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Greetings!

Gena Suarez Publisher of TOS

Diana Waring

Relational Homeschooling

www.DianaWaring.com 

• your kids are the most important investment you will ever make;
• your kids need YOU (your love, your care, your time, your heart) more than they need stuff;
• everything else they need is pretty basic (food, shelter, clothing).

With that in mind, you can make some good choices.

Ask yourself:

• "What technology can we afford?"

• "What technology do we NEED?"

• "What technology will help--not harm--our family?"

My final bit of non-techie advice concerning technology? Seek the Lord for His wisdom and provision for your family's techno needs. He knows what you're dealing with, He hears your heart, and He is a generous Father.

Remember, stay relational!!

Diana

P.S. We'll be in Des Moines, Iowa, this weekend! I'd love to meet you, so stop by and say, "Hi!"

Hal & Melanie Young

Raising Real Men

www.RaisingRealMen.com  

We started homeschooling when dinosaurs walked the earth. Well, not really, but it was before social media, websites, even email! It's amazing all the inspiration and help you can find these days.

Melanie's brother lives in China, so our children have cousins who speak Chinese.  

That motivated us to chose Mandarin as our homeschool's foreign language. There's just one slight problem. Uh, we don't speak Chinese!

That's where technology can really help us! Years ago, we had to find someone in our area who we could trade with or hire to help us with those strange subjects we wanted to do. Sometimes we bought tapes (yes, we're that old!) or books, but that didn't give you any feedback. These days it's much easier!

For Mandarin, we use ChinesePod to teach speaking. It's a subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of podcasts on all different levels. The earliest levels are mainly in English and explain simple elements of Chinese and the most difficult ones are completely fluent discussions of Chinese poetry and philosophy. You do have to exercise caution in your choice of lessons. We're not really interested in our guys learning to order a beer or ask a girl out in Mandarin!

We also love Skritter. It's an online program that teaches you to read and write Chinese characters. That's the hardest part of learning Chinese, but Skritter makes it fun. Using fuzzy logic (hey, look it up!), the program recognizes when you get it almost right, and helps you to do it just right. It's like a video game, kind of addictive. :)

The best use of technology in your homeschool is to help you do those things you just think you can't do at all! Let me tell you, if a couple of Southern-accented parents like us can do Chinese at home, you guys can do anything!

Yours in the battle,

Hal & Melanie

See you guys on the road! This week we'll be in Nashville, TN, at the Teach Them Diligently Convention, then NCHE in Winston-Salem, NC, kicks off our Great Western Tour. See if we'll be in your area by clicking here.  

Please pray for us--we're hitting the road for ten conferences all over the country between now and mid-August! That's a lot of miles to cover, and we have a terrible history of breakdowns and flat tires!