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This summer is passing so quickly — it’s hard to believe it’s almost the 4th of July. Not only is Independence Day a great time to celebrate, but it’s a great teaching time, too. If you’re family is anything like mine, though, a lesson during a summer holiday isn’t always fully appreciated by younger students. Here are some ideas for slipping some learning opportunities into your 4th of July fun:

Bake some holiday treats together — The magazine racks in grocery stores are full of periodicals and recipe books featuring red, white, and blue desserts for the holidays. You can also find plenty of recipes online at sites such as AllRecipes.com and CookEatShare.com. Look through the recipes with your child and pick out one or two favorites.

Plan a picnic — If you’re going to celebrate with a feast outdoors, have your child help plan it. Sit down together to figure out a menu, then look through the sales fliers to figure out the approximate cost of the food. When you go to the grocery store, have your child help you find all of the items you need.

Work on crafts — You can find great 4th of July craft ideas in family magazines and online. Try looking through sites such as FamilyFun.com, EnchantedLearning.com, and MarthaStewart.com.

Attend a concert — Many cities offer outdoor concerts for the 4th; is there one in your area? Use the concert as an opportunity to introduce your child to the different musical instruments and what they sound like.

Learn patriotic songs — Whether or not you’re attending a concert, you can still use the 4th as a time to teach your children songs about America. Some songs to sing together include You’re a Grand Old Flag, America the Beautiful, God Bless America, This Land is Your Land, and The Star Spangles Banner.

However you celebrate the 4th with your children, enjoy the time together. Just like the summer, these schooling years will pass by so quickly!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend approached me about putting together a writing camp for the homeschoolers in our area. I was able to get in touch with another friend, author Pam Zollman, who has taught writing classes for years. This week we met to decide the details, and I think the camp is going to be really good.

Pam has written over 40 books for children, and she also worked as an editor at Highlights Magazine. As I listened to her talk during our planning meeting, I could tell she has a knack for getting the information to across to students.

During the camp, we’ll follow a similar schedule each day. To begin, we’ll read a favorite picture book, then together the class with discuss the story elements found in the picture book: characters, setting, and plot. This camp will focus on illustration, too, so we’ll look at the pictures to determine the medium used and the mood created.

Then Pam will start with the writing instruction, and the kids will work on their own original stories. Next, I’ll give the children some drawing tips so they can develop illustrations to go along with their books. Throughout the camp, Pam and I will be available to help them out as they work on their projects.

One of the best things about this camp is the educational experience it affords — and during the summer, too! Kids will spend five days learning, reading, writing, drawing, and putting their own book together. It can certainly be counted as school time, even if the children are having too much fun to realize it!

Do you have a friend who likes to write? Does she enjoy teaching as well? If so, encourage her to set up a class for the homeschoolers in your area. It doesn’t have to last all week — even one or two classes can inspire a young writer to start creating.

Over the past few days, there’s been someone in the family who’s not been feeling well. It seems some sort of stomach virus has been passed from person to person, making it difficult to stick to our regular schedule or get much schooling done. When we are experiencing sick days, I tend to let the lessons slide for the time being and have the children make them up the following weekend.

There are some other ways to approach “sick days”, days where you or a child has a cold or a virus that makes homeschooling difficult. Here are a few ideas:

If your child is sick:

Make it a favorite subject day: If your child isn’t too sick, but just not feeling quite right, allow him to choose his favorite subject and work on assignments in that area for the day.

Make it a reading day: Give your older children reading assignments that they can do while lying in bed. If your child isn’t reading yet, spend the time reading to him.

Make it a video day: If your child is feeling too sick to read, find some educational DVDs he can watch. If you don’t have any at home, ask your spouse or a friend to pick some up at your local library.

If you are the one who’s sick:

Have Dad help: If you’re unable to homeschool, consider having Dad homeschool when he’s off work. Even if he works during the day, he can still direct a few lessons after supper.

Enlist the help of older siblings: If you have older children, call on them to help their younger siblings with some of their lessons.

Make it a reading day: Older children can read to the younger ones and do their reading assignments on their own.

Make it a video day: This works well when Mom’s the one who’s sick, too. While you’re recuperating in bed, don’t feel guilty about turning on some educational DVDs for your younger children.

If you find the illness is making it just too difficult to continue schooling, though, take the necessary time off to rest and recuperate. You can always make up the school days on the weekends, during traditional holiday breaks, or even during the summer. After all, that’s one of the benefits of homeschooling — a flexible schedule that can be changed as needed.

We found Look Book by Tana Hoban in our library a few years ago, and it’s been one of our favorite books ever since. We liked it so much, in fact, that we made one of our own.

Look Book is a wordless picture book that features pages with a cut-out that shows a small part of a photo on the page underneath. The reader, then, must take a good look and decide what is actually in the picture. A turn of the page will reveal what the photo really captures — a pretzel, a flower, or some other object. The following photo then shows that object in an even wider view, such as pretzels on a pretzel cart or a stand filled with flowers.

