Tag: tutoring

Posted in Home School

Do You Need Unit Studies?

Posted on by Katharine

Curriculum to draw a horse while studying horses.You probably seldom saw unit studies in your collective school past, except maybe on holidays or after the first snow.

Unit Studies is a relatively new term that conveys the idea of studying only one topic at a time in every school discipline.

So, if your children wanted to study horses and you were teaching through unit studies, they would read Black Beauty or something similar.
Their English assignments would be reports or essays about horses.
Math would cover statistics about horses.
You would teach the history of horses, complete with maps.
Spelling would include equine and other “qu” words and whether racetrack and several others are closed, hyphenated, or open compounds.
Biology might cover the horse skeleton.

Get it?

And often, every student is studying the same topic, so while the high schoolers are learning to render a horse in oil paints and apply the logic of game theory, the first grader is filling a color book about horses and learning to count the pintos in a certain mixed herd.

Some people love unit studies, and I have used them a time or two, myself, enjoying the results. They really ring the bell for people who thrive on research, and I do. The consummate teacher, whose every cell longs to provide all, all, all the input from the depths of her soul, will inhale this idea with great joy.

Often, the homeschool teacher who loves unit studies has a teaching degree, or had begun to acquire one, or always wanted to be a teacher.
Perhaps she has a lot of experience in teaching maybe Sunday School or some other public place, such as job orientations at her old workplace.
Something about her life has handed her a great amount of confidence she can do a better job than any old book.

Often she has given birth to children who also enjoy much “hands-on” experience in life.
They must contemplate while they learn (unlike the ones who grab up facts and contemplate later.)
These children seem to grow taller when they have a “project” in the works, and sometimes it is an ever-expanding project.
The wise teacher of this type of learner will keep a constant supply of projects in the wings, waiting for the right moment to introduce them.

One other important aspect of teaching through unit studies is the time factor: It takes a great amount of time.

Unit studies require a life of total devotion to providing content for the students.
You have to know, months in advance, what you are doing and what you plan to be doing.
There are no textbooks already planned out for you.
There are no answer keys.
Often there is no summer vacation for you.

Thing is, you love this stuff.

Also you need to know there is no maid. Either you have to provide that, yourself, or else you have to be okay with some things undone.
If your husband freaks over a cheerio in his chair, hmm.
If a sticky floor drives you crazy, hmm.

I counseled a lady who asked me, “My husband has told me that if I will homeschool our children, he will hire me a maid. Do you think I could do it?”
I told her, “With a maid, there is much greater time to devote to the business of teaching. I would only be concerned about the children not learning to carry their own load with chores.”

She took that counsel to heart.
She has the maid.
Her children have strictly enforced chores.

And she, for some reason, chose unit studies.

Are unit studies for you? There are companies that provide grace and guidance for those who embark for this journey. Check out Konos, Sunlight, and Weaver, to see if you could love this way.

And last, but not least!

Posted in Home School

Do You Need Disposable Workbooks?

Posted on by Katharine

Schoolbooks sitting around look like a stack of magazines.

You’ve seen these before, too: oversized, paperbound booklets, that look almost like magazines, with 30-80 pages, for reading a small amount and writing the answers directly into the book. You either loved them as a child, or else not.

As a home-educating mom, you may just learn to love them the way your teacher did: they make learning, and thereby teaching, so much easier.

If you, Mom, as the teacher, must be gone, you must leave someone you trust in charge of your students.
This person may love your children to pieces, but not feel your drive to be a good teacher.
This person may be your husband or your mom, so firing is not a resort.

But workbooks may be.

Workbooks are inherently geared to any teacher, including the student, himself. He reads a little, answers a few questions geared to comprehension, and then repeats.

Because the coursework is so intensively interactive, the student learns more, faster, and retains it longer.
Because the student can feel the acceleration of his learning, he gains confidence.
Because the incremental teaching and much-needed confidence is built into the book, the teacher finds the student needs less direction.

Sounding good?

The Non-Standard Student.

Perhaps you already figured this, but if your child is not inherently gifted for student-hood, workbooks can carry him along until those long twelve years are finally over. Many children finish the day’s work by noon, and still learn enough to do well on exit tests.

It’s just easier. Not only for the student, but also for the teacher.

On the other hand, if your student is far, far ahead of his peers—or maybe even of his teachers—a curriculum that could test and place him where he belongs could be a tremendous asset, in many ways.

Home Business.

Finishing by noon makes time for a home business.

And finishing by noon, daily, is not such a stretch, you will learn.

Early Graduation.

Finishing by noon makes time for doing two day’s worth per day, which can create time for graduating and starting college earlier than you thought.

For some students, it can mean graduating at age 18 instead of 20, after all.

For others, it can mean graduation from college by age 18.

