Category Archives: Homeschooling

>How to Make Online Friends in a Real World

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You write emails and messages, and facebook statuses all year long. You have prayed over long distance friends, and shared your heart with them even though you have never seen into their eyes before. You have met these friends online, and now you love them and truly care for them. How can this be?
We met many of our online friends through an online school (the best, I dare to say) almost five years ago. And every year we go to the famous End of the Year Gathering where we all meet for a week to share laughs, words, hugs, tears. To look into our eyes, and gaze into the beauty of godly fellowship. 
Some of my closest friends are there, and some others, like Elizabeth, one of my best friends, I have met through the blogging world. How could this happen? Haven’t we been told that online friends are not real? That they do not belong to the real world?
We are now in a time where we can’t ignore the online world. It is part of us and we are part of it. My dearest sister and best friend lives in Canada while I live in Mexico, and yet we are in contact almost daily through all the new technologies that allow us to share those little things that make up our days.
Few of the things I have learned along with my children in this new world, new era, where online relationships do happen are these:
1. Know that there is a REAL person behind the screen. When I teach online, when I blog, when I send a facebook message, when I write or read an email; I know there is someone breathing on the other side. A person, a real one, with virtues and flaws. With good days and bad days. With a beautiful home that sometimes gets messy as mine. We are real people,  we are not “a thing” behind a screen.
2. Be YOU at all times. Be sincere, be real. When my dear friend Elizabeth and I sat on the same table to have lunch, for the first time after almost two years of being “online friends”, I was very happy to find “the Elizabeth” I knew I would find. We knew each other; we were not any different than the person that we show online. 
I have taught my children not to post ANYTHING that they would not say in person. When they started to learn how to relate in an online world, I would read their statuses and profiles, to make sure that they were being real. This is a very important thing to do at all times. As Christians, we are to be true to our faith on the family table, the mall, the farm, the school, facebook, etc. We cannot be double-minded. We must be always blameless children of God. 
3. Make it happen. This is the hardest part, but the most rewarding one: Go beyond the screen! Get the phone (or Skype which is cheaper if you have loved friends who live in the UK or Brussels). Listen to their voices, to their laugh, take the time to make it happen! Set a time, just as if you would go to a Starbucks to meet with your friend. It seems simple but it makes a world of a difference.
Now, try to meet them in person! This is what we must long for, to be with our online friends at a table, sharing the bread, and looking into their eyes.
This past week, as more than 400 people gathered in Lancaster, PA to celebrate the End of the Year Gathering, I kept my eyes open to see that true godly relationships can be built online where the Lord reigns among His people and His statutes are honored.  As one of our friend has said, “that week with these people was absolutely worth any pain that the good-byes may have wrought.”
I pray that God will help us live in this era of online relationships, true to our calling, honoring Him in all we do and say, praising Him with every word we write or read. 
Much love to you today, my dear friend!
Becky
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The picture above is of my little girl and her friends. Their lives have been brought together because of online friendships. This is the fourth year in a row that they get together to share laughs and songs!  My daughter cried when she said good-bye to them.

>On Deadlines and Following Instructions

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This is a very practical post, but one that I have been wanting to write for several months now, ready? Well, it is about two simple things, but VERY important things that we homeschoolers might not be teaching our kids:

Work under the “pressure” of deadlines and follow instructions.

We brag on how good we are at teaching our children so many things, but these two, believe me, these two are more important than what you think they are.

Provide your children, even from their early years, many opportunities to practice these disciplines. Give them deadlines and expect them to submit the given assignments on time, no matter what! It is so easy for us to say, “Yes, I understand you didn’t have time to finish your book report, we were so busy…” but just think that what we are really doing is teaching our children to be  irresponsible. Teenagers won’t fall apart if they have to stay up late at night once in a while to complete a given assignment. It will do them good.

Another good idea, is to have “open-house” presentations. For example, every quarter plan a nice presentation and invite your friends to come over and see you children’s work, their binders, notebooks, drawings;  have your children give an oral presentation about one of the topics they enjoyed. All these help your children work “under the pressure” of deadlines, which is necessary, as well as with other character traits that must be cultivated.

What about following instructions? Ask your children to turn in their assignments in a very specific way; let’s say, double-spaced, typed with a point 12 Times font, with their name and date on the upper right corner of their paper, etc… and be ready to lower points if they don’t follow the instructions carefully. I know, it seems kind of weird to do this, but it is VERY important that our children learn how to follow instructions.

