Start teaching them a Foreign Language by teaching them SONGS!

Start with songs!  Not only does this help you with vocabulary, it also helps you with pronunciation!  I always wondered how those foreign singers could sing English songs even though they couldn’t speak English!  Now I know!  Just pick up a CD with Christian children’s songs, and start playing it!  I put the emphasis on “children’s” songs, because there are adult worship songs, too!

While we were in Mexico, during those formative high school years, I learned a lot of little kid songs in Spanish.  Most of you learned, “I’m in the Lord’s Army” in English. But because I didn’t go to Sunday School as a little girl, I learned those songs in Mexicali in Spanish first. 

I started when my babies were babies.  Since I didn’t know all of those Christian children’s songs in English, I sang them in Spanish.  As my children grew to be toddlers and I got a cassette tape of children’s worship songs, I finally learned the words in English.  And boy, was I surprised at what they did to the songs to make them rhyme!

When my children were in elementary school, because elementary school went so much faster than I had ever anticipated, I did one lesson of Spanish every other day.  It took maybe about 20 minutes.  But I made sure it was fun and I didn’t pour too much into them at one time.

This is how I kind of structured that time:

Songs

Phrases:  (Hello, goodbye, my name is, and if you’re ever in a church while on a service project in Mexico, you will hear “Dios le bendiga” - God bless you.)

Vocabulary

Bible Verses

But this post will be about songs.  I'll explain the other ideas in later posts.

Purchase CDS with children's songs in the language you want to teach. I purchased Bible songs and other popular children's songs.  If you have the same songs in English, they can definitely hear the correlation in the tune, and it will help them learn the vocabulary even more quickly!

Along with the Bible songs and the nursery rhyme songs, I actually received the WOW top 40 in Spanish.  My high schooler can currently sing many of those songs word for word in Spanish.  

In the "if I had to do it again" category, I would have purchased a CD with Mexican Folk Songs. This is like teaching them"Old MacDonald", but the songs that they sing in Mexico.

Some songs I just translated.  For instance, when I was teaching body parts in Spanish, I sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", but I easily translated it into Spanish because there are no other words, just body parts - Cabeza, Hombros, Rodillas, Dedos. And the better they got at it, the faster they would sing it!  

And did I mention that when they get older they can help lead worship time in an elderly home, in a children's VBS time, and in a church worship service?

Outreach by Teaching a Foreign Language

Why take a foreign language? Can't we survive in the modern world by only knowing English?  The older I've become, the clearer it is to me WHY a foreign language is so useful and why it is important to teach whatever you know to your student.  Let's start with  fulfilling the great commission as demonstrated in Matthew 28:19-20  “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

Start them young and hopefully I can record some of the practical ideas I have used as they have grown older. Or things you can use to help foreign language tutors that might be willing to help teach your students.  The suggestions I make, can be done in ANY language.  I’m just going to bring up Spanish, because that is the language I chose to teach my children, living in Southern California and 2 hours from the Mexican border and meaningful mission trips.

I have not only wanted to give my kids a heart for their neighbors, but to give them a heart for other people groups.  If that was the goal, then I needed to equip them to reach other people groups.

I actually became a Christian one October when I was 15 years old.  That Christmas, my church announced that they were going down to Mexicali during Spring break with Azusa Pacific University high school program and I decided to go.  Little did I know that that ONE week would change my life forever.  Not only for reaching people for Christ, but in how I dedicated myself to studying Spanish with a purpose in high school.  The frustrating part was that in high school they were teaching me vocabulary to go to Mexico on vacation, including concerts, where I needed to memorize a list of instruments.  Hello?  This wasn’t the Mexico I went to!  I needed to learn the vocabulary for “sin” and “pastor”, “king”, and “giant”.  

Yes, that is me in the middle of the group!  And yes, our sign says “El Bano or Burst”!  Here is a picture of our youth group in Mexico in 1978.  And another one my senior year in high school.

The hardest part about learning a foreign language isn’t the grammar or vocabulary.  The hardest part is getting over your own self-consciousness and being able to speak it!  After I had children, my goal became getting my children to speak and jump that hurdle of self-consciousness.

Let me emphasize a little bit more about how important that hurdle of self-consciousness is.  I received an email from one of my Spanish students, who went down to Mexico with her youth group over Easter break last Spring.  Emily, a sweet, redheaded 3rd year Spanish student went down on a build project. 