It’s a thought.

Learning Gaps.

If you are taking a child out of a collective school environment, you probably have little idea where he is in his learning or where he should be.

He may have learning gaps or even be behind the kids his age.

But with workbooks come . . . placements tests!

Placement tests are the tool that lets you know exactly which book to buy for your child, and why. You can have the confidence that comes with knowing this material is exactly the right level for your student; not too easy or too difficult.

The Unsure Beginner.

Of course, you also are unsure about what to do or how to do it.

(Don’t feel bad; most professional teachers who begin homeschooling feel the same!)

But with workbooks, the self-explanatory nature goes both ways—for the teacher and for the student. Since the workbooks do all the work, you, Mom, will have more time, more confidence, and more understanding of what your child needs.

And more time for folding laundry? Maybe?

Accuracy in Placement.

You know this equals accuracy in spending, which is so important during these times of economic chaos.

Especially if you begin in the middle of a school year, you can buy only what you need because workbooks cover only three weeks’ worth of studies.

You could never buy half of a regular text!

Is this all ringing true for you?

If so, you may need to change to workbook style curriculum. Classic types are: A.C.E. and Christian Light.

Check them out!

Still not getting it? Try unit studies!

Posted in Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

Attitude? Awareness? Vision? How Can a Tutor Know?

Posted on by Katharine

Needing glassesI used to tutor.

Once, a young mother came to me for help with her first-grader daughter. The girl had been in a private school and was producing perfect work, daily, but on the following days, she seemingly knew nothing from the day before. Everyone was puzzled. The mom had heard about home schooling, found my phone number on a poster, and thought I’d know something the girl’s teachers did not.

Scary scenario!

However, I’d recently received a copy of a learning styles test a friend had written, and thought that with it, and with private tutoring, perhaps I could discover something an overworked teacher had missed.

The child was sweet, bright, and eager. This was going to be fun. I gave the mom a copy of the test to fill out at home, since she probably knew her daughter better than anyone else. I began carefully disguised check-ups of the girl’s reading and math skills.

She was a puzzling bundle. She could know something one moment, then know nothing the next. We read from an early reader, and she would do very well after I told her almost every word. I wondered—was she guessing? Memorizing?

The learning style test had come back showing her to be a visual learner. She ought to love reading.

I turned to the back of the reader, and showed her vocabulary lists placed there for the teacher. I pointed to a word from our day’s reading, and asked her what it was. That’s when everything became clear.

“Oh, Ms Kathy! I could never read that word; it’s too little for me to see it.”

Dear me. A visual learner who cannot see. Of course. She was, indeed bright enough to memorize each day’s lesson, but had inadvertently missed learning to read.

That day, she and I made huge yarn letters together, one per page of construction paper, and did copy work on the board with letters one foot tall. Immediately she knew what was going on and began making enormous progress.

When her mom came to pick her up that day, I asked her if either she or her husband had vision problems. She said they both had trouble seeing much of anything, that their vision was corrected with contacts of a strong prescription.

I told her, “I think your little girl cannot see. I think that is the basis of the problem, plus missing out on the foundations of reading readiness.”

We both had tears in our eyes that day, and eventually the girl received her first pair of glasses. I lost that tutoring job soon afterward, but the joy of helping such a needy one, so quickly, was compensation enough for me.

Posted in Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Homeschool–The Original Tradition

Posted on by Katharine

One of my favorite defining statements about homeschooling is, “All children homeschool, all the time.” This has always been true, as I hope to show.

God gives children to His human creation in order to bless us, His Word says. He also blesses these children by giving them parents, because they could never survive without us. How unlike a newborn calf they are! No child can stand up and fetch his own nourishment a few moments after being born. No, we must carry them around, sometimes for more than a year, before they can walk like a newborn calf.

From the day our children are born, we begin preparing them to stand on their own, though. To quote one educator, Dr. D. R. Howard, “Education is preparation for life.” What our children learn from us largely determines what type of life they receive. We can train them to receive blessings or curses.

It may be confusing to think of the children who attend the world’s schools as “homeschoolers”, and by definition, they certainly are not that. Nevertheless, their parents are schooling them, training them, about life, preparing them for some sort of future, just by relegating their education to the world. Their very abdication of their God-given role of authority over their children teaches the children something about the importance of God, of family, and of children.

Of course, we need not think too much about that because our children are at home. Still, we should think about what we are teaching them. How do we parents homeschool all our children at all times? For the next few days, let’s consider their needs according to their ages and learn how capitalizing upon these needs gives rise to well-rounded adults and neglecting them leads to harm.

Although what will follow are generalities, regarding a child’s age, maybe it will help us think as they think, and show some mercy toward them.

Stick with us for the next few days for an overview of homeschooling the pre-schooler, from infancy, onward!