How Bad do I Think Google Is? Let Me Count the Ways........

So, I decided to start a blog. Two actually. I'm a homeschooling mom putting herself through nursing school, so I thought I'd write about both, each on their own page. Share a little useful information, some common experiences, etc. Great. All is good.

Since each blog was on a specific topic and, let's face it, a homeschooling mom putting herself through school can use every nickel she can earn, I decided to add Google's AdSense program. No biggie - each blog has a certain audience, so the ads should be things they might really be interested in - nursing school info on the nursing blog, homeschool resource links on the homeschool blog.

But hey, did you know that Google can, with absolutely no explanation, yank all of your ads AND keep all of the money you've earned so far? Whoo, talk about fun....... They claim privacy issues and refuse to provide even a hint of what the problem is/was, yet expect bloggers to be able to defend themselves somehow? If you don't tell me what you think the problem is, I can't possibly make any sort of explanation!

[Yes, I looked through the Help pages they referred me to and still don't know what the problem was. I didn't click on my own pages, I didn't pay for clicks, I didn't imply that clicks would get anyone entered in a drawing, etc.....]

So, I thought I had part of the heat bill paid this month. With all of the ice and snow, that was a good thing. Now, it's all gone. Up in a puff of smoke.

Thanks Google. Maybe someday Larry and Sergei will find out what it feels like to be treated this way. It won't come from me, but I hope someone's there to help pay their heat bills when it happens......

-

Happy New Year, Chinese style!

Gōngxǐ fā cái, hóngbāo ná lái!!

OK, I'm not nearly young and adorable enough to get away with demanding a red envelope, but you all have my best wishes on today, the first day of the Year of the Ox. If you're lucky enough to live in an area of the US that puts on a good party for this occasion, enjoy the fireworks and dragon dances.

A few resources for learning about Chinese New Year and the various traditions and activities involved:


The University of Victoria up in Canada has a nice faculty page up with links to information on the full 15-day slate of festivities as well as food, decoration, and taboos.
http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/438/CHINA/chinese_new_year.html


And a nice, succinct run-down of New Year dos and don'ts:
http://www.familyculture.com/holidays.chinese_new_year.htm


OK, Wikipedia is not my favorite source for many things, but they do have a nice overview of this one....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year


This page is terribly clunky, but has some really nice examples of Chinese calligraphy and presents it so that you can see how the art has evolved over the ages
http://www.chinapage.com/callig1.html


And, finally, good wishes to all of you students!
Zhù nǐ xué xí qǔ dé hǎo chéng jì ！

Enjoy!

Inauguration Lessons

So, it's time for a new President to be inaugurated. What a great time for practical civics lessons! The AFT and NEA (yes, I know, bear with me, lol) have produced a series of activities and study suggestions that is worth checking out. They've designed most for the older set with a few adaptations for younger kids, but, as homeschoolers, we're used to taking materials and pulling out what we can use, right? :)

http://www.pic2009.org/page/content/lessonplans

Here are a few more things for the kids to think about.....

What oath does the President take? Where does it come from? What words do new Presidents add that are not actually in the oath itself?

What oath does the Vice President take? Who else takes the same oath and why would the VP oath be the same as theirs?

Why January 20th at noon?

How did the tradition of Inaugural Balls begin? How did the President involved feel about it? Why?

Read a few inaugural addresses form different periods in US history. Talk about how current events and context may influence inaugural addresses.

Watching Barack Obama's inaugural address, can you identify what his Calls To Action are? Are they similar or different from those of previous Presidents? Are there any Calls that you feel you'd like to answer with your own positive action within your community?

What do you think the purpose of an inaugural address is? As you watch, how does it make you feel? (Contrast to other addresses you can find copies of if you like.) If you were being sworn in as the new President, what would you include in your address?

Younger kids can be introduced to a lot of American symbolism during the inaugural festivities. Try pointing out some of the symbols you see and discussing why they're important and how they're being used.

