Author Archives: Marcy Crabtree

About Marcy Crabtree

Marcy spent nearly 15 years as an Ob nurse, sometimes juggling homeschooling with the job she calls her first ministry. Grateful that her main ministry today is at home, she has been married to Tom for 16 years, and is 12-year-old Ben's proud momma. Her homeschool style is delight-directed with lots of unit studies, lapbooks and notebooks. She is greatly influenced by Charlotte Mason’s love of living books and the Principle Approach method of homeschooling. If she ever writes a book herself, it’s likely to be titled "Homeschooling by the Field Trip Method."

Delight-Directed Learning for ANY Homeschool {Part Five}

Welcome back to my series, Delight-directed Learning for ANY Homeschool.

delight-directed homeschool

In our first four discussions on this topic, we looked at the following ideas:

Part One: Talk to your kids or maybe just pay attention to what they talk about most. What piques their curiosity? There really are very few topics that cannot be developed into an educational experience. We often take these topics and create unit studies.

Part Two: Notice when your student gets excited by something you are already teaching. It really can be as simple as giving your student some extra time to follow a rabbit trail.

Part Three: Notice what has piqued the interest of your student and then plan a field trip based on that interest.

Part Four: Create a “fun school” jar with exciting activities you know your kids will enjoy.

This week, in my last installment, I want to expand on one last idea that I mentioned briefly in Part Two.

Fill a book basket with books on your student’s topic of interest.

Using book baskets is something I learned early on in our homeschool journey, and this method of learning serves a dual purpose.

First of all, filling a basket full of colorful picture books, interesting nonfiction books, and inspiring biographies exposes your children to different genres of literature and encourages a love of reading.

Secondly, reading is just a great way to learn. Put away the boring workbooks and dry textbooks and let your students enjoy learning about interesting topics from real, living books. Even if you do nothing else but let your child read (and read to him), deep, rich learning will occur.

Head to the library and check out books on any subject your student wishes to learn about, and then spend a day (or a week) reading all of them. You will be amazed at how much your kids learn from reading about topics of interest to them. It’s likely you can also shop your own bookshelves for books to read, too. You’re a homeschool mom; every room of your house has a bookshelf, right?

If your kids don’t read them all, that’s okay, too. But chances are good that if you take them to the library, teach them how to find books based on a topic they love, and then set them free to choose the books, they will at least look at them! Use them for required reading, free reading, read aloud time, and bedtime stories. Any time, day or night. It doesn’t have to be just during school hours. If your kids are reading about a topic they love, they will want to read (or listen to you read) about it all the time!

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Using this method has encouraged my son to love reading for pleasure, and for school. For a long time, he didn’t even realize he was “doing school.” Today, I rarely have to make any kind of reading list for him. He devours books faster than I can supply them. Our library always has a stack ready to be picked up. And yes, there are many days that all he does for school is read. And I am perfectly fine with that.

Which brings me to the topic of working with kids who don’t love to read so much. That is another great benefit of this method. If you have reluctant readers, be patient. This method of learning may not be an immediate hit, but if you fill their book baskets with books about subjects they choose and are passionate about, it’s only a matter of time. In the beginning, they may only flip through and look at the pictures. That’s okay. Give them time. Read to them more. Help them explore things they love with books. They will come around eventually.

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Read more from Marcy in her Author Box below!

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

Delight-Directed Learning for ANY Homeschool — Part Four (free printable)

 

delight-directed homeschoolWelcome back to my series on how to add delight-directed learning to ANY homeschool! You can read the first 3 installments here:  Part One,  Part Two and Part Three!

This is probably one of my very favorite ways to add delight-directed learning to our homeschool. And with summer upon us, the timing for this could not be more perfect!

Create a “fun school” jar with exciting activities you know your kids will enjoy.

The concept is super simple. Just grab a Mason jar or empty peanut butter jar — even a coffee can will work. Write your fun school ideas on slips of paper, fold them up, and toss them in the jar. On days you want to add some delight-directed learning to your day, you’ll have plenty of ideas there for the choosing.

