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Hear my interview with Ashley Ortega on
Wednesday, September 1, from 3:00-5:00 PM PM  EDT
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Have you heard about these FREE homeschool interviews?   Kerry Beck is hosting interviews with some of the top experts in the homeschool community – to get your homeschool year off to the right start! 

Why? She knows what it is like to be in the trenches as a homeschool mom.  So, she is  hosting interviews of 14 experts in thehomeschooling community who have practical advice for you to get started on the right foot this year.

–>> It’s called Homeschool Super Heroes Week!

Actually, it’s the next 2 weeks of August and you can listen to the interviews each day for Free.

All you have to do is register for Homeschool Super Heroes Week and you will have access each day to practical tips & tricks for you to start your year right.

I just got a look at the new preschool curriculum from Sonbeams. There are several positives to this product. [Disclaimer: This is not a paid review, nor is the link an affiliate link.]

First, it was obviously written by someone with experience with preschoolers. The lessons are focused–you work on one concept for five days. The lessons are reinforced in a variety of ways using the five senses and different learning modalities.

Second, it was obviously written by someone who homeschools. The lessons are laid out in an easy-to-follow format. All the planning is done for you. You just need to check each week to see what supplies you will need. You can easily skip activities or a whole day if needed.

Third, if you have a learning disabled child or one who struggles with academic learning, this curriculum provides a gentle introduction to letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and other preschool concepts. The author incorporates sign language as part of each lesson, allowing a child with speech issues to communicate his understanding of the topic.

A Note: this curriculum is Christian. Whenever possible, the author ties the lesson to a Bible verse, story, or principle. Great if you are looking for something specifcally Christian that is not preachy.

Sonbeams is having a 50% off sale on this curriculum Friday, August 20, 2010. After that, the discount goes down 10% each day so if you know you want it, be ready to order on Friday. Here is the link to the product information page:

http://sonbeams.com/homeschool-preschool-curriculum.html

The sales info info on this and other products is on the Back-to-School Sale page.

If you have one, I won’t have to explain the term but for those who don’t (or who do and don’t know it has a name): a kinesthetic learner is one who learns best while moving. This movement can be acting out the topic at hand or seemingly random movement.

What can, or should, be done about the student with a kinesthetic learning style? Is it simply a character issue that needs to be addressed by teaching the child to sit still? There is definitely value in training a wiggly kid to sit still, but there is more going on than just annoying behavior. Here are some of the things that are happening when you have a kinesthetic learner in motion:

• Some of the movements cross the midline, facilitating connections between the left brain and right brain
• Movement stimulates blood flow to the brain, making it easier to think
• Repetitive motion creates a rhythm, making it easier for some kids to concentrate
• Movement activates the nervous sytem’s proprioceptive sense, giving the brain feedback as an action or idea is acted out

Notice anything strange? Every one of these types of movement stimulates something in the brain. So the next time your kinesthetic learner starts to wiggle, see if you can determine what he is trying to accomplish by moving. Is it just a character issue, or is he really trying to learn?

On vacation this summer, I had the opportunity to interview two young people who attend one of the Winston Schools. The insights they provided into teaching a struggling learner were fascinating. One of them graduated this year, and the other graduated the year before. Here are some of their insights:

1. The best thing about the [Winston] school was that everyone there had a learning disability. It was so nice not to have to hide it. Instead, talking about our problems was normal lunchroom conversation. Plus, virtually every teacher there has overcome a learning disability themselves, giving them insight into the students.
2. When we said we didn’t understand something, they didn’t just repeat the explanation. Instead, they tried to present it using a different modality. If they had explained it orally, they drew it on the board. If they had drawn it out, they gave additional explanation or had us act it out. If we didn’t get it, they would try different things until we understood.
3. Don’t settle for a B grade when you can really make an A. Sometimes it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself because of how hard it is to learn new things. Give that extra effort to get an A if you know you can.
4. Try different learning/study techniques until you find the one(s) that work for you. For example, when studying the Civil War, one student wrote all her notes for each year in a different color. That way, if she could remember the color the information was written in, she could place the event in the right year and in sequence. The other student would use color to highlight important info or doodle a picture as a memory aid.
5. Find a teacher or parent who believes in you and won’t let you settle for being less than you can be.

When you have a struggling learner, especially if there is no obvious underlying medical or genetic issue, there is a lot of pressure on you to help your child get “caught up” to his peers in school. This pressure may come for others or from yourself. You know that if you can just do X, Y, and Z, he will catch up. In some cases, that just ain’t so.

I don’t point that out to discourage you, my friend, but rather to encourage you. My previous post on approaching teaching as a science leads to that kind of thinking. There’s nothing wrong with that–unless it’s not working for your student. Pressuring a struggling learner and forging ahead before he’s ready can be very damaging. Why? Because in one sense, a struggling learner never really catches up. He simply develops on a different time line.

Think about it this way. Catching up implies that he is behind in a race and that by speeding up, he can get back in the game. That kind of thinking puts way too much pressure on the teacher and the student. Consider your child’s struggles. Is it realistic to think that you can somehow speed him up? Not likely.

What is more realistic is to consider taking a different path through the forest of education. The destination is the same for all students: graduation with a basic set of skills. But not everyone has to be on the same path. The paths may cross at times, or even join, but to expect that to happen by pressuring a struggling learner is to invite disaster.

