Welcome, Grandparents!

With a lifetime of experiences, we know you have amassed a wealth of creative ideas for just about any project imaginable. We’d love to have you apply those ideas and skills to educating your grandchildren. For homeschooling families, education is a lifestyle, and everything a homeschooling family does becomes an educational experience. They can’t go to the zoo without whipping out their sketchbook, or attend a theater production without analyzing the worldview that is being depicted through the story line, costumes, music and set. Homeschooling families simply love to learn! And your grandchildren need your wisdom and insights!

So, this page is for you — Grandparents — to share ways you can be involved in the home education of your grandchildren, so that all of us can benefit from everyone’s ideas.

We’ll share a quick idea to get your started, then we’d like to publish some of your ideas. Here goes:

Plan a Chocolate Day!

This one’s for all ages. It will take just a bit of research and some shopping, but it will be fun!

— Google the history of chocolate and print out info for your grandchildren.

— If you plan ahead, you can also call some chocolate companies and ask if they have any printed brochures (and samples!) for educational groups that they could send you.

— Give your grandchildren advanced homework: (1) Have each of them research one aspect of chocolate (types of chocolate, cultivating cacao, harvesting, processing, packaging, sales, consumers, preservation, anything they find interesting). (2) Have them make a list of every food they can think of that contains chocolate, in as many of the 6 food groups as they can. Tell them to be creative; for instance, chocolate-covered bacon is a new delicacy (at least in the Midwest!) that falls under the meat group, and chocolate-covered strawberries fill the fruit category.

— From their food lists, plan a Chocolate Meal with your grandchildren and invite their parents as the honored guests. Prepare something from each food group, together with your grandchildren. That adds cooking skills to everything else they’ve learned by studying chocolate.

— Enjoy your meal together, discussing all the things you learned, including which chocolate dishes you like best or least, and why.

Another idea: This one for long-distance grandpas and grandmas

Virtual Story Time!

— Read a book to them over Skype or iChat on the computer so they can see your expressions and engage with you just as if you were beside them on the sofa. If you don’t have a computer, go to a friend’s house for video chats until you get one. (Computers are mandatory in this day and age for long-distance grandparents!) 🙂

— Don’t stop at the end of the book. Discuss the book, asking every question under the sun about what you’ve just read. You’ll learn how your grandchildren think, what they like and don’t like, what warms their hearts, what frightens them and what motivates them. And they’ll learn the same about you.

— The best part: Grandparents can use this opportunity to point those precious grandchildren to God: If they are afraid, they can trust Him; if they are joyful, they can thank Him. Read them short Scriptures that relate to the thoughts they convey to you through the book conversation. Discuss those verses — their meaning, their audience, the context, the application.

— End the conversation with prayer. It will encourage them not only to know you are praying for them, but to actually see and hear you praying for them.

Your Turn to Submit Ideas!

Grandparents of Homeschoolers™ welcomes your ideas (and photos of your ideas in action). We reserve the right to edit as needed, and/or to use your idea in the most appropriate place on the Grandparents of Homeschoolers social media network — the website, blog, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. Please submit all ideas using the “Contact” form on this website. If you have a photo to accompany it, please note that as well and we will contact you separately for your photo.