Category: home school

And We’re Off!

A new school year has started and we are six days in! After a lovely day spent at the beach while most of the other kids in our neck of the woods had their first day back at school, we began our 2019-2020 school year last Wednesday. Our grades this year are 2nd, 4th, 10th and 11th, and this is my 21st year of teaching my kids at home.

We always start with a half-week of school so that we can all get used to the new grades and new books and can get back into the routine of a well structured day. We sure do enjoy the freedoms of summer, but it does make transitioning back to school a little bumpy! Now we are hitting the books hard and working to stay on top of the schedule I’ve laid out. This way, when it’s time for our field trips, we will have the freedom to go without feeling like we are falling behind.

Speaking of field trips, I have a whole mess of them planned for this year! I am doing a Maryland History course with my younger boys, so we will be visiting every single one of the 24 counties. Almost all of these trips will include a hike of at least 2 miles, so I’ll be counting these as a part of our Physical Education as well! We will be doing some camping, visiting some historical places like St. Mary’s City, a one-room school house and the Maryland State House as well as going to some nature reserves and museums. It’s going to be so much fun!

My boys really love science, so I invested in some magnifying glasses for them to explore around our yard and to use on our hikes. I think that hands-on learning is the absolute best way for kids to learn. They’ve already started collecting different bugs and stuff. I just hope that they don’t decide to let any of the creepy crawly things they find loose in my house!

We always start our day out together with all four students sitting around the table where we have our Bible time and pray for our day. The boys are learning the books of the Bible as well as having weekly memory verses. My girls are pretty much independent with their school work, but we are studying Proverbs 31 together and I am looking forward to all of our discussions about what being a godly woman looks like.

I was able to get away with a good friend of mine for 2 nights before school started, and we were able to have some really good time alone with God, seeking his heart for us and for our families. One thing that I was reminded of, is that one of the greatest things to invest my time in is in the minds, hearts and souls of my kids. While their minds are the obvious investment when you think in terms of school, it is really the hearts and souls of my children that I should be focusing on the most. Everything that I am teaching my children should be able to be used to point them to Christ.

It’s been a long time since I have only had four kids to teach. It’s actually kind of weird, to be honest. I have adult children who have moved out, and other adult children who live at home and work full-time. I am embracing the changes that are inevitable and accepting the challenges that I will most certainly face. I know that God’s grace will be sufficient, His joy will be my strength and that His mercies are new every single morning.

I am really excited about all that He has in store for our school this year!

My Home School Prayer

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for another year to school my children. Thank you for the opportunity to take Your instruction to train them up in the way they should go beyond their physical and emotional needs and being able to equip my children with an education that is based on Your Word and the godly values that we uphold in our home. Thank you that I do not have to shoulder this amazing responsibility by myself, but that I can be assured that You will be with me every step of the way, giving me wisdom as I teach each day. Thank You for being the perfect Teacher and showing me how to teach by Your example all throughout Scripture.

I pray for grace to accept every challenge that I may face this year. Please help me to remember that I am not only helping to grow my children’s minds, but more importantly, I am helping to grow character in each of their lives. Help me to keep in mind that You are present in everything, and that no matter what the subject, I can always point my children toward You.

I ask for wisdom to know when to push my children farther and to know when it’s time to put the books away. I ask for patience during those times when I have to explain something over and over again or when my children don’t want to do their work. You have said in Your Word that Your joy is my strength, so I ask for a measure of Your joy that would be so abundant that it overflows from me and effects those around me. I pray that our home would be filled with peace and not chaos or disorder.

I ask that you give each one of my children a love for knowledge and a desire to expand their minds through learning. Help me to tailor their school to their individual needs and bents that You have blessed them with. Help me to try not to fit them into some kind of mold of my own design, but to remember that You are molding them into exactly who You want them to be.

Please give me eyes to see when I need to correct my own faults instead of trying to always correct my children. Give me humility to admit my sin and to ask forgiveness of them when needed. Remind me that when I face a challenge, the first thing that I need to do is to get on my knees and ask You for help.

Thank you for the flexibility that allows us to take amazing field trips and learn things first-hand by traveling to different places around us. Help me to make the most of every opportunity to teach my kids about the world that You have created for us to live in.

