HOMESCHOOLING BEGINS WITH HOME
Elementary School and Junior High School |
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The fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association.
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knowledge acquisition and skill development in your own mind to gain the greatest advantage of homeschooling for this season:
establish a love of learning.
Why? |
Because a responsible mom—especially with the first child she homeschools—often begins to shift her focus from home to school as the pressure from family or perhaps her own internal pressure builds. Traditional academic skills development (see Part 2) often becomes an area of conflict between the homeschooling mother and the homeschooled child.
While academic skill development is important, if it begins to replace (instead of join with) relational, personal, and moral skill development while in the elementary years (Grade 1 through about Grades 4 or 5), mom heaps a heavy, unnecessary burden on herself and her children.
Junior High School years,
- continue to cultivate the three areas of skill development that began during the Homeschool Preschool and Elementary Years,
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increase shared knowledge acquisition,
- encourage personal knowledge acquisition simply and naturally, and
- develop traditional academic skills (Part 2)
- encourage personal knowledge acquisition simply and naturally, and
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A C Q U I S I T I O N |
As you relate to the Lord, yoking with Him, and pray for the renewed mindset that will keep your burden light during this season of establishing an environment for acquiring knowledge through homeschooling, keep these two thoughts in mind:
- Maintain an eternal perspective about knowledge acquisition.
Knowledge acquisition will continue throughout adulthood and into eternity.
As we develop a love of learning, each of us—including you, Mom—acquires her own personal knowledge that she can share naturally with others…
… just like I am sharing naturally with you through this Christian website.
Rather than forcing a homeschooling scope-and-sequence, complete with tests for regurgitation of knowledge deemed important by a system, learn together with your children.
Homeschooling provides a rich environment
within which to acquire knowledge together.Prepared curricula for individual subjects may serve as tools for you during this time, but avoid allowing curricula to become a noose.
- You, Mom, will become homeschooled yourself through personal knowledge acquisition!
Develop your own love of learning and model your process before your children as you share with them what you are learning. I guarantee you from personal experience that over time children will emulate your process and begin to share with you and each other what they are learning.
They will be prepared to acquire their own knowledge without force during High School when a solid foundation has been laid. Three keys to that solid foundation include:
- practiced development of relational, personal, and moral skills
- genuine love of acquiring knowledge naturally through relationship with you
- competent use of the tools of learning
- reading for personal research (elementary years)
- writing (first legible penmanship, including math, and then composition) to develop thinking and organizational skills (junior high school years)
- speaking/narration for sharing coherently with others (high school years)
- reading for personal research (elementary years)
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Bring your children alongside you when they are young and they will desire that you come alongside them as they mature.
Strengthen your relationship with each of your children as you:
- acquire knowledge together through family reading times and
- share with them what you are learning through your own personal education process.
Applying these two simple ideas daily cultivates the love of learning in both your children and you—a love of learning that will motivate them to:
- tackle their weaknesses,
- perfect their skills, and
- acquire their own knowledge at the most efficient seasons of their lives without force.
Shared Knowledge Acquisition
Elementary and Junior High Years
(Approximate Ages: 8-14)
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Appreciation |
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*This outside link to my dear cyberspace friend Wendy’s helpful website introduces you to the concept of implementing Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of reading Living Books to acquire knowledge together.
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Continue your own education.
Use this season of homeschooling to continue your own education.
What interests you? Learn about that and share your discoveries with your children.
For example, one summer I wanted to learn more about the wildflowers in our area. So I got a Field Guide and began to look for wildflowers. My children and I collected a few, pressed them, and made bookmarks as Christmas gifts that year.
Additionally, as you learn, you will find God Himself at the Foundation of every subject discipline. Sharing this aspect of your learning ministers to your children as well.
Gradually and naturally add personal knowledge acquisition to your children’s lives.
The preschool and early elementary years focused heavily on skill development.
At the beginning of this season of homeschooling during the early to later elementary school years, a child’s natural curiosity—coupled with your sharing of personally obtained knowledge—increases knowledge acquisition as she matures.
Family reading time broadens her horizons—and yours!—and observation of the world around you rounds out the beginning of this season.
When your children begin maturing into the reasoning stage, personal knowledge acquisition will be added over time to the relational, personal and moral skill development.
By the end of the junior high school stage of homeschooling, around age 14, personal knowledge acquisition will be firmly established.
Example 1.
If your child enjoys play-acting, let her dress up and re-enact scenes from history as you read the Bible, classics, or historical fiction books together out loud.
My oldest child thoroughly enjoyed this type of learning. I myself began to love history (a subject I avoided during my growing-up years) because she became so fascinated by the people of history.
One morning I found her at her little desk dressed in sweatpants she had cut off at the knees, a little homemade vest, and a tri-cornered hat “writing” the Declaration of Independence. She had become Thomas Jefferson!
Example 2.
For the child who loves flower-picking, find some quality Field Guides and begin to identify flowers in your area. You can introduce flower parts to the child as well.
During the summer of 2008, my 10-year-old daughter and a young friend of hers came running breathlessly into the house during an afternoon of outdoor play, wide-eyed.
“We found something strange in the gulley that looks like a flower.”
They got the Field Guide and identified an Indian Pipe, something we had not seen before—a flower with no chlorophyll.
Example 3.
At the age of 13, my son, who didn’t learn to read-to-learn until age 9, devoured the Creation ministries books.
Not only did he prepare himself for the next season of homeschooling—acquiring personal knowledge through textbooks!—but also shared his new-found knowledge with me, teaching me through his process.
As you encourage your preschoolers and elementary-aged children to love learning naturally, they will begin to acquire their own personal knowledge that they share with you and others as they prepare themselves through the junior high school years to enter into the rigors of high school homeschool.
to acquire the knowledge that interests them,
they will develop a love of learning and
teach us parents and siblings through the process.
Unfortunately, it is often at this stage of homeschooling when mom begins to panic, however.
Why?
Because the academic skills development of an elementary and/or junior high school child can become burdensome and overwhelming if not coupled with the shared and personal knowledge acquisition outlined in this article.
Part 2, Skills Development addresses this topic in more detail.
Additional articles related to the theme of Scholarship:
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Skills and Knowledge (Overview Article)
- Preschool and Early Elementary
- Later Elementary Years and Junior High
- High School Homeschooling
has chosen to relate to her particular children
through homeschooling.
As she continues in the fear of the Lord
and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit,
may she continue her own education as she seeks to minister
to her growing children’s true heart needs
related to knowledge acquisition for this season:
establishing a love of learning.
is the beginning of knowledge;
But fools despise
wisdom and discipline.
~Proverbs 1:7
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