A Wonderful Online Site...

Just found a wonderful online site for buying educational tools. Most of the items I'd get from here I'd put into my "Learners Closet".  I haven't yet talked about our closet but I will do a post about it when I get back from vacation!

Hope you enjoy this site....

http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/home/home.jsp


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Allowance & Chores

A very important part of a TJEd home is to teach your children not only the love of learning, but also the love of working. They need to be able to enjoy working and to find a sense of worth by completing a task that has been assigned to them.

Every home does their "chore system" differently but I thought I would share mine in case you are looking for a different point of view.

Allowance:

In our house, the kids don't "earn" allowance...they don't get paid "per chore completed". We feel strongly that the kids should be helping around the house because they are a member of the family, not because they want to earn some money. We want to teach them that the reason we do things for others (our family, in this situation) is because we love them, not to get something in return.

I began searching the scriptures to find some guidance. I prayed for quite a while about the subject because I did feel so strongly about "helping out because you are a member of this family". I decided to analyze how our Father in Heaven blesses us and did some research on the subject. I found that the Lord has blessings already waiting for us, blessings he wants to give us, blessings because he loves us. I then realized that the Lord usually withholds blessings, instead of giving blessings. I found that to be very interesting....He has blessings he's going to give us but then has to withhold some due to our choices. This was just what I needed to more fully understand and it became the basis of our "chore & allowance" system.

I dedicated one family night to this subject and found that the kids easily understood why I had decided to take this different approach. I explained to the kids that they would each get a certain amount of money per week (varying by age) and they were expected to help out where needed, do their duties, be kind to one another, not have a bad attitude and obey. I explained that we, as their parents, really wanted them to receive all the money (aka: blessings) we had waiting for them. But it was up to them if they received it all because some could be withheld if they were having problems in any of the areas I listed above.  I explained that they were not getting a "reward" for a certain act but it was a "blessing" we wanted to give them for overall good behavior.

When we do have to withhold money, we talk with the child about why and try and help them see how they can alter their choices to ensure they are able to receive all we have planned to give them.

Chores:

So in our family the "daily chore" system really doesn't work. They do have a "duty" that they are expected to complete whenever it's needed.  Hannah's duty is dishes, so it's an all of the time type of thing. Gabe's duty is feeding and watering the cats whenever it's needed.

Instead of doing "daily chores" we decided to do "Monday Morning Cleaners". Every Monday morning the kids know they have certain duties to complete. Both kids need to "clean" their room (not just straighten), they have to "clean" their playroom (not just straighten), Hannah vacuums & dusts the entire house, and Gabe cleans the upstairs bathroom.  Their duties are to be completed before lunch. After lunch we usually make a special treat, like brownies or cookies as a fun reward for a clean, pleasant home.

I feel my kids are much more focused when they are expected to "really" clean only once a week. For some reason, it doesn't feel so daunting to them like it would if I spread the duties throughout the week.  During the rest of the week, we just randomly tidy things up as needed.


I truly believe that having a responsibility in the home is very important to children. They begin to realize how needed they are in the family and gain that much-needed self confidence.

We are definitely still working toward the "love of work" with both of them, but I think they are making progress and so is their mother...yes, I'm still learning how to "love" work...it's interesting how much I'm growing in that area as I travel down my "Love of Learning" path  :)

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Thirteen Colonies Craft

Since we are studying the United States, I decided to also focus on The Thirteen Original Colonies.

I found a really fun and useful craft for the kids that's centered around The Thirteen Colonies.  It also focuses on the Postal Abbreviations, which is another area we are currently focusing on. Hannah really has a love for history and is really enjoying learning about our wonderful nation!

As you can see, each circle represents one of the 13 Colonies. When we make it through the first 13 states, I'll move onto other states that followed. Those circles will be alternating, red & white, which will symbolize the stripes on the flag.

