Saturday, September 22, 2012

Autumn Leaf Craft



When the boys were young, we spent much time creating. One room was reserved for messy projects like painting, cutting, pasting. Sometimes other media were used like wax, cardboard, string, balloons, newspapers, glitter, and more. What fun we had! This was always an integral part of our home school.

Last week when we visited Dad and Alma, one of the boys early projects was sitting on the nightstand in the guest room. So simple, yet sweet, these leaf art pictures have graced the guest room for nearly 10 years now. 

If there are young children in your family, this is a great project to do with them! Here's how:

  • Purchase small frames. They do not need to be expensive. Frames from a place like the Dollar Store or WalMart work perfectly. Remove the colored 'advertising' in the frame. In it's place, insert a piece of plain white paper.
  • At the craft store, purchase a sheet of beeswax. With sharp scissors, cut it to the same size as the 'advertising' paper you removed from the frame. Place the beeswax on top of the plain white paper.
  • Sprinkle extra fine "prisma" glitter sparsely on the beeswax.
  • Place one dried leaf per sheet of beeswax. Center it carefully, so that it looks like it's falling from a tree.
  • Put the frame together, with the glass layer going on top of the leaf and beeswax. Secure tightly and enjoy.

*This project also works well with dried flowers.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Teaching is Inspiring, Motivating, and Inducing



"Teaching is inspiring a student rather than filling him with facts. It is responding to him rather than demanding of him. It is motivating him to explore on his own rather than controlling his explorations. It is inducing him to think, rather than repeating others' thoughts. Teaching is leading others to be like you --- and more. It is finding lessons in everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and bringing them together to give deeper meaning and fulfillment to life." 

Dr. Raymond Moore
Home-Style Teaching, A Handbook for Parents and Teachers

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Recipe for Home Teaching


As a new school year starts for many, it seems timely to review the core "recipe" for homeschooling. I have always appreciated the one by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, early advocates of home education. Here's their recipe for home-school teaching:

"The requirements are not complex. Parents need only to be loving, responsive, and reasonably consistent, and salt these qualities with a little imagination, common sense, and willingness to follow a few simple suggestions...And don't worry about the opinions of neighbors who don't know or care about the real needs of children. Just be kind to them. Have your children be helpful in your home and in the neighborhood. Visit the old and infirm and ill. Do favors for others without asking any in return. Soon your 'strange antics' will be forgotten...or admired." 


They remind us that:


  • "In one sense you are teaching all your waking moments --- as models to your offspring. Yet while some parents are more diligent than others, none need to formally teach a full school day."


And continue with this:


  • "Much more important is your working with your children in physical work, helping them learn practical skills and the nobility of work --- building character qualities of initiative, industry, neatness, order, responsibility, and dependability, which are hard to find in even one of ten children or young adults today."

And there's more!

  • "Along with these grosser values you can by precept and example teach manners and graces which today are rare --- kindness, thoughtfulness, tact, forgiveness, generosity, and a just plain kind of for-others love. This is seldom done in schools these days. Teach therm how to walk tall, how to listen closely, how to speak graciously. Paul was not gesturing idly when he wrote Philippians 4:8, 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report;...think on these things.'"


Using the Moore Formula of work, study, and service
, children have been found to excel academically and socially. For more on this subject, it's recommended that you establish your foundation and philosophy for homeschooling by reading several of the books Raymond and Dorothy Moore have written on homeschooling. 


The quotes above are from the book "Home-Spun Schools" page 12 - 13.