Almost Unschooling Grama

Homeschooling is hard, but then, so is parenting. If you are even close to being a decent parent, you are already doing most of the things a homeschooler does. If you are brave enough to take the plunge, it’s likely you will find that homeschooling fine-tunes your parenting skills, helps you understand how your children think and strengthens your relationship with them. Most homeschoolers who stick it out for a year or two find themselves on the other side of the fence: Sending their children to a traditional school seems like the harder education option.   If you have a child in a traditional school, the likelihood is that you are already spending as much time or more than the typical homeschool parent spends on educating a child. How can that be? A child in a typical school has to be readied for school every morning, then there’s transport, homework after-school, extra-curricular activities, etc., not to mention all the stress caused by doing these things when the child is tire...

This is my grandson's word problem box.  One of my biggest math book pet peeves is that kids are given a set of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problems, but the problems on the page or on the worksheet are all the same type. They almost never need to figure out what kind of computation they need to make.  So, I cut up the books or worksheets and place them inside the box and have my kids pick out 2 random problems to solve a day. I have them circle all the numbers and underline the question. I also encourage them to draw a picture of the problem if they aren't sure of what operation they should use.  If they still need help deciding I have them highlight  any clue words from a chart like the one found here  https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/clue-words-chart-11156394    At first, most kids need you to walk through the entire process, but if you are consistent with the 2 problems a day rule, they will pick it up quickly.

Gotta get this out there! Schools as we have known them are germ factories. Why are we even discussing returning children to some sanitized horror factory of what they used to be? Let's not talk about trying to do schools as close to what they used to be to contain the virus. Let's talk about containment. The reason our current school systems are such germ factories is that there are simply too many children in one place. One kid gets sick and the whole community gets sick because that child spreads it to every family in the school. Let's limit the exposure. Why not restructure our schools, or at least our classes. One-room schoolhouses were once the norm in our nation for the elementary grades. Let's return to that. Imagine classes of 15 to 20 students with one teacher and one aide composed of 2 to 7 families of children. In this way, if one child gets sick, he/she only infects a small number of people in the community. Then, those families can take precautions to cont...

There was one religion in the beginning. Every religion is a perversion of the original. God is the one and only creator. The enemy can only pervert what God has already created. My personal belief is that early Christians followed Paul's example by searching other religions for traces of the true religion to help them connect with those who would listen to them. Easter and Christmas do have pagan roots, but even before that the concepts of new life and light in the darkness came from seed birthed in the heart of God. As Christianity spread into Gentile lands, the symbols and ideas embedded in pagan religions were reborn into the revelations that God intended for them in the first place. The egg is a symbol of new life in religions around the world. In Christian tradition, it is a symbol of the tomb. Hiding the egg symbolizes the hiding of Jesus body in the earth. #holidaysymbols What is the one thing rabbits are best known for? Their capacity to multiply! God has ...

“Christians shouldn’t participate in traditional “Christian” holidays because they have pagan roots.” If you’ve been involved in evangelical Christianity for any length of time, it’s likely you’ve come across this teaching, and many of you have chosen to celebrate the Jewish feasts and holidays instead as a result. While I am all for Christians celebrating Jewish holidays, I still have no qualms about celebrating Christmas in spite of its pagan roots. Here’s why: Many years ago, I read the book  “Peace Child “. It’s about a missionary couple who felt a call to reach the cannibalistic tribes of New Guinea with the gospel. The culture of these people was the polar opposite of Christianity. Lying was held up as a virtue and violence was revered. In the book, Don Richardson explains that all religions and value systems have their roots in the true religion practiced by Noah. Satan has never created anything. He only perverts the truth. Therefore, the strategy of these ...

Confession: Grampa Tom is a Scrooge.  OK, I can't blame him. He grew up in a large farm family. My father-in-love was a fantastic worker but had no business sense. They lived hand to mouth and every penny earned from the farm usually went out the door as soon as it came in at harvest. By December, money was always tight and the pressure to provide gifts for 9 kids always caused a lot of fights between his parents. Not only that, but many of those kids had December birthdays. Christmas for my husband was always a time of great stress.  On the contrary, Christmas in my family was always a joyous occasion that my upper-middle-class parents were comfortably able to afford. My expectations and my husband's dread of the season created some stress between us in the beginning, but when we went through the farm depression of the early 80s, things got serious. My overwhelming desire to give came into full clash with his insistence that we absolutely could not afford Christmas. ...

Give your children the opportunity to experience the joy of giving! Start a tradition of giving by challenging them to do an act of kindness every day in December up to Christmas. Brainstorm with them some of the things they could do and then have a time at the end of each day to share what they have done and how it made them feel.  Here's some ideas to get you going!  1. Unroll the toilet paper in a public restroom a little way. Then roll it back up with a dollar bill so the next person who comes in will find it. 2. Go for a walk and pick up litter. 3. Message someone. Tell them how much you appreciate them. 4. Take cookies or bread to a neighbor. 5. Give good toys to a toy drive. 6. Write encouraging notes on sticky notes and leave them around town. 7. Do a chore for someone. 8. Roll down your window and yell "Thank you" to road construction workers. 9. Take the neighbor's garbage can back to the house after the tru...