On the back of each circle, the kids can write some facts about the state they learned about. By the end, Hannah will have a wonderful set of flashcards to help her remember the facts about each state. Gabe likes to just draw pictures of what he learned, which is wonderful. Sometimes he's present for the "Let's learn about a state" time and sometimes he chooses to go play. He was there for Delaware, as you can see, but decided to go play airplanes for Pennsylvania.  I always ask him if he'd like to join us and usually he does but there are times when the imaginary roar of an airplane is just too tempting!!  :)

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The Family Tree

I chose our family's genealogy as an area of discussion over the next six months. The kids are really excited about the subject, which makes me so happy!!  I LOVE family history and I'm hopeful to encourage my children to have that same love.

The project I came up with was to talk about two of our family members a week. After we learn about someone, we then add their leaf to our "Family Tree".  Hopefully, by the end of the six months, our tree will be beautiful and full.  This is a great project for Gabe, since he is still in Core Phase.

A little while back, I realized that Hannah, who does know all of our current family members, didn't know how we all fit together. One day she asked who my grandfather (who's dead) was married to. I gave her the "great grandma...of course" answer, thinking she just hadn't thought the question through. Then she looked at me with confused eyes and said, "I thought she was married to Uncle George!". I had to explain that "Uncle George" is actually great grandma's son...NOT husband.

We then went over other various family members explaining how each family fit into our "family tree". Hannah seemed thrilled at all of the new information, or more precisely, the new connections. I could see her drawing lines from one family member to the next, like a big connect-the-dots, inside her head.

It was this incident that helped me understand that family history is not only those who have gone before us but also those who are still among us.

I am so looking forward to talking about our family members, past and present, and I hope my children gain a love for not only "family" but for every "family member".

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The Phases of Learning

There are several phases in A Thomas Jefferson Education. Each phase has a possible age range but since everyone is different, the ages always vary. For that purpose, I will only be listing the phases and not approximate ages to go with them.

The Phases of Learning, by Oliver DeMille, in a nutshell...

Core Phase: During Core Phase work times and play times are scheduled, with children allowed to choose their own subjects of play during play time. As they get older, play includes reading, math and other subjects that students choose to engage for fun.

Love of Learning Phase:  the student might choose a structure of 1 or 2 or 3 hours a day of set study time; it is important that the student choose it, and that the mentor help the student learn accountability for his choice.

If the student won’t choose it, you haven’t inspired him yet—get to work. Don’t fall back into requiring. Pay the price to inspire, and trust the process–it’s the only way to get the result of the student owning their role as a self-educator.

Scholar Phase:  By the early Scholar Phase a student will likely be studying 6-8 hours a day on topics of their deepest interest.

Depth Phase: the student increases the structured time and goes into more depth.


In our household, we have one Core Phase child, Gabriel, and soon there will be two more when the twinners get a little bit older. We also have two in Love of Learning Phase. One is our 10yr old girl, Hannah, and the other is her 37yr old mother...me!  I grew up on the conveyor belt and so I am now finally getting to learn what "I WANT" to learn!  :) 

Since Core Phase and Love of Learning Phase are the phases that we are currently in, in our household, I'm going to give a little deeper explanation of those phases. If you have children (or yourself) who you feel are in a different phase, please just refer to Oliver DeMille's "Leadership Education-The Phases of Learning" book. There's a link on the main page of this blog.

Phases as taught by Oliver DeMille, Leadership Education-The Phases of Learning:

Core Phase: 

Core Phase is a basis of a life.  A good Core Phase naturally provides the foundation for a good life, a great Core Phase for a great life, and so on. Core Phase is also a basis of an education. It is the basis of a family, and it's generations. It is the basis of society's culture, politics, economy, art, law, government, etc. It is, in short, the foundation of a person--who he or she is and what he or she can and will become. The foundation itself must be solid. During Core Phase, we lay the foundation for all learning and service in the child's life. The "curriculum" is simply:

• right and wrong
• good and bad
• true and false
• relationships
• family values, especially spiritual culture
• family identity, including family history and mission
• family routines and responsibilities
• accountability
• the value and love of work and play

Always remember that during these phases, children learn more by what we are and the environment and feelings that surround them than through the explicit teachings or activities we provide.

Love of Learning Phase:  Love of Learning naturally follows the establishment of a solid core. During the Love of Learning Phase, the student falls deeply in love with learning, studying, knowing and learning even more. If a person is forced in pressured formal schooling or assignments during this phase, she can develop a hate of learning attitude or even just a dislike of studying.

