Worthy to post?

I must make a confession. I have been waiting for something worthy to post. While it's true the holidays are always busy and I've had a whirlwind first couple of months in the new year- those aren't the only reasons I have not posted since November. . . Because of my busyness and going and going. . . the 'homeschool' that's been going on has not been easily recognizable and has certainly not been impressive. I kept thinking, 'I won't post yet, maybe tomorrow, or next tuesday we will do some awesome school thing and then I can blog about it!' I can't believe I've already fallen into that kind of thinking, but then again, yes I can believe it. Don't we worry about our portfolios*? Don't we only want to show the 'good stuff?' Don't we generally want to impress? And really, there's nothing wrong with that to a point; certainly we should put our best foot forward. You don't normally answer the door in pjs and bedhead hair; and you'd especially not want to answer the door that way when Publisher's Clearing House is bringing you a check. And I do believe in a certain level of privacy, I won't share every homeschool detail here, and I don't recommend it. But that's not what was in my head. What was in my head was thinking I needed something super fantastic to share or it wasn't worth blogging at all. [and I do think those little chick hatchings are hard to beat] But for a blog? . . this is different. This is suppose to be real-or at least more realistic. Blogging, is suppose to be a snapshot of daily life; More specifically, this blog is suppose to be a snapshot of day to day homeschooling.

*in our state, we must show 'thorough and regular instruction' through a portfolio review each year, usually its done simply in a 3 ring binder with subject tabs.

Book Review, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.*"

Take Back the Land, by Rick Boyer

Inspiring a new generation to lead America

Written to the youth of America, homeschoolers in particular. I am glad it is written directly to the audience and not to their parents. I agree with Rick, that we need to treat this age group as adults - or at least as much as adults as they demonstrate they are. We were all there once, screaming, ‘I’m not a child anymore.’ So, okay, you’re not a child - if that’s the case, act like it. Age is not the determiner of adulthood- maturity is. And with his definition I agree.

Mr. Boyer defines adulthood as:

Ownership of faith

Ownership for one’s actions

Is a giver and not a taker

Has a proper sense of duty

He gives a brief history of childification in America - in which compulsory education is a major part. John Gatto also discusses this phenomenon in his writings. It seems that this process is extending later and later and that we cannot take much more. Something must change. Homeschooling is the start of a revival but it is not complete. Rick Boyer asks the ‘new generation’ to complete the revival.

The homeschool parents of the first/second generation are like Moses, we took our kids out of government education and as much as possible out of this childification process. The current and soon to be graduates of homeschooling are Like Joshua - they’ve been led out of government education and are on the bank of the promised land - but will they cross the river? Will they go one step further and reign in government control for everyone or will they return to Egypt?

Rick rightly points out that compulsory education is imprisonment for the innocent. Think about that. When did we find it acceptable to incarcerate those who’ve committed no crime? Truancy was not a big problem before compulsory laws- so for fear of a nonexistent problem, all parents and children are controlled as criminals.

The battlefield for the ‘joshuas’ of today are family, church and government. Not everyone will be called to every battlefield or even have the same role in the three arenas. The point is to seek and discover your role- and then fill it now, not waiting for some future day when you are ‘old enough’.

Rick Boyer states “I say this without apology and without hesitation. It’s no exaggeration.

The current crop of new adults [around age 12- the 20s] needs to get involved and make changes now, not later or we’ll loose the little freedoms we have left. America as we know it is on the verge of disappearing completely. We need new leadership- and homeschoolers are poised to provide it.”

In reality we have a 2 class educational system: The leaders and the rest of us. Yes, where do today’s leaders come from? Not usually ‘public school.‘ They attend a handful of elite private schools and as Mr. Boyer states: “. . . every American president and almost every candidate for president of the last 20 years attended either Harvard or Yale. With the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court in 2010, every member of the present Supreme Court also attended Harvard or Yale.” Doesn’t this make you mad? Doesn’t this scare you? Doesn’t this seem wrong? If ‘public education’ is suppose to be the great equalizer and field leveler- then why are our leaders not coming out of it? Why do they come from a completely different educational track? And a small one at that. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see this system is not equitable and not working for most of us. And you can see, that as the education system goes, so goes the nation.

The biggest impact on my reading this book and of what’s most significant to me is that Rick Boyer is not the only voice with the same message. Generation Joshua, Vision Forum, The Harris brothers, ICCinc, Debra Bell and many others are all delivering a similar message. Even at TED Talks there are some good speakers expounding on how the current educational system should not be reformed but scrapped for a totally new one. So because of the wide consensus, this is a truly timely book. And while it might not be the end of the world or even the end of America- certainly change is coming and it will need leaders and those leaders will be the homeschoolers. [or the perceptive] I hope they read it and act on it.

-deborah

* Gandalf, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Scheduling oh my!

Since I love homeschool planning more than actually implementing them or most any other household chore, I tend to force myself to wait until the very end to make my plan or schedule for the next year. I must resist the urge to plan all year for future years. I typically want to scrap the current year in January in order to start day dreaming about next September. But I resist. I hide catalogs that come in the mail and determine not to buy things at conferences unless already on my decided list.

I agree with other advisors that you really owe it to yourself to take some time off- either go away, or have the kids go away for the day or hire a mom's helper for the day? Anything, so you can really concentrate on the job, look through all those great resources, and search the house for those books you know you bought at last year's conference. . . It is also a good idea to discuss with dh [dear husband] each child's details and how you want to meet them.

