We have a new high school math course. It’s a full 180-day course. The focus is consumer math, but also covers many practical, real-world math applications.

Although the course is mainly based on online textbooks, there are some fun extras mixed in. They will spend one lesson playing a game as an Uber driver, trying to actually get the bills paid. In another lesson they will run a magic show and try to make a profit as they work to make it to Vegas. There are some mini-units on cryptocurrency, economics, philanthropy and more.

This is intended for high school. The daily lessons are expected to take 40 minutes on average. There is a note a couple of weeks into the course about how to adapt lessons if they are taking longer than an hour. This is a new course, so we’d be happy for feedback on the experience.

Check out the course. There is no offline version of the course at this time.

In other news, as of yesterday I have three adult children! He was born on Mother’s Day 18 years ago. I still have three being homeschooled, ages 10 – 15.

Do you remember ever having the experience of being asked for directions as a kid and having no idea, but then after you got your driver’s license you knew your way around? The difference was that you didn’t have to know for yourself until you were responsible for knowing it for yourself.

When you are helping your child with their work, try to remember that principle. If they are independent readers, have them try before you even look at anything. Have them try to figure it out on their own. It’s my policy to not step in until they’ve tried on their own first.

If they need help figuring it out, talk through what they need to do, but then let them do it. If they need redirecting, go ahead and point out what they need to be doing for the first one. Look ahead and see where they will need to do something different and maybe circle the first one that might be different to alert them. But then walk away. They need to figure it out for themselves. Just because they can do it with you talking them through the steps, doesn’t mean they are learning the steps they need to do.

You can ask your child to check their first answer, or to come to you to check, so they can make sure they are on the right track. If they got it wrong, see if they can figure out where they messed up. You should have them redo it to make sure they get it right. You can ask questions to guide them along, but don’t just tell them what to write. Then let them try on their own again. Then check again, and so on, until they are completing them correctly independently. They need to do it on their own to be able to do it on their own. If they keep coming for help, you can start a policy of having to do four on their own before they can be done, and you can just make up more for them to do, so they can’t get away with just always asking for help.

I have a child with special needs, and he’s used to having someone sit next to him for when he needs help. I have to distract myself and even walk away to leave him to try things on his own. Otherwise, it’s too easy for him to ask for help if I’m right there or for me to jump in too quickly. It’s an important skill to figure things out for yourself.

I can see in my adult son how helpful it was to him that I couldn’t help him with his computer design work he does. He would come to me with a problem, and I had no clue, and I would always just send him back with, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He perseveres and figures it out. Now he has companies contacting him regularly because he’s someone who figured out what others haven’t. This isn’t just about borrowing in subtraction or changing the Y to an I. This is a life skill. It’s problem solving and perseverance, and they will serve your children well for the rest of their lives.

One definition of revival is that of being in a state where nothing matters but Jesus. One way to think about living in a revived state is “All Jesus All the Time.” He’s your all and everything. That’s how you can live now and always. You don’t have to wait for something to happen. You can give your life to Jesus today and let go of everything that is keeping you from living in His constant loving, full-of-joy presence.

The world today talks about living in the present. That’s not the key. It’s living in His Presence. That’s the goal, living in consistent fellowship with God. That looks like knowing Jesus is with you always. It’s keeping your eyes on Jesus. It’s setting Him always before you. It’s acknowledging Him in all your ways. It’s abiding in His love.

How can you do that? You can let go of every other love. He needs to be your one and only. The greatest commandments are to love God and love others. All of God’s laws are summed up in those commands to love. We are able to be forgiven because of Jesus’ love sacrifice to take the punishment for our sins. We continue in that blameless state before Him because we receive the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and let Christ live that love out through us.

We need to obey that greatest commandment and love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. You can be revived by giving up all other loves so that your life is consumed with the only love that matters. Yes, there will still be work to do, but you do it with Jesus right there with you. You can fellowship with Jesus when you wash the dishes, turning it into a sweet time instead of a chore. 🙂

Ask the Lord to shine His light on your life and reveal where you’ve given yourself to other loves. Give them up. If you feel like you can’t or don’t want to, then ask God for help. Ask Him to change your heart so that you love Him alone. Walk in His light, as 1 John 1:7 says, and you will have love for others and He will be working to remove all that’s not from Him. It’s a continual state, not of perfection, but of blamelessness because you are ever giving yourself over to His purifying process, walking in the light of His love.

Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” (Eph. 5:14 NKJV)

Here are some Thanksgiving activities you might want to try.  (Choose from available activities from the sites.)

Cranberry Science

Ship Drawing

Thanksgiving Crafts (and more)

Mayflower Crafts  (use available links)

Turkey Escape Game

Thanksgiving Online Activities/Games

Thanksgiving Online and Offline Activities and Games

Thanksgiving Logic Game

Spot the Difference

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

A History

Why are you homeschooling? Do you have a goal in mind? Maybe your child was created with a drive to get a full scholarship from Harvard, but I hope that’s not your goal for them. Those kinds of goals need to be driven by the child, something they take on and achieve with you cheering them on, not something that you drive them to do. We shouldn’t be choosing career paths for our children. They were made for a purpose, and we should want that for them, not our own aspirations.

Let me get back to the idea of goals. What is your big goal for your kids? What is your goal for homeschooling? What’s your “why?”

Let me suggest one for you: that your kids would love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength, and with all their mind, and that they would love their neighbors as themselves.

If your child got the full scholarship to Harvard, it would sure feel good. It would feel good telling others about Harvard. It would feel good telling those family members who were always questioning whether your kids were missing out by being homeschooled. But, we’re not in this for ourselves. We’re not doing this every day in pursuit of validation for ourselves. The end game isn’t to prove to anyone else what a great job we did homeschooling. We’re not out to prove our kids are just as smart as the kids who went to school.

We have a bigger purpose in mind. I hope you have a bigger purpose in mind.

I know some of you homeschool out of fear. I hope you can redirect that into love. Pour love into your kids, not fear of what’s out there. Some of you homeschool because of busy schedules. I hope you keep school as an important part of the day and don’t neglect it in pursuit of other things. Some of you homeschool because you want your child to have the best academics and know homeschooling can be better than school. I hope you take the time to enjoy being together in your freedom and not just pursue accelerating your child’s education.

And some of you want more than anything that your child would love God and love others, but sometimes forget that’s the goal and get sidetracked looking at all those pursuing other goals. Yes, we want our kids to be educated. This is God’s world and we want them to know about it. We want them to not just be able to read, but to be able to study the Bible. We want them to be able to make smart decisions with their money and understand the numbers of credit and interest. We want them to marvel at how God designed the world to work, and to learn from history’s mistakes to avoid them in the future. But it’s all got a focus. This is God’s world we live in. He put us each here on purpose for a purpose.

If you ever wondered what God’s will is, I’ll fill you in. Love God. Love others. Teach your kids their purpose in life. If they are doing that, He’ll make sure the rest falls into place.