Thank You for making each one of my kids different from the others. Thank You for their unique personalities and the things that make them special. Thank You for blessing me with the gift of children. I ask You to bless all of us not just with teachable minds, but with teachable hearts as well. Help us to pursue excellence in all that we do. Please bless our school year and help us to honor You in all that we do.

AMEN

Finishing Well

I love this time of year! The flowers are all blooming, the trees are beginning to grow little leaves and the weather is warm enough to put away all of the winter coats until next year! Spring is such a wonderful time of year, but it is one of the hardest times of the year in our home school.

The warm weather beckons to us and thoughts of the upcoming care-free, run-wild summer days distract us all from the school work that we know must be done. As soon as the temperatures reach about 60 degrees consistently, all the kids want to do is play outside and none of us can wait to put the books away for the summer!

All school year we work really hard to keep on track with the schedule that I’ve planned out. We don’t take any of the public school holidays like Martin Luther King, Jr. day, Presidents’ Day or even Spring break. We rarely take a snow day, and my kids have to be really sick to get excused from their school work. The reason we do this, is so that we can finish our school year before Memorial day, and so that we can take our summer vacation before the beach gets crowded! This also gives us a nice long summer break before we get started on the next school year.

So, here we are, with less than 6 weeks of school left, and we are all struggling to finish our school year well. This is not a new struggle. It is the same struggle that we deal with year after year. Can’t we just call it a year and be done already??? Of course not.

The God that we serve is an excellent God, and He calls us to be excellent in all the we do. “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus…” Colossians 3:17 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” Colossians 3:23 ” Whatever your hand finds to do, verily, do it with all your might…” Ecclesiastes 9:10

God has given me the privilege of home schooling my children. I do not take this task lightly. It is my belief that any task worth doing is worth doing well, all the way to completion – including getting through all of my curriculum, even if it feels like summer outside! This is why, every morning during our prayer time, I pray that we would pursue excellence in our school work and not just do enough to get by.

Along with this prayer, there are some practical things that we do to help us during this season.

  1. If it’s a warm sunny morning, I’ll send the kids out as soon as they eat their breakfast for 20 or 30 minutes before starting school.
  2. If school work can be done outside, do it outside! (Reading on the trampoline is awesome – as long as no one is jumping!)
  3. Have a picnic lunch.
  4. Plan afternoon outings to the park or the river. This gives the kids incentive to finish their work in a timely fashion.
  5. Take field trips!!!
  6. Count down the school days until vacation.
  7. Plan a year end day trip to the beach!

With just 26 days left in our school year, the end is in sight and we are all ready for summer. As hard as it is with the beauty of the creation calling us outside, we will pursue excellence and finish our year well.

Our Latest Field Trip

Last week, my friends and I decided that it was time to end our winter home school hibernation and take a field trip. Maybe some of you aren’t familiar with what home school hibernation is. This is the time between January and March when we don’t have any extra curricular activities going on in our lives, so we hunker down at home and work really hard on our school books. We catch up on anything that we might have been behind on and sometimes even get ahead on some subjects.

Anyway, we’d all had enough of the hermit life and we decided to make our first field trip of the spring a really big one. No, I mean REALLY BIG. Like, 620 miles in less than 48 hours big. It was a total blast.

I had done some searching online, and found out that Luray Caverns had a home school week in March. The prices were phenomenal, so we decided to start our trip off there. We met up with our friends at 5:15 on the morning of March 19th, and we packed into two vans and made our way west toward the caverns.

We made one stop for fuel and handing out breakfast along the way, and then our motley crew arrived at Luray at 9:00. There was just enough time for a bathroom break and to pay for our tickets before going on the first tour of the day. I should probably mention that our kid to adult ratio on this trip was 19:4…

The caverns were amazing! Some of the kids had never been in a real cave before, so it was fun to see their reactions to all the different structures down there. My favorite was probably the reflecting pool!


After the caverns, we visited some of the other museums on the property.
The Car & Carriage Caravan Museum, Luray Valley Museum, and Toy Town Junction were all included with our tickets. Toy Town Junction is a museum for vintage toys and I saw a lot of the stuff from my childhood there. Not sure how I felt about that!

I still have this Mandie doll!