After discussing the kids w/ their Dad, The first thing I do is determine my dates. I get a calendar and decide when I'm going to start, stop and take vacation. I try to have a couple of extra floater weeks for unexpected things. I pencil in all those weekly commitments; TKD, dance, soccer, piano, Speech, Bible Study, etc etc. . . Then I count up what's left and start slotting my resources in them. I mostly just concentrate on the weekly schedule and a loose idea of what the daily schedule will be like- [Latin on Monday, piano on Tuesday etc] Since each day is different It's unrealistic to think I can do the same 'school schedule' each day of the week.

Another thing not to forget in this planning is the household chores and meals. While not perfect in this, I do recognize that stopping more often during the day to pick up makes it much easier to maintain the house overall, rather than trying to save it up for one big mega clean up. This is a good thing to do for 'transitions' in your day [after breakfast, before lunch, afternoons before Dad arrives, just before leaving, bedtime, etc. ] set a timer for 10 minutes and have everyone help pick up the main areas of trouble. Whatever gets done in that time is better than nothing. You might schedule in starting a load of laundry in the morning, and swapping it at lunch time. I am going to attempt, yet again, to schedule children for various meals- 1) so they can learn/practice to cook, 2) to learn to serve their family, and 3) to take some of the load off of me. Even the younger ones can make eggs or sandwiches so why not make them for everybody?

As for school. I'm going to try something different this year. I seem to always be struggling to get in my 'favorite subjects' of history and science because I spend so much time doing the 'have tos' When I do school that is. . . Sometimes it's just a struggle period. but also things like teaching someone to read and do math. I've found that I just can't do every single subject each day anyway- and alternating days wasn't working too well either- unless I was in a co-op. So this year, I am doing units. First a 3 week science unit, and then a 5 week history unit. then back to science. there's a little tweaking to fit in the calendar parameters decided on above, but mostly it fits into the time slots I've made. I am very excited to try it this way and see how it works out. . . I've also determined NOT to try to do the whole book, but just pick a handful of related topics for each 'unit.' More details to come, I hope. We start on Tuesday with piano, TKD and possibly Speech Chapter. . .

School's Out, sorta

Just posting like crazy today. Lots to catch up on. . .

The kids and I were very excited to finish our SWR for the year. I had hoped to get through list O for this year, but we DID make it through list N instead. Pretty darn close and M and N lists had all the review words, yay!! And not only that, we were able to do 40 words a week [ OR more, shsh, don't tell] AND do a couple of enrichments for each list. The kids have progressed so much in their reading ability and in their stamina that it is just easier to do the assignments. I feel like next year the 2 of them doing SWR will need to be done separately. They have different needs to work on and I found they either distracted or held up one another. I also need to see if the little one could do some things. I am never real consistent with having older kids teach younger ones, so here's my chance to try again. The next 2 could easily play phonogram games, read pre-school books, and stuff with the youngest. I will have to remember to plan that in- maybe while I do SWR with one and they can switch off. Lots of time to think about it. . .

At the end of our year we did a final spelling diagnostic. I don't do them every month, because one just doesn't test well, yet. . . If I don't count the obvious letters he confused the sound for [f for v, r for w etc] then he spells fairly well. They are both solid second graders in reading and spelling, and this is with one that seemed would NEVER learn to read. So it is a great big HUGE accomplishment. We will start back again at the end of August. For now, we will just enjoy reading, work on some vision therapy for one and handwriting review for the other.

I would still like to finish up some of the history we didn't get to, some of the science and continue to work on the math until done, but in reality, this is purely optional and probably not likely. . . but you never know. . .

Science Project

Here is the kids' science project display.

I am sorry to say that the cracked egg did not make it. We opened the egg and there was a full grown chick inside, so he definitely survived the crack, but I don't think he survived being rolled around by his earlier to hatch siblings. :( live and learn.

The Final Cut!

Here are the long promised movies we made of our chick hatching!!

We ended up with 10 baby chicks. 2 eggs never developed and 6 died before hatching. 1 of the 10 needed 'help' to hatch. He is the little yellow runt. Half way through the hatching process I put the rest of the eggs in cartons. I will always wonder if we might have saved a couple more by doing this at 'lockdown' [the day you stop turning them]. I think I might also have the hatch in the bathroom, so we can easily bring the temp. and humidity in the room up to the incubator level so that opening and removing chicks from the incubator would be more doable. I did not like hatched chicks pecking on the in progress chicks. The kids won special recognition at the local homeschool science fair for being the most fun exhibit. [Yep, took laptop and showed the videos, live animals not allowed.]

I highly recommend the backyardchickens.com forum for information and support! A great group.

Here's an overview movie:

Here's a nice hatch:

The kids made their own video of one of the hatchings.

We had many friends over that day to see the amazing miracles!

They were such cute fluff balls and fun to watch and play!

This was the best 'science project' ever, I highly recommend it.

next post: rats.

Egg Slumber Party

So, our eggs started to wiggle and pip [made little holes] on Tuesday. We were on egg watch! We decided to sleep in the room w/them so could keep an eye on them. Wednesday morning the first ones were hatched. Last night we had fluffy baby chicks to watch as well, so a second night on the floor. Even though we are still hoping a few more hatch, we've given up on sleeping down here. Other than waking up early, we didn't wake up, nor did we miss anything.

The brown thing is a towel covering the 'brooder' where the hatched chicks are being kept warm. It's really a lizard tank w/ heat lamp.

Three of my kids on the floor and I slept on the couch, lol. Okay, I DID check on the eggs several times throughout the last 2 nights.

Here are the fluffy chicks bedded down for the night. [5 of them, can you count them?]