The key is to forget about grade levels. There is no magic age at which a child should be able to read. There is a normal age, based on standardized testing norms, but not a precise age. As you work with your struggling learner, you will see that he can and does learn. How many movie characters can she name from her favorite movies? How many airplanes or automobiles can he recognize on sight? Learning is taking place, just not according to the norm.

I’ll write more on this in coming months as there is a whole world of things to discuss in this area. I invite comments on all my posts.

(c) 2010 Stephanie Buckwalter

As you reflect on your role as teacher, how do you approach the job of education? Is it more like an art, where the student is your medium in which you work and the curriculum is your tool? Or is it a science where step A leads to step B, then step C and so on until all steps are finished and your have your expected outcome? Your answer probably depends on the type of student(s) you’ve had. Some students do well with the step-by-step scientific approach whereas others do better with a more fluid interaction.

For the most part, public schools have reduced education to a science. They use principles of behavorial psychology to assign grade levels. Grade levels are based on norms. Norms are determined by standardized testing. Standardized testing determines whether or not you pass a grade level. This is not necessarily bad, as many kids do well in that kind of environment. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, tend to approach education as an art where each student’s learning can be individualized in both content and pacing.

I realize these are gross generalizations, but the point is this: homeschoolers have the best of both worlds. They can use the benchmarks of learning as a guide, but then can adjust the pace of learning in any or all classes per individual, giving each student time to develop at his own pace. This is particularly important for struggling learners, especially in the early years of school. If you have been doing school the scientific way and your child is struggling, it might be time to trade science for art.

(c) 2010 Stephanie Buckwalter

Ahhh, there’s nothing like visiting relatives in Texas to get a new perspective on life. I grew up in Texas, but I had forgotten how dangerous it really is. [smile]  I have four boys and a little girl who love to explore. Here’s a little sampling of the instructions my kids got at the first three homes we stayed in–within 5 minutes of arriving:

House A (ranch in South Texas): “Yes, you can go out and play in the fields but watch out for rattlesnakes. Here’s what they sounds like. [rattling sound]”

House B (outskirts of small town in South Texas): “Watch out for rattlesnakes. We don’t get a lot of them but I just killed one by the garage about a month ago.”

House C (in the country in Central Texas): “You can play outside but if you go off the porch, be sure you have shoes on because we have a lot of scorpions.”

So at the third house, one son asks, “Do scorpions get in your house?” At which point someone launches into a details about how and when. I’m in the background giving the line across the throat sign so they don’t scare the wits out of them. Too late. That son had to sleep in the room with me and my husband, certain that the house was destined to be invaded by scorpions that night. The good news is that the only scorpion the boys saw was one they found when they went on a scorpion hunt the next day.

I’m trying to think of the moral of this story, but I can’t settle on just one. Here’s a sampling of what I came up with.

• If you don’t like to live dangerously, don’t go to Texas.
• If you happen to have scorpions in your house, don’t tell your guests under the age of 15.
• If you want to avoid rattlesnakes and scorpions, stay with your relatives in the big cities (the strongest warning we got there was to leave the outside lights off because they attract bugs).

If you see a different moral or have your own Texas stories, feel free to leave them in the comments section.

I spoke on this topic at Cindy Rushton’s Ultimate Homeschool Expo. I will have the audio available for sale some time this summer.

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TOPIC: How to Make Any Curriculum Right Brain Friendly
DATE: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
TIME: 10 AM Central Time
WHERE: Join Us Live Online (On Cindy’s website!!): http://talk-a-latte.com/chat/ (The room is closed until the chat-the room will be open about 15 minutes before we go live)  

OR here are the call-in details:
Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 38181#
PIN: 1# (Or your Talkshoe PIN)

If you like what you hear, sign up for the whole conference for only $39.95. Check out the Ultimate Homeschool Expo site for more details.

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One of my favorite tools for teaching literature is the model of the hero’s journey. The 12 stages of the hero’s journey are extrapolated from the writings of Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. For a simple overview, you can read through this PDF document written by Christopher Vogler. Teaching it is easy. You can watch a movie with your kids and apply it to the storyline. Good movies for this are the Star Wars movies, Lord of the Rings, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Finding Nemo.

The list of movies goes on and on. Even kids in the Finding Nemo set can glean quite a bit about the hero’s journey. That movie has a bonus: both Nemo and his dad go through the hero’s journey. Watch for clever twists like Dorie as mentor. She makes for a weird mentor except in one area: friendship. There are also very explicit references to the hero’s journey throughout the movie like the initiation scene in the fish tank. Watching that movie with the 12 stages on hand can give you a whole new level of appreciation for the story.

I encourage you to look through the PDF document and begin teaching your kids how hero stories are constructed. Then challenge them to find true life stories that fit the model. You’ll find that many success stories more or less fit the model of the hero’s journey.

Do you ever grieve over your special needs child? Do you grieve the losses when her peers move ahead? Or when other kids shun him because he’s different? I’m in that mode right now, for both of those reasons.

My daughter is nonverbal and a little behind so once other kids begin to interact with her, they realize she is different. Their responses are interesting. Some of the run to their parents, some just ignore her, and yet others will try to play with her–for a short while. So far, she seems unaware but it is heartbreaking to watch.