I’m volunteering over at the
Catalyst conference for a few days, and I’m sure I’ll have much to share when I
return. In the mean time, I thought I’d pass along a few noteworthy items drawn
from eight years of home schooling my children.
You may have missed these things, too.
You may have missed these things, too.
1. The
“t” is silent in the word “often.” Don’t tell me you already knew this.
Everyone I know pronounces the “t.” My husband has two postgraduate degrees,
and he didn’t know about the silent “t” until I told him. I learned this while
home schooling my FIRST grader. I was so shocked; I called a friend who was an
English professor at a state university. “No student leaves my freshman English
class without knowing the “t” is silent,” he commented. I never had his freshman
English class, and if anyone ever told me the word “often” had a silent letter,
I’m not sure I would have believed them. If you don’t believe me, look it up. I
still have trouble saying it correctly.
2. The
countries in the former U.S.S. R. We cold war kids had a geographic meltdown when
the Soviet Union broke up. I couldn’t even say Azerbaijan much less find it on
a globe. Enter, Geography Songs. The kids and I sang our way through the
countries of the world and to this day, I’m one of the few people my age who
can recite all the former Soviet bloc countries. Okay, I can’t say them, I have
to sing them. But still.
3. That
reading to your children is more than about teaching them. It creates shared
memories. My children were able to read almost anything by the time they were
six, but despite that, for years, we always had a book we read aloud as a family in
addition to the Bible reading for the day. It was like taking a daily trip together
where we discovered new characters, new places, and new experiences. From Laura
Ingalls Wilder’s stories of growing up on the American prairie to C.S. Lewis’
tales of Narnia, we navigated between fact and fantasy and carried away a boatload
of wonder. If you have children or grandchildren, read a book aloud together.
You’ll be talking about it the rest of your lives.
Well, there you have it. Just
three things out of so much that I learned while home schooling. I have a
degree in education, but it sometimes seemed I didn’t know much until I home
schooled my kids. Home schooling probably helped me with punctuation and
grammatical skills, too. I have ôʹ fən had trouble with them.
“Start with God—the first step in
learning is bowing down to God…” (Proverbs 1:7 The Message).