled such events. Occasionally, I would just say no, though I tried to make my nos rare so they would really count. More often, I would build flex time into our schedule.

      One way I did this was to ramp up into the school year by starting our longer-running subjects early. For example, we might do two days a week of two subjects two weeks before the “official” start of school, then do three days the following week, and get into full-time school the third week. This way, we had some built-in flexibility, we were eased into the school year, and it made school a more natural part of our life.

      Ramping up also closed the gap between the last day of school and the first day, so the sudden structure of the school day was less of a shock. This was by far my favorite method.

      Daily Priorities

      In addition to the school day itself, there are ways to practically prioritize subjects within the day. This will look different for each family depending on your individual strengths and weaknesses. For my kids, it worked best to do the harder and less fun subjects first thing after breakfast.

      Once my kids were about 8-9 years of age (about third grade), I began to enforce a wake up time. School started at 8:30 a.m. sharp, and they were expected to be in class and ready to learn. Of course, I made accommodations for situations like an unexpected late night or mild illnesses, but overall we kept to this schedule.

      Having the routine in place helped the kids be mentally and physically ready to learn, as well as preparing them to set and keep schedules in future endeavors, such as college or career. It also helped me plan doctor’s appointments, dinners, ministry activities, and the like.

      In the mornings after breakfast and Bible, we would start with math, spelling, or grammar. We kept all our more academic subjects before lunch. At lunch time, we would eat together and then enjoy a read aloud (a book above the highest reading level that I would read aloud to them). After lunch came fun history projects, science labs, nature walks, or more hands-on subjects.

      I also found it useful to keep ALL fun activities after lunch whenever possible, including extracurricular activities, at least while my children were in elementary school. After a short stint at a 10:00 a.m. dance class, I quickly realized that the time to get ready, get to class, and get back in time for lunch left my kids mentally checked out for school. Dance class days began to feel like a day off, so we shifted to find extra curriculars that started later in the day.

      As they got older, this rule was bent because they began to understand the importance of getting their school work done. When my son was a teenager, he was involved in Karate for Christ and was asked to teach some early classes. I told him he could do it as long as he kept school a priority, but if his grades slid, Karate would have to go. This was a fabulous growing experience for him and he handled it well, demonstrating to me his maturity by handling both commitments without letting either one waver.

      This is the method that worked for us, but I know other families who have found their kids understood math better in the evenings than the mornings. The great thing is to experiment the first few years and find the rhythm that works best for your individual family needs. Then stick to it. Period.

      No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).