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Homeschooling Blog (Archive): October 2003
October 29, 2003
posted by Carol at
4:32 PM (Pacific)
So, I have just committed myself to taking the vegpledge
VegPledge
My husband and oldest son are totally on board with me. Son2 and Son3 have their doubts and suspicions about the whole ordeal. They love meat. I could totally gross them out and make them never want to eat it again but I don't think thats a fair thing to do to them. Husband wants to go veggie for health reasons. I also am concerned about health issues while son1 is in it totally for ethical reasons. We'll see how it goes.
October 24, 2003
posted by Carol at
12:24 PM (Pacific)
Ya know, I really should learn how to do the Blogroll thingey. It would save me some time and trouble. I read the "school@home" almost daily and then from there I follow her links to a favorite site or two and then from those sites follow their blogrolls to more and more interesting blogs to read until I've wasted over an hour and supper is late or dad's home and nothings done or the kids are having a meltdown from lack of parental attention and far too much xbox while I'm reading all these fascinating homeschooling blogs.
Not much going on in our house, well schoolwise that is. I mean, how much can I write about workbooks daily? Not much. I hate them, the kids tolerate them, the husband loves them. The only good thing about them is that it keeps DH happy, the kids are learning a little from them and I suppose it builds character for both them and me by having to do them even though we don't like them. Fortunately they can get them done in less than an hour so that frees up the entire day for living.
We have been talking about highschool here lately. I have no idea what we're going to do when that time comes. I figure we'll need to seriously start looking into what we want to use in January and have it picked out and ordered by say, March or April. Oldestboy expressed interest in video school which is a fine idea except the only one I know of is Abeka. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. I don't mind using a christian curriculum at all except I wonder how scientific the science is. I like a balanced view, if possible. I mean, I get mad at secular science for totally leaving the possibility of a creator out of things and I also don't like a totally christianized view of science either. Some of what I've read of that is as far out there as secular science. I dunno. I'm not hard to please, am I? :)
October 22, 2003
posted by Carol at
6:08 PM (Pacific)
Our dog has helped bring the kids closer together. They had a wonderful time out in the yard this evening. It would never have happened had it not been for our dog. I bought a flashlight yesterday and they played happily together in the yard, in the dark, with the dog and the flashlight for well over an hour. They had an elaborate game of hide-n-seek combined with search dog. 2 boys would hide while boy3 would wait in the house with the dog. Then he would go out and command dog to find 'em. Dog would search for the hidden boys and then be rewarded with a click and treat from the hidden boy. Great fun was had by all 4 of them! I hope they all sleep well tonight. Dog is crashed on the bed here next to me as I type.
We bought a clicker for the dog yesterday. Its a new way of training a dog rather than with a choke collar. You click the clicker and then give the dog a treat when she does a behavior you want her to do. Its interesting. We've got more reading to do but so far so good.
I like the whole concept of rewarding the good behavior rather than punishing the bad. Good not only for doggies, but kiddos as well!
:)
October 19, 2003
posted by Carol at
7:52 PM (Pacific)
"Only time will tell if this homeschooling experiment works for us, but in the meantime, I have the comfort of knowing that I am making their grandparents crazy with my latest hair brained scheme." Pamela Jorrick
Lifted from someone's signature line at the Edgy message board.
Yuppers, that about sums it all up for me.
Now that I have the knowledge that I've been blogrolled twice I'm going to have to at least try and make the effort of updating here regularly, or at least semi-regularly, or howsabout irregularly regular? or is that regularly irregular? Now I'm going to have to see if spellcheck has a hayday with that sentence.
................well, it passed spellcheck even if spellcheck doesn't know how to spell spellcheck.
~cmm
October 11, 2003
posted by Carol at
10:14 AM (Pacific)
http://www.bookcrossings.com
THIS is just one of THE coolest ideas I've seen in a long time. GO CHECK IT OUT!
What you do is-
1. Read a good book
2. Register it at the website
3. Release the book. Give it away, leave it in a public place, that sort of thing.
The website has all the information on it.
This is such a neat idea. I'm definitely going to try this myself.
posted by Carol at
9:15 AM (Pacific)
http://pub15.ezboard.com/btheedgycatinmamas
This is an interesting message board I occasionally visit. Its kinda slow, not a lot of posting going on, but we're all a bunch of busy homeschool moms so that's understandable.
