If there was just one habit you could help your teen foster before they graduate high school, what would it be? I could think of several obvious ones at the top of my list: good hygiene habits, sticking to an exercise schedule, waking up on time, etc. But what about spiritual habits? What about making Bible reading a habit? Before I dive into this, it's probably important to say that there can be a lot of false guilt around this topic. I grew up in an era where having your "quiet time" was the metric by which the quality of your Christianity rose or fell. I don't for a minute think that's true. Most ...Read More
Does Your Teen Really Know How to Study the Bible?
I'm convinced teaching teens how to study the Bible is, arguably, the most important skill you can teach them. Think about it... When you read a narrative, you don't jump to the middle of the story, pick a random page, and hope to glean something from the story. When you read a letter that's mailed to you, you don't just pick out your favorite lines and discard the rest. You intuitively know: the author intended this writing to be read from beginning to end—intended a certain flow of thought, wrote in a certain genre. I'm convinced before teens graduate high school, the skill of knowing how to read the Bible ...Read More
Homeschooling Homeschool Science: How to Build Your Own Backyard Compass
Building a backyard compass with your kids may be one of the most vivid ways to help kids understand how the lights in the sky organize our everyday lives. I get it—finding direction using the lights in the sky is probably one of the most old fashioned Boy-Scoutish activities I can think of, and perhaps in our GPS age, it might seem like an outdated skill. But even in our technologically sophisticated age, there are some timeless realities that are as true today as they were for our ancient forefathers. A day is still a day. A year is still a year. We still operate our lives on the predictable patterns of day and ...Read More
Sexting Stats: 7 Facts Parents Need to Know (and what to do about it)
Sexting. It's a classic tale as old as time: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl hook up. Girl texts boy risqué photos. Boy and girl break up. Boy shares risqué photos with friends. Okay, maybe it isn't a classic tale, but if sexting stats are any indication, it's an all-too-common tale today. And it's a story parents need to be aware of. "Sexting"—sending or sharing nude or partially nude photos or videos—is alarmingly common among teens. How do we prevent it? How do we deal with it when it impacts our teen? First, it's important to know the numbers. Here are some of the most recent sexting ...Read More
10 Reasons to Teach Your Child Handwriting in the Digital Age
Should we continue to teach our kids handwriting, especially cursive, in our digital age? Some think handwriting is as outdated for composition as the slide rule is for math. Others are eager to keep the art of handwriting alive. As a homeschooling parent, with all the things you could teach your child during the day — why spend time with handwriting? In honor of National Handwriting Day1 (yes, that is today — January 23), here are a few thoughts on handwriting... ...Read More
Teaching Kids About Seasons: an easy, educational activity
There are a lot of ways you can teach kids about the seasons of the year, but often we miss teaching them why there are seasons in the first place. What causes the changes in temperature and different weather patterns we see throughout the cycle of the year? This activity makes it easy to teach kids the why behind the seasonal changes. (Bear in mind, it takes about a year to complete this activity, but each step only takes you a minute or so to complete.) The goal of this activity is to show the different places on the horizon the sun rises throughout the course of a year. Teaching Kids About Seasons Activity ...Read More
Teaching Your Kids About Sex When You Have Sexual Sin in Your Past
We all have a sexual history, but for some of us that history is more riddled with sin than we would like to admit. You might know someone who glided through adolescence, young adulthood, and engagement with a firm resolve to say no to sexual sin. They got to the altar on their wedding day with little or maybe no regrets. Then there's the rest of us. Now that we—the guilty ones—are parents and watching our kids grow up, we know we should teach our kids about godly sexuality, but we feel terribly unqualified. We didn't receive the best sex ed from our parents. And to top it off, we also feel like our past ...Read More
The Ultimate List of Math Facts Memory Tools
What's the single most important thing you can do to help your child with math? Hands down. You'll help them memorize their math facts. When your kids have their math facts memorized, this frees them up to do higher level math later in life. This ultimate list of math facts memory tools will help you on this endeavor! The Ultimate List of Math Facts Memory Tools Below is a list of all the math facts memory tools that I could find to help you teach your kids math. Brainetics: Breakthrough Math and Memory System - This is a more advanced system for students who already know their multiplication and division facts. ...Read More