I’ll give you a few ideas to get you started, but please — take requests from your children to add to the jar, too (that’s part of what makes it delight-directed!). Then take a break from “school” and let them choose from the jar what they will do that day. Here are 15 fun school jar suggestions to get you started:
  • Go on a nature walk with a list of items to look for (leaves, moss, animal tracks, acorns, flowers, etc.). I have a free nature printable I’d love for you to use for this. It has a scavenger hunt and journal pages for all four seasons. Download your free Nature Through the Seasons PDF.
  • Create art.
  • Do messy science experiments.
  • Collect an insect or other creature in your backyard (butterfly, moth, ants, spider, turtle) and observe it for a couple of days before releasing it. We have a box turtle that lives in our yard. My son loves to keep him around for a couple of days now and then for observation. He can tell you more about box turtles than most kids, I think.
  • Learn about how to use Word or PowerPoint.
  • Grab a camera and look for interesting things to photograph. Learn about digital photography while you’re at it.
  • Visit a nursing home with a list of questions to interview one of the residents.
  • Plant a garden. Even if you live in an urban area or apartment, you can grow herbs in a container or use root vegetables to make a table top garden.
  • Visit your local zoo or aquarium. Choose one or two animals to learn about before you go, then photograph and observe while there.
  • Find a creek or pond and collect water samples to study. Find rocks perfect for skipping and see how many times you can skip a rock through the water.
  • Visit your local state or national parks. National and state Parks offer amazing fun and educational opportunities for a low cost. We even seek them out when on vacation!
  • Learn about the history of ice cream; then go out for an ice cream cone.
  • Go geocaching!
  • Make pine cone bird feeders and hang them in a tree in your backyard.
  • Taking a walking tour of your city.

fun school jar

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

Delight-Directed Learning for ANY Homeschool — Part Three (Plan a Field Trip)

delight-directed homeschool

Welcome back to my series on how to add delight-directed learning to ANY homeschool? Did you catch the first 2 installments? If not, please do click over to read Part One and Part Two!

This month, my tip may take just a tad bit more planning, but your students will love it!

Notice what has piqued the interest of your student and then plan a field trip based on that interest.

Last year, we were studying about the Civil War, but the part that really interested my son the most were the battles themselves. We are fortunate to live in a state with battle sites, so we sought opportunities to stop and visit them when we had the chance. As it happened, our state historical society also had a Civil War exhibit we could visit. We even planned our summer vacation to include a visit to Fort Sumter.

You don’t have to go to such great lengths to plan a field trip that will add delight to your homeschool. A simple visit to the zoo to visit the polar bears during your study of the arctic tundra or a tour of your State Capitol while learning about elections will suffice. In fact, there are so many ways to plan a field trip you might never have thought about!

Once, when my son was completely obsessed with dogs, I called the local animal shelter and asked for a tour. They were thrilled to accommodate us and I ended up planning an event for our local homeschool group. The animal shelter did a fantastic job of teaching the kids all about dogs, including safety measures, breeds, and responsible animal control. Of course, they also got to play with the puppies after!

plan a field trip

When my son was younger, like many little boys, he went through a period of being completely obsessed with jobs that required a uniform — firemen, paramedics, police officers, mailmen. I ended up planning a several week-long unit study on community workers. In one afternoon, I was able to make phone calls to all of these local offices to schedule a meeting with our local community workers. Ben was in heaven as he put on the full firemen gear, turned on the lights and siren in an ambulance, and climbed inside a police car.

Planning delight-directed field trips is limited only by your child’s curiosity and your creative planning. And they add a measure of learning to homeschooling unmatched by any book or curriculum. Any time you can add a hands-on experience on top of following the passions of your child, real learning — the kind that runs deep — will happen.

It may require a little planning to pull off a delight-directed field trip, but the memories made are more than worth the effort. Besides, great field trips are fun for the mom, too!

So, tell me . . . what field trips are you planning for your homeschool in the coming weeks?

plan a field trip

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

Delight-directed Learning for ANY Homeschool — Part Two

delight-directed homeschool

Welcome back! Did you catch the first installment in this series last month? I shared about how talking to your kids (or listening to what they talk about) can give you many ideas about how to incorporate delight-directed learning into your homeschool. If you missed that article, be sure to click over and read more about that.

This month, we’re going to take a look at another great idea for accomplishing the same goal of adding delight-directed learning to ANY homeschool.

Another effective method to encourage delight-directed learning is to simply notice when your student gets excited by something you are already teaching.