We had a picnic lunch and let the kids run around a bit before loading them up for the next leg of our journey. The view was absolutely breath taking with all the mountains surrounding us!

All of us had been studying the Civil War era, so our next two stops would be focusing on events that took place during that time.

Booker T Washington was freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War when he was 9 years old. We visited the Booker T Washington Monument National Park where he was born and worked with his family. After watching a short film about his life we got to tour the farm and go inside a replica of the cabin that Booker and his family lived in. We found out that the ranger that helped us there went to Tuskegee Institute which is the school that Booker founded. That was pretty cool. Our time there ended with a short hike, because we always hike, wherever we go!

By this point, we had really packed a lot into our first day, so we stopped for some dinner and then crashed at our hotel for the night. I may or may not have been in bed by 8:00!

After resting up, we all met for breakfast in the hotel lobby. I don’t think the staff knew what hit them. The waffle maker was on over-load and I think they almost ran out of milk. Despite the breakfast madness, we were packed back up and on the road by 8:30.

In keeping with our Civil War studies, we visited Appomattox Courthouse National Park. This is where Lee surrendered to Grant and the Civil War was officially ended. We spent a great deal of time in the visitor center. The park rangers gave each of the kids a junior park ranger book, and they all worked really hard to find all the information needed to complete the activities inside.

If you’ve never gotten a junior park ranger book which is available at most national parks, you should really try it! It gives the kids a chance to be interactive in their visits and makes learning a lot more fun for them. When they’re done, they get a park ranger badge from that specific park.

We got to piggy back on the tour of another school group that was at the McLean House where the terms of surrender were drawn up. This meant that we got to hear the ranger talk that was given. The rangers did a great job explaining what happened there!

The McLean House

The ranger talk

After another picnic lunch, we surprised the kids by taking them to Dairy Queen for a free cone because it was the first day of spring! This has been a tradition for a few years, and we weren’t going to break tradition just because we were on a field trip! Shout out to Appomattox Dairy Queen for handling our crew like champs!

We were really close to Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest, so before heading home, we stopped and took an hour long hike on one of the trails there. As I said before, it’s not a field trip unless we take a hike!

We were about five hours from home at this point, so we set our GPS for the nearest Rita’s Italian Ice and took off towards home. First day of Spring = free Rita’s, so we planned our dinner time around our dessert! Traditions must not be broken! The closest one was 82 miles away in Fredericksburg, which was perfect timing for dinner and a snack before ending our trip.

Free Rita’s

This was an awesome field trip and an awesome group to hang with. Not everyone can hang with crazy, but this crew definitely can! I am so blessed to have friends like these.

What Field Trips Look Like In Our Home School

In our school, field trips are as much a part of our curriculum as Math, History, Science and Writing! During my yearly planning session, I incorporate as many field trips as possible. My favorite trips are those that take us to famous historical places, but we manage to make our way to places that cover Science and Bible as well.

I’ve had a number of people ask me why we take so many trips. The easy answer would be that field trips are a lot of fun, but there is more to it than that! Field trips are a way to give what we’ve been learning about new meaning. It makes what is written in a book take on an entirely different perspective as we see those words take shape and come to life.

I was home schooled, and my mom was a firm believer in field trips. I learned so much from the places that we visited, that I couldn’t imagine schooling my own kids any other way. Not only do we learn first hand on these trips, but we make many, many memories together as well.

If you are not familiar with our many field trips, let me tell you what our school year looked like 2 years ago when all of my kids were studying United States History in their respective grades. Some might see it as mass chaos, but I see it as hands-on learning at its finest.

As I was planning our year and was going through the historical time line of our country, I realized that there was a lot that took place in and around Maryland that corresponded with what we would be studying. Seeing the potential to enhance our learning, I began to compile a list of places that we could visit during our school year. I lined them up according to the time line, and planned to visit each one through out the school year. A few trips were stuck in that didn’t apply to our studies in History. Some of them science related, some of them simply points of interest that we wanted to see.

