November 5, 2024

How to Help Your Homeschooled Child Pursue His Interests

The longer we homeschool, and the older my children get, and the more experience I get ‘under my belt’, the easier it seems to allow my children to pursue their own interests. Don’t get me wrong…sometimes I do still worry and wonder if I’m doing this ‘right.’  I think we all do that on occasion, no matter how long we homeschool or what our homeschooling methods are.  However, I have seen my children learn and grow so much in the areas where I have been able to let go and give them greater control and ownership.

My oldest two children absolutely love drawing!  They are now in their 2nd year of formal art classes, but before that they simply pursued it on their own.  My eldest daughter is an avid photographer.   She has a photography blog and also submits photos to National Geographic Kids-My Shot, and was even chosen as the ‘Photographer to Watch’ one week.  My eldest son pursues writing with a passion. He spends a lot of time planning and writing fiction stories and is considering participating in National Novel Writing Month.

How to Help Your Homeschooled Child Pursue His Interests www.girlfriendsoffeehour.com #homeschool #childledlearning

Are you wondering how to facilitate your child’s learning through his interests?  Here are a few ideas for you that I think will help!

Ways Your Child Can Pursue His Interests

  • Does your child want to learn to draw? Allow him or her to check out books from the library on ‘How-to Draw_____.’  There is an almost unlimited supply of these books available to teach your child how to draw dinosaurs, cars, cats, dragons, people, faces, birds, buildings, and so much more.  Utilize art classes through a local art studio or via your homeschool co-op.  Perhaps you are an artist and can help your child learn this skill yourself.
  • If your child has a strong interest in writing, purchase several special notebooks that he can use just for this.  He may take notes, write shorts stories, create outlines for stories, draw illustrations that he wants to use with some of his stories. He can use these notebooks to help get his ideas out of his head and down on paper to see it!  Using the computer to write is also valid.  This will teach your child how to type, but is also sometimes easier for those kiddos who want to write but have a bit more difficulty with the physical aspect of it.  There are also online venues such as blogs, and sometimes magazines or places such as The Bionicle Wiki, which my own son has utilized in his writing for several years now.
  • Maybe your child wants to learn how to take better photographs. You can help her by purchasing a relatively inexpensive camera (maybe for Christmas this year?). She can get to know her camera by reading the instructions and then simply practicing in your own back yard.  She will learn the best times of day to take certain types of pictures, when the wildlife is out and available as subjects, and greatly improve her skill. There are also sometimes classes available, either online or in your town, that will teach how to use a specific type of camera or more general classes that are more of a ‘Photography 101’ kind of course.  One thing we are considering is an apprenticeship.  Is there someone in your area who would be willing to spend some time with your child, teaching her how to take photos, taking her out to find the perfect location to capture wildlife, or showing her how to set up the perfect family photo shoot?  Find out and ask!
  • Maybe your children are a bit younger, like some of mine, and you don’t really know what their greatest interests are yet.  That’s okay!  I am allowing my children to experiment with different things.  My younger son is taking an art class this year.  He is learning to draw with markers.  What he has done so far has turned out pretty well, but at this point I don’t see it as being his passion.  He is also taking his first science class.  He is actually loving it, so it could be that he develops an interest there, much like his older sister has. S he loves animals and is always ready to learn new information about them.  If we have a questionabout animals, we ask her first.  I call her our ‘resident animal expert.’  One thing I do see emerging is my son’s interest in comic books and writing comics himself.  That covers several topics of interest at once: writing, drawing, and reading.  His favorite? Calvin and Hobbes, to which he was introduced by his father.

Would you like to learn just a bit more about how my son has pursued his writing?  Read Writing Center Tools for the Relaxed Homeschooler.

There are many other areas where our children seek out their own studies.  They also do have some more ‘formal’ work, though we are very relaxed here.  My hope it that, even if you are very structured and traditional in your homeschooling methods, this post has helped you to see how easy it can be to allow your children to pursue their interests. And the best part?  That counts as school, too!

I hope to see you here next week, when we will reveal our Pumpkin Painting Contest winners.  There is still time to enter, so head on over to see what it’s all about!

Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Week 4

Welcome to the final installment on Photography, and also my last “Saturday with Shauna” here on the Singles blog!  In the past three weeks we’ve covered why you should intentionally take more photos of your family and friends, tips on taking better photos, and making albums and wall photos from your digital images.  This week we will discuss archiving because let’s face it, computers crash.  You want to keep your images safe so when disaster strikes, you won’t lose your precious memories.

So after you’ve taken some photos, you download the photos from your camera or memory card to your computer, right?  That’s what most of us do, I believe.  That’s a great start!  You now have the images saved to your computer, but what next?  What if your computer crashes?  Here’s what I recommend:

Get yourself an external hard drive!  They connect to any computer via USB and you can get a lot of space for very little money.  For example, here’s a Seagate external hard drive on amazon.com that hold three terabytes for only $119.99.  Do you know how many photos you could store in three terabytes of space?  A LOT.  Totally worth spending a hundred bucks or so on.

So after you get yourself one of these, as soon as you download your photos to your computer you then want to copy your photos over to the external hard drive.  At this point, your photos are still on your camera, on your computer, and on your external hard drive.  Three places, but we’re still not safe.  You have to delete the photos from your camera/memory card at some point in order to take more photos, so you really only have them saved in two places.  But both your computer and your external hard drive could crash, so what else should we do?  Burn them onto a CD.

Your computer should have a CD drive that is capable of burning discs but if not, you can find USB CD drives fairly cheap.  You’ll want to keep blank CD’s on hand so that you can quickly burn a CD of your new photos.  Label it and file it away somewhere, preferably in a fire-proof safe.  Or if you already have a security deposit box at your bank, your CD’s would be a great addition to that.  If you have neither, you can pick up a small fire-proof safe at your local Wal-Mart or Target for around $30.  It’s worth the investment because not only can you store your photo CD’s in it, but you can also store important documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates, titles, deeds, etc.

At this point, we have our photos on our computer, an external hard drive, and a CD.  I’m assuming by now you’ve deleted them from your camera/memory card so you can take more photos 🙂  In my opinion, this is still not enough.  What if you lose your CD or it gets scratched or broken?  The last thing I’d recommend is storing your photos in a cloud drive online.

Why store your photos online?  Because if your computer crashes, your external hard drive is damaged or lost, and your CD is scratched and can’t be read, you will still have your photos online.  Most online storage websites back up your data also, so chances are pretty good that your photos will always be there when you need them.  Some websites charge a fee, so you may need to shop around to find one in your price range.  Here are some examples:

Flickr – you will need to pay for a Pro account in order to save uncompressed photos.

Photobucket – free unlimited photo storage (with file size limits).

Mozy – paid online data backup, not only for photos, but for all your files.

These are just a few, I’m sure if you do a Google search you can find more to choose from.  There are lots of pros to having cloud storage, but a major con is that websites can be hacked and your photos could be viewed or even stolen.  So even though I recommend it in addition to your computer, external hard drive, and CD storage, you will have to decide for yourself if the risks and costs are worth it to you.

So there you have it.  I hope you have found this series helpful in your photographic journey!  Please be sure to share some of your photos with us on the Facebook community group page and also leave a comment below!

<3 Shauna

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You can find Shauna blogging about her other hobbies such as knitting, crochet, and cooking on her personal website, www.workhomeplay.net.  She also blogs on GCH: What’s on Your Plate? on Tuesdays.

Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Week3

Welcome to week three of Photography!  Last week, I gave you ten tips on how to take better photos and the week before, I talked about why you should take more photos.  This week, we will cover what to do with all those digital images you now have!  If you’re like me, my photos have generally lived on my hard drive or the memory card.  Not anymore!  I’m making it my mission to print photos and make albums, cards, etc. with my photos from now on!  Are you with me?

First of all, you need prints.  When computers crash a paper print is still there.  Sure, a physical print can be ruined, torn, lost, etc.  But treated properly, a print can last a very long time.  Plus, prints can be more easily enjoyed than digital photos that you have to pull up on your computer or other device in order to view them, especially if you have elderly relatives who are not computer savvy.  If you take the time to print your photos and decorate your home with them and fill albums with them, then others can easily enjoy them along with you!