Kids have been fascinated by the two new First Kids. Have them write a story about what it might be like to live in the White House or have friends visit them there.

Some Famous and/or Accomplished Homeschooled Folks

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/Famous.htm

This page has a pretty nice list of folks who were homeschooled and have gone on to succeed in their chosen fields. From soccer players to mathematicians to musicians, there's a pretty wide choice of people listed. There are short blurbs on each, with links for more info - the Computational Origami by Erik and Mark Demaine is worth the click to this page all by itself, imho!

Enjoy!

Once A Month Cooking

We can spend a lot of time cooking. Some of us love it, some not so much...... If you'd rather be spending that time doing something else, have you considered cooking once a month?

No, really. :) Make a list of the foods that your family likes. How many of those keep well in the freezer? Well, how about grabbing the kids and spending one day each month chopping and boiling and baking, then making individual- or family-sized portions and freezing them? It's really not much more trouble to make a large pot of soup instead of a pot big enough for one meal or get a larger dish and bake a dozen chicken breasts instead of just 2 or 3.

Try a few of these, then follow the links below for more:

-Make a batch of spaghetti sauce, then freeze it in ice cube trays. Once frozen, turn the cubes out into a freezer bag. When it's pasta night, just boil up the noodles and melt a few cubes of sauce.
-Cook a bunch of chicken breasts in a frying pan, adding lemon juice and black pepper to taste. Freeze each separately or make sure they are frozen before putting them all in one bag - no fun trying to pry frozen chicken breasts apart.
-Cut steak into useful portions, then place in a ziploc bag with your favorite marinade. Freeze. Want beef tomorrow night? Pop a bag out of the freezer and into the fridge to thaw overnight.
-Chili and lasagne work well, too. Just make too much and freeze in portions. :)

http://tinyurl.com/9or525 (Food Network page with looong URL)
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/357170
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html

Teach Them or Teach Them To Learn?

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
-William Butler Yeats

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
-George Bernard Shaw

Money-Saving Website

Oh, that all the homeschool resources we love were free.....

I love my local library. Love, love, love. Our branch participates in a very good lending-exchange program with other area libraries and the staff has been wonderful about supporting us in our homeschool journey. However, unless your library has unlimited funds and a large base of homeschoolers lobbying for materials, it's likely that you will need to look elsewhere for at least some of your materials.

Enter the Co-op!

http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org has a great selection of discounts on loads of resources for the homeschooling family. It is free, yes, free, to join! Once you are a member, you can band together with other members to order things at less than retail price. On many items, the discount increases as more people buy in!

They usually have offers for resources covering all major subjects as well as electives and some fun stuff. I have seen items that would work for secular HSers, religious HSers, elementary schoolers, high schoolers, and many, many that would work for HSers of any stripe. It's well worth subscribing to their updates since offers normally have a time limit - different offers come and go and many have multiple sign-up periods. If there is a product that you think would be great on their site, let them know and they may get in contact with the company to see what can be done.

No, I have no financial interest in the Co-op, though I am a member and have benefited from some of the savings they offer.

Free (nearly) Paper Toys!

http://www.thetoymaker.com - Click on Free Toys to find a large assortment of projects that are free. (OK, a few cents for ink and paper.....) Toys that almost anyone can fold and put together, boxes that can be folded for decoration or to hold small surprises.... Loads of fun designs! (Even a few learning toys.....)

Record Keeping

Some of us are required to keep and/or submit certain types of records. Some have high-school aged kids who might want to go to a college that will ask for some sort of transcript. Others simply want to keep themselves on track or need a way to reassure themselves that yes, the kids are learning and moving forward. Finding the right form of recordkeeping to satisfy your family and any legal requirements you are subject to will be one way for many of you to stay sane. :)

Paper Records

-Journaling. Many families simply get a notebook and write down what the kids do each day. This can be as loose or as structured as you like. Write down what is accomplished each day, dividing into subject area and noting hours if you like.