Here’s what we ended up with:

  • A 2 day trip to Jamestown since it was the first English settlement in the new World and a great launching pad for our History studies.
  • Fort Frederick – a stone fort active during the French and Indian War
  • Washington Monument State Park – the first monument erected to the “Father of our Country”.
  • Philadelphia – Independence Hall, Congress Hall, Liberty Bell and much more!
  • Valley Forge/Peter Wentz Farmhouse – General Washington stayed at both places during the War for  Independence
  • Fort McHenry – Site of the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812
  • New York City – this is an annual Christmas trip we take with friends. I’ll have an entire blog post about that up soon!
  • Antietam, Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg – 3 different trips, all significant during the Civil War
  • Blackwater Wildlife Refuge
  • Baltimore Aquarium
  • Lancaster Candle Barn, Miniature Horse Farm and the Herr’s Chip Factory
  • Dairy Farm – we all got the chance to milk a cow both by hand and with modern machinery!
  • Washington D.C. – many monuments, National Art Museum, US Botanic Gardens and Conservatory
  • Museum of Natural History
  • Assateague Island and the Ocean City MD Boardwalk for our year end celebration!

18 weeks out of our school year included a field trip. We had a blast at every single place, and we all walked away having learned something new that wasn’t in the books. What a fantastic year that was!

Another question that I get often, is, “How in the world do you manage to take all these field trips, especially with the amount of kids you have? I could never do that in my school.” Actually, anyone can do what we do, and it doesn’t take a vast amount of planning, organizing or money to do so. It just takes the desire to travel and the ability to use a search engine on the internet.

First of all, plan on packing lunch for all of your trips. Stopping for lunch at a restaurant, even fast food, takes time and money out of your day. We try to only be gone for lunch, but occasionally, we have to plan on having dinner out. If it’s a trip that keep you out past dinner, the dollar value menu at McDonald’s, pizza deals at various places or simply packing dinner can save you a lot money on these trips.

Another tip for planning field trips would be to look for national and state parks. Most of them are free of charge or only have a small fee for parking. They also have an amazing junior ranger program at most of these parks. You can get a ranger booklet from the visitor’s center and inside there are activities like scavenger hunts, questionnaires, bingo games, sketching activities, word finds and more. Some of the parks even have different books for different ages. When a book is completed, take it to a park ranger and they will give your child a badge and certificate for that specific park. It’s fun to see how many badges your kids can collect!

Make your field trips a part of your Physical Education class. Almost every trip we take, we incorporate a hike into it. It might be walking a mile or two on a trail at one of the parks we visit or it might be walking around all day in Washington D.C or NYC and covering 9 or 10 miles during the course of our visit. Either way, we got lots of exercise and plenty of fresh air!

Another way to save some money is by looking into home school deals that different places offer. For example, when we went to Jamestown, we found out that they offer a lower rate for families that can offer proof of home schooling. Students can visit the Jamestown Settlement for just $7 and adults for $9. That’s a great saving, especially for the adult tickets which normally cost $17 apiece! It’s always worth asking if they have a home school rate. You never know unless you ask!

One of my best tips to share about field trips is to invite your friends! While you can still learn plenty by just going with your own bunch of kids, it is so much more fun for everyone if you bring along another family or two or three! Not only do your kids have other friends besides their siblings to interact with, the moms have a great time with their friends as well! Besides, it helps to squash that nasty rumor that home schooled children don’t have a social life.

For the past few years, we have started off our year with a BIG field trip and then ended our year with a trip to the beach to celebrate another great year of schooling! As I mentioned, we took a 2 day trip to Jamestown, but we’ve also gone up to Plymouth Massachusetts to visit Plymouth Plantation, Mayflower 2 and the Forefather’s Monument, and a 2 day trip just for Colonial Williamsburg. Our all time favorite start to our school year though, is probably our whirlwind trip to Niagara Falls in New York. We left early on a Monday and got back late on the following Wednesday night. Three days of amazing site-seeing with 2 other families. Not only did we see the falls, but we visited Fort Niagara and the Niagara Power Vista up there as well. Best field trip ever!

There are endless possibilities out there for field tripping with your kiddos! Be adventurous! Don’t let the table of contents in your school books dictate your school schedule. My kids can tell you way more about what they’ve learned from these trips than from the written accounts in their school books. Just to be clear, I’m not knocking the books, I just think that sometimes you need to put them away and get out and experience what you’ve been learning first hand. You won’t regret it.