Little ones, must learn to follow instructions as well; if you say use a red crayon to underline, expect them to use red crayon… even if this means that  they’ll have to look for it  because that  specific crayon is the one missing! Have them label their work neatly and teach them to always use a sharpened pencil and a nice and clean eraser.

If we put some effort on teaching these two simple things we will be teaching them a lot.

What do you think?

How do you teach your children to work under the “pressure” of deadlines and follow instructions?

>Why Does the Mexican Flag has that Particular Eagle?

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>Why does the Mexican Flag has that particular eagle, standing on a cactus, devouring a rattlesnake? You can read your little ones about this in this book I read to my little one this week. Yes, it is a very good, little book that my 7 yo enjoyed from the first page to the last. I really liked it because, even though it is short, it is accurate and the illustrations are beautiful.

The book is entitled The Sad Night, by Sally Shofer Matthew. 

And a little extra information for you ….

Why did the Spaniards finally conquered the Aztecs if they were outnumbered?

I have read many opinions and I have come to the conclusion that there were three important factors:

First the Aztecs had a totally different mindset when fighting. In Europe the idea was to win no matter what, in the Americas once a tribe fought and clearly won in battle that was it, it was settled who was the strongest one. However, the  Europeans were not going to be defeated like that, their interest were much more bigger than winning a one fight, than showing who was the strongest one. An Empire with many interests was behind all this. So, when the Spaniards lost this important battle (the Sad Night is the result of that loss) and they left. The Aztecs never thought that in a year they will come back with a larger army  decided to crash their civilization; that was not the way things worked on this side of the Atlantic.

The other factor was that these people, the Aztects,  lost because of all their superstitions. Moctezuma (yes, with a “c” and no with an “n” is the way we spell it in Mexico) was a great, brave warrior. He had the control over all the area (very BIG area, I have to say) No tribe was strong enough to resist the brutality of the Aztecs, however, through all this encounter with the white-bearded men  Moctezuma was paralyzed because all the time he was sure he was dealing with gods. At the end the generals and the people in general realized that gods or not they had to kill these men (gods?). Moctezuma tried to protect them ’till the end and this was his fall. People stoned him to death. (keep in mind the desperation that had to be happening here, the people “knew” that Moctezuma, their Tlatoani, was their god, so this was not an easy thing to do!)

Third, and most important, the Aztecs lost because it was written! Because God is sovereign over the nations, over the course of history, He is Lord over all, and He directs the history of mankind like the course of a river according to His infinite wisdom.

Well… I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you get to buy this little book with a great story and full of  beautiful illustrations.

Have a blessed weekend, dear friends!

>Changes Can Be Beautiful -thoughts on homeschooling-

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>Changes come into our lives every year, every day; changes do come and we must have eyes to see the beauty they bring.

We have been homeschooling our children for 10 years now and several changes have happened along the way. Today while I was enjoying teaching my little one, I saw from afar my oldest children taking their online classes and thought of these changes and how much they used to scare me when I  thought about them 10 years ago and how the Lord has faithfully removed them  and has helped me see the beauty in each one of them.

I want to write this post to encourage those families who are today where we were 10 years ago. These words are for you:

Don’t fear the changes; God is faithful indeed!

Choosing curriculum seems like an titanic task; there are  too many options, actually, too many great  options; but you want to know a little secret I have learned along the way? When I did not know of all those great options out there and I prepared my classes from scratch; we learned a lot, had a blast and built great memories. My almost 17  years old son still likes to see his old binder with all his notes and drawings; my 14 yo son remembers everything we did together… My daughter recalls every single project we made together… they still love to talk today about all the books we enjoyed together.

And then the day came when I saw all those great and different options and I wanted to use them all, so I bought some resources that we never used, and returned some others that were not as nice as they sounded. So here is the secret…

Don’t try to change what is already working for you today. 

No matter how wonderful the rest of the options seem to be, take a deep breath, and if what you are doing with your kids is already working, then don’t change to try something else.

Some of the things that used to scare this mama who struggles so much with Math and has survived  all these years using the “rule of three” for every single math problem in her life, were the ones you can easily imagine, “What are we going to do with Algebra, and Science and Logic?”  My kids grew and changes came and the day arrived when we were ready to tackle those; what did we do then?

The Lord walked ahead of us, and the Lord brought to our lives (literally) something we did not know about… a way out to all our fears through such season of changes: A great online school with lots of friends included and teachers that have influenced our children to live godly lives.

