Our newest e-resource. PIPEline Book of Remembrance. A color-coded timeline journal! Finally available as an ebook download. You’ve gotta take a look at this Lifestyle Education through Discipleship exclusive.
An order page and more info about it can be found here.
What could be better than our Book of Time, a comb bound color-coded timeline in a book, your personal journal to put all of history in context?
Our new PIPEline Book of Remembrance color-coded time line in a book (same book, but remade and renamed) that you download and print out yourself!
What’s better than buying a Book of Time for each of your children at $15 each?
Buying a PIPEline Book of Remembrance for $20 once and printing out a book for each member of your own family.
What’s better than paying $20 for the PIPEline Book of Remembrance masters to print a book for each family member?
Buying it this week for the old price of 1 Book of Time – $15! (Good through Aug. 10th only.)
Watch our L.E.D. Resources page for the addition of the PIPEline Book of Remembrance, coming in the next few days. But you can order now so you don’t miss out on the Special Price, if you’d like 🙂
P.S. The PIPEline Book of Remembrance makes a great companion to Freedom & Simplicity in HisStory and PIPEline of HisStory.
It’s not too often that I post these kinds of things, but they can be basic helps. Here’s a few tips for time management for your children pertaining to their studies.
See my from me post today for a few tips on general household time management.
Keep things in their place and Think ahead. Plan what they need before beginning and gather all necessary tools. Saves much time if they know where they are. 🙂
Also arrange activities to provide variety and break things up – alternate quiet and active studies. Take breaks when needed, doing a different type of activity, so the time spent studying is productive.
More another time.
Some of you may be gearing down for the summer, allowing for a lot of outdoor play time while the weather is good. This is great and just as needed as indoor book time. But I hope you aren’t gearing down and allowing your children to sit in front of the TV or video games and turn their brains to mush.
Whether it be for days when it’s too hot or stormy to play outdoors, or for while doing indoor chores, or for long trips in the car, when mom’s voice is worn out or she’s busy elsewhere, stories on CD are a great choice for an enriching pastime.
Our whole family loves listening to all of the recommendations below, but I’ve divided them into target age groups to help you choose. Links are given for those that are not available through our website. For others just browse our catalog pages. The ones in bold print are available through us, others may be.
Some of our favorites for the younger children are Your Story Hour and Patch the Pirate. There have been several others over the years – Jungle Jam and the older Adventures in Odyssey. We also have several audio books. We especially love the ones by produced by Blackstone Audiobooks. You can buy these on tape or CD or download many of them in mp3 format from Audible. Just a few of our favorite ones for little ones are Beatrix Potter’s stories, Winnie the Pooh, and Charlotte’s Web. And I can’t leave out the Elsie Dinsmore series, the favorite of our 7 yo for a couple of years now. For just plain music listening they love Judy Rogers’ CD’s, Go to the Ant and others, the children’s worship CD’s from Sovereign Grace ministries, the old Tiny Tot Pwaise series (are they still available?), as well as the music on Patch the Pirate.
Middle age children love Jonathan Park, the Kingdom series audio books, and Radio Theatre‘s Ben Hur, Squanto, and the Luke Reports. But my 5 yo loves Jonathan Park, Ben Hur, and Squanto as well. He likes the others, they just don’t hold his interest as long.
We think of the Radio Theater series and other advanced books for youth and adults, but my just turned 7 yo has loved and listened to Silas Marner and Les Miserables for 2 or 3 years. Others we have include the Hiding Place, and we just got Amazing Grace.
Just a few other audio books we enjoy as a family are Pilgrim’s Progress, Ivanhoe, Swiss Family Robinson, the Henty books, A Basket of Flowers, Robinson Crusoe, and there are many, many more. We listen to many of the classics, both literature and historical Christian great books on audio.
Also we belong to 2 email lists that send an audio story for children each week: Jim Erskin’s Living Books for the Ears and Robert Green’s You Need a Story.
Have a great time listening!
See our other posts on Audio Books – Part 1 and Part 2.
For Hymn Study we love the living books by Douglas Bond in the Mr. Pipes series. There are currently 4 books in the series covering different time periods of hymn writers. The story is of 2 American children who go to England on vacation and meet an elderly church organist and hymn historian, who shares stories about hymn writers of old and the hymns they wrote. Besides reading and narrating these stories, we also copy and learn to sign the hymns, add them to our timelines, and do further research and writing on some of the authors and hymns.
