After reading the news about Phoebe Prince, a freshman at South Hadley High School (in a middle to upper class community in Massachusetts), who hung herself due to cyber bullying, I couldn’t help but to wonder how this kind of behavior could have gone unnoticed, or untreated for that matter.

The “untouchables” is the nickname they’ve been dubbed on The Boston Globe. These mean girls who hounded Phoebe through text messages, social networking groups, and even in person, have been left literally unscathed by the event- even further mocking Phoebe after her death.

The main question I had for this situation was: how do we 21st century parents help to prevent this kind of bullying?

Do we restrict or limit access to the computer?  Do we prevent our children from having social networking accounts?

As a tech savvy parent, I have had to think about this often and mull over some solutions that will fit my kids now in the early years and in the years to come when they become teens.  For now, my children lay low in the social networking arena since they are underage and don’t have Facebook or MySpace accounts.  I have even had to reconsider using full first names for my children under my own blogs and accounts online as well.

But when they are older and become more media savvy, how do I prevent cyber bullying from happening to them?  Some children/teens can be cruel–there’s no getting around that.  How do parents take a proactive role in keeping our kids and teens safe from the exploitation of cyber bullying?

1. Educate our children on web savvy behavior, such as never revealing last names or passwords. I think one of the most important steps to helping to prevent cyber bullying is to help our children to become aware of how to keep themselves safe online.  Small tips like keeping passwords safe and not revealing last names helps.
2. Supervise your kids online.  When at home, it is important for parents to keep tabs on what your kids are doing on the internet.  Placing the computer in a safe, common area (such as the living room), helps keep us parents aware of what is happening with our kids online.
3. Install parenting controls. With software such as Net Nanny, a parent can install internet filtering on home computers as well as for cell phones.  With the onslaught of cyber bullying via text messaging today, parents can also some control over at least knowing what is going on via their kids’ phones.  Here is what the Net Nanny website quotes their software solution does for the cell phones:

Parents now have the ability to view all e-mail messages, along with all (SMS) text messages and multi media (MMS) messages transmitted and received by the device.

Key Word Alert: Net Nanny Mobile “Alert” notification monitors keywords identified by the parents as words that could be potentially alarming. When one of the key words is contained within a text message or email, to or from the child, the parent is notified immediately via e-mail by Net Nanny Mobile.

From any computer on the Internet, parents are given complete insight into the mobile activities of their children.

4.)  Another tip: train your kids to delete messages without opening them.  Not only will this prevent spam and virus attacks, but it also helps to filter out info that could be emotionally harmful to your children.  If they don’t recognize the sender or the subject line looks “fishy”, don’t open it.  Generally, I like to do a quick scan on my email accounts each day for emails that appear in my inbox (which are not first caught by my “junk mail” folders).  If there are emails that I don’t recognize, I have trained myself to automatically highlight and delete them without fully opening messages or attachments.  This should be something we train our students to do as well.

5.)  Apply message blocks. If we learn to use the technology our kids are using, we can effectively help them to block unwanted messages on their cell phones, social networking accounts, and email accounts.

These are just a few small tips to help parents and teachers to step into the direction of being proactive with our kids’ technology experiences.  Although taking away all access to social media and technology can actually prevent our children from experiencing cyber bullying when we are present, it does not effectively prepare our kids to learn how to be proactively careful in their own online and cell phone activities.  We just have to teach them and train them to use technology safely.

As for cyber bullies- obviously these kids have severe emotional and psychological hang ups, that they would get some demented type of pleasure out of harrassing other people online.

But….that’s another story and another set of solutions to be tackled on another day.

For now, let’s just learn to keep our own kids safe…

And last tip:

Perhaps we can bring more community awareness to this problem by starting up community-wide and school initiatives. Our schools and community programs need policies in place to deal with these types of behaviors.  We can’t wait until it’s already happened- then it’s too late.

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If you have been looking for a different way to approach telling bible stories to your children, here is a neat little site that has bible stories children can both read (or be read to) with full colorful pictures.

THe girls have been enjoying these bible stories.

Typically I will let my 7 year old read them on her own or outloud to me as she scrolls through the pages.  The pages are in PDF and can also be printed out on a separate link to use as coloring pages.

Stories are both Old and New Testaments and are translated in about 35 different languages, including (English, of course), Swahili, French,  German, Portugues. Indonesian…and more!

Bible For Children does all of this for FREE because they believe in the value of spreading the Gospel message to children that normally wouldn’t have access to it.