-Detailed notebook. Get a 3-ring binder for each child and start printing out useful forms. Luckily, there are sites out there that offer free forms that are specifically designed to be useful to homeschoolers.
http://donnayoung.org/index.htm - Donna offers a wide variety of useful forms. Check out the options and choose the ones you like. She has everything from planning sheets to forms to record volunteer hours on. Well worth spending some time clicking around this site. if you download in Word format, you can edit many of the forms to suit your needs.
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/records.htm - A few useful forms. Most look most useful in the earlier grades.
http://tinyurl.com/7cckch - A daily assignment plannning page from about.com. Could be used for any age.


Online

Homeschool Tracker http://www.homeschooltracker.com
Windows only
Many homeschooling parents swear by this program. Others swear at it. You'll need to check it out and see if it works for you. The basic version is free and allows you to manage assignments, track hours and some resources used, and generate some reports. The Plus version will cost you money, but does offer a number of extra features, ranging from a transcript feature to weighted grading to the ability to copy assignments into a weekly or lesson plan.

PER (Plan, Educate, Record) http://www-homeschoolplanner.com (note the dash, not dot, after the www)
main site - http://www.home-school-inc.com
Any OS can use this. For Macs, Firefox seems more stable than other browsers when using this site.
A free tool you can use to plan out what you'd like to do, schedule class times, record what gets done, and generate reports on things like attendance and resources used. You define your term lengths, using the dates most useful to you. The kids have their own area to log onto to see assignments, grades, etc. You can even assign work to be done that can be turned in and graded within the system. If you don't take the scheduling too seriously, this can be a very useful tool. (You do have to define class times, but nothing says you have to stick to that time schedule - just enter completed work in appropriate boxes and you're good.)

Help With Getting Chores Done!

******UPDATE - Handiland has begun charging subscription fees in order to access most everything above the most basic functions. We will be leaving the service and I can no longer recommend it unless you're not watching your budget. :(

Do your kids resist doing their chores? Do chore charts help, but maybe they need an extra boost? Have you discovered HandiPoints yet? (http://www.handipoints.com)

Handipoints is an online system where parents and kids can assign and track chores. Parents assign a certain number of points for each chore and the child checks off the chore as it is completed. You can easily list chores as daily, like brushing teeth after each meal, or weekly, like taking the garbage cans out to the street for pickup. You can also choose any combination of days that work for you - useful if Child A does dishes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday while Child B does dishes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday! In fact, for many chores, I choose the daily option so that we have the flexibility to assign points whenever the chore is completed - some things just aren't scheduled for the same day each week.....

For each chore completed, the child actually receives two kinds of points - the system keeps track of each separately. One type of points can be saved up and used to 'purchase' rewards from Mom and Dad - 10 points to play an extra board game with Dad, 40 points to choose a movie to watch, etc. You decide on the rewards and how much it will take to earn each one.

The second kind of points is used to 'buy' virtual items in the HandiPoints world. Each child has a cat character that they get to customize and play games with. (Some of the games offer the chance to earn more points) With HandiPoints, they can choose to 'buy' items to decorate their virtual room with, clothing pieces to dress their cat in, or do things like send virtual postcards to other cats.

Handipoints is most likely to appeal to younger kids, though I know of quite a few pre-teens who really love playing in the virtual world of HandiPoints. Even if the virtual-world aspect is "too young" for your kids, the point-tracking system alone is worth joining. (As of now, it is free to join. Rumblings suggest that this may change.....) With younger kids, internet security is, of course, a concern for many parents. Handipoints handles this well - kids communicate with each other using a set menu of G-rated statements, questions, and answers. There is no way for them to give out personal information, so that's one worry out of the way! They can also make their cats do things like wave, dance, sneeze..... My daughter particularly enjoys sneaking up to my cat (I do log on sometimes to see what she's up to - she's aware of it and we have fun together.) and sneezing on her. LOL

Homeschool When Mom (or Dad) is Sick

Ugh. You know the feeling. You wake up in the morning and can just feel that things are not right. In a perfect world, you'd just curl yourself back up under the blankets and try to go back to sleep just to avoid feeling like this all day. But no...... the kids are up and everyone's healthy but you. How does your family handle days like this?