Ideally, however, each young person has the opportunity to freely fall in love with the joys of learning and to experience first-hand how wonderful learning can be. These are the years when children dabble with learning, getting to know "what's out there." If they have come from the Core Phase in good order they are usually fearless, feel almost everything will be interesting and believe they will be able to do whatever they set their minds to.

Love of Learning "curriculum"...

• Example, environment, opportunities, work, play, study, projects, field trips, the library, family room, inspiring parent, mentors, guidance, the bookshelf, mornings, afternoons, evenings, Summers, Winters, exploring, freedom, fun, personal attention, younger siblings, older siblings, mom, dad, grandparents, questions, and discussions.

There are 55 ingredients for Core and Love of Learning Phase. I will list them here but I will not go into what each of them mean. I will have future posts that will go over what each of them are and how I'm applying them in my home. They are...

1. Sundays
2. Weeks
3. Mornings
4. Kidschool
5. The Bean-Counter Game
6. The Six Month Purge
7. The Six Month "No"
8. The Six Month Inventory
9. The Annual Project
10. The Annual Break
11. Afternoons
12. Evenings
13. Winters
14. Summers
15. The Weekly Club
16. The Binder
17. The Field Trip
18. The Library Trip
19. The Bookshelf
20. The Closet
21. The Family Room
22. The Entertainment Room
23. The Donation Box
24. The Storage Box
25. The Weekly Lesson
26. The Safety Kids Class
27. The Mom School
28. The Computer
29. The Kitchen Table
30. The Cleaning Time
31. The Academic "No"
32. The Discipline "No"
33. The Yard
34. The Evening Reading List
35. The Chores
36. The Grandparent Mentoring
37. Teaching The Model
38. The Central Classic
39. The Awakening
40. The Interruption "Yes"
41. The Stateswoman
42. The Core Reading List
43. The Degree Program
44. The Formal Ball
45. The Assignment
46. The Mission
47. The Friend
48. The Core Phase Curriculum
49. The Love of Learners Curriculum
50. Spring if for Science
51. Fall is for Beginnings
52. The Subscription
53. The Dinner Meal
54. The Discipline "Yes"
55. The Academic "Yes"

Once you add and apply each of these ingredients, your home will be transformed into a wonderfully functioning TJEd home. We have added many of these but still have several more to go. I can't wait to get them all added!!

I want to clearly state that A Thomas Jefferson Education is not just for the kids, it's for the entire family. It's NOT a curriculum, it's A WAY OF LIFE! 



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The Seven Keys to Great Teaching

There are seven areas that I focus on while I am mentoring my kids. They seem very simple but they are of great importance when it comes to A Thomas Jefferson Education.

Allow me to quote Oliver DeMille....

There are seven principles of successful education; when they are applied, learning occurs. When they are ignored or rejected, the quantity and quality of education decreases. Whatever the student’s individual interests or learning styles, these principles apply.

And whatever your role in education—home, public, private, higher education or corporate training—the application of any and eventually all of the seven keys will significantly improve your effectiveness and success.

1. Classics, not textbooks:  Great ideas are most effectively learned directly from the greatest thinkers, historians, artists, philosophers and prophets, and their original works. Great works inspire greatness, just as mediocre or poor works usually inspire mediocre and poor achievement.

This first key means that in pursuit of a transformational education, in preference to second- or third-generation interpretations, we study original sources — the intellectual and creative works of the world’s great thinkers, artists, scientists, etc., in the form they were produced.

2. Mentors, not Professors:  The professor/expert tells the students, invites them to conform to certain ideas and standards, and grades or otherwise rewards/punishes them for their various levels of conformity.

In contrast, the mentor finds out the student’s goals, interests, talents, weaknesses, strengths and purpose, and then helps him develop and carry out a plan to prepare for his unique mission.

Parents and teachers who apply the Seven Keys can be an effective part of the mentoring of a student in the early phases of learning, and help prepare the individual to fully take advantage of the influence of later mentors that will be formative for continued development and achievement.