They built quite the house.  Her first couple of years in Spanish class she was a timid student, and then all of a sudden something clicked.  I think it was the fact that she knew she might be that much more useful if she was going down to Mexico!  This was in the email I received, “I really saw what a tool learning Spanish (and practicing!) was! And I'm not "just saying" that because you are my Spanish teacher ;-) I really saw how useful learning the language was, and how fun it was to reach out to people with it.  I don't think I told you this, but I was able to speak to a young man from the church there. Even though it was difficult trying to get Spanish to come out of my mouth, it was great to hear him speak about his family and what his life was like, and in turn tell him (in very broken Spanish haha) about my family and a bit of my testimony. What a blessing!

 To be honest, this past trip was wonderful academically because I saw my strengths and weaknesses in my Spanish. I could understand nearly everything that was said in Spanish, whether it was a local talking or one of my friends translating, but I had trouble getting it out. Plus, my vocab is super strong, I knew the word for "Shepherd" when no one else did (yay for being taught from a Christian curriculum!). I felt pretty smart lol. On the flipside, I really need to practice my verb conjugation!”

Over my next few blog posts, I'll talk about different things that we have done to get them over the hump of self-consciousness.  But not today. I've got to prepare for Spanish class tomorrow!

You, too, Can Teach High School Science!

Many parents are afraid to teach high school Science.  I understand that feeling.  I actually felt that way with Junior High Science!  However, since I had worked with my children so thoroughly in elementary, it just became continued learning!  Wait! Let me step back and tell you that when I taught First Grade Science, I learned a TON!  I finally figured out why tomatoes are classified as a fruit, when we learned to classify edible plants!  Second, Third, and Fourth grade were no different!  The only difference was that I had an adult view on the subject and it all made sense!  And since I was so excited to be learning all of these things, I passed that excitement on to my kids and they became excited.  (Plus, we were doing “camp”, so of course it was fun and exciting!) But, yes, high school was intimidating, especially since I had only had two Science classes in high school, and here I had students that I KNEW were going to want Chemistry and Physics!  

The first thing you need to do to prepare for High School Science is to build up your supply cabinet.  I ordered the glass beakers in elementary.  I ordered glass thermometers.  I order the microscope in 4th grade, and I ordered a NICE microscope that is actually still working.  I have taken it to be recalibrated once, but it was totally worth the $250 I spent on it in 1995.  But typically, each elementary year I would spend between $50 and $100 a year to get what I would need.  My big years were the years I purchased the microscope and then the year I purchased a balance.  By the time we got to high school, it wasn’t any different.  I’d pick up the few things we needed and there we were doing Physical Science.  But now I was integrating my Algebra into the Physical Science.  Wow!  Was this liberal arts mom really doing that?  On a side note, Biology has a lot of “consumables” that makes Biology about $250, and Chemistry has a lot of “hazardous shipping” costs that makes Chemistry about $300.  I remember purchasing $75 worth of chemicals and paying $200 to have it shipped!

I totally felt inadequate when I got to Chemistry.  I had managed to go to school for 17 years and never had to learn about the periodic table, let alone chemical bonding and reactions.  And here I was with my Science minded guy.  I tackled it the way I did everything else.  I figured I could learn it.  Sometimes labs felt miserable.  We would try it.  We would fail.  We would look it up on Youtube.  We would fail.  We would tweak things.  We would fail.  Sometimes our labs lasted 2 to 3 hours trying to get one experiment to work right.  I felt like a failure.  All along, my Science son is critically thinking, learning how to tweak formulas and equipment, with a huge sense of accomplishment when the experiment did finally work!  We got through Chemistry.  I felt like we limped through Chemistry, but we finished it with a full understanding, and that includes me!  Physics went a lot easier.  We’d be reading the book and I’d say, “Oh, that’s how my toaster works!  Oh, that’s how my blow dryer works!”  And each time he’d roll his eyes and laugh, “Mom’s learning stuff from our books again!”