Suggestions:

- Declare a day off. Skip the work altogether. Let the older ones heat up some soup for you. Of course, this is really an option only if you can be at least fairly sure that the kids will not cut open the sofa and spread jelly all over the stove while you're safely tucked in bed.......

- Pull out those educational videos. Let the kids go to town watching Discovery Channel shows, practicing along with French-language DVDs, or scouring discoverystreaming for age-appropriate health vids.

- Just scale back a bit. Have the kids sit where they can hear/see you, but can't catch your germs. Let them read something, then tell you about what they learned. They can be moving forward with their education with a minimum amount of physical effort on your part.

- Are you lucky enough to have a family member or a homeschooling friend who can take the kids for the day? Spare just a fraction of a second to think about all those parents without a support system as good as yours and make the call!

Happy Not-Back-To-School Day!

Most of the public and private school students head back to class tomorrow. I plan on enjoying a late morning in bed, maybe a bit of hot cocoa. :)

Since we began homeschooling, DD's schedule has slipped back a couple of hours. Compared to her public school friends, she's up late and sleeps in late. However, her schedule seems to be much closer to what recent research suggests is the healthiest one for kids her age, so I'm good with us being a bit different. Since I have evening classes, it all works out perfectly for us anyway. :) No stressful mornings trying to get her up and off to school hours before her body wants to be awake, no missing out on time with her since she's in school all day and I'm at class all night.......

Sometimes, it's the things we *don't* have to do that are the most sanity-making.

So, whether your family is up at 5 am or still snuggled away under warm blankets at 10, here's a cocoa-toast to the freedom to work on our own personal schedules!

After the storm.....

Where I live, we've spent the last several weeks with near-constant ice and snow. As long as you don't lose electricity and heat, it's gorgeous, but too many of us wind up staying inside. While it's fun - and almost luxurious sometimes - to take a day to snuggle up with family, reading or watching the fire, drinking hot chocolate, doing puzzles, etc., it's important to get yourself and the kids outside when you can. Cabin fever will hit before the warm weather does and it always seems so much worse when you haven't been outside at all for a few months, barring the weekly venture out to the grocery store.......

Some kids need absolutely no encouragement to play outside, not matter what the weather and temperature. Others need a bit of a nudge.

Snowmen/critters. Build a whole family of snowpeople. Or how about a family of dinosaurs? If you've got ice to break into triangles for back plates or icicles to make tail spikes, you can really go to town. Maybe you forget rolling snowballs to make your snowpeople - can the kids figure out how to make a snowman out of cubes or some other odd shape? What can they make out of pine needles for their creation? Or maybe you have a family (and neighbors. lol) who would appreciate a tableau of Calvin and Hobbes-inspired snowfolks?

Sliding. Many people have sleds or discs to fly down hills on, but what's stopping those of us who don't from improvising? Grab a piece of cardboard for each kid and let them spend the afternoon going up and down the local hill! When your new sleds fall apart, just dump the pieces in the recycling.

Snow Coloring. Fill spray bottles full of water and  environment-safe coloring and tell the kids to decorate the yard. (You want safe coloring for the big ecological reasons, but on a personal level, who wants to have the snow melt to find that you need to re-seed patches of ground because your coloring killed off the grass? Bleah) What can they make? Giant faces, a flag representing the family, a menagerie of silly critters, maybe a people-sized game board that can be played on until the snow melts?

Nature Hunt. Yes, it's cold. Yes, the ground is covered in snow. But nature lives on. Maybe the kid who identifies the largest number of animal tracks gets an extra marshmallow in their hot chocolate or perhaps the family can identify which birds are out and about, then find out what sort of food they might be looking for.