Many homeschool moms are intimidated by delight-directed learning because they believe it means that everything has to be done from scratch. But that is not necessarily true. You don’t have to create an entire unit study or do anything else particularly labor-intensive. In fact, our journey into delight-directed learning began when we veered off course from a pre-written, pre-secheduled, pre-purchased, boxed curriculum because something we were already studying piqued the curiosity of my son. And it happened more than once!

It really can be as simple as giving your student some extra time to follow a rabbit trail. You can do this by providing a themed book basket filled with picture books, chapter books, nonfiction resource books, and DVDs. Or you can add arts and crafts, projects, lapbooks, notebooking activities or website searches for their chosen topic. How much you give your student access to will depend upon how much time you are willing to veer off course.

We’ve had rabbit trails take just a day to satisfy the need to know more. Others have literally taken weeks, even months. If you suspect this new interest will be ongoing, you could simply create another “class” for your homeschool and offer that option for continued study on a daily or weeky basis. Then resume your usual lesson plan.

However you decide to indulge your student, there can be great rewards. Being willing to stop and follow rabbit trails can delight your student, and creating an atmosphere of delight does wonders to encourage a love of learning.

Isn’t that our goal as homeschool moms?

delight directed learning

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

Delight-directed Learning for ANY Homeschool — Part One

delight-directed homeschool

The delight-directed learning method has been the joy of our homeschooling for several years now. Are you familiar with the term? We happened upon it purely by accident when my son was in third grade, and we kept falling off our well-organized lesson plan.

Has that ever happened to you?

It might look something like this:

The next lesson in your geography curriculum takes you on a tour of Canada. After spending a wonderful day of learning all about the climate, the lesson plan leads you on a trip down a stream in British Colombia, where you discover the architect of the animal world, the beaver. Suddenly your child is obsessed with beavers. He wants to find books at the library, watch videos, draw and paint beavers, and spends much of the day building beaver dams and lodges out of Lincoln logs. At lunchtime, you find him gnawing a raw carrot the way a beaver would gnaw a tree trunk.

The next day, when you are ready to move on to the next country, your curious and creative child just wants more time learning about beavers.

What’s a devoted homeschooling mom to do?

You could just tell him how sorry you are that there is no more time for learning about beavers because South America is next on the lesson plan. Or, you could put the lesson plan away for a few days and enjoy the delight your child has found in this interesting creature.

The above is a true account from our own homeschool. In this case, we moved on to the next thing on the lesson plan, but when it happened again a few weeks later (this time with Mexico and butterflies), I took notice. In fact, after we finished our intense study of the Monarch butterfly, we went back to Canada and the beaver.

Our homeschool has never been the same.

Perhaps you can relate. You might be the homeschool mom who just moved on. Or maybe you are the one who stopped and relished in your child’s curiosity for a day or two (or ten). There is not a thing wrong with either option, but today, and for the next few months, I want to take some time to help you see the possibilities of adding delight-directed learning to any homeschool. To YOUR homeschool.

This 5-part series will give you some simple tools and methods of observation you can use to just let loose and allow the interests and passions of your children to dictate what they learn, for that is the basic definition of delight-directed learning. It may be something you will completely fall in love with and want to do all the time (that is exactly what happened to us), or perhaps you will be able to find one day a week (or month) to devote to delight-directed learning. I believe you will enjoy it, and I know your kids will.

This first method I want to share this month is simple — just talk to your kids.

Or maybe just pay attention to what they talk about most. What piques their curiosity? If your children speak endlessly about whales or Ben Franklin or knights or princesses, begin there. There really are very few topics that cannot be developed into an educational experience. We often take these topics and create unit studies.

A unit study can last for a week, a month, or even a year. You are in control of how long you spend on a topic. This is a great way to homeschool all the time, but if you’re not comfortable doing that, use this method for a nice break now and then when you are following the lead of your student, or for a summer study.

delight-directed learning

That should get you started. No fear, mommas! Don’t be afraid to put away the lesson plan and follow the lead of your students. Even if for just one day. You may surprise yourself and forget to bring it out again!

What do you think? Will you give it a try? Have you already?

Join me again next month when I’ll share another easy to way to integrate delight-directed learning into ANY homeschool.

Heidi St John Homeschooling Guide to Daylight

A Quick and Easy Christmas Morning Breakfast Casserole

Many of you are probably like me on Christmas morning.

A wee bit frazzled and a lot bit sleep-deprived.