Look around your house.  How many photos do you have displayed?  Only a few?  None?  That describes me.  For a former photographer, I’ve been really lazy about displaying my own family photos in our home!  If you look around and see many photos, then good for you!  You are a few steps ahead of us! 🙂  For those of us who have little to no family photos on display, we need to get busy.

The first step is looking through all your digital photos and picking out your favorites that you would like to see hanging on your walls or in albums.  When I used to make albums for my photography clients, I would start by making a new folder on my desktop (or anywhere, just remember where you put it).  Then I would look through all the photos and copy the ones I knew I wanted in the album into the new folder.  That way you have them all together in one place.  You can always delete this folder later after you’ve made your prints.  You could make separate folders for events or occasions or a folder for each of your kids and add photos to it throughout the month.  At the end of the month (or whatever time period you decide on), you could make an album for each event or for each child.  If you keep on top of your current photos this way, it makes the process much less painful.  But for those of us who have thousands of photos from years past to sort through, you will just need to set aside a day or maybe a full weekend to do this.  Don’t just say you’re going to do it either, write it on your calendar.  Schedule the time to do this and get it done!

Now that you have your photos together, look at them again and decide if you’d like to make larger prints of any of them for your walls.  Most people think an 8×10 is a “large print”.  Think again!  Take a look at the image below, borrowed from catewatersphotography.com, which compares print sizes.  An 8×10 looks puny in comparison to the others!  And on your wall, it will look tiny and be barely noticeable.  So when it comes to wall prints…. GO BIG!

Photo from: http://catewatersphotography.com

So you have your prints picked out for your album and you’ve selected a couple to print BIG for your wall 🙂  Where do you print them?  Personally, I find that many photo labs at the discount stores have color issues.  They may have cheap prints, but you get what you pay for.  Try to find a local lab that takes the time to calibrate their machines daily.  Their prints may be a few cents more but it will be worth it, plus you’re supporting a local small business!  You could also submit one or two photos to several local labs and compare the colors to see which one you prefer.  If you just can’t find a suitable lab in your area, there are some good online labs you can go to.  Just upload your photos, select print sizes, and submit.  Easy peasy!  My favorites are mpix.com and shutterfly.com.  These labs also offer photo canvases, which will really make your photos look like a work of art!  They are usually a little pricey, but if you have a special photo you really want to show off BIG on your wall, a canvas is worth the extra money!

You can also make albums and photo scrapbooks online through many different websites like mpix.com and shutterfly.com.  So if you’d rather do that instead of making individual prints and compiling your own album, go for it!  The options are endless!

The bottom line is that you have to make an intentional effort to manage your photos.  Set aside some time once a month or once a quarter, whenever you can, and get it done.  Remember, your photos are a legacy that will be cherished for years to come by your children and their children, etc.  I have several albums that belonged to my parents from the 50’s and 60’s and I’m sure they didn’t think they were anything special.  But I do and I’m so thankful they took the time to organize their photos into albums so I could have them now that they’re gone.  So if not for yourself, do it for your kids and grandkids!

Next week, our final week on photography, I will give you some pointers about photo storage, for both prints and digital images.  You’ll want to know how to preserve your digital files so that in the event of a computer crash, you won’t lose them.  And you want to make sure your printed photos will survive for many generations to come.  Your homework is to review some of your past digital photos, pick out some favorites and print them! 🙂

<3 Shauna

PS – you can visit me on my personal blog for recipes, knitting, and other fun stuff!  www.workhomeplay.net

Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Week 2

PHOTOGRAPHY

Last week, I explained to you why it’s so important to take pictures of your loved ones and to do it often and I hope you’ve taken my advice and have been intentionally capturing your memories!  This week, I’m going to give you some basic tips so that your pictures look less like snapshots and more professional and interesting, no matter what kind of camera you have!

 #1 – What’s in the background? 

A cluttered background = a bad picture! (photo swiped from Google, so I blotted out the child’s face)

Pay attention to what’s behind and around your subject!  If you’re taking pictures in the living room and there are toys all over the floor behind your subject, the photo is going to look cluttered and the background will distract the viewer from your subject.  To avoid this, simply move your subject!  Or if you are able to, remove items from the background.  You want a simple background so the viewer’s eye is drawn to your subject, not the junk behind them 🙂

 #2 – Get down on their level! 

