You Can Teach Your Child Successfully by Ruth Beechick

You Can Teach Your Child Successfully helped me be a better parent educator.  Here are just a few nuggets that have helped me:

1. Teaching your child at home is not rocket science. You CAN do this thing that God has called you to do. The important thing is knowing that God has called you! (Because if He hasn't called you, then you will not be as successful.)

2. Share reading with children. Read them stories. Talk about literature. Take notice of vocabulary. Teach children to read in three different ways. (Textual - to study, Imaginational - Literature and poetry, Functional -discernment, inferences, as well map reading, schedules, tables and graphs, etc...)

3. Teach your child to write. It does not take a lot of money or complicated formulaic programs. Teach your child the need for writing. Allow him "real" writing opportunities. (Thank you's, business letters, correspondence, invitations). Have your child write to think. Have him write down all he knows about a topic. Allow him to discover the gaps he needs to fill in. Teach summarizing. Use copywork, dictation and modeling.

"I cannot stress strongly enough that progress toward more mature writing happens within the child's total thinking abilities. It does not happen in any easy manner by simply learning techniques, forms, or tricks of writing." ~Ruth Beechick

The above quote is proving itself true all of the time in my home. As children develop thinking skills their writing improves proportionately. As a result I spend a lot of time teaching thinking skills in the course of our literature discussions, movie watching, and Bible study.

5. Grammar is best taught in context of writing. As a result we use Easy Grammar to keep skills fresh, but I believe the most fruit comes during times of revising the children's writing samples. This is where I teach sentence structure, word choice, capitalization and punctuation and actually see the light come on.

5. Spelling is best taught in the context of a child's writing. This has proven true in our home. There is no need to teach words the child already knows. This said, I have found it best to teach a good solid year of intensive and systematic phonics instruction prior to using this method. We use Spell to Write and Read in a very Beechick manner. It works for us!

6. Ruth Beechick taught me that using literature to teach math was a good idea. Then a friend, from SHS, began her own Living Math website.

7. In speaking of history and social studies related topics, Ruth Beechick counsels, "Since there is no widespread agreement on what should be taught in each grade, you can be assured that you will do no damage to your own curriculum by making adjustments that fit your situation. If you are teaching children of several ages, it is perfectly all right to have all of them studying Columbus and the explorers at the same time." Love it! Ruth goes on to describe how we might use a textbook as an outline for our history studies while utilizing the public library to deepen our understanding. This is my favorite way to teach history! This gives me freedom from expensive curriculae. Last year we used an ABeka 8th grade textbook and the library for the entire family. I really have enjoyed the idea of holding family meetings to decide what we'll be studying or reading next. It's good to hear everyone's input and helps me lesson plan in the long run. The history chapter of this book is my favorite. There is just too much wisdom to list here.

8. The Bible is literature. The idea of doing Bible as literature came to me recently when I became disheartened with our literature program this year. The Lord gave me no peace about the few choices we had tried. So I finally gave in and ordered Kay Arthur's Daniel study. Matt, Drew and I are happily studying God's Word for our literature now. There has been excellent fruit ripening as a result. I now see that this is what God wanted from us all year.

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