Is this the scene at your house? Christmas morning generally begins with wide-eyed excitement (much too early in the morning, I might add), quickly followed by the opening of gifts, cleaning up the resulting mounds of wrapping paper and ribbon litter, and finally, excited children who just want to play?

And now it’s time to make breakfast. But making that big Christmas morning breakfast means you’ll miss out on a lot of the fun part of Christmas morning — the watching the joy spilling out all over the family room floor as your children relish in receiving “exactly what they wanted.”

I discovered the perfect solution a few years ago, when I attended a Christmas brunch for the ladies in my church and my mom surprised me by bringing along a yummy dish. This easy and delicious Christmas morning casserole is made ahead, the night before, and then quickly slipped into the oven to bake while I enjoy my family. All it needs is a side a fruit and your beverage of choice, and you have the perfect meal for Christmas morning. If you feel particularly inspired, and sometimes I do, toss some biscuits into the oven with the casserole.

the busy mom breakfast casserole

Nana’s Sausage Breakfast Casserole

Serves 8

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

1 lb. pork sausage

6 slices white bread, cubed

8 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. dry mustard

2 cups sharp cheddar cheese

ground black pepper to taste

 

Directions:

1. Brown sausage in a skillet, breaking into small pieces as it cooks. Drain on paper towels.

2. Layer bread on bottom of a greased 9×13 glass casserole dish.

3. Spread sausage over bread pieces.

4. Mix eggs, cheese, salt, mustard and pepper in a large bowl.

5. Pour egg mixture over sausage and bread.

6. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

8. Bake 45 minutes or until the center of the casserole is firm and a knife inserted comes out clean.

 

What are your tips for a stress free Christmas morning? Do you have a quick and easy Christmas morning meal idea to share. Let’s chat more in the comments!

5 Christmas Picture Books That Will Point Your Kids to Jesus

I will warn you ahead of time, this post could have been titled, “5 Christmas Picture Books That Will Make Momma Cry.”

Despite those tears that usually mean my son reads the final pages, these books remain one of the most special parts of our Christmas celebration every year. At a time when the focus often drifts to receiving, rather than giving, Santa, instead of Jesus, and filling stockings seems more pressing than filling our hearts, reading these books will help redirect your family back to the reason we celebrate — the birth of a Savior.

5 Christmas Books

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The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski

Jonathan Toomey is the best woodcarver in the valley, but he is always alone and never smiles. No one knows about the mementos of his lost wife and child that he keeps in an unopened drawer. But one early winter’s day, a widow and her young son approach him with a gentle request that leads to a joyful miracle.

 

The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg

One dark November night a stranger rides into a small prairie town. Who is he? Why has he come? The townspeople wish he were a doctor, a dressmaker, or a trader. But the children have the greatest wish of all, a deep, quiet, secret wish. Then a young girl named Lucy befriends the newcomer. When he reveals his identity and shares with her the legend of the candy cane, she discovers fulfillment of her wishes and the answer to her town’s dreams. Now will she share what she has learned?

 

Silver Packages: An Appalachian Christmas Story by Cynthia Rylant

In Appalachia each Christmas, a boy named Frankie waits beside the tracks for the Christmas Train, which will bring presents to the children who live in coal towns and hollows. Year after year, Frankie hopes that one particular gift, a very special gift will be tossed to him from that train. It is this enduring hope that will guide him to the true meaning of the season.

 

Christmas Oranges by Linda Bethers and Ben Sowards

The only home little Rose has ever known is the orphanage, but Mrs. Hartley cares for all the children as if they were her own. When Mrs. Hartley dies, Rose is sent to a new orphanage, which is as cold and cruel as her previous home was kind.

Gradually Rose makes a few friends, and she learns that every Christmas a generous neighbor donates a box of oranges for the children.

An orange is an unknown luxury for little Rose, and she waits in eager anticipation. But on Christmas morning, Rose is brokenhearted when she learns that there is no orange for her.

However, Christmas is a time of friendship, love, and of miracles . . .

 

Annika’s Secret Wish by Beverly Lewis

A beautiful book that will become part of a family’s Christmas heritage, Annika’s Secret Wish inspires young and old to freely give and share even long hoped-for gifts. The final page features Swedish Christmas traditions that your family may choose to include in your own holiday celebration.

 

May this be a season of joy for your family, as you dig in deeper to share the real meaning of Christmas with your children.

And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:9-12

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight