Homeschooling Boys Workshop in Lenoir

Dear Friends in Lenoir,

Please forgive me for taking so long to post this. I greatly enjoyed spending time with you and I was so impressed by the number and quality of questions asked by your group. It is such a blessing to speak to engaged listeners!

Thank you for letting me come!
Melanie Young

Here's the handout:

Ballistic Homeschooling: Surviving and Appreciating Boys
Melanie Young
Copyright 05/2005, 2008

I. The Challenge of Boys

II. A Vision of Manhood
A. Aiming at Young Men
B. Manhood Marred
C. Resisting Feminization
D. Manly Virtues: Courage, Honor, a Stalwart heart to fight for right, Persistence, Fortitude, Endurance, Leadership. Men should be Brave, True, Faithful, Honest, and Intrepid.

III. Raising Men of Iron with Hearts of Gold
A. Give them something to aim for.
B. Leadership vs. Rebellion
C. Learning Responsibility
The Vision
Chores
School
Errands
Finances
Opportunities
Avoiding Disaster
D. Purpose in Life
E. Discord among the brethren
F. Passionate Purity
G. What’s sin, what’s not
H. Loving your sons

IV. More than survival

Resources
Books by G.A. Henty are fantastic (Vision Forum, lots of vendors)
Sugar Creek Gang books by Paul Hutchins http://www.belovedbooks.com
Cowboy Sam readers by Edna Walker Chandler
Jeff McLean: His Courtship (Timberdoodle sells this)
Vision Forum catalog http://www.visionforum.com
Timberdoodle catalog http://www.timberdoodle.com
Plants Grown Up by Doorposts http://www.doorposts.net
Poems for Patriarchs (Vision Forum sells this)
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers (secular, but good information)
Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger movies (buy very cheaply on eBay); Movies made during World War II like Sergeant York; War movies do not upset boys, they inspire them!
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris
Men of Iron by Howard Pyle
Lots of biographies of great men. Teach history through example! Discuss the great men of history as men. Discuss how they met the standard of godly men and how they failed. Some great places to start: Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Winston Churchill.

Homeschool Moment: The Great Circle Route

Tonight over supper we were talking about the flight our eldest son is taking today to Asia. We first looked at the flat world map on our kitchen table (I covered it with roll plastic bought at Wal-Mart and we've got a US one on there, too - we have a big table!). It looked pretty obvious that his plane would travel right across America and the Pacific to Asia. Not so, Grasshopper! I asked one of the children to run go get the globe. If you hold a piece of string between where you are and where you are going in Asia and try to get the string as short as possible, you will be surprised at the actual route. It is much closer to travel north to go west to Asia from the U.S. East coast! It's called the Great Circle Route! Check out this Great Circle Mapper. It looks confusing, but just type in two airport codes (you can look them up on the same page and map! For example, if you type in "JFK-NRT" (JFK, New York to Narita, Tokyo, Japan) and press "Display Map" it is amazing! You may not recognize the continents at first because you are looking down at the North Pole!

BTW, we'd sure appreciate prayer for Eldest Son! He has just a little more than an hour to make it through one of the busiest, most confusing airports in the world to make his connection and his plane is running a little late!