The series is an ongoing story between Mr. Pipes and the children. But we didn’t start with the first book and we didn’t get lost. Obviously when we went back and read the first, it filled in some answers. But feel free to start where you like.
Mr. Pipes and the British Hymn Writers is where the children first meet Mr. Pipes, so it is first even though it isn’t first in history chronology.
Mr. Pipes and Psalms and Hymns of the Reformation is next – this is where we started, because it was what we were studying in History.
Mr. Pipes Comes to America is next – we haven’t read it yet.
Mr. Pipes and the Accidental Voyage is the newest and about the Early Centuries of the Church – so the first in hymn chronology but last in story order.
We just got the new Accidental Voyage this week and my children are upset that we won’t be getting to it this year. I planned on just finishing the British one and taking a break for a while. They obviously really love them.
We also have and have used are 101 Hymn Stories.
I’ve seen and plan to get Hymns for a Kid’s Heart series by Joni Tada
too. See more about all these resources on our History: Music & Art webpage.
I just ran across a website yesterday that looks like it will be a good supplement for us. Songs and Hymns.org has information about the hymn itself, the lyric writer, the tune composer, (including pictures of many of them -which is how I stumbled upon this site, looking for pictures of the writers), Scripture the hymn is based on, the words and music to listen to and read, and a story about the writing of the hymn and a devotional about it. Their daily radio show, Adoration Songbook, can be heard on some radio stations or listened to online. It is 5 short episodes about the hymn of the week.
UPDATE: Here are a couple more links to websites we’ve used in our hymn studies. Timeless Truths and The Cyber Hymnal. And a couple of Psalms sites. Psalm Singing – we found it when looking for The Scottish Metrical Psalter, and a more recent find, Psalter.org.
It’s been over a year since I’ve written anything about timelines, but I get asked alot about where to find timeline figures to go with my PIPEline of HisStory.
There are several options:
1) You can draw and write your own. A 3×5 index card cut in half works great. You can either just write the name and date or you can draw (and color) a picture of the person or event. You may want to draw a symbol of their contribution on the card, such as making a picture frame around artists, a treble clef with composers, a crown for government leaders, a cross for Christian leaders, etc. You can also cut them out in shapes if you’d like, either a basic “person” shape or a representative shape such as a crown for government leaders etc. If you choose to do shapes, you can reproduce the shape several times on a sheet of cardstock and copy/print to to have ready to write or draw on and cut out.
2) You can find free or cheap pictures to use. Some people buy old sets of encyclopedias to cut up. But now we have the internet! You could do your own searches, but that takes way too much time for me. I prefer to use picture groups already put together from websites like Homeschooling with Notebooking. I’ve also found a few nice ones at Christian Hearts Homeschooling.
3) You can purchase sets of figures. We used to sell a timeline with pictures you color yourself. I just found it available online now – Drawing from the Past. Homeschool in the Woods produces the History through the Ages timeline figures you can color, but I’ve never used these.
Start by ordering the PIPEline of HisStory and get started creating your own unique timeline by any of the methods listed here.
Does that sound scarey to you? Do you think you can’t possibly write your own curriculum? I hope by the end of this series of articles you will change your mind.
Years ago I got a book called, You Can Write Your Own Curriculum (or something like that). It was so common sense and easy to integrate, that once I adapted and developed some forms to suit our needs I got rid of the book. I wish I still had it to share its simplicity with you. But instead you will get my version.
For some the question may not be can I do it, but why would I want to? Writing curriculum is work. It takes time. And who knows if I’d do it right. So why write your own curriculum? In one word, Liberty.
Here in America we’re generally losing the understanding and the care about what that word means. We think freedom is doing whatever I want while someone else foots the bill. But in truth Liberty can be summed up in having self-government so no one needs to control me. It speaks of character and growth. Neither comes without Labor. Both require that four letter word that many don’t like to hear, work. But it is through Labor that we grow in wisdom, knowledge, understanding – and character.
Yes, writing your own curriculum requires work, but that is not a bad thing. It is the thing that will cause your own growth, and help develop good character in you. That which we are handed, whether it be curriculum or welfare, does not cause growth or develop character. It does not cause increase. It is only through Labor that we produce, cause increase.