When taking photos of kids or pets, try getting down on their level when you take their picture instead of standing and looking down at them.  When you’re on their level, you get a new and interesting perspective in your photos.

 #3 – Don’t center! 

Imagine a grid in the frame to compose your photos

Try putting your subject off-center in your photo.  It creates more interest than having your subject right in the middle of the frame.  Imagine a grid in the viewfinder of your camera and try placing your subject at any of the points where the lines intersect.

 #4 – Get a little closer! 

Fill the frame for beautiful close ups! My son, Gunnar 🙂

Try moving in closer to your subject…. Fill the frame with your subject’s face for a beautiful close-up!  If your camera has a zoom feature, you won’t even have to move closer to them, just zoom in.

 #5 – Try not to use the flash! 

Photo swiped from Google, so I blotted out the girls’ faces… but you can still see the flash shadows behind them. Not pretty!

Using your camera’s on board flash creates background shadows, which are a tell-tale sign of a snapshot.  If possible, place your subject in a well-lit area where flash is not necessary.  If you must use a flash, diffuse it.  For example, wrap some bubble wrap around your camera’s on board flash before you take the photo.  This will scatter the light and eliminate the harsh shadows.  There are many creative and inexpensive DIY ways to create a flash diffuser, just Google and pick one to try!

 #6 – Watch the light! 

Photo swiped from Google, so I blotted out the person’s face… but you can see an example of dappled light on her arm. You wouldn’t want dappled light like this on her face, so pay attention to the light while shooting.

When taking photos outdoors, pay attention to the light and how it falls on your subject.  If you have your subject facing the sun, they will squint their eyes, which doesn’t make for an attractive photo.  If you have them in the shade of a tree, for example, watch to make sure there isn’t dappled light on their face.  The best times of day to take photos is early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the sun is not high in the sky.  FYI, Late afternoon sun produces a beautiful “golden” look in your photos.  If you’re taking photos in the middle of the day and it’s sunny out, you’ll have to be more careful.  If you notice your subject is squinting, ask them to turn in a circle and stop when they are able to open their eyes fully.  Or ask them to move to a shady area cast by a building or a tree.  Another FYI, overcast days are the BEST days to take portraits outside!  The clouds act as a natural diffuser for the sun 🙂

 #7 – Be bossy! 

Who doesn’t love Journey?? 😉 When taking group portraits, don’t be afraid to tell your subjects to move where you want them!

When taking photos of several people, don’t be afraid to be bossy!  If you think it would look better if Uncle Joe moved over a few inches or you need Aunt Betty to stand behind someone, ask them to move!  It’s your shot, so feel free to direct your subjects in order to get the best shot possible.

 #8 – Be bold! 

Experiment with your camera’s settings!

Don’t be afraid of your camera.  Experiment with settings and read your owner’s manual.  If there’s a particular shot you want to take but don’t know how (for example – night photography or fireworks), just Google it and find out how others do it.  You really can’t mess up – there’s always the “delete” button!

 #9 – Use what you’ve got! 

You don’t have to have the fanciest camera on the block, just use what you have!

Don’t think you can’t get good photos just because you don’t own the newest DSLR with all the bells and whistles.  Good photography happens because the person behind the camera has a unique perspective and knows how to get the most out of whatever equipment he/she has.  You can have the latest and greatest DSLR but if you don’t know how to use it, you won’t produce good photos.  So, even if all you have available to you is the camera on your smart phone, don’t despair!  Read up on all the features your camera has and use them!

 #10 – Practice makes perfect! 

Practice makes perfect!

You can read all you want about how to take good pictures but you have to get the camera out and experiment with what you’ve read and experiment with the settings on your camera!  And if at first you don’t succeed, try again!  Keep practicing and implementing these tips and others and I promise, your photos will improve!

I hope you will use these tips and get out there and take some photos!  I want to see photos posted in the fellowship group on FB this week! 🙂  Remember, you have the opportunity to preserve your precious memories, so do it!

