Dad's ready for anything

How do you beat the early spring cabin fever, or end of summer “I’m bored out of my mind’s”?? How do you get rid of your husband and a house full of teenagers (some of them yours even!), for the day in the process? Send them to play paintball!

We became a paint balling family about ten years ago. Maybe I should rephrase that, since I’ve never played before. My hubby gathers together as many kids as we have guns & masks for (unless they have their own, which several do), and they head up to the hills to go shoot each other with paintballs.

Even girls play! And the boys are surprised, and then impressed. Especially about our daughter J, who has been playing for years. I once overheard a friend of her brother’s tell another kid “Don’t worry about hurting J, she can take care of herself. Watch out for her!” Yep, she can be pretty brutal from what I hear.

Paintball is *NOT* a cheap hobby, but it is one which can get almost the entire family involved. Our younger guys like to shoot the paintball guns at targets in the yard, and D1 has gotten to ride along when they go play in the hills. Daddy made him stay in the truck bed, so he wouldn’t get shot, BUT gave him a paintball gun so he could take shots at everyone if they were close enough. He had a great time, and guess who he got in the shoulder? Daddy!

I feel I must provide another disclaimer: Yes, guns can be dangerous, but only as dangerous as the person handling them. Paintball guns shoot balls of paint, not bullets. Paintball is a relatively safe sport, provided caution is used and safeguards are used correctly. EVERYONE wears a helmet/face mask with eye protection. Even in hot weather they all usually wear long pants and sleeves (camouflage is optional). Yes, if you get hit it hurts. It leaves a paintball sized welt that goes away between a few hours & a few days later. It’s also a LOT of fun and gets the kids out hiking, running, and active.

Paintball welt-affectionately known as a beesting

Even the kids who’d rather sit and exercise their thumbs on the XBox controller. It is a great remedy if you’re a dad who just doesn’t connect with your teenagers, or you aren’t sure WHAT TO DO WITH THEM. This gives you common ground, and fun! I am not sanctioning violence against your children. Just good, clean fun.

Taking your kids out and shooting them could be fun too, but you know what they say about paybacks!  ;)

Read past ABC’s of Homeschooling posts.

1. Give a preview.

2. Give them tools. A clipboard, pen, paper, and a magnifying glass are an open invitation for observation! A digital camera allows instant recording and further examination.

3. Make predictions. In the scientific method, this is called creating a hypothesis. Have them guess what it will be like, write it down, and then they will be tuned into looking for what they are hoping to see.

4. Get outside (the comfort zone). When anyone goes outside of their comfort zone, whether that is just the balancing on top of a fence, or hiking to the top of a mountain, senses are heightened. They will take it all in!

5. Go multisensory. Some people learn through sight, others through touch, and still others have to physically manipulate their world. Do it. Try new things.

6. Disprove something. Nothing gets kids fired up like trying to prove that an idea is wrong! Countering theories and arguments are a favorite pastime of kids in the 9-14 year age range. Turn those sometimes dicey attitudes to be used for good, and you will have active participants (as in #3.)

7. Try it blind. Or deaf. Drop one sense, and see what happens with the others. Taking away their sense of sight will force them to become more observant through sound, smell, and touch.

8. Walk in someone else’s shoes. Exchange your own life for someone else’s. Have them trade lives with someone, historical or fictional, and then record it. This is great for video!

Read past ABC’s of Homeschooling posts.

Learning is natural.

Schooling is not. First time homeschoolers always encounter so many different methods and opinions on this new venture that they are beginning, that it’s easy to get caught up in the curriculum game. Which curriculum is best? Which will make my kids the smartest? Which will pour the most literature/math/science into them so that they can pass the (fill the name) exam? Which books are on that book list again?

Back up a minute. You are teaching children, not testers. You are in your home, not an overpriced classical Christian academy. Take a deep breath. Children are naturally curious about the world around them. They naturally enjoy being read to. They naturally like to move and have fun. Notice a theme here?  Not to state the obvious, but kids will learn anything that they are naturally interested in.

Why make this harder than it has to be?

Curriculum is well and good, but it is a tool. Use it as such to reach the goals that you have for your kids, but don’t live by it. If you and your kids are slaves to your curriculum, how long do you think you will enjoy homeschooling?

Life itself is a great teacher. Gardening, grocery shopping, filling out job applications for the first time, learning to budget money, finishing reading a huge novel, or finally making that volcano erupt after six tries… these are experiences that will stick with them!

YOU are a great teacher. Every smile, every story read, every glue-sticked project, timeline figure memorized, or random bird fact explored has meaning. Your time with them is precious, and even when it’s hard you’ll still wish you had that time back years later. Don’t waste it.

