For Mothers with Toddlers: Sit Still and Be Quiet, Please!

Note:  I did not write this, but I wholeheartedly agree with everything in it, and it does have implications for teachers as well.   It may be shared freely.

                                            Sit Still and Be Quiet, Please!

   As a young mother reading Little House on the Prairie series to my children, I marveled at the expectations placed on the young characters to sit quietly for hours. In our modern times, even adults wouldn’t have the ability to be so attentive. What was the difference? What have we gained, or lost, in our present-day society by doing everything faster? While these questions are beyond the scope of this article, I believe that training our children to sit quietly and listen for an extended period of time is a virtue that will benefit them throughout life. Below are a few thoughts and practices that I have gleaned over the years.

• It begins early. Train your child to be quiet as soon as they start making noises with meaning for example: mama or no no. Meal time prayers and family devotions are a great place to start. By the time your child is talking, they should be able to stay quiet in church services.
• Expect to have to train them. While this sounds like a no-brainer, it’s easy to think that a child should just behave because they know better, but most children will need a parent to remind them. Again and again.
• It begins in the home. It is not the Sunday school teacher or the grade school teacher’s job to see that your child sits quietly. The child should gain this discipline before then.
• Dads need to be involved. Small children generally sit more quietly for their fathers. 
• Keep the electronics away. Don’t use it as a babysitter or even as an educational toy for young ones. Your children will have plenty of screen time in their lives without it.
• Teach by example. A young child wants to be “big.” Point out to them that Daddy, Sister, Brother etc. are sitting quietly also. 
• Skip the toys and food for church services. Feed your child a good breakfast and keep the diaper bag for diapers. More stuff does not make a child quieter, in fact, it usually has the opposite effect.
• Make staying in the church auditorium more pleasant than being elsewhere. While this may seem contradictory to the above point, make every effort to stay sitting in church by having a special toy or book to play with. Also, if a child knows that they will be disciplined when taken out, they will likely think twice before making a fuss.
• Do not relax on the rules. If you do need to take your child out, because they are being noisy, keep them sitting in your lap just like you would in the pew. 
• Teach them how to sit properly. Don’t allow them to stand up on the bench or on the floor, if they are too big to stand on your lap. 
• Expect them to be involved. By the time your child can read, they should help sing and follow along in their Bibles with everyone else at church.

Finally, God has vested parents with the authority to teach and train our children. He will supply the wisdom and patience needed to complete the task. 

- a mother of eight 

Facinating Fix-ups

 This post was written for and posted at The Dock for Learning.  

Fascinating Fix-ups 

 

Spelling fix-ups:  

It's silly to get your house repo$$e$$ed if you only owe $4 on it. 

And, the word clam is in the word ex-clam-a-tory.

Many years ago I was visiting another school and classroom when I heard the teacher refer to “fix-ups.”  I had never heard the term before and was a bit perplexed, so I asked her about it and she explained.  “Fix-ups” is the term used for students correcting their papers. 

At first I was a little taken aback.  Aren’t they just supposed to try to do well the first time?  Isn’t that a bit lame giving them the opportunity to redo their work?  

The more I thought about it though, I thought it was a fabulous idea, and one that I have been using in my classroom for years.  Here are a few reasons why.

• Students try harder the first time, as they know that they will be required to correct any wrong answers.   If approached correctly, it becomes a game or a challenge to do well the first time.

• It gives students immediate feedback so that they can see what they got wrong.  This prevents establishing a wrong method, such as when learning long division.  The sooner the mistakes are corrected, the better, so that no wrong habits are established.

• Grades on tests improve!  The students get in the habit of working more slowly and carefully, as well as being more diligent with their work, and this transfers to tests.

• It establishes a culture of “excellence expected” in the classroom. 

• It keeps students busy and hopefully not wasting any time. 

Here are a few suggestions of how to implement the use of “fix-ups” in your classroom. 

• Explain to your students what you will be doing: grading their work and getting it back to them (as soon as you can) so that they can correct any wrong answers.  Stress that the goal is to have a 100% by the end of the day. 

• Note: This applies only to daily work, not tests.

• Choose your subjects.  We  do this with math, language arts, spelling, and vocabulary, but you might want to start with just math and then work your way up. 

• Grade like crazy!  I have a camping chair that my students take up the stairs for me every morning break and at lunch.  They set it down where I can see all of them, and I supervise and grade from my chair.  I get fresh air and sunshine, the papers get graded, and the students know the parameters (don’t get the ball that went over the neighbor’s fence), so it’s safe. My goal is to have all of the math papers (that have been turned in) graded by morning break, and the rest of everything graded by lunch.  Using teacher’s keys, I can usually grade, supervise, and carry on a conversation all at the same time.  Teachers have superpowers.  

• Help!  If my students have gotten a wrong answer the second time, I expect them to try once more, and then I will help them if they still can’t get it.  This provides a good opportunity for them to see me work the problem up on the board, or to get an individual lesson at their desks.