3. Inspire, not Require:  None of the keys is as highly celebrated and as poorly applied as this one. This is perhaps the least understood and least practiced of the Seven Keys. It is probably the single most important element of Leadership Education.

There are really only two ways to teach—you can inspire the student to voluntarily and enthusiastically choose to do the hard work necessary to get a great education, or you can attempt to require it of them.

Instead of asking, “what can I do to make these students perform?” the great teacher says, “I haven’t yet become truly inspirational. What do I need to do so that these students will want to do the hard work to get a superb education?”

4. Structure Time, not Content:  Great mentors help their students establish and follow a consistent schedule, but they don’t micromanage the content.

Of course, this principle is applied differently at different levels of student development...

Phases of Learning: There are 4 phases of learning: Core Phase, Love of Learning Phase, Scholar Phase, and Depth Phase. I will talk about these phases in my next post.

5. Quality, not Conformity: With the student feeling inspired and working hard to get a great education, the mentor should give appropriate feedback and help.

But the feedback should ideally not take the form of common “grading”, but rather personalized feedback, commenting on the particular strengths of a work, including clarity of expression, original thought, technical precision, correlation of principles and ideas, effectiveness of argumentation or other reader appeal, etc.

These are clearly directed toward the evaluation of a written work, but similar concepts can be adapted for feedback on other products of a student’s scholarly efforts, be they organizational, artistic, personal, interpersonal, innovative, etc. Great teachers and schools reward quality–quality work and quality performance.

6.Simplicity, not Complexity: The more complex the curriculum, the more reliant the student becomes on experts, and the more likely the student is to get caught up in the Requirement/Conformity trap.

This leads to effective follower training, but is more a socialization technique than an educational method.

Education means the ability to think, independently and creatively, and the skill of applying one’s knowledge in dealing with people and situations in the real world.

Great teachers train great thinkers, and great leaders, by keeping it simple: students study the greatest minds and characters in history in every field, write about and discuss what is learned in numerous settings, and apply what is learned in various ways under the tutelage of a mentor.

7. YOU, not Them: If you think these principles are about improving your child’s or student’s education, you will never have the power to inspire them to do the hard work of self-education.

Focus on your education, and invite them along for the ride.

Read the classics in all fields, find mentors who inspire and demand quality, structure your days to include study time for yourself, and become a person who inspires great education.

A parent or teacher doesn’t have to be an “expert” to inspire great education (the classics provide the expertise), but he does have to be setting the example.

So there you have it, the Seven Keys... what I'm trying to accomplish in my home on a daily basis.  I find it hard some days to stay off  "the conveyor belt" but when I find myself "on the conveyor best", I get off as quickly as I can. It can be so hard to break away from what you've always known, even if you know it's not what's best for you. We are such creatures of habit and tend to find our wheels back in the same old ruts.

Slowly but surely I'm getting there. I'm understanding more and more that I can't educate my children....they have to educate themselves!!

Knowledge truly is Freedom....true knowledge...Liber! 

Liber (Latin): the root word in Library and Liberty!!  Without Liber there is no true education nor true liberty!!

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Our Symbols

After teaching my kids that the flag was the symbol for our nation and what it symbolized, we talked about what our symbols would look like if we each had one. Then Hannah and I sat down (Gabe by this point has tuned out and was playing airplanes...like always) and created a drawing of what our symbol would look like. Then we both took turns trying to guess what the other's symbol represented. I was amazed at some of Hannah's choices of symbols. I figured out all but the boat. But I was more amazed that Hannah figured out what my symbol meant, except for the anchor. She's one smart cookie and she knows her mommy well!

Here are our symbols. Can you guess what they mean?

Hannah's symbol

My symbol

When Greg got home from work, Hannah showed him what we had been up to that day. She got him to try and guess what our "symbols" represented. It was somewhat humorous to hear what he thought they meant. After hearing their true meanings, Greg decided he wanted to make one as well. He felt inspired by our symbols and wanted one of his own.

I'm actually tempted to do a replica of my symbol since this one was done in a matter of minutes with colored pencils. I'd like to create an actual piece of art that I could possibly frame.  Maybe I'll add that to my next "Six Month Goals"!  :)

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