Check Out Snowflakes. Set a piece of very dark fabric outside (or in your freezer) until it's really cold, then get out a magnifying glass and take a close look at the snowflakes that fall on the fabric. What observations can the kids make about the flakes? Watch the flakes under the magnifying glass as you breathe on them - how fast do they melt?

Snow Snacks. If you can trust that the snow near you is fresh and clean enough to be edible, give each of the kids a small bowl and have them fill it with snow. Pour a little juice on top - orange juice works well! - and enjoy.

Got Ice?  Do you have a patch of ground that has frozen over with ice? Kids love to slip and slide and an ice patch like this is safer than a lake or pond that isn't frozen thick enough. Give everyone brooms and play broomball, trying to get the ball into the other team's/player's goal.  If the ice is smooth enough that it won't ruin clothing, you can have Seal Races with everyone sliding on their bellies. (This is also a safe place to have kids practice what they would do if they fell through the ice while skating on a pond.)

Talk to the Owls. On a clear night, go outside and have someone do as realistic an owl-hoot as they can. If you're lucky, you might get a reply!

Snow  Tag. Stomp down snow in a wheel pattern - a largish circle with spokes running in to a hub. The person who is It stands at the hub, while everyone else stands on the outer circle. The person who is It yells Go! and darts down one of the spokes, trying to tag another player. The other players may run around the circle or down a spoke to the hub and back out another spoke to the circle, but may NOT leave the paths or pass each other when on the same line. The deeper the snow, the easier these rules are to enforce, but footprints will show up easily enough in any depth to settle any disputes.  This is best played with a number of players since one or two people may evade It easily, but with a few more, players start bunching up on each others' heels when they cannot pass each other. When a player is tagged by It, they become It.

Welcome!

I have been homeschooling my 2E DD for a couple of years now. In my attempt to learn more about homeschooling in general and homeschooling a challenging child specifically, I have joined quite a few email discussion lists. To everyone who has participated in those discussion, you have my eternal gratitude for your advice, thoughts, assistance, and humor.

Recently, it struck me that I had seen several "How do I do this and stay sane?" posts from homeschooling parents of all types. Now, I realize that there is an element of humorous exaggeration to these posts - most of us wouldn't give up homeschooling for anything - but, like any other parent, we have Those Days every now and then. While many parents find that the quality-and-quantity parent-child time homeschooling provides winds up leading to a closer relationship, let's face it, it also means that when everyone is stressed out, you're going to need to deal with it instead of shipping them off to school and putting things out of your mind for a while. (One could make a persuasive argument that this is a great thing in the long run!)

There are positives and negatives to any schooling choice. You wouldn't be homeschooling if you didn't think that, on balance, it was more positive for your child and family than negative, right? If public or private school was the right choice for your child, that's where they'd be, but it isn't.  This blog is *not* intended to judge anyone's educational choices for their kids. We all make the best decisions for our kids, taking into consideration our resources and opportunities. For some kids, the local public school is a great fit, some do better at a private school, and some will find that homeschooling is the best choice. (In the interest of full disclosure, I went to what I still consider to be an excellent public school system for most of my schooling and only came to homeschooling when the well-rated public school near us became an obviously poor choice for DD.)

Now that you know where I'm coming from, where are we going? Homeschool parents need support and I'm hoping that this blog will be a piece of that. I'll post links to useful educational sites, ideas for projects, and suggestions on where to find materials. In addition, I'd like to include tips on how to retain your sanity when everything seems to be going haywire. 

I'd love to hear from all of you, so please feel free to share your stories, tips, and tricks. Tell us about the time the 4 year old covered the dog in applesauce to make his fur softer, so you de-stressed with a hot shower..... after hosing down Fido, of course. Or perhaps you managed to arrange a family water-fight that Fido enjoyed as he got clean? Maybe you have a favorite game that kids of various ages really enjoy playing together and that will short-circuit the blahs on a grumpy day? Anything that has worked for you may be just what another parent is looking for!

So, let's join forces and live, love, laugh our way through the ups and downs of homeschooling!