How does this connect to Liberty? Increase through labor brings freedom. We live in a society that seeks ease above freedom, constantly giving away liberties in exchange for someone else to take care of everything for them. We do not have freedom when we are dependent upon others to take care of us. This mindset can pervade our thoughts of education also. We don’t see that freedom comes from laboring for production for ourselves. Laboring to write our own curriculum brings Liberty by freeing us from someone else’s ideas of what education should look like for our family. It frees us from being dependent upon someone else for our increase of knowledge.
Writing our own curriculum causes us to exercise our creativity through labor to cause us to grow and produce. It frees us from a consumer mentality. It allows our family to operate in the individuality God has created within us. It keeps us dependent upon the Lord.
Writing our own curriculum exercises our faith. We need to trust God to lead us to educate our children in the way He would have them go. We write in “fear and trembling”, acknowledging our own weaknesses and inadequacies but His ever present strength when we are weak that enables us to “do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, and knowing that His grace that is sufficient. He will see us through, and all glory goes to Him. And when we are most glorifying Him we have our greatest joy!
We write our own curriculum because of the freedom, individuality, and creativity, variety, growth and joy in it. It allows our family to show forth who God is making us to be.
I will continue this series, showing you the Freedom & Simplicity™ in Curriculum Writing.
What’s the difference between principles, truths, and rudiments? These may be completely foreign terms to you, but they are basic terms in Biblically principled education that is expansionary. Expansionary education teaches by “planting seeds that contain the whole” by getting to the core principles of a subject and beginning with those and from those the whole subject grows. This is sometimes called teaching from whole to parts.
The definitions of these terms somewhat overlap. But you see slight nuances in them that give us our basis of usage.
Principle: Source or origin of any thing, that from which a thing proceeds; element, constituent part; ground, foundation; a general truth; a law comprehending many subordinate truths.
Truths: (see also McDowell quote below): Conformity to fact or reality; true state of facts or things; fidelity, constancy; real fact of just principle; conformity to rule.
Rudiments: A first principle or element, that which is to be first learnt.
Let’s take a look at what others say about these:
This first came from a discussion with Ellen at the Foundation for American Christian Eduction:
Every subject will have its own individual principles. “THE 7”
Principles (of American Christian History and Government) are basic
foundational Biblical principles. You will find them interwoven
through much of what you study. But every lesson in every subject is
not based upon “the 7”. Utilize them as they fit. Utilize others as
they fit.
This from McDowell & Beliles book “Liberating the Nations”:
“While the Bible contains thousands of truths, these can be broken down into a small number of principles form which the truths spring forth. If these principles are known, this provides complete parameters through which to view life, assuring that one truth is not forgotten while embracing a new one.” And they go on to discuss principles as “seed”.
So how do we use these terms? I don’t know that there is anything magical about the terminology but from the above this is how I use them. IOW, this is a generally the explanation I go with but it is not set in cement.
1) I term the “Universal” or Foundational Principles as the “7”. These are God’s governing principles that overrule so many areas of all of life.
2) The Biblical principles that are specific to a subject I usually term the Biblical Truths (or Biblical principles) of the subject.
3) And the principles that govern the subject (not directly derived from the Bible), the first rules of the subject itself, I usually term the Rudiments.
I will post an example, probably in the subject of math, and add its link here – hopefully later today.
We Journal our studies in Books of Remembrance. I’ve already shared about using Lapbooking to Journal. In this post I’m sharing about our regular Journals. Some people call this Notebooking. Journaling is collecting in a binder all the things you learn from your study. It can be simple or elaborate, down to earth scholarly or glitzy and artistic.
Journaling is not storing your worksheets in a binder, nor is it printed off encyclopedia or other articles, nor is it just reports. It is your own personally written text living book of the topic you studied. It should express your own ideas about the topic.
You can use color and design to ‘brighten’ up your Notebooks, not just the covers, but also the pages. Depending on your personality that may be just using colored paper and/or adding a picture, or maybe it will be using unique layout on the pages and a variety of ‘scrapbooking’ fancies. Another possibility is to use templates, a preprinted page with a heading and perhaps picture, and space to add your own info.
What do we put in our Notebooks? Here’s a few ideas.
Copywork or dictation of quotes, Scripture, a poem, a song, a play, a recipe,
Notes, narrations, summaries, reviews, outlines, graphic organizers/mind maps
T-charts, other charts and graphs, illustrations/drawings, colorings
Map work, geographic reports
Timelines, pictures, a photojournal
Word studies, definitions, glossary
Biographical or Character sketch
Essays, reports, speeches, correspondence
Bibliography
Brochures, postcards, flyers
whatever!
It doesn’t even have to be just ‘paper’ items. You can also add 3-dimentional projects that are small enough to fit in. Or you may want to include a CD of music, a performance, a multi-media presentation or a website/pages you’ve designed on your topic, or maybe even a DVD of a movie/play you produced/performed. The sky binder thickness is the limit!
We save each item in our Books of Remembrance in page protectors. If it is worth Journaling, it is worth protecting. And don’t forget to make a nicely designed cover for your Book of Remembrance too.
Have a blast writing your own living books of the topics you study through making Books of Remembrance.
And learn more about Journaling and the other methods used in Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ in our L.E.D. ‘How to’ book, Freedom & Simplicity on R Road to Biblical Wisdom.
Much of our Discipleship for Life™ teaching emphasizes the primary importance of renewing your mind. To truly learn, it is necessary to see from the viewpoint of Wisdom, to see the Big Picture, how things fit together. Biblical learning brings forth true Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom. It paints a glorious and non-abstract picture of God and His World. (Of course, we cannot see God completely clearly, but we can know Him as He is.)
But we will not get this clear picture from the ways of the world that we have been taught. From it we will get an abstract, fragmented, unclear picture. The ways that seem right to the natural man not only lead to death, but also bondage, the inability to think and reason Biblically about life, this world and God.
But, where do we begin? We haven’t learned this way. We learned by rote and drill – cram, test, crash and forget – with the emphasis on isolated facts, not unifying Principles. What do we do with our children while we are learning to teach them?
One way to approach this is to start or leave your children in the way of the past – rote and drill, learning individual facts for a test – while you begin to learn this new way. You can do this.
But I believe there is a better way, a way that begins to, step by step, lead them – and you – out of bondage and into Freedom and Simplicity™. These beginnings will ease them into a Biblically principled education for Discipleship for Life™.
As you are slowly learning, renewing your own mind, you can begin to teach them these same new ways. Line upon Line. Can we write perfect lesson plans? No. Can we teach them something? Of course.
I believe the place to start is not with “core subjects” or the “basics”, though you could, but rather with the foundation for all our teaching, the Bible. God’s Word is the primary thing we are commanded to teach our children, and what we are basing all other learning upon.
Begin studying the Bible with your children today, teaching what you learn. Whatever you have internalized from your own study for Biblical wisdom can be shared with your children, and you can teach them how to learn too. Begin to teach your children how to study the Bible. The most important thing you can teach your children is how to learn. You may not know this all yourself yet, but you can apply any part of it you know – in Bible study and other studies as well. Don’t wait until you know it all, teach what you know.
Begin reading with your children, both the Bible and great living books – and discuss what you read. Not just you telling them what was there, but encouraging them to discuss what they saw in the reading.
Begin reasoning with your children. Ask them questions that require them to think. Ask questions that help them to see the connection of what they are learning to the whole of the subject, to the whole of God’s plan.
Begin encouraging your children to reflect on what you (and they individually) read. Encourage them to look at it from God’s point of view. Encourage them to look for how it relates to them. Encourage them to write down their thoughts.
You are wanting to begin the shift, in their minds and yours, to focusing on ideas before details, to seeing cause and effect, to placing everything they learn into a Biblical context. You want to plant small seeds that with nourishment will grow over time and produce a beautiful garden, rather than handing them an unrelated menagerie of cut plants that will soon whither and die.
If you will notice, in the things I recommended to do, just natural, very basic things, you will find the methodology of Biblical learning. In L.E.D. I teaching I term this methodology of Biblical learning “The 6 Processes of Learning”. As stated by Rosalie Slater in the Principle Approach, this is 4 R-ing – Research, Reason, Relate, and Record. Neither is a step by step legalistic formula, but just a way to express the processes of thinking required to learn. There is more to learn of course, but with this you will be off to a great start in Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™.
To begin your own process of renewing your mind, you may want to consider the Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ – The Seminar. It will be held live in North Platte, NE on June 9 or you may purchase it for electronic download on mp3 with bonus doc handouts and powerpoint presentations.