<3 Shauna

Shauna Jared’s personal website is www.workhomeplay.net.

Saturdays with Shauna: Photography! Part 1

PHOTOGRAPHY

 

This week I thought I’d start a mini-series and share something with you that is near and dear to my heart.  Some of you may know that I used to run a part-time portrait photography business a few years ago and I still love to take pictures even though I’ve closed the business.  Photography is something I feel we take for granted now that we have digital cameras and the ability to take as many pictures as we want… some of you may remember the days of film when we had 24 or 36 shots to a roll and we were much more discerning in what we deemed photo worthy.  Then we had to wait anywhere from an hour to a week to see the prints!  These days, we come back from vacation with 2,000 digital photos to sort through and many of them never even see print.  It’s such a shame that treasures like this end up living on our computer or camera cards instead of in frames on our walls so they can be enjoyed.

In my opinion, photography is the greatest invention of mankind; it is truly a gift from God that we are able to preserve our memories and the faces of our loved ones for future generations.  I would like to share some of my thoughts and tips with you in the next few weeks on getting great shots that you and your family will treasure in the years to come and also how to get those images into frames and albums so they can be appreciated.  I also want to show you how to archive and manage your digital media so you don’t lose your images in the event of a hard drive crash.

Me with my parents a LONG time ago 🙂

 Week 1 – Getting the Shots!

First of all, you have to actually take pictures!  Some of us get busy and forget and we let months or years go by without really taking any photos, except maybe at functions like graduations and weddings.  Especially if you have little ones, pets, and elderly people in your lives, you really need to make an intentional effort to take photos of them often.  Little ones don’t stay little for long and sadly, pets and elderly relatives aren’t getting any younger.  I don’t mean to be Debbie Downer, but having lost all of my grandparents by the time I was 19, my dad when I was 21, then my mom when I was 27, along with my father-in-law in 2006 and our beloved toy poodle, Ginger, last year, I find myself wishing all the time that I had taken more photos of all of them.

Here are some ways you can be intentional (there’s that word again!) about taking photos of your loved ones for posterity:

Look at every day as a photo opportunity!  You don’t have to wait for a family get together or a holiday, just take photos!  In your backyard, in the living room, at the park, whatever.  Especially if you have young children – they change and grow up fast so you really need to make it a point to take photos of them often.  Use your camera or your smart phone if you have to, but just make sure to get the shots.

My son, Gunnar, having dinner one night at home <3

Create your own “family photo days”.  Schedule a day and take your family to a scenic venue for some family photos.  Do it once a month or once a year, it doesn’t matter – just do it.

My sister-in-law (at the time), me, and my brother… love that 70’s film look! lol

Use the holiday season and family get togethers to take photos.  Maybe you don’t see Aunt Judy but once a year at the family reunion.  Make sure to take a photo of her!  Maybe with the birth of a new baby there’s now five generations alive in the family – get them together for a group shot.  Maybe Great Grandma is celebrating her 97th birthday – get a picture of her blowing out her candles.  Or Uncle Joe flew in from Timbuktu for Christmas this year.  You get the picture (pun intended 😉 )

Get in the shot!  Maybe you’re like me and you abhor photos of yourself.  You avoid the camera at all costs and make jokes about breaking the camera lens when someone forces you to pose for them.  Quit it!  Your kids and their kids and so on and so forth, will treasure photos of you one day.  Get out from behind the camera once in awhile and get in the shot.  Use a tripod and your camera’s self-timer or give the camera to someone else.  Your loved ones won’t care about how bad you think you look in the picture, they will cherish photos of you regardless of what you looked like.

Our toy poodle, Ginger, who passed away in February 2012

Don’t forget Fido!  Our pets are like family too and they have a much shorter life span than we do.  Sometimes we neglect taking their photo because they’re always around.  But unfortunately, your beloved pet won’t be around forever.  Be sure to take plenty of photos, even if it’s just a picture of the dog lying on the couch.  One day you’ll be glad you did.

Next week, I’ll have some basic tips for you on taking better pictures!  In the meantime, your homework assignment is to take some photos this weekend!  Be sure to share some of them on our Facebook Fellowship page and comment below and tell us about your experience! 🙂