Homeschooling Boys!
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we are not experts, we just happen to have four boys, so we have some ideas of things that work!
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When you start homeschooling boys, the first thing you do is buy them something to build with!
We use Legos, for the most part, but I am sure there are other things you can use too.
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What kinds of Legos do you buy and where? Answer: You buy versatile sets that can make many different kinds of things instead of sets that only. You buy them on ebay, or there is an online homeschool store that has many unique and educational lego sets that I can't find at Toy stores. http://www.learningthings.com/go.asp?agent=aplus
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Where can you put Legos? And do you make them clean up every night? Answer: Ideally, you will find a small spot that they can leave their creations in progress up all the time. For years, the only place has been a section of the garage on the floor. Even though it isn't the cleanest and not climate controlled, they still spend hours there creating and applying math concepts while designing houses and buildings.
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More ideas on the boy's Lego page!
Boaz's Castle
Egypt?
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For geography & history, let them have time to play, to act out the scenes that you've read to them, or that they've read book
s about. Here are some scenes from our boys' playtime.
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With boys, you should periodically expose them to things that you might not think they will like. Sometimes they surprise you...
I notice that our son, Eli, brings poetry to read to me that he likes (because of our studies of poetry over the years?), and he also speaks in verse periodically. :
Because music is important to our family, the boys begin piano lessons at about age 6. |
At age 11, Eli had read a book from Mom's shelf called _A Hymn Is Born.
It's pretty good, Mom, he remarked. He regaled the other children with nighttime stories from the book for several nights.
His favorite story from the book was about Isaac Watts (late 1600's), who was extremely verbal by training. The boy's father taught him to speak five languages, and his mother taught him poetry for twelve years. He spoke in verse so often that his father threatened to flail him for rhyming his daily conversation. His response?
"father do some pity take, and I will no more verses make!
Eli has also had some training in verse and waxes poetic occasionally. While we were doing up sweet corn brought back from our weekend trip to
Kansas, we found some occasional corn worms. Once when Dad smashed a corn worm, it splattered a little bit in his face. Eli then made a rhyme:
Learn from your Daddy and be ye wise;
Don't smash a worm too close to your eyes.
When your boys reach about 11 or so, if they have had some exposure to poetry over the years, they may enjoy learning more about poetry in our Wonder of Poetry course.
If you sign up for our newsletter, you will receive book reviews periodically of some of our boys' favorite books!
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Around the age of 10, they may like to have their own
desk to work at, since that is the time they might actually want to sit down and write or draw, just for fun! They also like those plastic storage containers with drawers for all their little tidbits and collectibles.
Here is a desk we asked a neighbor to make for us. Eli's bulletin board goes on the wall under the hutch, but it is not shown in the photo.