After going through Look Book with my oldest son when he was little, I made a similar book using items I had around the house, and it’s lasted us for years. Now my five-year-old is enjoying the same book. If you’d like to make a “Look Book”, here’s what you’ll need:

• Three-ring binder
• White or black cardstock
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Old magazines
• Glue Stick
• One piece of notebook paper

To begin, search through your old magazines for photos that would work well in a “Look Book.” Large photos of familiar objects that fill the page work best. Items such as fruit, animals, and cars are a good place to start.

Next, cut the photo to fit on a piece of cardstock. Glue it to the cardstock using a glue stick. Line the cardstock up with a piece of notebook paper and punch three holes on the left side and put it in the binder. Do the same with all of the photos you’ve chosen.

Now, for each picture you have, take another sheet of plain cardstock and punch the holes along the side. Place one piece of plain cardstock in the binder in front of each piece of cardstock with a photo.

Next, choose an area on the plain cardstock to cut out. You don’t have the make the area very large — you want it large enough to show a portion of the photo underneath, but not too large that the reader can tell just what it is without looking closely. (To cut an area from the middle of the paper, poke on end of the scissors through the paper, then cut it out from there.) The pages in your book should alternate between plain cardstock with a cut-out and the cardstock with the photo.

There you have it! You’re children will enjoy the Look Book you’ve made — and they may even want to make one of their own!

When my children were small and we regularly attended a playgroup, we developed a clothing swap with other families in the group. Once every couple of months, the moms would go through their children’s clothing and sort out those pieces that the children didn’t wear anymore or that no longer fit. We’d bring our bags of clothes to playgroup and sort them out by size. Then, we’d take turns looking through them and picking out what our individual families needed. Any extra clothes that weren’t taken were donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

Although it was a lot of work collecting the clothing and sorting through them, the result was that we had plenty of clothes for the next season without having to purchase any of them. We were also able to help someone we knew just by giving away the clothes we no longer needed.

As the children have grown older, our playgroup has changed into more of a field trip group, so we don’t do the clothing swap anymore. However, a church in our area has taken on the same idea, offering a clothing closet to anyone in need. They receive donations of clothing, opening the swap once a week for anyone in the community to come in and take what they can use. It’s like our playgroup clothing swap, but on a much bigger scale.

It’s a big job for those at the church who work at it — they sort the clothes by size, then hang them up or fold them and put them away on the shelves. More clothes are constantly coming in, so the work never ends — there are boxes and boxes of clothes to sort through.

But what a service it is! We donate our clothes to this swap, and we’ve found many nice things there as well. Our family of six has probably spent less than $100 on clothes this year.

If there’s not a clothing swap in your area, you might consider starting one, even if it’s just among other homeschooling families you know. It’s a great way to bless others — and a great way to be blessed!

We decided to wait until the second week of January to get back into our schooling routine, so we used the time we had this past week to reorganize our home. It’s something I had wanted to do for quite a while, but busy schedules just hadn’t allowed it. So for the past few days, we’ve been moving furniture, sorting through books, weeding through the toys, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And each day, after a few hours of work, we all take a break.

Break time for the kids means free time, which they have been spending playing with new Christmas toys. But for some reason, their free time this week has been exceptionally loud. For the most part they’ve been getting along, laughing and shouting — it’s just been so loud, that it just doesn’t count as break time for me.

My idea of a break is quietly reading a book or magazine in my room, taking a quiet walk by myself, or listening to some quiet music while I work at a hobby. There is a key word in all these activities — “quiet”.

For the most part, homeschooling parents are home with their children most of the day, every day, except when we’re running them to classes and lessons or taking care of household errands. No wonder we need a break from the activity — a quiet one. Although we can enjoy this time when our children are young and moving and playing, we shouldn’t feel guilty about sending them to their rooms, closing the doors, and going outside to sit under a tree. In fact, we need to do just that. We need to take the time to rest, relax, and recharge ourselves so we can move on well with the rest of the day.

So whether you’re schooling, working, cleaning, organizing…whatever you’re doing today, try to find a quiet place to take a break. Make it a habit, for you and your children, and you’ll be able to enjoy being with them even more.

This year, I was going to be ready for Christmas early. I had finished much of my shopping after Thanksgiving, and I was going to have all my Christmas cards addressed and ready to go by the first of December. And to add a special touch, I was going to make the cards or have the children help me make them. I planned on printing photos of the family to include in the cards as well.

But then, one day slipped by, then another, and another, until finally it was too late to send the cards — again. Too late for the cards to arrive in time for Christmas, too late to send a holiday greeting to friends and loved ones that we don’t see very often. Another year, and another missed opportunity.

But is it? I could set my cards aside, and plan on doing better next year. But then, would I let another year pass by before I sent them a note saying I’ve been thinking about them?

But Christmas isn’t a deadline — it’s a reminder. A reminder for people like me who, in the day-to-day busyness of life, too often forget what matters most. It’s a reminder to reach out those we care about and to care about those less fortunate than ourselves. It’s a reminder to do those things we should have been doing all year, but may have let slip by.

