One of the great parts about homeschooling is that you don’t really have to worry about snow days. Everyone loves snow days, but they can really interrupt the flow of your curriculum. That said, snow days can provide a really important opportunity to add ‘balance’ to your child’s life. Especially, so for high school students who are working really hard.

That said, you may not want to interrupt your curriculum.  I found what works best is a compromise.  Don’t think that your child won’t know that the public school kids are out for the day.  What I learned worked best was offering the student the morning off.  Sleep, play games, read, do whatever.  During that time I took 30 minutes to 1 hour to come up with a very interactive or ‘fun’ lesson that supplemented the curriculum that we were already working on.  I didn’t simply go into the existing curriculum, but did something more hands on and interactive.

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Teaching history in your Christian homeschool setting can be difficult.  Some of the best activities in history class necessitate group learning.  The sheer amount of facts that come into play, especially with the advanced curriculum in history (high school, AP), can be daunting to teacher and student alike.  One of the ways that I have overcome this problem is through the use of narrative.  Historical narrative, or stories, can be extremely instrutive when teaching concepts.  Moreover, it provides a depth of knowledge that purely analytical learning cannot.  This does not necessarily take away from learning dates, facts, and figures, but can help improve your student’s cognition of these more rote items.  Coming into a unit with a good basis of knowledge, using a story to underscore a concept, can be incredibly impactful.  I suggest you give it a try.

I will give one example here.  There was a great story in the Wall Street Journal about the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson.  One of the main themes of this presidency was the ‘Jacksonian democracy’ and the emergence of new people into the democratic process.  This is best expemplified in a narrative format by discussing Jackson’s racous inauguration party that included all members of society, even those rough a tumble type who had stayed away from politics previously.

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It is one of the most difficult things for homeschool teachers to manage: the right degree to challenge your students.  It is well known that a strong homeschool curriculum is one that is challenging and rigorous.  But if we challenge our students too much, thereby focusing on the ‘product’ of good test scores, etc. do we neglect the ‘process’ of developing strong Christian adults.  The number one thing you want to avoid is not challenging your students at all.  In private schools they often speak of ‘teaching to the high end’ — meaning the high end of the class.  I recommend that you twist this to focus on teaching to the high end of your child’s intellectual ability.  It goes without saying that you can only push so hard and that continued pressure and challenge is only met with diminishing returns.  There is no silver bullet to answer these questions, but it is quintessential that we remain cognizant of them.

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Teaching Science in homeschool can be one of the most appealing subjects for both parents and their children.  Often, however, many homeschool teachers feel intimidated by Science in the higher levels of school.  I was reminded of this when I was reading a post called Gross Mold Update on another homeschool blog.  It reminded me that the solution to science at all levels is practical experimentation.  The goal of your science curriculum should, in my opinion, be largesly about investigative inquiry and research.  Facts are facts, but learning how to address a problem, hypothisize a solution, and act on it are priceless and valuable in many aspects of life.  Anyway, in the above posting the teacher cultivated mold spores with her students and found out the one that grew the best came from her own mouth – – a classic!  It keeps the kids interested though and they will likely never forget the principles.  This idea is valid at any grade level.

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