Do Science Fair Projects

Science Fair Projects  - I started doing Science Fair projects with my children as soon as I could.  Fortunately we had an outlet, our school group sponsored a Science Fair, and a deadline, always a good thing, so we got them done!  We always started simple!  For my Kindergartner, I always started with their taste buds.  We’d study the tongue, we’d take a picture of their tongue, and then we’d map it.  Where are all of the taste buds?  Then we got to making cookies.  We’d make salt cookies, sour cookies, made with lots of lemon juice, bitter cookies, made with dry mustard, and finally sugar cookies.  I’d have them guess where they would taste it on their tongues.  They would rub the salty cookie all over the sweet, bitter and sour tastebuds and they couldn’t taste it.  But when they got to the salty areas, they could taste it.  What a GREAT way to figure out how our body was designed, even as a tongue!  Of course, we’d finish with the sugar cookies and everyone was happy!  Then I’d have them make their chart of their discoveries and wah-lah, you have a Science Fair project!  I’ve always tried to take things that they are interested in.  They don’t have to be original or super deep.  There is value to figuring out how their Thomas the Tank engine will pull their train car one way and repel it the other way!  And for them to learn the terminology:  hypothesis, method, data, just puts them ahead in the learning curve.

One year, I had my Senior, who was studying Physics, do a Science Fair project with his 1st grade

brother who was learning about gravity.  Together, they built a crude ramp, and used Matchbox cars and books.  They’d pile the books higher under one end of the ramp, the little guy would let the Matchbox car go and the big guy would do the measurement on the stack of books, time the speed per second of the little car, as if he were designing a mountain road.  Of course, they both had tons of fun working together, and my older son got a ton of praise from all sorts of people that he was willing to work with his little brother.

As an encouragement, I let them do whatever they wanted. Much of the time they just wanted to build something fun, and I would let them, but they had to work within the Scientific Method framework.  For instance, one year, my 7th grader and his buddy, Garrison, come to me and say, “We want to build a wind tunnel for the Science Fair.”  I turn to Garrison’s mom, and she said, “Well, I told them ‘no’, but if it was okay with you, it is okay with me.”  I ask them, “What question are you asking?  And ‘Can we build a wind tunnel?’ doesn’t count. It needs to have a question, a hypothesis, something that you can repeatedly test and then find the results.”  I’m thinking “limited resources, limited size, and how?”, but I didn’t say “no”. A week goes by, and we meet for Life Science lab.  They say, “We came up with our question.  We want to know which paper airplane design flies the best.”  And, that becomes the wind tunnel Science Fair Experiment.  Not only did they learn a LOT about drag, design, pitch and yaw, but they learned much more about regulating air flow.  

Where are they now?  Garrison is working on his PhD at Notre Dame in Chemical Engineering, after receiving his Chemical Engineering degree from USC; and Stephen, after receiving his Electrical and Computer Engineering degree from Norwich University, a Senior Military college, is serving in the Army, hoping to be placed in the Signal Corp next February.

What else have we done?  We’ve figured out how glowsticks work and what causes the different colors.  We’ve asked the question about the best way to freeze ice cream.  

And found out that liquid nitrogen is the quickest.  We’ve asked about the best recipe for slime.

What recipe makes the best bubbles?  What is the best way to clean our hands?

What parts of our garbage do worms like the best?  

When my eldest got to college, he mentioned to me that many of the students in his Science classes didn’t know the Scientific Method.  He said after 13 years, he knew it inside and out, and it gave him a huge advantage while taking his Science classes.

So, maybe you didn’t get to start in the elementary years!  It is not too late!  Start participating in 
Science Fairs!  Start getting involved in high school Science!

Preparing for Your Own Science Camp

Start Science Camp when they are young!  I started with Elementary Science Camp - As a homeschool mom, remembering my earliest experiences with Science, I wanted Science to be different.  I had bigger plans.  I pulled out my Bob Jones Science Curriculum and I saw that there were experiments EVERY lesson.  Woo Hoo!  At this point, I had 3 little children, and my husband was starting his own law practice.  I opted to help him get his files set up and organized over preparing for Science.  So, what happened?  I read the first Science lesson with my son and we read about the experiment, while the little ones were napping.  He yawned and asked if we could do the experiment, and I told him “no” that I needed to get to work helping daddy and then get dinner going.  There was no way I could pull out that mess, do it and then clean it up, and get everything else done, during their nap time.  This pattern continued the entire month of September, and by December we just stopped reading the lessons in the textbook. 

