Good Morning!

This is just a quick note to share a couple of references that might be of help to you.  First, you may have noticed a new ‘widget’ added to our blog’s right sidebar called the Carnival of Homeschooling.  Ever heard of a ‘blog carnival’?  It is a bit like a blog ‘magazine’ that is ‘published’ on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly, that centers on a particular topic.  It is hosted by various bloggers who pull together a number of different authors/artices.  It is a great chance to be exposed to different authors who write about homeschooling topics.  You may also submit posts of your own to possibly be included in an upcoming carnival.

The second resource that I would like to share is a website that offers one free downloadable homeschooling resource every day, Monday through Friday.  These include free lesson plans, e-books, mp3 stories and more! You can check the site every day to see what is free for that day, or you can join their mailing list and they will send you a weekly e-mail every Monday that describes their freebies for the week so you can plan ahead of time what you want to download. They do occasionally send other e-mails with special offers, but they are not frequent or obnoxious.  The website is http://www.HomeschoolFreebieOfTheDay.com.  Enjoy!

Have a great week!

Warmly,

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In a previous blog, Should You Join a Co-op?, I addressed how to evaluate whether a specific co-op is the best situation for your family. Now, weeks later, after spending the first quarter of the school year in a successful co-op, I’d like to share with you what has made our co-op work well.

I believe there are some very specific qualities that have made our co-op successful. If your current co-op doesn’t demonstrate these characteristics, don’t despair. Rather, use them as guidelines for improving your current co-op situation. Our co-op underwent some changes and with thorough communication, we worked out the kinks, creating a helpful and encouraging environment. But the key is that we worked through our challenges rather than giving up our co-op. While that’s not possible with every struggling co-op, you might want to give it a shot before quitting.

1. Prayer – as with any endeavor, the amount of prayer put into the project has a tremendous affect on its success. We prayed over our co-op during planning and regularly lift it up in prayer as we progress. With God in charge, we become less worried about our own endeavors and more focused on Him.

2. Consistent Communication – while it may be time consuming, particularly at first, the strength of your communication will greatly determine the value of your co-op overall. Miscommunications cause frustration and that can lead to further problems. As with so many home schoolers, our co-op families have very busy schedules, so we found that with most issues e-mailing worked best. However, there were certainly situations when a phone call prevented a dozen e-mails. Talk with the other moms in your co-op to determine the best way to consistently, but respectfully, communicate.

3. Flexibility - we spent a great deal of time planning our history and science co-op during the summer. With all of that time invested, we thought we had things pretty much mapped out. We really overplanned and didn’t take our sons’ other academic and outside responsibilities into account enough. After the first four weeks, we revised our reading list. After six weeks, we revised our Bible study and science plans. You have to be willing to be flexible enough to change what’s not working. It was a little disconcerting after all of the planning that we did, but we decided to count our summer work as an intense learning experience. Should we do another co-op next year, we’ll know what not to do!

4. Student Personalities – It is not easy to work out how different personalities will respond in a co-op situation prior to actually interacting with each other. For example, we found that two of our boys fed off of each other and became really silly at points because they found each other so entertaining, while another boy was less likely to actively participate due to the distraction. At times, I am sure he wondered if he’d ever get a word in during some conversations. So, we had to lay down some ground rules that we really hadn’t expected. Once those rules were established, the co-op was more valuable and pleasant for everyone.

5. Grace – The personalities of the moms should be considered as well. We have had a few moments here and there when one or another felt left out or overwhelmed by the co-op responsibilities. Only one of us had actually ever taught prior to the co-op starting and there was insecurity at times about dealing with specific academic material. Grace plays an important role as you deal with these types of issues. Gently loving one another through such times prevents walls or negative memories from being created. It can be tempting during crunch time to be condescending or take over rather than allowing everyone to do her part, even if she does it differently that you would. I love the idea that my son gets to learn from other moms because it offers him the opportunity to interact and communicate differently than we do daily. Even though we may be very different in some ways, those differences can translate into precious learning experiences.