On their website, they list their goal for BFC:

These Bible Stories are to be distributed to the 1.8 billion children of the world freely wherever possible.

We have been enjoying this website in our home school, and I thought I would just pass this along.

BibleForChildren.org

Enjoy!

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A few days ago we started our school morning off with a little art. Baby Z enjoys painting now.
I realized soon that this was one of the little pleasures of the 2 year old toddler stage that I missed so much with my oldest daughter.

I just had to post this–although short and sweet.

I want to capture these “small” moments as often as possible.

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School has taken on a whole new meaning for us this week!  That is a good thing.

Adding on to the whole “workbox system” we began using last week , we’ve made some adaptations to what we do– it has been a wonderful start to our new way of doing things for 2010.  After one week, however, I discovered a beautiful key to teaching 2nd grade:  student independence.

I guess I always knew that I was holding on too tightly to our school days.  I need order and a system that works- but I also realized that I don’t need to be actively “teaching” every subject.  Serving as more of a facilitator and overseer this past week, I have been able to let my 7 year old take a pre-written list of school instructions/assignment sheet for the day back to her school desk, close the door, and have at it.  I tell her, “if you have any questions, just holla”.

I should have known this would have worked out so much better for us.  For NyGirl’s entire first semester of kindergarten she was practically self-taught with an Abeka workbook and a few other supplies while I rested from a long pregnancy and spent time in labor, delivery, and adjusting to having a newborn.    She did well- and all without my constant intervention.  I think I probably felt a little out of sorts because I didn’t feel like I was “on top of things”.

Which probably explains my complete 180 turn the next year in wanting to regain control I felt I had lost.  And, of course, I was attracted to the Classical Method in helping me to regain that “lost” control.

Now?

Now I am learning to let go a bit.  I still have structure and order, but the independence NyGirl has is making our lives so much easier.  Not to mention, she enjoys not having me over her the entire school day.  Our school days are shorter.  We have time for more extracurriculars and fun time together.  We both like the ease of how our days flow.

Let me give you an example of what our days typically look like:

(There are always exceptions, and I don’t make any hard and fast rule about not going anywhere during certain hours.  So many of our days may find us doing school work at the library or Barnes and Noble, or at the coffeeshop while BabyZ goes to nursery).  But in general, this is what it looks like:

• Up/toiletries/change clothes/chores/breakfast
• At breakfast, recite the week’s scripture memory verse
• After breakfast, clear the table and sit back at the table for “morning meeting”, which consists of  a special bible nursery song for Baby Z, bible story for both girls (currently reading the Children’s ILlustrated Bible New Testament at their father’s request), then a Saxon math lesson for NyGirl while BabyZ works on counting chips or counting bears.  I might at this point also give a grammar lesson from First Language Lessons.
• Then dismiss to NyGirl’s school desk in her room to complete her lessons.  I usually put out her school assignment sheet and workbooks in order on her desk the night before.  During this time BabyZ and I might work on a floor puzzle, recite abc’s, color, or watch educational PBS Kids shows.  From time to time NyGirl comes out of her room for assistance, or a teacher check.

That is the general order of things.  While at her school desk, she usually finishes the following assignments from these resources:

• Saxon Math 3 review sheet
• Bible Lifepace- grade 2
• BJU 3rd grade grammar workbook
• Spectrum Spelling- grade 4
• cursive handwriting worksheet
• and depending on the day of the week, we might do any one of the following: Geography, American History online lesson, piano lesson, violin lesson, P.E., art, or French.  Sometimes we hit only a few of these topics only twice a month or so, and that is okay with me as long as there is exposure.  Piano,  French, and American History we try to do weekly, and P.E. usually happens 3 or 4 times a week if no one is ill (since we’re paying for gym membership).

And that is about it.

But the secret of my peace of mind now has a lot to do with a routine that works for us.  I haven’t left the “control” issue completely at the door, though.  I still have my plans for at our school days and how I want them to proceed, but I am beginning to take a breather now that she is old enough to be more independent with her school work, and I am embracing it.

I think my favorite part is checking her work at the end of the day, writing small notes on her workbook pages (like “good job-keep it up!”, you know- typical “teacher-ish” behavior!), giving her stickers, and watching her face light up the next day when she opens her workbook and reads my comments from the night before.  That makes my day.

That, and the fact that she finishes all of the above subjects in about 1 -2 hours when it would have normally taken me about 4-5 hours to teach it (because of lots of toddler interruptions).  That has been the main reliever for me.