I was wracked with guilt.  Here I had this curious little boy who really wanted to do Science and I had squelched him.  But, I just couldn’t see it getting done when I already had my plate full.  Making and cleaning up one more mess just didn’t seem like something I could add. I continued to let it bug me, all year long.

Finally, we finished our school year.  I could mark that we completed each book, except for Science.  I NEEDED to come up with a solution.  And one day I did.  It was June.  I looked at the book and listed what I would need for each Science Experiment and then I looked at the Teacher’s Manual and listed all of the additional items I needed for experiments to reinforce the Scientific principles. There were 12 chapters in the book.  Those elementary Science books aren’t very thick and I marked my calendar for 3 weeks in July where we would start Science Camp.  I announced to the kids that we were going to do Science Camp for 3 weeks.  They were pretty excited.  We had baseball camp, tennis camp, Vacation Bible School and now mom was going to be doing Science Camp.  Sounded great to them!

I spent the next couple of weeks gathering all of the supplies I needed, and I put them in paper bags.  The bags were labeled Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and so forth.  I stapled a list of what was needed for each Chapter and as I conducted a large scavenger hunt, I’d cross things off.  Of course, I needed to wait to get carnations and cabbage and those kinds of things until the week of, but I could put magnifying glasses, thread, needles, empty milk cartons, toilet paper rolls and those kinds of goods right into the appropriate bags.  Another thing, as I contemplated whether or not I wanted to buy the plastic beaker versus the glass beaker (First grade science needed 3), I ended up buying the plastic, because I was working with little kids.  Rookie mistake.  By second grade Science Camp, I purchased glass beakers or glass graduated cylinders because I realized that I was working towards a bigger goal than just Science Camps and plastic beakers would not hold up over a Bunsen burner.

On the Sunday night before Science Camp started, I told my children that we were going to start Science Camp at 9 am and that we would finish at Noon.  It was my experience that the kids in the neighborhood, during summer break, slept in, watched cartoons all morning and didn’t knock on the door until after lunch.  I figured that if we couldn’t finished a chapter in 3 hours, we’d just finish it the next day.  This was the time that my children first questioned whether or not this was a “camp” or a “school day”.

Monday morning comes, and I start with an experiment that is recommended in the Teacher’s Manual.  Next we reread that Lesson that we had started the previous September.  Only this time we DO the experiment.  The kids are hooked!  They fill out their notebook, complete their drawings and observations and we easily finish the 3 to 4 lessons that are in each Chapter, within the 3 hours.  I clean up the mess, and get lunch started.  We do this the first week.  Come Saturday morning, they are asking if they can do another Chapter.  I tell them “no”.  

We stick to the 12 work days, and we are done with the curriculum!  Day 13 comes, and everyone is ready for Science Camp.  I tell them no more Science Camp until next summer.  They are disappointed and I feel like I have just pulled off the biggest coup!

Why STEM Education?

Now you may ask, “why should I worry about teaching Science to my students?”  OK, let’s talk about Why STEM Education. First of all, what is STEM education? STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. In 1899 the commissioner of the United States Patent Office is reported to have said “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” in a recommendation that the patent office be closed. Thank goodness he was wrong! It would have been much harder for everyone to be here if cars were still unaffordable and planes didn’t exist! Both airplanes and cheaper cars were invented by some engineer who was just better at problem solving than the guy before him. And PERSONALLY, this would have been a bad thing, as my husband, is a Patent lawyer, protecting inventors as they create and design new items.

Encouraging you to put more time and resources into your children’s education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math is important to me. We need more engineers and other kinds of scientists! Having a STEM degree is extremely advantageous to your students.  Having a STEM education allows your children to grow into successful adults who can think and perform in the real world.

