by Heidi Khalil ….. November 25, 2022
…. (continued from Homeschooling for 30 years) ….. For instance, let’s say that you have a child who loves animals. Find out which animals they love the most. Then proceed on a journey to teach them about these animals in every way you can, while holding onto the element of surprise and fun. You can plan… zoo/safari trips, touring the pound, library books and reports…. with full drawings and/or digital or cut out pictures, purchase one of the animals, let them join specialty animal clubs…. such as in 4H or FFA. Plan in advance, so that they can enter their animal into the fair. This is very exciting…especially if you get to stay on the fairgrounds every day. Don’t let them quit things that they start because they feel lazy. Pray through this.
I found that 4H has such a wealth of information available for you and your child in just about any area that you child would be interested in. When my older kids were small, the information was free. Later on, they started charging $1 per subject, no matter how many pages it had. Not bad at all. I couldn’t find a 4H club that worked for us, so I started one. The organization was awesome to work with. I told some of my other friends that were homeschooling and wanted these experiences for their children too. We ended having our meetings during the day, with lunch and the children got to do different activities as a class. We had sewing and cooking taught by one of our moms who had a PHD in home economics. We went on many field trips. We had woodworking class, and they all were able to make many projects to enter into the fair. My children have so many ribbons and trophies from things like showing goats, fine arts, baking bread, etc. at the county fair. The children would also leave with quite a hefty check in prize money for their entries. It was always a special time, and they learned so much, and are empowered to perform so many things that their traditionally educated piers wouldn’t have the confidence to attempt.
One weekend we were at a camp, where the lady’s restroom had a toilet that was constantly running. My teen daughter instinctively took the cover off the back of the toilet and fixed it in about 5 minutes. She used to work for my husband with his construction/handyman business from time to time and knew exactly what to do when tools or parts were not readily available. Another positive bonus is that children who are taught these life skills know that food comes from farms, not grocery stores. They are not strangers to growing gardens and raising & harvesting the meat from farm animals raised for the table. In times of great challenges in life, I know that my kids and their friends whose parents took this same route, know what to do as adults to keep their families fed & clothed.
Mighty Hand Publishing 