• Good enough.  I have found that students usually have a 98%-100% after the second fix-up, and I help them with the last one or two problems if they don’t.  Every once in a while we don’t have enough time for a 100%, but I expect at least an A (93% or higher), and then I call that “good enough.”  

Implementing the use of “fix-ups”, if done in the right way, can be a very positive, motivating, and helpful tool for teachers to use in their classrooms.  

Lancaster Music Camp Livestream Link

HERE is the link to the livestream 

of the afternoon program.  The sound does NOT work until 25 minutes -  sorry! 

 

Lancaster Music Camp Program

 

2025 ChoralFest Link from the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp

We had a wonderful time with wonderful people, wonderful music, and wonderful food at the 2025 Shenandoah Christian Music Camp.   HERE is the link to the2025 ChoralFest. 

Vibrant Words

       Now that it is summer I finally have a little time to breathe, and I'm already planning for next year.  In the meantime, I'm catching up on posts from this last year that I never got around to posting.  Aren't teacher summers wonderful?  

     

      I got this idea from Cassie Stevens (cassiestephens.blogspot.com).  Many students used their names, but others chose verbs or hobbies or interjections.  I appreciate the creativity.  The younger students used markers while the rest of us used acrylic paint.

 

Lighthouse Art and a Real Lighthouse

 

    This delightful project was gleaned from Art Projects for Kids.  She has an amazing collection of sketches which use quadrants.  These are great for students as they give more definite parameters, and I have seen my students' perspective, spatial awareness, and art in general greatly improve since I've been using a few of these a year.  

     And, it is fun to visit real lighthouses, and we do whenever we have a chance.  During a recent family vacation, we had the opportunity to tour the Turkey Point Lighthouse near North East, Maryland.  The view of the Chesapeake Bay was lovely, and the ladders and stairs inside the lighthouses are always enchanting.  

Registration is Open for the 2025 Anabaptist Orchestra

 The orchestra will practice at Legacy Christian School in Holmes County August 14-17, 2025.

The program is at Dover High School in Dover, Ohio, August 17th at 3:00 p.m.

Yay! Enroll here.

LAMA Concert! Lancaster Academy of Music and Art

 

Russian Mystery Day

Our Mystery February Fun Day got delayed because of snow two weeks ago, so we decided to have it this week instead.  The teachers donned scarves, aprons, and shawls.  We played Russian music and enjoyed a delicious lunch of borscht soup, beef stroganoff, wheat rolls, layered wafer cakes, and Russian candies.  Then we played vishibali, a Russian form of dodgeball.  This was a great immersion into the culture for the middle grades which have been studying Eastern Europe, and a lot of fun for the rest of us.  

 

Give a Mouse a Cookie; Give a Student a Lamp

                                                   

      After collecting several lamp bases and shades (purchased for $1-$2 half price at thrift stores for a few months), I made a slide show of several different creative lamp ideas and showed it to my students.  They were required to write down a few ideas that they liked, and then sketch the one they chose to do on paper.  Once that was approved, they got to choose a lamp and a shade and begin working on their design.  I found anything they asked for, and some of them found their own stuff.  The results ranged from airplanes to semi truck horns (yes, that's a real one!) for the guys, and books, lace, trim, and kitchen gadgets for the ladies.  We displayed these at our Christmas program open house, and I overheard one of the adults ask, "Did the students make these?"  Yes, ma'am, they sure did.  

Helping Happy Homeschoolers Prepare Appealing Pottery

 

I enthusiastically planned to make pottery for two of my homeschool art classes, figuring that if it was a big flop, at least we had tried and hopefully had had fun smushing the clay with our hands.  

It was not a flop, instead it was a wonderful experience that we all enjoyed.  

The first class period,  they were given a slab of air dry clay.  I ordered this on Amazon.  (The younger ones got Crayola Model Magic which is much easier to work with.  I got that at Dollar General.   They come in little packages just the right size for each student.)   I got all white clay so that we could paint it later.

      

During the first class we learned to wedge, roll, shape, make a pinch pot, and make coil pottery.  The younger ones made pinch pots; the older ones made coil pottery.   I gave them several ideas: pencil holders, cups with handles, adding coils to the top or sides, etching designs on the sides, etc.  Then I set them loose.    

When they were finished we let them dry on paper plates with their names written on them.  The teachers retrieved these two days later and wrote the students' names on the bottom of their creations after they were fully dried.  

The second class we painted them.  We let the paint dry while we had a P.E. class (hair dryers sped up the process).  The moms helped with that while I ran relay races with the students and jumped through a hula hoop with a funny hat on my head.  

Next, we glazed them with water-based Minwax varnish.   I stressed to the students (and had them repeat me several times) that they are not safe to drink or eat out of.  But, I have a dream of having a real kiln and making stuff that we could really eat out of some day . . . 

Related Posts:  

Fire Up the Kiln! -- Oops!  Explosion

Fruit Loops in Our New Pottery 

Students Make Magnificent Ming Pottery 

Korean Clay Pottery