And most importantly, it’s a reminder of God’s most precious gift to us, His Son, Jesus. It’s a reminder that He sent Jesus to die and rise again so we might spend eternity with Him. It’s a reminder of His incredible love for mankind, a love He wants us to share with each other.

So the cards may not go out on time this year, but I’ll still send them out — and I’ll remember.

…Or perhaps this should be entitled, “Lessons from the Parade?”

This past weekend, we followed a family tradition we began five years ago: we entered the Christmas parade of a neighboring small town. For a small fee, we enter the “Non-Commercial Vehicle” category, decorate our old pick-up truck according the theme of the parade, and dress up appropriately. The children and I ride in the back and toss candy while my husband drives. At the end of the parade, plaques are awarded for first, second, and third place in each category. All in all, it’s a really fun time.

This year, though, the theme was a little harder to develop, so I waited… and waited…and waited for inspiration to hit, which it never really did. We worked hard on the decorations, though, and we thought we had a chance of placing. But the weather was damp, and the duck tape we were using to hold our decorations to the truck wasn’t sticking. We were still rushing around as the parade was about to begin, fixing this, taping that. During the parade, I even had to hop out of the truck and walk along beside it so I could pick up anything that fell off!

We made it past the judges in one piece, though, and they gave us a good score. We took first place in our category (yay!), and we were all surprised. But there were some good lessons learned:

1. Cuteness counts!  My youngest, Luke, was dressed as a chick in an egg, and Lillie, my nine-year old, dressed as a farm cat. I think that helped a lot!

2. Prepare ahead of time! I waited too long to get started on this project. While we finished our design in time, it was stressful trying to get it all done.

3. Enjoy the process!  While the kids enjoyed the parade, they also enjoyed working on it. They painted almost all the props, and Luke especially was proud of his work. To me, this was the best part of the parade this year.

So, are we going to be ready next year? I’ll answer with a “Yes!” — that is, if we’ve learned our lessons!

In my son Luke’s K-5/First Grade co-op class, we’ve been using the Five In A Row curriculum. Because our co-op meets once a week, we choose a book for the week and center the class activities around it. This week, our book was The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola.

The story takes place in Renaissance Italy, so we talked about the Renaissance and the types of clothing people wore. We discussed Renaissance architecture, such as the buildings and bridges, as recommended in Five In a Row. Children this age really enjoy hands-on activities, though, so I wanted to find a craft they could all work at and have fun with. So we decided on building our own “Renaissance” structures — using just gumdrops and toothpicks!

Here’s how we did it:

Supplies (for 10 children):

• Gumdrops (we used three small bags from the grocery store)
• Toothpicks (we used two boxes with 250 toothpicks in each)
• Sturdy paper plates

To start, we gave each child a paper plate on which to build his or her structure. We then placed the gumdrops on plates and set them in the middle of the table where everyone could reach them. We gave each child a handful of toothpicks to start with. I then showed them how to push a toothpick into a gumdrop and then connect it to another gumdrop by pushing in the other end.

The children caught on quickly, and were soon designing their own structures by forming squares and triangles. One even resembled a pyramid. Some of the children built their structures two- and three-”stories” high; when the buildings began to tip over (still held together with toothpicks), they turned into even more interesting shapes. It was fun to see how many different designs they came up with.

All in all, it was a good day for the Renaissance. I’m sure most (if not all) of the students will forget the word “Renaissance” before the end of the day (it’s a big one, after all), but they won’t soon forget building their gumdrop structures. Especially since they took them home to display.

As part of my constant effort to get our home in order, I have decided to implement an idea I first heard about when I began home schooling. At the time, I was attending a homeschooling conference where educator Inge Cannon was selling a tape set entitled “Finally Organized.”  In it, she recommended a certain method for helping children (and parents!) remember to put away their things: the Redemption Box.

I’ve since misplaced that tape set (hmmm…. sensing part of the problem here), but I do remember the basic premise of the Redemption Box. If someone leaves their personal belongings out of place around the house , the items are placed in the box. Once a week, the child will have the opportunity to “redeem” the items by paying a certain amount for them. We’ve decided to empty the box on Saturdays and have our children pay 10 cents for each item they recover. If it’s an item they need before Saturday (such as a shoe, a school book, etc.), they’ll have to pay 50 cents to get it back early. If it’s an item they don’t really care about (such as a toy, not a school paper!), they can leave it in the box, and it will be given away the next week.

But what if Mom leaves something around?  The kids came up with a good idea for that one. If they find something of mine out of place, they can put it in the box, and in return take one of their items out of the box. That way, they don’t have to pay to get it back on Saturday.

How’s it working? We’ve been using the Redemption Box this past week, and it’s been great!  I don’t have to fuss at people to put their things away anymore — I just throw the items in the box. And as a result, the kids are working a lot harder at picking up their stuff. They’re also helping each other remember to put their things away.

I’m not sure yet what we’ll do with the money I collect, but so far it’s proven to be a good motivator — and the Redemption Box a great organization tool!