Today I read a post that said Six Things We Say In School which I found pretty honest and cute so I decided to create my own list for homeschooling.
Here lately I have been doing a lot of reviews for companies and websites we have been using in our homeschooling since we began. Things we absolutely love using in our schooling. Vocabulary SpellingCity.com is one of those websites.
We personally have used the free version of this site for years now and it’s been a blessing for myself and my children educationally. The website is extremely easy to use and full of lots of learning. For this particular review, I was given access to the premium membership portion of the website for a year for up to 5 children. As a parent this is a blessing, as a teacher this is an exceptional blessing for us.
Through Vocabulary SpellingCity.com, I am able to upload our weekly or monthly (or however I wish to create them) vocabulary and spelling lists to use with my children/students. I can also use pre-made lists created by others and by local public schools to help educate my children which are readily available on Vocabulary SpellingCity.com. Vocabulary SpellingCity.com then takes my lists and creates spelling and vocabulary games, programs, quizzes, etc for my children to practice with for the week or period we are working on the words.
I can create lists for any subject too! So lists of Math words, Science vocabulary, Social Studies, etc can be used right along with the other things we are learning about with Vocabulary SpellingCity.com. And of course, there are TONS of extras to use and work through when the weekly work is finished, just for fun!
This website is a bonus for any parent or teacher to have to help educate their children. There is a free version for you to use and try out the program, as well as additional memberships which provide even more! A premium family membership is available for $29.99 a year for up to five students. A classroom membership for up to 25 students is available for $49.99. School memberships are also available through the website.
For more reviews of Vocabulary SpellingCity.com, please visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog!!
*Disclaimer – A year subscription to Vocabulary SpellingCity.com was provided to me free in exchange for my honest opinion shared in a blog post review by Vocabulary SpellingCity.com and TOS’ Schoolhouse Review Crew team.
So I need to make a blog post but I’m sitting here distractedly watching my sweet almost 4 year old cut up pieces of morning art project on my brand new couch, gritting my teeth hoping she doesn’t miss and cut a hole in it! She took it upon herself to make a beautiful chalk drawing on a sheet of yellow construction paper. Her new obsession is cutting paper into tiny little squares.
She amazes me. She is smart as can be. She even amazed her therapists yesterday as she worked through her tasks with ease and brilliance of memory. *Yep she gets that from me!* LOL
She’s finally finished her artwork and now she is carefully carrying it and her tiny squares back over to our dining table where she was supposed to be working in the first place. Her chalk rolls across the table and she runs to the other side to retrieve it. “I got it Mommy,” she excitedly tells me.
This kind of stuff is exactly why I choose to homeschool. If my children attended public school, I would completely miss out on these precious moments and they would miss out on this time with me. Not to mention my little Laycie would miss out on her special creative moments like the ones she’s had this morning. And it’s the same for my other children. This is what homeschooling is all about.
I must say this is not the post I intended for this morning but I guess God had different ideas for me! I’m finding following his lead is much easier than I once thought and my life is much better for it. The joys of my days are found in the Love He has blessed me with.
What is joyful to you today??
I was on Facebook today, as I often am. It’s my outside link to the world! Anyways, an image was being shared about Homeschooling. It related that Homeschoolers are NOT trying to do school at home but are instead trying to do Homeschool. It completely reiterated my beliefs of education.
I believe education should be a natural process provided for children. It should not be a routine of learning things that are not of interest or that are not necessary. It should not be rote learning and memorization of facts. Those can be learned while doing interesting things very simply and easily.
When I first began homeschooling my son, he was just a little boy. At the time, I was convinced, mostly by others who were involved with Public schooling, that our school needed to be just like the public schools, in a classroom setting with specific curriculum. Boy was I ever WRONG.
As the years passed, I began to learn more and I began to understand the learning differences in my children, I came to realize that I didn’t want a public school education for my children. If I had, I would have sent them straight to that big yellow school bus that carried them to that brick building everyday. I didn’t choose that and that was not something I wanted for their education at all.
What I did want was for my children to learn naturally. I wanted to instill a natural curiosity about life and how and why things work as they do. I wanted them to feel a sense of accomplishment as they figured out and learned these things seemingly on their own.