To start with, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, writes in April of this year:  The U.S. is projected to experience a shortage of Registered Nurses (RNs) that is expected to intensify as Baby Boomers age and the need for health care grows. Forbes Magazine wrote in December of 2011,  “As any technological executive in Silicon Valley could tell you, hiring engineers is one of their toughest tasks these days…. People with engineering degrees are more sought after for jobs.  But even in non-technical fields, people with engineering degrees are more sought after than liberal arts majors with the same years of work experience.”  Why is that?  Just knowing the finer nuances of working with Excel spreadsheets makes a clerical worker a better candidate in today’s technological workforce.  And if the U.S.  can’t provide the engineers? Well, companies go elsewhere!  Also, Forbes asks, “Which tech companies most rely on foreign-educated engineers? Some of the biggest names in technology. Microsoft, Google, IBM, Accenture and Cisco, have the most foreign educated engineers, according to data compiled on employment and education.  Even companies like Facebook, which are relatively young, have a sizable number of engineers educated abroad.” What’s behind the high demand for engineers? There’s an increasing demand both from tech companies and non-tech companies for highly-skilled engineers to create, build and maintain high quality systems at various levels from manufacturing to product design. But the growth in United States engineering grads has not kept pace. Many tech companies hire engineers who have been educated overseas. The U.S. H1-B Visa program was designed to bring talented “speciality occupations” such as engineers into the U.S.  On Monday, March 3, 2014 CNBC reported that, “Applications for H-1B visas allowing foreign nationals to work in the U.S. are expected to keep rising in 2014, according to one analyst. At least 160,000 applications are expected for the 85,000 available visas when the filing season opens on April 1, said Marc Klein, an immigration attorney with Thompson & Knight.” "It just shows the U.S. still lags behind other countries when it comes to an emphasis on educating American-born students in computer science, math and other areas," said Klein, who handles visa requests. "So many get advanced degrees at American universities that natural-born citizens don't receive, and (which) are needed for the hard-to-fill jobs," he said. "They go home, and yet so many of them make up the number of applications to work here."  So, basically, STEM majors are higher paid and have higher employment.  In comparing 3 different reports on the success of STEM majors, Think Advisor, which advises the investment community, notes that 29 of the 30 most employable majors are Science, Technology, Engineering and Math majors, while Forbes lists 14 of the top 15 majors as STEM majors.  Forbes notes, “ “According to PayScale's massive compensation database and job growth projections through 2020 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, these 15 college majors are the most valuable in terms of salary and career prospects. They are ranked by median starting pay, median mid-career pay (at least 10 years experience), percentage growth in pay and projected growth of job opportunities.”  The last comparison list I saw was from USA Today, where they ranked the top 10 college majors, with 9 of them being STEM majors.  So you ask huh?  14 out of 15?  29 out of 30? 9 out of 10?  What is that other great major?  It is called “Construction Management”.  Not typically a STEM major, but I can imagine that when you are working with structural engineers and architects, some background will be needed!

Start Early in Teaching Creationism

My suggestion is to start defending against evolution early.  Not by taking a defensive posture, but by teaching them the terms early and thoroughly, equipping them with arguments without them knowing it.  1 Peter 3:15 says:  but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;

It was called to my attention about 10 years ago that Darwin’s Origin of the Species is perhaps the most influential piece of literature ever written.  I’m not including the Bible in this, I’m emphasizing “literature”. Think about that.  Origin of the Species is the most influential piece of literature ever written. Well, I agree. Think of any other piece of literature that has turned the world upside down and changed the world view of so many educated people.  From early on, I tried to teach my own students a Creation world view, without pounding the fact that it would refute Darwinism.  First of all, I always taught that Science is empirical.  This means that true Scientists use observations, experiments and calculations to develop theories.  And then they test their theories with more experiments and calculations to come up with reliable data to prove their theory.  In the early years I never brought up evolution, I just told them that Science is observation and recording data.  It was something that we all could do.  Science is not a theory.  Science is what is observed.

I also taught about adaptation.  They are always giving stories about animals that change colors or grow more hair.  Adaptation is God’s way of allowing us to adapt to our environment for survival, not evolution.  We can move from Southern California to Maine and after a couple of years 45 degrees would be considered “sweater weather”.  Did we evolve?  No, we just adapted.  Because if after 10 years we move back to Southern California, our sweater weather would move back to 65 degrees after a couple of years.  It is all about adaptation!  

I found it helpful to comb through all of the Creation Research Institute’s books so that I could naturally refute the theory of Evolution all the way through their education.  Plus, since I didn’t have the background, it was helpful for me to learn more about my God, the Creator.  It wasn’t until my students were in high school, when I felt confident in their personal relationships with Christ before I actually introduce them to the theory of evolution, but by that time, they could almost refute it themselves.  If they know what is true, and they know what the other side believes, they are less likely to be influenced.  And I always had available no less than 5 sources that could show them the proper arguments, if they needed them.  They know where to find truth, when it isn’t on the tip of their tongue.