Setting up a vigorous homeschool day

Monday, 28. April 2008 by Renee Ellison

To motivate your children and keep them on track, getting through their subjects every day, make up a chart that is on the wall in “Grand Central Station” in your house so they can check off each accomplishment each day.  Get going TODAY and require a FULL schedule of work and chores and developmental exercise (i.e. more push-ups tomorrow than today, etc…begin EASY), using whatever academic materials you already have, no matter how inferior.  Do everything in 15 minute blocks…but perhaps the chores/exercise could just be 5 minutes in between each academic subject.  This will keep them awake and vigorous.  (For more about structuring your homeschool day, read our QuickBook, The Right Stuff.)
The important thing here is that you are developing productive life PATTERNS/HABITS.  Begin with the Bible at the top of the list: 10 minutes of reading and 5 minutes of praying (Melanie even gets on her KNEES)...this begins to develop both of these disciplines for the REST of THEIR LIFE.  Prepare for a real battle here…the enemy goes after beginnings.  Make sure their Bibles are EASY enough…go to that used bookstore on the right hand side on the way to David, and find Bibles that are easy versions with lots of pictures, if you don’t already have any.  (And have them check off the books of the Bible as they read them in the table of contents…alternating from NT to Old Test (so that they aren’t forever in the OLD or New).  There is no downside to raising a holy child.  Our first and last, most important parenting.