You can do this. Your KIDS can do this. It’s not hard. It really is very natural. Enjoy your time as a homeschooling mom, because it won’t last forever. Enjoy the trips to the library, backyard soccer, games of Tag and Duck Duck Goose, collecting leaves, and reading Narnia aloud until your voice is hoarse.

Learning is natural. Schooling is not. Encourage interests, praise strengths, build up weaknesses, love, learn, and pray. Mothering is as natural as learning.

That’s why I feel for my kids. Over 13 years I’ve taught 5 kids multiplication, and it always seems to be the same as when I was a kid. We skip count, do practice drills, use flash cards, and stress just a wee little bit over all those facts. I mean let’s face it: The rest of their upper level math skills hang on their ability to multiply, quickly and easily. No pressure or anything, right?

Since we always encounter the same things, I’ve had to become very resourceful. We have found some of the very best helps for kids to learn their times tables that I could possibly ever hope for. Some, I wish I’d had when I was 8!

Timez Attack is a full-fledged video game that teaches all the multiplication facts. Yes, really, an actual video game! Best of all, the basic version is totally FREE. If you upgrade to the premium version (which we did at Christmas time!) it unlocks 7 worlds that they can go through in addition to the Castle, which is the free world.

No matter whether you get the paid version or not, your kids will be able to learn ALL of their math facts with Timez Attack. My kids jump on this game right after breakfast frequently, and I have to tell them to go get dressed and make their beds first. That’s how cool it is! And this is the one resource I wished we’d had when our bigger kids were little. They totally missed out on TimezAttack!

Skip counting is the basic way to learn multiplication, and everyone knows that, but not everyone can SING their 3′s, 7′s or 9′s… but my kids can! I discovered One Hundred Sheep when my 17 year old was a second grader. We had tried two  other skip counting tapes (yes, before CD’s were everywhere, lol). One was from Math U See (Mack the Muskrat, or something like that) and it was awful. We used Math U See curriculum, but that tape? Oh boy. NOT a keeper.

The other one we tried was one that just set the problems to music, “Two times two is four, two times two is four”… my kids couldn’t stand it and neither could I! Then we got this CD. Each skip counting song is actually a different SONG, with a catchy tune, and a vocalist who can sing! All of my kids have enjoyed it. We had the tape originally, and I lent it to a friend about 6 years ago and never saw it again. I finally tracked it down and bought the CD when the boys were starting homeschooling. We love it and I think you will too.

Some kids need that tactile input, and some need visual. Learning Wrap-Ups provide BOTH in a fast paced way. They just wrap the thread around the plastic board, from left to right, then flip it over and they can check their answers on their own! These are great for taking in the car when you need to run errands and have to bring the kids along. We have several sets of them!

Last but definitely NOT least, Donna Young’s resources are fantastic. Donna has this amazing website just chock FULL of printables for homeschoolers! Two of my favorite helps for multiplication are her free Tri-Flash Cards, and the multiplication charts. We have printed sets of the Tri-Flash Cards for addition/subtraction and multiplication/division and used them until they were worn out! I keep the multiplication charts and 100′s charts in plastic sheet protectors, and the kids practice with them using dry erase markers. If you have never explored over at DonnaYoung.org, go there now! 

Multiplication can be tricky because there are so many facts to learn. Isn’t it great that we have access to so many different study helps?

Do you have any great ways to help your kids learn their math facts? Please share them in the comments!!

 Read past posts from the ABC’s of Homeschooling

Let me tell you about my family.

We lose things. More than once, D1 has lost his math books or other curriculum. As I type, we are missing his entire set of Teaching Textbooks Math CD’s. He is on the second CD, and has not been able to do any of his regular math since we started back to school a week ago. Sure, we are filling in, but I’m stressed because we need to find those CD’s! For the time being, it is Timez Attack to the rescue.

We have lost lots of things. Camera cards, small dry erase boards, flashcards, math books, pencils, notebooks, and library books. Oh yes, THOSE little babies cost money if you lose them! Then there are cell phones, car keys, glasses cases, phone numbers, and birthday money. Lost is a Being Verb. OK maybe it’s not but it should be, because it IS a state of being in this house!!

I’ve come close to losing my marbles too. Lately, actually. Still overwhelmed with the clutter I have allowed to build up, I just started on it. Just. And I’m sure that somewhere in the piles of papers and books and stuff, either in my room, or in the school room, is D1′s set of Math CDs. And I am also pretty sure this won’t be the last time something like this happens, since it isn’t the first time either.

What have you lost lately? Or what’s the worst thing that you lost?

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