I also didn’t want my children to feel pushed educationally. I don’t ever want them to feel like they are having to do work above their skill levels before they are ready. During this journey of homeschooling we have had many challenges but all along, I could hear God directing me to just keep trying and remain patient. I didn’t always listen. I often fell into the “he should be doing this by now” trap. “She is more than ready for this, why isn’t she doing it.” The reason is because God wasn’t ready for their minds to open to those things. He had other plans for them in life. He wanted them to remain children, just as I did.
As I began to follow the paths opened for us in learning and I began to learn more about these things I thought I should be pushing, my children began to learn. They began to show strengths that I thought they were missing, yet were learning all the time. They began to learn independently in things that interested them most. All I needed was to be patient and as always the Lord would provide. And he has!
It is a joy to see my children today. It is a blessing to see how much they have learned and how far each of them has come. They are each very different in their learning styles but they are each learning just fine.
School for us differs every month, as they need it to. One month we may watch tons of movies on subjects we are interested in or may need to learn about because it goes along with our learning process. The next month we may do tons of worksheets to learn. And the very next months may contain tons of books that we read together. How they learn the lesson is not the important part. Learning the lesson is what’s most important.
Right now I am once again re-arranging curriculum. This past month has been a video lesson month for us but now my children are requesting book work and worksheets to do. They are ready and need this. I’m fine with this because they are willing to do the things necessary to learn more. The video’s have peeked their interest in learning and they are ready to learn even more. For us, games work the same way. They enjoy learning through educational games on websites and DS games they have. All these things work together for us educationally providing Homeschool.
Education was not meant to be a routine schedule provided in an institution. Education is a process that is taught 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as learning comes up. It doesn’t stop when you walk out of a school building and it isn’t the responsibility of a teacher to provide to a child. It is a parent’s responsibility to ensure your child knows how to learn all day long, as learning never stops.
This is homeschooling for us here at Luv’N Lambert Life. What is homeschooling for you?
It’s been back to school time for many across the country in the past few weeks and many more still this week. Facebook is filled with posts about parent’s who are more than ready for their children to return to school and other’s who are saddened by this routine of sending their children off year after year. It literally breaks my heart to see these poor families ripped apart by this common occurrence of society.
It is the social norm to place our children into the hands of strangers every day, to allow them to be raised up, taught and taken care of by absolute strangers who we have only met once in a block building on the day of open house. Like sheep, we follow in the footsteps of those before us, leading the way, who say this is how Education is meant to be and we forget the teachings of our Father to raise up our children in His word.
In fact, His word is no longer allowed in these schools. His word is no longer spoken to the very children who He has blessed us to raise and love upon. We, the parents whom He gave His children to care for, follow along and do the opposite of what He has asked in order to stay within the boundaries of a society who could certainly care less what truly becomes of our beautiful children. We do what we have been led to believe is the “right” thing by a society that says it is so.
What has happened to His word? What has happened to the teachings that He set forth centuries before in writing? Do these words, these directions written directly from Him mean nothing to us? Is society’s wants more important than His commands?
Today’s education is NOT the standard set by the Word of God. It is us, the parents, who God requested to teach the children, to guide and direct them in His loving word. Children are meant to be mothered by their Mothers and fathered by their Fathers, as God has directed. Children are not meant to be herded through classroom after classroom, year after year to be handed over daily to someone else’s care and knowledge. They are not meant to be yanked from the skirts of their mothers as infants and small children to be turned into tiny adults before they are able to enjoy life as a child.
What can we do as parents to change this standard set by society? For one, we must advocate the word of the Bible and share it with our family, our children and those who’s lives we daily touch. As parents, we must provide our children with a strong foundation, allowing them room to grow while maintaining a firm and protective hand. We can become more active in the classroom, know what our children are being taught, and participate in their lives daily. We can observe and learn what lessons our children learn from friends and family and correct the lessons that our children should have never been taught. We can raise our children in God’s word and teach them values as that He set forth ages ago.
Life does not have to be this way. Parental relationships do not have to be this way. Education does not have to be this way. By stepping up, bringing out the word of God and educating our children the right way, in His word, we can change our daily lives for the better and that of our children and their children for good. It only takes a single step initiated by YOU, the parent. Are you ready to move forward and let God do His work by teaching your children His word? Are you ready to make the change and commit to living your life His way instead of following the life society sets as normal? Only you can take the steps necessary to change your life and that of your children.