6. Workload Balance – For the most part, we have been able to balance the responsibilities amongst us fairly evenly. At times, that balance may be off momentarily because of sick children or other demands on our time. But a successful co-op most often spreads the workload evenly for all participants, preventing frustration or feelings of being taken advantage of.

7. Compatible Curriculum - By using Epi Kardia’s 9-12 Complete Units, we were able to personalize and design our history plans to suit our families’ goals. The booklists made quick work of selecting our reading materials; the project ideas kept us from having to think up hands-on activities and we utilized the research lists as mini-research study topics for the boys to present each week. The organization of Apologia Chemistry, along with the experiments that can be done at home, made it ideal for our situation. Considering that the three of us were never science majors, the articulate presentation of the material greatly supported our needs. 

8. Academic Progress – It has been wonderful watching the academic progress of the boys that has already been achieved. History and science discussions not only demonstrate their comprehension but also allow them to develop better communications skills. Completing science experiments together promotes discussion of the results and new ideas that may not have been considered while doing the experiments alone. As I previously noted, being responsible to another adult takes accountability a step further and also provides the opportunity for praise and encouragement from someone besides mom. It has been a joy watching John Paul interact with the other moms in our co-op and also observing how he has developed more respect for them over time.

These qualities may not be exactly what you’d want in your co-op, but generally, I believe they are foundational for most co-ops. If you have ideas or have participated in a successful co-op, we’d love to hear your comments. Many thanks to my co-op sisters, Sharon and Cheryl, and their boys, Erik and Robert, for hanging in there and working together in an attempt to teach our sons with a spirit of Christ!

Blessings on your week!

Beth

Dear Friends,

It’s not uncommon for us to receive questions about Epi Kardia curriculum particularly concerning how to use it properly. Occasionally, we get questions addressing specific learning and/or teaching issues. We believe that the following question and answer may be beneficial to many moms, so we’re publishing it as a blog. Many thanks to the mom who graciously agreed to let us share her concerns in order to help her fellow home school moms.

Question:

Hope you are both well.  I am hoping that you can help me with something…  

My daughter struggles with information retention.  As you both know, we have been using the Epi Kardia curriculum this year and I am finding that she just isn’t remembering things that she is reading.  For instance, only 2 weeks ago, we spent at least an hour reading about the Parthenon, looking at the pictures in the book, discussing how it might have been built, et cetera. Today, I mention the Parthenon and she says, "What is that?  I have never heard about that."  I am getting increasingly frustrated.

Now, if it is something she sees in a video, she can remember it for the ages. She knows every creature, habitat, and name in the Jacques’ novels – The Redwall Series, but she can’t remember what she read in her Ancient Greek book yesterday.  I think it is selective retention and her natural tendency to speed read, but don’t know how to improve it other than reading everything that she reads and making worksheets – which would drive us both crazy.  If I make her read aloud, she reads slower but does not retain any better.    

Do you have any recommendations?  She gets extremely defensive if I ask her ANYTHING about what she just read.  For instance, I asked her to complete the Venn diagram today comparing Sparta/Athens and she simply said ‘It isn’t necessary.  I know it all already."   When we sat down to do it, she did know some things, like their differing forms of government, but she said that was insignificant and not worthy of putting in the Venn diagram.  ;-)  I don’t think she is being disrespectful – she simply does not retain the important things – but she can tell you if they had cats in Greece!  or every type of land animal in Europe at that time.  She thrives on projects – things she can make with her hands but I can’t turn every book we read into a project – or can I?  

She is 11, tested in 90th percentiles last year on SAT, and is my artsy kid (5 years in Montessori school when I worked full time), learns best on the floor of her room, and thrives in chaos.  Maybe I am making more of this than I should but I am really concerned that she just does not retain info.  She is a poor speller, too.    

Suggestions?

Answer:

What you’re experiencing is really not uncommon at all, especially for an 11 year old. I know that I went through very similar responses from John Paul and it wasn’t until a couple of years later that he really matured enough to realize that I was doing this for his benefit!  As you probably know, children have different learning styles or some combination of learning styles. We do cover this in the Epi Kardia manual (www.epikardia.com/teacher_s_manuals.html), but let’s look at in light of your daughter, specifically.