I'd always believed that only right-wing religious fanatics homeschooled their children. Then we got a computer and internet access......
:)
October 10, 2003
posted by Carol at
7:40 PM (Pacific)
ARGH!
I didn't get my thoughts finished in that last post. We had a crisis here and I had to go calm things down. Now I can't remember where I was headed with my thoughts. Something about my realizing just how much my kids had already learned at home with me and why do I have to turn them over to someone else to teach them other things just because they hit the magic age of 5. Or something like that. That was the revelation that began our journey of homeschooling.
We're also on our 3 week break until then end of next week. We go 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off year round for school. As much as I'd love to be a true unschooler, the husband has issues with it. So, we do what we have to do to keep him happy. Fortunately "doing" schoolwork takes up a short period of the day and then we're all free to pursue other things. Maybe thats why I can't come up with any good homeschooling posts because of the break.
October 9, 2003
posted by Carol at
12:33 PM (Pacific)
I actually write so many posts for this blog in my head. I just never seem to get them written down here. If I could just write the many, many, many thoughts that I have as I go about my day this blog would never lie stagnant.
How about some random fragmented thoughts instead?
Eldest son is on Teen Council at the library. Not only is he involved with the Teen Council is also an officer, the homeschool representative AND one of only 2 teens on a library committee that is going to meet every Friday of the month to discuss how the library can better improve its services to teen readers.
*excuse me while I go burst with pride*
This IS the same boy who was diagnosed with a learning disability while in public school and who we all were afraid was doomed to being illiterate his entire life.
NOT.
He was a late reader, that's for sure. It took until this year for his brain to finally "click" with reading. Now look at him! He's read so many books this summer I can not even begin to list them. He read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'M not even through with that one yet.
Yet another scattered random thought in my head:
We moved to a new neighborhood. Into a subdivision after living out on a farm for the past 5 years. I'm a little nervous homeschooling back here. I've been told there are a lot of teachers that live back in here. I really shouldn't be. Homeschooling is certainly legal. I'm just always afraid of some neighbor calling the school system or (even worse) CPS to report kids not being in school. We are trying to lay low for awhile and not call attention to ourselves.
I met the neighbor lady who lives directly next door to us. She's ok. A little, hmmmm, different. I did tell her we HS. She says "ooooohhhhhh. I wondered why they weren't in school the other day." She then goes on to say that she always thought one would have to be really smart to do that.(hs) I laughed and said "that or just crazy." She went on with the typical blahblahblah that I get when I tell total strangers we're homeschoolers. They almost always relax after I tell them that my DH is a former math teacher. Which always gets my goat. I, as a mother and an intelligent woman, am not qualified enough to educate my children.
*humph*
They all learned to walk, talk, feed themselves, go potty, ride a bike, tie their shoes and a myriad of other skills while under my care.
October 5, 2003
posted by Carol at
4:47 PM (Pacific)
I'm sorry I'm so bad about keeping this blog updated. Thats not a good way to keep my readership happy.
I do have a list, not only in my head, but on paper somewhere of actual articles I'd like to write about here. Topics I'd like to address. I'm on this darn computer at least once or twice a day, sometimes more than that. Its usually only for 15-20 minutes at a time though. I think that limits my publishing. I'm also rather insecure about my actual writing abilities. I read others blogs and they're all so well-written and literate. I write how I think and its usually a mad, weird jumble of thoughts, ideas and bad spelling.
On a homeschooling note.
Oldest son wrote our local TV station several months ago expressing his interest in weather forecasting and meteorology. He was hoping to see if he would be able to come to the station and maybe get a back-scenes look at the weather department. I think this was wayyyyyy back in July, maybe even June, when he sent the letter. We'd never heard a peep from the station, so we just figured they blew him off and chucked his letter.
The husband drives past the old rental house yesterday and checks the mailbox. In it is a letter addressed to Oldest. Ok, so at least they sent him a rejection letter after all these months. Turns out its a handwritten letter from the head meteorological, apologizing for taking so long to get back to him and inviting him to spend a half a day with him in the weather department.
HOW FREAKIN' COOL IS THAT!!!!???
Hopefully his dad can take him over next week (this week is crazy busy). This is the same station that refused to show the TV show "Couplings". A decision I also applauded.
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