Remember, BabyZ is still only 2, and very active.  I have had to let go of the marker board for a season.  What works for us is just using blank computer paper, front and back, as our “white board”.  While at the kitchen table for our morning meeting, I use the blank paper for our math  and grammar instruction.  I try to write out the majority of the math and grammar examples out the night before to just make that morning’s work easier.

All this prep work and planning is going to make for a very productive school year.  I’m a happy mama, and a happy teacher

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Here we are back to school again in 2010!  We are off to a great start, and I must say, my goals for this year are a bit different than from ‘09.

We started a new filing system, inspired from a fellow homeschool mom whom I’ve known since high school.

It basically consists of a medium size crate we got from WalMart and some simple file folders.

In it we’ve placed file folders and our subjects/books/materials in each folder to separate our subjects.  They are in order according to how our school day generally goes.

So in the first file folder we have our Children’s bible., a hymnal, catechism, scripture memory charts, anointing oil, etc.  Our second file folder contains our Saxon math materials, our third file folder contains all Language Arts , and so forth.

BabyZ has been sitting at her own little desk (you can see she’s marked it up really nicely):
NyGirl now has her own desk where she can ‘officially’ do her schoolwork rather than at the kitchen table:

This system has really been working out well for us.

I spent the better part of 2008/2009 really attempting to discover (or maybe re-discover) what it is I truly wanted for my children.  I had just had my second daughter and was learning the ropes with having a newborn, turned young toddler in the house (a really active one at that) while trying to find balance in the discovery of my role as homemaker, homeschool teacher, writer, and web designer.  Some of those things I eventually let go of completely (like designing sites for clients) while I ended up whole-heartedly persuing others (such as writing and plugging in more to my role as a homeschool mom).

While feeling my way around the homeschool community, I found that with all of the myriads of choices in educational curriculum and methods, I would need to quickly discover our family goals for our children’s education, and stick with them.  It took us a while to find our way to where we are now.  We plucked through several ideologies on home education, and tried our hands at the Classical Education method (as proposed by Susan Wise Bauer).  I bought all of her books and to this day still use First Language Lessons.  The ideas were great, but with time I began to realize that I couldn’t fit our educational plans and goals into the Trivium– it soon began to box me in and I was dying to get let out of the “cage”.  (This is no offense to those of you who use this method and have children who are flourishing well under this type of training.  I still think it is a great method…just not for us).

We have and are still trying a few different approaches (such as Charlotte Mason and Montessori), which I guess makes us very eclectic.  And all the while as we are adapting our way of doing things we have a true, main focus which is beginning to center us as a home school now…the idea of us teaching our children in the ways of God.  This has always been a part of our family motto…just something we normally do on a typical day with our kids.  We are Christians, and therefore we are raising our children as Christians.  But with our home school, we are going beyond the idea of simply raising Christian kids.  It is becoming more of a foundation for our school, where everything is beginning to center around our studies of the Bible, worship time, etc. I never thought I would be one to go straight for the “all Christian” curriculum or to try to find specific curriculum which was religious in nature.  Our math is Saxon (pretty streamline), our science  and social studies, Houghton Mifflin, and grammar is a combination of different workbooks (Spectrum), First Language Lessons…but our history, on the other hand, is from a free Christian-based online school for homeschoolers. My daughter is really enjoying her History lessons (currently is learning about Christopher Columbus).

But the thing I noticed about how our lives are already beginning to change because of our more pronounced focus on a Christian education this year, is that my daughter seems to be all the more content and peaceful at the end of our school hours.  School also has become more fun, for the both of us.  Everything – from reciting scripture, learning the books of the New Testament, learning hymnals and receiving prayer during “chapel”, reading bible stories from the New Testament, and getting tested on spelling and vocabulary words taken straight from the bible text…has been a blast both for me and for her!  We also located a great BJU Press 3rd grade reader in our stash of books and resources which has some hearty, old fashioned, good stories.  The kind of good stories that truly are good- (the focus being on courage, honor, commitment, honesty, etc.)

So we are having a good time…not to mention we’ve got some techie stuff up our sleeves that we’re planning for the new year.  Hopefully we get the podcast some wheels and start rolling out more audios.  I kind of liked VoiceThread, but I got a little bored of it.  NyGirl definitely enjoyed Power Point so we’ll be doing more presentations of that sort- maybe next time using open source.

Looking forward to a great year ahead!

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