1.     She clearly isn’t an auditory learner. If you find that discussing material is not enough for her to retain it, then it’s not her strength. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t discuss the books, it just means that you probably shouldn’t spend the bulk of your time discussing the books. It is easier if your child is an auditory learner because you just have to say things (and a lot less messy too!), but it’s not uncommon for a child to not learn through audio processes exclusively, even for a time. Just don’t rely right now on teaching her something when listening is the primary source of learning.

2.     This age is extremely dedicated to what they’re interested in. Even when I taught in the classroom, I noticed immediately that children learn more about what they find fascinating. Sometimes that fascination comes from curiosity; sometimes it comes from your enthusiasm or may even come from seeing the same thing or concept in various places (in a book, then on tv, etc). The reason your daughter can remember everything from Redwall is because she loves it and she doesn’t think of it as school. Again, pretty normal. That’s why it’s so important that parents monitor their kids’ tv viewing and extracurricular reading, which you obviously do. Don’t despair over this…history has many interesting topics but we sometimes have to search with our children for them. One idea is to go over the general topics for a time period and ask your daughter what she’d like to study most. Is she more interested in people than buildings and events (many young girls are more relationship oriented)? You don’t have to completely overlook everything that she doesn’t seem particularly interested in, but definitely spend more time on areas in which she shows interest. Don’t worry about being off balance in what she’s studying as it all comes together by the time she’ll graduate. Also, girls at this age like to think of themselves as more mature, so seeking her opinion could be a powerful tool. It certainly was with Ally. She loved the historical fiction and didn’t get into the non-fiction so much at 11-12 years old, so I made sure that we were reading some really interesting historical novels or fiction in every unit and lessened the load on the non-fiction that year. She learned a tremendous amount because the historical fiction is packed with great material that is just presented in a different way.

3.     The next recommendation you basically made yourself. You refer to her as “artsy”; she’s obviously bright and you can have her do as many projects as you can fit into the day. Projects are such an awesome way to help hands-on kids retain what they’ve learned. The key is to make sure the project is relevant and that she can actually tell you why it’s relevant to what she’s studying. Lap books make ideal projects for hands-on learners because they incorporate skills such as writing and organization, but also allow for unlimited creativity.

4.     Don’t fret over the spelling. Do check her written work and maybe even keep a list of words that she commonly misspells in her notebook, referring her to this list as she writes. John Paul just started spelling well this year and it’s only because he got tired of me making him correct spelling and now uses spell check faithfully. There are many skills that will carry your daughter successfully through this life, but personally I’m not sure spelling is one of them. Oh my, and that’s coming from an English teacher!

5.  Finally, I personally feel it’s important to address situations when a child feels comfortable determining whether an assignment is significant or not. I am not implying at all that your daughter is disrespectful, but young ladies do often feel that they know a great deal more than they actually do. I think sometimes it’s necessary to gently point out to a child that while she may be exceptionally bright, she’s not really qualified at this point to determine the relevance of an assignment. You could use your relationship with God as an example. When we make decisions in life, feeling confident that we know what’s best, sometimes those decisions aren’t really for the best because we don’t see the whole picture the way God does. That’s why it’s so important that we read His Word, listen to Him through prayer (and other wise people) because He has a bigger view and definitely more experience and wisdom. At the same time, we can be confident that God loves us and therefore, all decisions that He makes for our lives are in our best interest. Transition to the point that God put you in charge of your daughter’s education because you see the bigger picture for her, have more wisdom and really want the best for her in all things. If you can get her to accept that premise or line of thinking now as your child, she will be much more likely to conform to it in her relationship with the Lord as an adult.

I am always so impressed with your comments and concerns for your children. You definitely should be concerned if you feel any of your children aren’t getting the most out of their learning experiences. Just remember that the most valuable learning is actually a result of a layering effect and over time, even things that your daughter doesn’t seem to remember at the moment may very well come to her a year from now. The brain is an amazing creation but rarely seems to work for our convenience.

I remember being where you are and I have total empathy! I’ll be praying for you and your daughter and look forward to hearing about her progress.

Many blessings,

Beth