Allowance, Consumers, Kids Businesses

Ever since my kids were little, they divided their money into envelopes-spending, long-term savings, dowry and giving. Recently, we encouraged them to give their money on a weekly basis, instead of when they had a significant amount to give. We want this to be a weekly habit. The kids have savings accounts for larger items. These are things like a car or even a digital camera, etc. The dowry amount is savings for their future family. We are opening mutual funds for these savings.

Personally, I don't have a problem with teaching my kids to be consumers. They will all be consumers on their own some day and should be trained at home how to be a good consumer. If my kids make a foolish decision with their money, I’d rather it be a training situation at home with a small amount of money than wait to make those foolish decisions on large purchases in the future.

One thing that has helped us is that each of our kids have their own business. All of my kids have written books that we sell and my daughters produce some of our cds. My son sells marshmallow guns and potato cannon kits. You can even see what he sells on our website HERE

He must pay us for materials and overhead. He is learning the value of money in a real life way, making wise buying decisions to keep the costs low and the fact that there are other expenses besides materials in having a business.

Some good living books to encourage entrepreneurialism and business sense in our kids are below. Click the title to read more about each book.

Better Than A Lemonade Stand

Henry Reed, Inc

Toothpaste Millionaire

Merchant Maiden

Kerry

Raising Leaders or Unschooling

Below is my response to unschooling and A Thomas Jefferson Education

Thanks for your response and yes, it does sound a bit like unschooling. I am definitely not a big proponent of unschooling. In fact, I quote the verse about children left to their own are a shame to their mothers when I give workshops at conventions about approaches to homeschooling. I wholeheartedly agree with you in this area.

The Biblical mandate is to train our dc and to TEACH them diligently.

Training dc in character is not an option nor is it w/ the Scripture.

Studying science is way to learn to take dominion and history is how we

learn about God's plan for the nations about our role in civic sphere. Of

course we all want to read the great books, here, too & develop great

communicators. And then there is math and if we study math we can learn

more about God while developing our brains to think more clearly. There are

none of these subjects that I want my dc to miss out on. I see them as all

important, college or no college intent.

Left to choose on their own, my dc would not choose wisely - at least at

this point. But we also have to learn to do things that we don't like.

What you have said is one of the reasons I developed a workshop on TJEd that I was privileged to give at a few conferences this summer. I have listened to all the cds and read all the lecture notes from TJEd. After taking in all the unschooling info, I still struggled with the idea that God gave parents to kids as their authority. My dh and I are accountable to God for our children’s upbringing.

In our own homeschool my kids are “required” to do certain activities and hopefully inspired to do other activities. One thing I am striving for is more inspiring than requiring. Yesterday I had a melt-down and felt like I was a complete failure in getting my kids to love learning. In the early years I “required” so much more than was necessary. Those young years should be years of imagination, investigation, discovery, etc. My dh quickly reminded me that my oldest is taking a college course (with loads of reading great books/classics) and is enjoying it. She thinks its cool to take this course. He also reminded me that my middle daughter loves to read and my son loves to investigate, experiment and be an entrepreneur. Okay, I was feeling a little better.

Personally, I am an eclectic homeschooler. Teaching the Trivium, by the Bluedorns has been a great model for me that I continue to follow. I even took my son off of math until he was 10. He breezed through math and caught up to “government educated children” by the time he was 12. When I visit with the Bluedorns’ kids at conferences I see how it didn’t hurt them to skip certain subject until they were old enough to understand. Those kids all have their own successful businesses.

I really believe that we are training followers when all we do is “require” our kids to study. I want to go beyond that and have my kids learn to lead by making choices (good or bad) in what they will study. I believe it is my responsibility to train them to make good decisions (like eating your vegetables) in their studies. You might be surprised at the decisions they make. Last year I told my girls they had to finish humanities & writing for the remainder of the year. After that they could choose what they wanted to study. Believe it or not, my math-hating daughter chose to finish her algebra book. I was soooo surprised. Making good decisions in any area of life takes training by parents. I want to train my kids to choose wisely in all areas of life – spiritual, emotional, character, academics, etc. It is better for them to make some foolish choices while they are still under our influence at home, than to let them wait until they are on their own.

For this year, my girls know that they are required to study humanities and great books. After that they will be making choices. Over the next week they will tell me what it is they want to study and we will come up with a plan. Believe me this is so far away from my personality that likes to plan the entire year in August. Hey, I was a schoolteacher and can whip out those lesson plans easily. But, I know that it will be much better for my kids if they have some choice in their studies. They certainly will learn the content better if they choose what to study.

I could go on, but I’ll quit for now.

Blessings,

Kerry

Story of the World Sale

We overstocked our Story of the World and Activity Books. If you want to get NEW copies of these books, go to our monthly specials and click the buy it now button. You will get an incredible deal on these sets - over 30% off retail.

Click Here to see the specials

Kerry

Leadership Ed vs. Classical Ed

The following is a comment I made on a loop:

Someone recently commented that these are all similar phases, but called something different. I would disagree. First of all, the grammar stage of classical ed requires much memorization and a steady dose of learning what the teacher requires. This is much different from the core & love of learning phases of leadership education where the child is able to choose what he will study. I can see more similarities between the Bluedorns younger ages and Core/Love of Learning than the classical grammar stage. I believe there are also differences between scholar phase and dialectic/rhetoric. The classical approach has more requirements than the leadership approach. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but these approaches do have differences in that they all emphasize something through their phases.

Personally, I like the idea of my children taking ownership of their own education as they choose their studies. Next week I will be discussing with my kids the idea of structuring our time, not our content. They do have a few requirements (humanities with George Grant and great books with Wes Callihan), but after that, they will be choosing their own studies. I expect my middle daughter to finish her algebra and biology because she wants very much to go to college.

Kerry

Today in History

I was surprised to see so many familiar events listed in The Christian Almanac as occurring today, August 24.

1456 - First printing of Gutenberg Bible completed

1524 - Peasant's Revolt in Germany - Peasants lose and have far worse conditions

1572 - Catherine de Medici has Huguenot leader, Coligny, assassinated. St. Bartholomew's Day follows with the slaughter of an estimated 100,000 Huguenots (French Presbyterians).

1682 - William Penn acquires three counties, later becoming Delaware

1759 - Englishman William Wilberforce is born. Wilberforce becomes a Christian in 1784 and works for social reform, eventually becoming a chief spokesman against slavery.

1814 - British set fire to U. S. Capitol and White House

1847 - Charlotte Bronte dispatches Jane Eyre to a publishing house under the pseudonym of Currer Bell

1869 - Cornelius Swartwout received U. S. patent for waffle iron

1932 - Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey in just over 19 hours.

1965 - Communist Control Act went into effect, virtually outlawing the Communist Party in the U. S.

Pretty interesting!

Kerry

Teaching History