Yes, this is a greater miracle than what you might think because, just in case you have forgotten, we live in Mexico and are Mexicans! And here, in our country, very few families homeschool their children and we don’t have Christian schools either. So changes did come and the Lord gave us a way to walk through them and also gave us eyes to see the beauty in them.

Alteration… yes, that word that my fiends at three chose for the photo play this week has me thinking…

We have had to alter our initial plans several times; it never occurred to us the option of an online school for example, but through each change, we have seen how the Lord has always been ahead of us preparing  the doorways we would need to walk through.

So, my friend, if you are to change anything this year in your homeschool, be sure you don’t change just to have the other option that seems super great if what you are doing is working in your family; but at the same time know that changes will definitely come, sooner or later, without you even noticing them; and when they come remember that the Lord has been walking ahead. He is our faithful Father.

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

 Lord, teach us to see that changes can be beautiful!

Note: The second picture on this post is “playing” at You Capture. 
This week’s theme is “Doorways”

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>Last School Project of the Year – Paper-Flowers-

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>My little one and I are studying Botany this school year and this is our last school project of the year. We made this beautiful flowers using cupcake liners (the original idea is from this place)

They are very e.a.s.y to make and super fun.

These pictures are also  posted on my Spanish blog, Delicias a Tu Diestra Para Siempre.

Enjoy your little ones today, enjoy your journey!

>Spanish For Children -a Review-

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I am thankful to the folks at Classical Academic Press for giving me the opportunity to review their Spanish for Children program.

As a teacher of Spanish 1 and 2 at Veritas Scholars Academy, I was intrigued about the Spanish for Children program. How good it is? How well prepared will the grammar students using this program be for high school Spanish?  I am a Spanish native speaker, and as you can probably imagine, I love to teach my students beautiful pronunciation; so I also wondered about the DVD’s and CD; is the pronunciation clear and accurate?  Let me now tell you what I found.

Spanish for Children is a program recommended for upper grammar students (4th grade and up); their basic bundle includes the Student’s Primer, the Teacher’s Primer (answer key), four DVD and one CD, and a Spanish Language Reader, Tin Bot.

Spanish for Children 1 covers 37 weekly chapters which follow a very good and logic sequence. Starting from the -ar, -er and -ir verbs it covers about 142 verbs; about 150 nouns with gender and number,  adjectives and prepositions; starting to build on a new language in upper grammar stage with this great foundation is just an incredible way to start with the right foot!

Spanish for Children is Classically and Creatively taught, with lots of reviews, exercises and fun phrases that will put Spanish in context. It is a thorough program that will certainly prepare students in an incredible way for Spanish in high school, because it not only teaches isolated vocabulary but grammar structure, which is essential to be able to speak a new language; something that we want our Spanish students to be able to do.

I would say that if  Mom or Dad do not speak Spanish, they would definitely need to get the DVD set.  Believe me (I don’t make money if you buy it), it is important to have the children’s ear trained into listening good Spanish and Mrs. Julia Kraut does a great job; her pronunciation is clear and beautiful. The DVDs do more than teaching good pronunciation, they are a great help into understanding the lessons in-depth.  Mrs. Kraut explains every lesson in a very engaging way, and it is fun to listen to her class; it is not boring or tiresome. She starts each lesson chanting the weekly grammar chart, followed by an introduction to the new lesson, there are images accompanying the new list of verbs and vocabulary and then she goes on to explain the grammar concepts, always encouraging the students to practice what they have learned “even with their Teddy Bear”. I really appreciated that she continually shares her experience with the Spanish language and different cultural aspects surrounding it, because as I always tell my students, learning a new foreign language is not only about learning the language but understanding the culture. If you don’t get the DVDs you will certainly miss this part which I consider very important.

If students are diligent in studying the lessons every day and watching the  DVDs, I would dare to say that they would excel in learning Spanish even before reaching high school!

Classical Academic Press also offers many free on line resources to help students practice what they are learning, such as virtual flashcards, games, and readers. There is also a sample schedule ready for Mom to download and start planing the course. Mrs. Kraut has a blog where you can post your questions and read some more fun facts about Spanish and some teaching tips that the author likes to share.

In all, I highly recommend this program to all those families interested in introducing their children to the beautiful world of Spanish.

Giving your children the opportunity to learn a new language from an early age is a gift that not every one is willing to give because of the difficulties of teaching it, but this program definitely makes the task easier and really fun.

For more information visit Classical Academic Press

You can also find them on Facebook, where they have an active conversation with their followers.

Related posts from here and my former blog:

Classical Education and Memorization
More than Copy Work
Why Classical Languages Matter
Teaching the Word of God to our Children

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